Pete. Lieutenant Pete Dryer.
“I thought I’d call you right away,” Pete said.
“What’s happened?” Was he calling because Guy had told him about his questioning?
“Oh, God,” Pete said.
David felt a quickening of dread; he’d made sure that the museum was locked, but he still had a sinking feeling.
“What’s happened?”
“I’m down off Front Street at the new oddities museum,” Pete said.
Thank God, a different museum, thank God…
But he knew, he knew something terrible had happened, and he had a feeling that it didn’t matter much where the body had been discovered, just that one had been.
“I found my missing stripper,” Pete said. “And God knows, maybe something is going on again, maybe your mumbo jumbo about an agenda is right. So I’m trying to unofficially let you in on this. Come on down, and I’ll do what I can.”
David was frankly surprised that he was permitted to pass by the yellow tape with Liam.
There was already a good crowd on the sidewalk as they made their way through the outer doors to the tourist attractions. People were whispering, pointing, speculating.
The museum was a medium-size place, much as the Beckett family had operated, but it was new since he’d been gone. One-storied, it occupied an old warehouse building that was just about ten thousand feet square. It was called the Eccentricities Museum, a good enough name for the exhibits it boasted on the posters flanking the doorway.
See Carl Tanzler and his Elena! Get to know Robert the Doll! Become a member of the Conch Republic-yes, it was real, for just a few hours. Find out about the secession! Meet Samuel Mudd, take a virtual tour out to the Dry Tortugas and learn what it was like when yellow fever struck.
Just as in most other museums, other exhibits came first.
There was a young woman talking to an officer at the entry, sobbing as she did so. She had been the cashier, he realized. There weren’t tours here-visitors walked through at their own pace, he saw.
Liam was moving quickly, and David followed at the same speed. He almost bumped into a model of Hemingway-in death, the man was everywhere.
Pete was already at the crime scene. He was hunkered down by the body, speaking with the M.E., who had already been working on the corpse.
The exhibit displayed Elena in wedding gown, with Carl Tanzler standing by her side. A plaque announced that they were Tanzler and his bride-he had married her in a private ceremony officiated by himself, in his airplane on the beach. One day, he had believed, he and his bride would sail away to the heavens in his airplane.
David’s muscles seemed to knot and contort; no model of Elena lay on the bed.
This time, the girl had dark hair. Long, dark, slightly kinky hair.
There was a photographer on hand, but Pete seemed to be impatient with him. “Angles-I need the angles. Come on, you should have a couple dozen shots by now.”
David shot wildlife. Nature. He wasn’t experienced with crime-scene photography. Luckily, there had been a few classes at college on the techniques. But they weren’t much to help him as he tried to use his small digital camera discreetly to get a few snaps.
The woman’s eyes were open wide. She stared in distorted horror into the air.
Déjà vu.
Pete, the M.E. and the police photographer-who mumbled something about the real guy being on vacation-stepped back.
Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash. The bruises on her neck. Flash, flash, flash…the way her body was situated on the bed. Flash, flash, flash, her eyes, her eyes, her eyes, just like Tanya’s.
“This one has been dead for twenty-four hours,” the M.E. told Pete, pointing his gloved hands at the body. “She was held somewhere else while lividity set in…note the blood and the coloration on her arms.”
“The museum had just opened. Liam, you might go and interview the first group through here today, the ones who found her.” He gave directions to other officers and techs, staring at the body and shaking his head. “Hell. I wanted to throw her in jail for a night or two, but this…”
“She was strangled?” David asked the M.E. It seemed obvious, but nothing could be taken for granted.
The man looked up at him curiously. “Same as before.”
Flash, flash, flash. A sheet had been pulled up, but it seemed to have been done hastily. She wasn’t pretty, as Pete had said. In life, she’d had a hard look about her, David thought. There was none of the innocence and youth that had made Tanya so stunning, even as a corpse in a tableau. The woman wasn’t unattractive; she just wasn’t beautiful. Nor had she been laid out with care. There was something off about the scene, something discordant with the last.
And the last he could remember as if it had been yesterday.
Pete looked over at him. “This one isn’t as pretty, maybe it’s a copycat. Or maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe, just maybe, you’re right. Someone has an agenda. And…”