House of Skin by Tim Curran Read Free Book Online

selected. Stadtler saw the content, self-indulgent look on his face and wondered for a moment just how far this could possibly go.
    “Are we going to take life?” Grimes asked.
    “Yes,” Zero assured him. “How else can we study death before and after?”
    “And what about fear?” Stadtler said. “How are we going to go about studying that? If I might ask.”
    “There are ways. Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking,” Zero said. “As I said, I’ve always been intrigued by what it would take to completely snap an individual’s mind. And I don’t mean just terrify them or give them a garden variety psychosis. I mean totally destroy their psyche, totally destroy what makes them a person. Wipe the slate clean, so to speak. Reduce this person to a basal level where he or she knows and remembers nothing but terror. Then,” he said in almost a whisper, “we could re-learn this person to our own fancy. Re-engineer their psyche.”
    “I’m not following you,” Stadtler admitted.
    “It’s simple. Reduce this person through fear, strip their mind away, propel them backwards into a state of psychological infancy.”
    “Exactly,” Grimes said.
    “To what end?”
    “Enlightenment and pleasure, if you will. Pleasure in the satisfaction we’ll derive from destroying their will and life programming; enlightenment in that we’ll ultimately understand the nature of horror itself.”
    “How do we go about it?”
    “First we need a volunteer,” Zero said.
    “Who?”
    “The streets are full of them,” Grimes said.
    “Then let’s go find one.”
    It was the beginning of the end.

THE ZERO FACTOR
----
    “I’m afraid you’ll think I’m crazy, Mr. Fenn.”
    Fenn attempted a smile, but it was a bad one. Dr. Lochmere hadn’t meant it as a joke, he supposed, but as far as he was concerned, all psychiatrists were crazy. They were no better than the loons they kept like pets. Maybe he was cynical, but he preferred to call himself a realist. And if ten years of homicide could do nothing else, it could certainly mold a man into a student of realism.
    “You’re a professional, Dr. Lochmere. I’m always happy to listen to a fellow professional. In my line of work, I rub noses with head doctors all the time. We can be of valuable assistance to one another.”
    Lisa nodded, sensing his dislike of her profession. “It just seems odd for me to ask your help in finding a man who may commit a crime. This is all very … vague, you understand. The man I’m searching for might not even be here at all.”
    “Maybe you’d better just tell me and let me decide.”
    “Fenn,” she said. “Is that Irish?”
    “Yeah, I’m afraid so.” He laughed, but there was little humor behind it.
    She looked amused. “An Irish cop.”
    He found himself grinning and it looked positively out of place on his hardened features, yet his blue eyes sparkled with mirth. “It runs in the family.”
    “I bet it does. My dad was a cop as was his,” she chanced.
    “And you broke the chain?”
    “My brother Jeff works bunko in Vallejo. Same precinct as dad. He’s terribly proud of him. He wanted me to go to school.”
    “Sounds like a good man.”
    A darkness crossed her face. “He is. You’d like him.”
    Fenn bet he would. This had all started as somewhat of a bothersome, uncomfortable meeting in a coffee shop with some female headshrinker … and what was happening now? Was he actually enjoying her company?
    He was. And the fact that she was pretty in his eyes didn’t hurt either.
    “I need your help with a man called Eddy Zero,” she said. “He was under my care at Coalinga.”
    “The state mental hospital?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s where they keep some of the very worst. Serial killers, thrill killers, sexual predators.” He shook his head. “Good God, why would a woman want to work in a zoo like that?”
    “Why would a man want to work homicide?”
    They shared a laugh.
    “I never thought it would come to this,” she