Whirlwind by Charles L. Grant Read Free Book Online

evi-dently raw.
    Although there were shadows, and although he tried, he couldn't spot any pools or traces of blood.
    He glanced up, frowning. "Blood?"
    Scully nodded. "I know, I've looked, too. If it's exsanguination, it's almost too well done. Otherwise
    ..." A one-shoulder shrug. "Cauter-ization is about the only other thing I can think of. Based on the pictures, that is. To know exactly, we'll have to talk to those who were at the scene."
    At her direction, he checked the photograph on the right.
    "Now that one," she explained, "was found, they think, only a few hours after it happened. The eyes are gone there as well, but I can't tell if they've been surgically removed or ..."
    She didn't finish; she didn't have to.
    "The blood thing again," he said, looking from one exhibit to the other.
    i n i - M m
    "Right. And again, I don't have an answer for you. Not based on what we have now. Look dose at the hind quaters, though. Twisted, just like the other one. I doubt if they're stil in their sockets. There was a lot of force exerted there, Mulder. A lot"
    "Meaning?"
    "Too soon, Mulder, you know that. Most of the hide is gone, although—" She leaned over and pointed. "—it looks as if there are still some strips around the belly. Maybe between the legs, too. With all that muscle tissue gone or shredded, it’s hard to tell."
    He looked up. "This isn't just skinning. What do you figure? Flayed?"
    She nodded cautiously, unwilling as always to commit until she had seen the evidence firsthand. "I think so. I won't know until I've had a good look for myself."
    Then she handed him another pair.
    Puzzled, he took them, looked down, and rocked back in the chair, swallowing heavily. "Jesus."
    People; they were people.
    He closed his eyes briefly and set the pictures aside. He had seen any number of horrors over the past several years, from dismemberment to outright butchery, but there had been nothing as vicious as this. He didn't need to look at them more than once to know this was something dif-ferent. To put it mildly.
    Rayed.
    These people had been flayed, and he didn't need to ask if they had been alive when it happened.
    "Skinner, right?" The Assistant Director would have flagged this for him as soon as it had arrived, Scully nodded as she pushed absently at her hair, trying to tuck it behind one ear. 'The local authorities, the county sheriff's office, called . . ." She checked a page of the file. "They called Red Garson in the Albuquerque office. Apparently it didn't take him very long to think of you."
    Mulder knew Garson slightly, a weathered, rangy westerner who had breezed through the Bureau academy at Quantico, less with consider-able skill—although he had it in abundance—than with an almost frantic enthusiasm born of a man determined to get out of the East as fast as he could. Which he had done as soon as he could. He was no slouch when it came to on-site investiga-tions, so this must have thrown him completely. It wasn't like Mm to ask for anyone's help,
    "Mulder, whoever did this is truly sick."
    Sick, deranged, or so devoid of emotion that he might as well not be human.
    He grabbed a picture at random—it was a cou-ple, and he was thankful that what was left of their faces was turned away from the camera.
    'Tied? Drugged?"
    Scully cleared her throat. "It’s hard to tell but
    initial indications are . . ." She paused, and he heard the nervousness, and the anger, in her voice.
    "Indications are they weren't. And Garson doesn't think they were killed somewhere else and dumped at the site."
    He rubbed a hand over his mouth, bit down on his lower lip thoughtfully.
    "Autopsies by the medical examiner, a woman named Helen Rios, are inconclusive on whether they were actually conscious or not at the time of death. The lack of substantial quanti-ties of epinephrine seems to indicate it hap-pened too fast for the chemical to form, which it usually does in abundance in cases of extreme violence."
    "A victim's adrenaline