The Experimental Murders (Elysium #2)

Chapter Ten

"Nothing," he sighed as he stood up straight.

"So what's next?"

He stared at the corpse's head before gesturing to the cart. "Hand me that bone saw, will you?"

She retrieved the tool and handed it to him hesitantly. "What are you going to do?"

"Some poisons cause the brain to swell," he said as he positioned the saw above the woman's eyebrows.

Seized with horror, Trinket turned away. She could watch a good many awful things, but cutting open a person's head? That was too much. This wasn't a wolf or a frog or some other animal. This was a person. Well, a dead person. She still looked like a person, though, albeit one that was falling apart. All the same, it just seemed wrong.

The sound of metal against bone filled the room, and Trinket found herself touching her own head, thinking of how horrible it would be to have someone hack away at it. Just the thought brought up old feelings of terror from Elysium.

Moans in the middle of the night.

Screams from patients being dragged through the hallways.

The threatening hum of the Jar.

A sickening wet plop pulled her from her memories. She turned back to the horrific scene behind her, finding Booker standing before the cart and poking at the brain that sat atop it. Swallowing, she took several steps towards him, trying hard to keep herself from glancing back at the mutilated body.

"No abnormal swelling," he said without looking up.

"So it wasn't poison that killed her?"

"I'll have to take a sample of blood as well, but from what I can see, she died of natural causes. Or as natural as dying from malnutrition and starvation can be."

Leaving the brain behind, he returned to the body, and Trinket braced herself for the mess she was about to encounter as she followed him. But she was surprised to find that there was very little blood.

"Why wasn't there more blood when you cut into her?" she asked, avoiding the woman's face. Or what was left of it.

Booker had retrieved a syringe with a thick needle and was injecting it into the discolored underside of the woman. "Without a beating heart to pump it throughout the body, the blood tends to settle to the bottom of the corpse." He lifted up the syringe, now filled with dark liquid. "Hence why I went there for the blood sample."

Setting the syringe aside, he turned back to the body with a new vigor in his eyes. "Well, now that we've done our best to try and determine the cause of death, let's move on to what we're really here for."

Trinket's gaze followed his and settled on the abnormalities attached to the woman's arms.

Crouching down, Booker began examining the flaps of skin. Trinket stood behind him, studying them from afar. They appeared to be stitched at her wrists and all along her waist, ending at her hips. The skin itself was almost translucent, and as Booker extended the woman's arm, it pulled taut, forming something like a parachute.

"Is it human skin?" Trinket asked, running her fingers over the stitching on the wrist. Just as with the woman with the bird fingers, the stitches were neat and tiny, holding the clearly separate pieces of flesh tightly together.

"It looks like it," Booker said as he flexed the woman's arm and watched the flap of skin react. "And yet it almost looks synthetic."

"Fake skin? How would one make fake skin?"

"A combination of human and animal skin, perhaps?"

She swallowed hard before daring to ask, "Where would he get human skin?"

"Oh, it's easy enough to acquire. One just needs to visit a Resurrectionist to obtain a spare body."

"A Resurrectionist?"

"Fancy term for bodysnatcher. Someone who digs up corpses."

"Is that legal?"

"Not really, but it's common amongst doctors. They need something for their students to practice on before trying their hands on living patients."

Releasing the woman's arm, Booker stood once more. He stroked his chin as he looked the corpse up and down, his eyes eventually returning to the odd flaps of skin.

"There's something so familiar about this," he said. "Like I've seen it somewhere before. I just can't put my finger on it."

Assuming he was finished with the autopsy, Trinket retrieved the sullied tools and brought them to the sink to be cleaned. Since the first body had the fingers of a bird, can we assume your friend's theme is animals?" she asked as she meticulously scrubbed the scalpels and knives, taking extra care with their sharp edges.

Booker appeared beside her with a lit candle. "It would make sense. He was obsessed with the idea of combining man and beast," he said as he passed the cleaned instruments through the flame several times before returning them to their leather case.

"What animal has skin attached to its arms, then? Birds have feathers. Perhaps bats? But bat wings aren't quite so floppy."

Booker stared at the flickering flame, his eyes unfocused in thought. "An animal. It must be an animal."

Without warning, he blew out the candle and turned for the stairs. Trinket shut off the water and chased after him. "Where are you going?"

"The library. Come on, I need your help."

They emerged from the laboratory and continued up to the second floor. "Shall I make tea?" she asked as they rushed up the stairs.

"No time for tea. I need to figure this out while it's fresh in my mind."

As they entered the large room, she was once again amazed at the number of books that filled the shelves. Though she had never been much of a reader, she had to appreciate the enormity of Booker's collection. He had books on nearly every subject under the sun. She still wondered when the mating habits of the iridescent earwig would be useful, but with this new turn of events, nothing would surprise her.

Booker had already climbed the wheeled ladder by the time she caught up with him. He scanned the titles, stopping here and there to pull one out, peruse the contents, and then either return it to its place or keep hold of it. Trinket approached and reached up to take the pile of books he had already collected.

"What are you looking for?" she asked as she placed the books on the large table in the middle of the room.

"Anything that sparks a memory," he said, returning a book to the shelf and pushing himself further down.

Once he had accumulated several piles, he came back down to the floor and sat at the table. Pulling a pile towards himself, he grabbed the first book and began flipping through the pages furiously. Trinket joined him, though she wasn't sure what it was she was supposed to be looking for. Each book was on animals and wildlife. Turning the pages, she glimpsed pictures of familiar creatures like cats and dogs and chickens, as well as more exotic ones like wolves and parrots. But nothing resembled the dead woman downstairs.

After hours of searching through books, her eyelids grew heavy and itchy. She had lost track of the time, but she was certain it was now the early hours of the morning. How long had that autopsy taken? It felt like ages since she had been at the Clocktower for dinner.

She stifled a yawn as she turned another page. But when her blurry gaze skimmed the next entry in the book, her breath caught in her throat. The image that stared up at her seemed to move and waver. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to steady her vision. As her sight focused, she drew in a sharp gasp.

Booker glanced up at her, raising his eyebrows questioningly. She gestured for him to come closer. His chair scraped against the wood floor as he pushed it away from the table and rushed to her side. A smile spread across his face as he saw the diagram the book was opened to. Joining him in studying it, she read the description of the foreign creature.

The flying squirrel.