Off-Kilter

Part Two

"What were you two lovebirds up to yesterday?" Marty asked the next morning as Jim settled in.

Jim slung his trench coat across the back of his chair and took a moment with his back to Marty to compose his thoughts. "Sixteen interviews, Marty, what were you and Tom doing?"

"Bobble-head basketball. Tom's bobble-head doll's head comes off, we got a little hoop we attach to the holding cell, first one to ten points wins."

Jim struggled against a laugh. "Sounds like fun," he said as seriously as he could.

"Yeah, join us next time." Marty's chair squeaked, meaning he was probably leaning so far back to look at Jim that he was in danger of tipping over. "We got a lead in that Bartlett case. You find any leads?"

Jim rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Not really." He quickly pulled out his computer and plugged it into his scanner so he could take a look at those reports Kyle Boyd had left with them. While his system was booting up, he crossed to Karen's desk, carefully sweeping his hand across the top in search of the stack of files. "You see a pile of folders here?" he finally asked.

"Mmm? Oh, no, nothing."

Jim let his eyes close behind the dark glasses. He had to think. "Karen here yet?"

"Nope." Marty sounded distracted, so Jim just settled into his chair to wait. Papers fluttered on Marty's desk, a pencil scratched out words, then clattered into a pen holder. The chair squeaked again. "You shoulda seen your DOA, Dunbar. Really creepy—the only thing he was missing was the coffin."

"The make-up wasn't gaudy?"

"A little. I mean, it looked like something I'd do."

Jim smirked. "You in the habit of applying women's make-up, Marty?"

Marty actually laughed. "No, that's the point. It's something I'd do, just 'cause I wouldn't know how." A clicking sound, like he was tapping something on his desk. "But it wasn't bad. The colors were off."

"Like they'd been bought for someone else?"

"Yeah."

"And we're assuming whoever did this, either killed him, or just dressed up the body and took out the brain, is a man, right?"

"Took out the brain?"

"ME said it looked like a little bit of Egyptian mummification had been added, for fun. And some other ancient burial practices. Incense in the pockets. A small cross in the folded hands. Which weren't quite stiff, so rigor mortis hadn't set in yet, which means the body hadn't been dead long. The guy hadn't just been lying around. Whoever did this got right on it, dressing him up, bringing him back."

"And these sixteen people you interviewed?"

"Are completely unrelated."

Marty laughed at Jim for the second time that morning, but this time it was less comradely.

"Say what?" Tom asked.

Jim looked up, looking surprised to find Tom had joined them. "Unrelated. That's all I can come up with. No connections." He tried to smile. "Back to square one."

"And the ME report?"

"Hard to say much when half the organs are missing," Karen said. "They took out the liver, too, I guess, but that was like a week ago. Which is why ME didn't say anything about it yesterday."

"Hard to live without a liver," Marty said.

"Yeah," Karen agreed, "you sort of need that."

Jim just stood next to Karen's desk, his hands resting lightly on it. "They give you anything else?"

"I stopped on my way in to see how they were doing. Looks like we'll be looking into the blood work next. They can't find any hospital records for this guy, not recent ones, nothing about a major operation."

"What are you saying, someone actually removed his liver a week ago, on a whim, and then followed him around until he died?"

"Maybe. You can live without a fully functioning liver, but you need dialysis and other treatments."

"Is there any chance this guy didn't even know it was missing?" Marty asked.

Karen laughed. "Yeah, Marty, good one."

"Maybe Marty's right," Jim said. "Say he didn't know what happened. He wakes up, he's got a small incision, he remembers being attacked, thinks maybe he's okay."

"And you wouldn't go to the hospital if you found a stitched up hole in your body?"

Jim shrugged. "Okay," he conceded. "Unless he had a reason to avoid going to the doctor."

"Let's call the wife, see if she noticed any changes in his health over the past week or so. ME said he was extremely jaundiced, which didn't show up in the original photos because of the make-up."


Jim yanked the earpiece out and spun his chair to face Karen. "Karen, remember yesterday, that first woman, her hair was donated."

"Yeah?"

"At the bottom of the e-mail, it said if the hair wasn't long enough, they'd just sell it at market price in order to fund their non-profit organization."

"Yeah?"

"That's just hair. And it brings in a fair price, I'm sure."

"Okay…"

"How much do you think a liver would bring in?"

"A liver? Jim, honestly…"

"We're talking black market here."

"Black market organ selling? Who would want to buy a used liver?"

"I can think of one or two people," Marty cut in, "and not for dinner, either."

"So that's a good reason to cut out a liver, right? To either use it yourself—"

"Yeah, but what for?" Karen asked.

"I just ran across a bunch of transplantation pages. I'd been looking into the possibility of it being some burial practice, but all they removed was the liver. They didn't remove any other internal organs. So what do you do with a liver? You put it in someone who's sick and dying and desperately needs a liver. Trouble is, it needs to be fresh. And you need a matching blood type."

"So we should see if this guy's donated blood anytime recently, and if his blood type's listed in any records that someone could have stumbled across."

"Right."

"But why would someone steal his liver and then sew him back up?"

"So it wouldn't be obvious right away what the cause of death was? To give them time to get rid of the organ?" Jim speculated.

"Okay… I'll buy the live organ donor theory, but, Jim, if they only wanted his liver, why'd they come back and take the brain out later, then powder him up like a pretty corpse? Why would they come back to the scene of the crime?"

"Guilt? Sadism? Trying to distract us? I haven't figured that much out yet. But if money was the motivating objective, maybe we can trace it."


"Let's see if we can retrace where they brought Rich Feldman back from," Karen said, standing outside the southwestern-themed building and looking up. On the outside it didn't look any different from an old brownstone with balconies. "We got an hour before Mrs. Feldman will be back."

Jim let Hank down from the car. An hour'd be too long for the poor pup to be cooped up in the back of Karen's sedan. "What do we know? We know he was there that night, but the next morning he was lying dead in the hallway. Cause of death is probably the missing liver, which would look like he died of natural causes. No trauma, no murder weapon. And a week later, he's not going to have any evidence on his body of who did this."

"And the wife says she doesn't know of anyone who didn't like her husband. He was an all-around good guy. Everyone always invited him over for tea or coffee or dinner." Karen led the way through the main entrance as they ran over what they knew. "Mailboxes in the lobby here."

"We need to concentrate on how this guy got his liver removed in the first place, if he's so popular. Anywhere an assailant could hide? Big desk? Storage closets?" Jim listened to the room dimensions as Karen moved around the room, her footsteps giving him a reference sound and bouncing off the walls. This room seemed as empty as the hallway upstairs had the day before.

"No, nothing." She headed for the open staircase that led to the second floor. "Wide hallways, bright, a few windows. Pictures of dead cows. Kind of a little orange in here for my tastes."

Karen turned off down the hall while Jim was still in the stairs. They felt wide, roomy. He stepped off onto the tile, hearing footsteps echoing as he turned the corner, but it took a second to realize they were headed in his direction, and that they were too heavy to be Karen's steps. Jim froze just as a body bumped him.

"Sorry," a man said.

"No problem," Jim replied.

"You need help finding an apartment?"

"No, I got it, thanks." Jim stepped aside to free up the path to the stairs, but the man didn't move.

"You look familiar…"

"I get that a lot." He listened carefully for Karen—a slight rustling ahead, maybe the air conditioning was blowing one of those fake plants she'd told him about—but it was like she'd disappeared.

"No, really, you do." The man reached out, sort of rubbed Jim's arm. "I know, you were that cop on the news a couple years ago."

"There were lots of cops on the news a couple years ago."

"Yeah." The man patted his shoulder, then let go. Jim got the impression he was a touchy-feely sort of guy, especially since he kept moving closer into Jim's personal space as he talked. "You're investigating that murder across the hall, right?"

Jim nodded. "You seem pretty sure it was a murder."

"Aren't you?"

"We don't rule anything out."

"Innocent until proven guilty and all that, huh? I see. Yeah, I think I'd think he was murdered."

"Did you get to have a conversation with any of the officers when we were over here yesterday?"

"Nah, but my partner did. Bob. We live together. He's a drag queen. The cops pulled a quickie on him, if you know what I mean, talk about homophobic."

"So what do you know about Rich Feldman? He and his wife get along? He have any health problems?"

"Health problems?"

"Routine questions."

"Why don't you come in a minute, have a seat, take a load off. I was just going to get the mail, but that can wait. Let me play hostess. Bob always gets to do it, but he's out right now, so this is my chance." The hand ran down Jim's arm again. Jim realized, a couple years ago, he'd have hated the way the man kept making contact, but now, he was so used to relying on that one-on-one contact to get around that he didn't mind. It was a way for him to connect with his environment and the people in it, probably the same for this man, too.

"Sure." Jim prodded Hank to follow the man. "And your name…?"

"Ed Gaines."

Jim smiled to himself. "Almost like that serial killer."

"Yeah, I get that a lot. My last boyfriend broke up with me because he thought I'd start pulling his skin off and making chairs out of it."

Jim stopped behind the man, listening as a key slid into a lock.

"Could your dog stay out here? Bob's horribly allergic, so he says. I think he just doesn't like the dog fur on the sofa."

"No problem." He motioned for Hank to stay, then took the door that Ed passed back.


"Thanks," Jim said and shook Ed Gaines' hand as they both left the apartment. It had smelled odd in there. Heavy on the women's perfume, but with some underlying medicinal quality Jim couldn't quite place. He wanted to say formaldehyde, but who kept that on hand?

"See you around," Ed said. "Without Rich, we might be looking for a fourth for bridge night." The man took off down the hall, wearing some sort of boots with hard soles, maybe cowboy boots, matching the décor.

Jim waited until he'd disappeared down the stairs. In the silence, he could hear the footsteps all the way down the hall, down the stairs, the way he jumped off the last one, sounding satisfied, or maybe just excited about something, and then he heard the jangling of keys, the squeak of a mailbox.

What he couldn't hear was the panting of German shepherd breath.

His heart clenched. His stomach pitched. If there was a connection between Rich Feldman's death and the dog walking crime, had someone taken Hank? Was he sitting on the front stoop waiting? Was he missing? Had they fed him table scraps? "Hank?" Jim asked cautiously, hating the way the tile floors and high ceiling reverberated his voice.

"Jim," Karen hissed.

He turned in her direction. Was she okay? She'd sort of just disappeared there.

"Where've you been?" she whispered. She tip-toed over and stood by his side.

"Interviewing the neighbor. Where've you been?" he countered.

"Look what Hank found," she whispered.

Jim took her arm and followed until he got a face full of fake plant. He ducked, pushed it aside, and continued following her, behind the plant, into the alcove, through a doorway. Silence. The room felt closed-off compared to the rest of the building. He could smell cleaning supplies and sounds didn't echo in here, probably because the room was packed, every wall covered, negating the free space sound waves needed to bounce back. He could hear doggy breath and reached out a hand, touching Hank on the head. "What'd you find, boy?" he asked.

"We missed it the first time," Karen whispered. "We weren't exactly looking for a brain in a dirty bucket of mop water…"

Jim spun toward her. "You're kidding."

"I hope you don't mind I used Hank as a police dog."

"No, no. You found the brain?"

"I mean, yeah, I think so. It's a little worse for wear, mind you. Bits and pieces floating in the water. Gray, the same color as the water, looks sort of like debris, and since we weren't looking for a brain the first time around…"

"You call forensics?"

"Yeah." He was standing so close he could feel her move to check her watch. "As soon as they get here, let's go have our conversation with the wife."

Jim grimaced. "You gonna ask her if she knew her husband's brain's been floating around in the cleaning bucket across the hall all night?"

"Jim," Karen said, that disgusted tone in her voice she often used to cut him off.


"So let's say Mr. Feldman got up to run an errand," Karen said, leaning against her car next to Jim in the parking lot of the Feldman's apartment building.

"Half-dressed?" Jim shook his head. "Let's say he didn't plan on leaving the building."

"Okay. Unlike the other cases, the perp didn't enter the apartment."

Jim shook his head again. "Let's say these aren't related."

"No?"

"No."

"You thought they were."

"I was wrong."

Karen snorted. "You gonna ever share that with me, or you just planning to let me keep going down the wrong path 'til the case was solved?"

Jim shrugged it off. "We got our dead body now, we got the brain. And it seems like that supply closet's looking like our crime scene. It's not all that likely someone broke in, stole the mop bucket, filled it with the brain, then put it back."

"Okay."

"So Mr. Feldman never made it out the door. And the only connection our DOA seems to have with those other cases, is someone with a sick sense of humor. Our perp and those perps did their homework. Ours researched how to get a brain out of a dead body—"

"And how to remove a liver. Assuming, of course, that it was related."

Jim smiled. "How could it not be related?" The late afternoon sun finally peeked out, warming his face. It had been cloudy most of the morning, but he hadn't really noticed until now, until the sun made itself known.

"But you don't think it's the same guy did the other 16?"

"Only if that guy finally did elevate to killing someone, and I was right about trying to head him off. But I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Karen…"

"Why not?"

"Because… There's just no connection. There's no reason for there to be a connection. And it looks like all we gotta do is follow this path to find our perp. We don't even have to look at those other crimes." The sun disappeared again, the warmth went away.

"So whoever killed him, you think they were already in the building?" Karen moved away a little.

Jim nodded. "They seemed to know enough about his patterns to remove his liver. I don't think it's a stretch that they were waiting for him."

"You think we got us a doctor who went bad?"

"Or someone who never quite graduated medical school."

"You think they could have just looked it up on the internet and figured out from that how to do this?"

Jim laughed. "And have the guy live? I don't think so."

"No?"

"Karen, it's gotta be someone who knew the basics. They obviously didn't want the guy to die right away. They would have had to know what to cut and how to pack it if they wanted a decent price for transplantation."

"I dunno…"

"Come on, Karen, the only evidence we have is an empty box from hair dye and a bag of dog shit."

"…so the jury might not like our evidence box…"

"Karen," he said, imitating her disgusted tone of voice that she often used on him.


Jim and Hank followed Karen back from the bodega near the Feldman's toward the car. There was a tapping sound near the roof of the next building that Jim associated with the city, with pigeons, with a slight breeze, and with the park.

"Birds sound like they're made of wood…" Karen muttered.

Jim nearly snorted his coffee.

"Really, those pigeons—"

"I heard them."

"Like a board thumping, or like knocking two sticks together. But when you look up… it's a bird."

Jim nodded absently.

"Things aren't always what they sound like," she continued, unknowingly preaching to the choir.

Jim turned away. She didn't have to know how many times the rain on the windows had mimicked everything from white noise to a knock on the door to gunfire. He nudged Hank ahead, ready to give in for the evening.

"So—" Karen caught his arm— "let's say our guy isn't trying to distract us. Let's say this isn't random, these crazy things that keep happening."

Jim set his jaw, refusing to be caught up in her enthusiasm. "If it's not random, it's related. And we haven't found any connection between the victims or the sites of these so-called crimes." He'd long ago given up the connection between the crimes Kyle Boyd had sent up and their DOA. They'd spent two days chasing down victims, researching, making maps of the crime areas, trying to pin-point a connection.

"What about the crimes themselves?"

Jim shook his head and listened to the wooden clacking of another pigeon taking off into the wind.

Karen touched him again on the arm. "I'm serious; I'm not letting go so easily."

"Karen, we followed up those crimes. How could they possibly be related to Feldman?"

Karen led Jim to a little touristy restaurant near the car where they could sit outside and talk.

"You're hungry," she said.

"It's time to head home, Karen." He set his coffee down on the table and checked his watch. With the constant cloud cover, he couldn't tell if the sun was still up, but it was already after seven.

"Sit," she ordered. "Get some food in you, you'll be less irritable."

Jim grinned. It wasn't often Karen called him out, but when she did, he listened. He settled onto the hard metal chair, the flapping of the umbrella over the table gently massaging his senses. It was a quiet, calming sound, cutting through the louder sounds of the city going on around them, cutting out the sounds of traffic and cell phones and pedestrians.

Karen started laying it out as soon as the waiter had disappeared inside. "Say these are all connected somehow. We got us a DOA. And leading up to that, we got us someone who's practicing what? How to change appearances. We got a guy playing with some girl's hair. We got a guy practicing incisions and sewing them back up—minor surgical stuff. Or major, if they also did the liver. We got a guy doing make-up on a corpse."

"Why'd they remove the brain?"

"I don't know yet."

"Okay, keep going."

"So let's say the ultimate goal is, someone wants to change what they look like. Like some smalltime criminal, or—"

Jim's hand hit the table a little harder than he'd planned. He stopped her. "Wait. That's it. You're right."

"I'm right?" She sounded skeptical all of the sudden.

"But it's not some little crime boss looking for a little anonymity. What if… while you and Hank were off having fun looking for body parts in the closet, I was talking to Feldman's neighbor. Ed Gaines. Whose boyfriend has been looking into sex change operations."

"What's that got to do with our DOA?"

"They're neighbors. They would know exactly when Feldman leaves his apartment, where he goes, how long he's gone. He could have gone out that morning to get the paper—it couldn't have been delivered after or the paper boy would have noticed the body and called it in—and his neighbor just happens to be peeking out at the same time. They're all buddy-buddy; they play bridge together. Nothing out of the ordinary—hey, Rich, how's it going, come here, you feeling okay?"

"Okay…"

"Gaines said that sort of elective surgery is really expensive," Jim explained.

"And you're thinking they decided on the DIY kit? At home in your spare time?"

"These hits on the city weren't random, but they didn't want anyone getting suspicious and connecting them."

"So connect them for me," Karen said, sipping a lemonade, slurping more like it.

Jim swept his hand across the table, a wrought iron mesh deal, until he reached the silverware. He really was hungry. He set everything on his side of the table in order, carefully positioning it, ready for the waiter to bring their food, as he bounced ideas off of Karen. "Marty said Feldman's make-up wasn't his color."

"Marty said this?" She sounded amused.

"Yeah, he said the colors were off. Meaning, the make-up had been intended for someone else, and hadn't been bought especially for this occasion. Did you get to talk to the neighbor—Bob—during the canvass?"

"Yeah… I think so. Gay guy across the hall? Guy with long blond hair?"

"Yeah, him." Ed Gaines had briefly described his boyfriend to Jim when prompted.

"Would it be possible the make-up was for him?"

"You mean, for his complexion? Yeah, I guess so."

"And the original hair color of our most recent victim—was it similar to Bob's?"

"I dunno—Bob's hair was dyed. Couldn't tell."

"So hers turns orange. That means, don't use that color."

"His was blonde—definitely not orange."

"And dark colors are harder to cover up."

"Right. You think they were practicing dyeing hair on our victim?" She sounded more intent than skeptical.

"I think we need to have another conversation with the friendly neighbors."

"But wait—what about the dog walking? And the light bulb incident? How are those related to a sex change operation?"

Jim grimaced. "Well…"

"Exactly."

Jim removed his sunglasses and rubbed his forehead. There were too many crimes for them all to be immediately obvious, but there was nothing tying each of those crimes to each other, either. Meaning, they weren't necessarily related. Not everything had to go back to Feldman and his neighbors. "Let's say, the neighbors didn't have to come back and dress him up. They did that for fun, right? Maybe once they started these bizarre crimes, they did the others for fun?"

"You know, homicide was sure boring before you joined the squad, Jim."

"You think it's my fault the DOA was embalmed?" Jim raised his eyebrows.

"Um…" the waiter said, sounding a little disturbed, "who had the scallops?"


"Where's Bob?" Ed asked. Karen had called him into the squad for an interview, along with his boyfriend, and then separated them.

"Interview room down the hall," Karen said. She flipped to a clean page in her notebook. If Jim and her were on the right track, this would be an intricate evening.

"Why?"

"We got a couple questions for him."

"About what?"

"About your neighbor." Karen noted that Ed didn't look all that nervous. He was looking around, mostly curious. His eyes kept flicking toward the door, and each time they did, he looked a little concerned.

The door opened and Jim stepped in. He'd been briefing the lieutenant and the other two detectives while Karen catered to the kooky couple.

"Ah, you again, more follow-up questions from this afternoon?" Ed asked, smiling up at Jim.

Jim leaned against the window. "Exactly."

"Such as?"

"Such as why you have formaldehyde in your apartment."

"Just taking a little correspondence course in taxidermy."

Karen stared at the man. Taxidermy? That checked another of the crimes off their list. "How's that going?"

"Bob likes his coffee with real cream. Not the fake stuff. You guys got that?"

"He asked for tea," Jim informed him.

"Tea?" Ed shifted nervously. "I just want to make sure you're treating him okay. I'd do anything for him, you know."

"He's fine. We're just asking him some questions," Jim said. He moved forward and sat on the table next to Ed. "You okay with that?"

"Sure."

"And you know, he asked for a lawyer first thing. Would you know why?"

"Bob did?"

"Yeah, Bob did." Jim nodded down at him, sunglasses in place. "What we want to know is, what's Bob got to hide?"

"Bob's not hiding anything. Bob's the most straight-forward man I've ever met. What you see is what you get. Well, it will be, after the operation is taken care of."

"About that," Karen said, "you said that's kind of expensive. How are you taking care of that? You're a web designer, right?"

"Yeah."

"And Bob, what's he do?"

"He's out of work right now."

"We got his transcripts," Jim put in. "From medical school."

"Yeah, he didn't finish. They do these little mock-ups where they have people come in and play patient and the students play doctor, and they always went badly. The patients didn't want to tell Bob what was wrong."

"Why not?" Karen asked.

"They were prejudiced."

"Would Bob try to get revenge for that prejudice?"

"No. He's not like that."

"And you?"

"No."

Jim got up and moved away again, distancing himself, leaving Ed alone at the table. "What we want to know is, why would Bob kill Rich Feldman? You all were friends. You played bridge together. What's he got against Rich?"

"…Nothing."

"No?" Karen asked.

"No."

"Then why'd he do it? Dr. Feldman worked at that hospital, right? Where Bob was going through clinicals?"

"Yes, but—"

"And it just happened to be a coincidence that after Dr. Feldman took sabbatical, you and Bob just happened to move across the hallway?"


In Interview Room Two, Marty stared at the bearded man with the breasts and long blond ponytail. He'd seen his share of drag queens, but never one who still had a beard.

"I'm growing it out for electrolysis," Bob explained. "I'm tired of having it waxed."

Marty grimaced.

"What we want to know," Tom said, "is why Ed Gaines decided to kill Rich Feldman."

"Ed wouldn't kill Richie. Ed loved the old geezer." His voice was very deep, and he drawled his words out slowly. "He say he killed the bastard?" Bob smiled slowly and scratched at his beard.

"Not yet, not in that many words."

"Here's what we got," Marty laid out. "We got us one dead man. We got your apartment, full of formaldehyde. We got a large deposit last week into your bank account from some unknown source. And we got your boyfriend running willy-nilly around the city like he's lost his mind, dyeing women's hair, make-upping dead men, walking dogs without permission. What's his mental capacity like at home? He seem a little odd lately?"

Bob sighed, a very long, a very motherly-type sigh. "Ed's gotten a little odd lately, yes, but that's nothing a little therapy won't fix. He's just got it in his head that my operation's the thing that'll fix everything, and… he wanted to do it himself. He doesn't understand about hormone treatments and complications of surgery. He'll get over it. I've been trying to get him into therapy—maybe a court order will help him see the light."

Bob explained how Ed had been practicing incisions on himself before he went out and cut the pinkie finger of some man he'd met in line at a bar. How the woman had similar hair to Bob's, and how Ed wanted to be the one to help take care of Bob's long hair, because dyeing hair is an intimate thing no beautician should have the right to do. How Ed had been dying for a dog and borrowed one to take for a walk to show Bob they could handle it.

Marty just stared. "He was going to do… it… himself?"

"Using my medical expertise, of course. But yeah. And he didn't like it when I said no. He thinks I don't trust him."


Ed smiled. "I was just practicing breaking into places. Picking locks. This guy was an old colleague, quit because of paranoia, and he's been living off welfare and off his wife so he doesn't have to leave the house very often."

"So you hid his light bulbs because…?" Karen asked.

"Because I had to do something! If I didn't, he'd never know anyone had been in his apartment. But I didn't want to steal anything."

"That's still trespassing."

"So I'll probably get community service." Ed shrugged it off.

"What about everything else? The judge is going to look at everything you've done and make a decision cumulatively."

Ed's jaw jutted out, his relaxed demeanor changed, and he straightened in the chair, looking up at Karen. His eyes widened as he insisted, "But I did it to stop Bob! I'm helping people here!"

Karen grimaced and glanced up at Jim, who had been staring out the window for the past ten minutes, just taking it all in. "What was Bob doing?"

"I figured if I could do the operation for him at home, he wouldn't need the money for one in a hospital. But he was obsessed. He followed Richie—I love Richie, he's a great guy—and I knew Bob was going to do something to him. So I was trying to give Bobby an alternative." Ed looked up at Karen with eyes full of love and a small smile. "I didn't know Bob had already done something to him."

"But you honestly thought you could do an operation at home without any medical training?"

"Bob has enough medical training. He taught me some things." Ed pulled up his pant leg to reveal some stitched scars. "See? I was practicing on myself, but I thought I should practice on someone else, because it would be different."

Karen glanced up at Jim again, wishing for a moment that she were the blind one, that he had to see all this instead. She could see how his forehead was creased, how he was concentrating on memorizing every word.

"Bob sold Richie's liver to pay for the operation. I didn't know he'd already done that. I had it all planned out. We were going to be a quiet little couple, live peacefully in the city of joy with our little dog. But Bob didn't want a dog. And he was going back and forth between how much of the operation did he want to go through. Keep the penis or not, so I worked it out—if I learned some taxidermy, it'd still be there, technically."

"Gonna keep it on the mantelpiece?" Karen tossed out in defense of her own sanity.

Ed glared at her. "We don't have a fireplace. We couldn't afford the apartment with one."

"So which one of you found Rich Feldman at the end?"

Ed lowered his gaze. "I did. I hadn't realized Bob had already gotten to him, but I found him lying half in the hall, half in his apartment. And I knew you'd just trace it back to Bob immediately because of the medical school relationship. So I thought, if it looks like someone killed him… in order to practice some ritual of burial… then the finger would point somewhere else."

"That's when you decided to remove his brain?" Karen asked. "Instead of calling for an ambulance?"

"I ran inside to call an ambulance, but Bob was there, and he said there was nothing I could do, and he told me about the liver. So I really quickly found a website that explained how to remove a brain, like the ancient Egyptians did, and I drug Richie into the storage closet so no one would see him."

"He was already dressed like that? Dress shoes and a smoking jacket?"

"Yeah."

"And the make-up?"

"He looked so sick… I had to do something. He just looked so sick…" A tear slid down his face. "Bob's not coming home tonight, is he?"


The squad room was silent. They had paperwork to fill out, and a sense of foreboding. How could anyone get so off-kilter as that? Both Bob and Ed had gone so far past the point of "this is a good idea" that it was hard to see where their realities had skewed originally.

"You guys did good," Fisk said quietly as he shut his door. "17 cases closed in one day."

His praise was met with silence, as were his footsteps as he headed for the elevator.