Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle Read Online Free PDF Page B

and digging out male internal organs?”
    â€œWe’ve been down this road.
Two
serial killers collecting body parts in the same city in the same three-week period? ‘Is such a coincidence logical, Mr. Spock?’ ‘Coincidence, Jim, is just a word superstitious people use to describe complex events that in truth are the mathematically inevitable consequences of a primary cause.’”
    Michael made this work a lot less gruesome and more tolerable, but sometimes she wanted to thump him. Hard.
    â€œAnd what does that mean?” she asked.
    He shrugged. “I never did understand Spock.”
    Appearing as if conjured into a pentagram, Harker dropped an envelope on Carson’s desk. “ME’s report on the floater. Delivered to my doc box by mistake.”
    Carson didn’t want a push-and-shove with Harker, but she could not let obvious interference pass unremarked. “One more time your foot’s on mine, I’ll file a complaint with the chief of detectives.”
    â€œI’m so afraid,” Harker dead-panned. His reddened face glistened with a sheen of sweat. “No ID on the floater yet, but it looks pretty much like she was chloroformed, taken someplace private, and killed with a stiletto to the heart before her hands were taken.”
    When Harker continued to stand there, the day’s sun bottled in his glassy face, Michael said, “And?”
    â€œYou’ve checked out everyone with easy access to chloroform. Researchers doing animal experimentation, employees at medical supply companies…But two sites on the Internet offer formulas for making it in the kitchen sink, out of stuff you can buy at the supermarket. I’m just saying this case doesn’t fit in any standard box. You’re looking for something you’ve never seen before. To stop this guy, you’ve got to go to a weirder place—one level below Hell.”
    Harker turned from them and walked away across the squad room.
    Carson and Michael watched him leave. Then Michael said, “What was
that
? It almost seemed like genuine concern for the public.”
    â€œHe was once a good cop. Maybe a part of him still is.”
    Michael shook his head. “I liked him better as an asshole.”

CHAPTER 8
    OUT OF THE LAST of the twilight came Deucalion with a suitcase, in clothes too heavy for the sultry night.
    This neighborhood offered markedly less glamour than the French Quarter. Seedy bars, pawn shops, liquor stores, head shops.
    Once a grand movie house, the Luxe Theater had become a shabby relic specializing in revivals. On the marquee, unevenly spaced loose plastic letters spelled out the current double feature:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    THURS THRU SUNDAY
    DON SIEGEL REVIVAL
    INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
    HELL IS FOR HEROES

    The marquee was dark, the theater closed either for the night or permanently.
    Not all of the streetlamps were functioning. Approaching the Luxe, Deucalion found a route of shadows.
    He passed a few pedestrians, averting his face without seeming to, and drew attention only for his height.
    He slipped into a service walk beside the movie palace. For more than two centuries, he had used back doors or even more arcane entrances.
    Behind the theater, a bare bulb in a wire cage above the back door shed light as drab and gray as this litter-strewn alleyway.
    Sporting multiple layers of cracked and chipped paint, the door was a scab in the brick wall. Deucalion studied the latch, the lock…and decided to use the bell.
    He pushed the button, and a loud buzz vibrated through the door. Inside the quiet theater, it must have echoed like a fire alarm.
    Moments later, he heard heavy movement inside. He sensed that he was being studied through the fish-eye security lens.
    The lock rattled, and the door opened to reveal a sweet face and merry eyes peering out of a prison of flesh. At five feet seven and perhaps three hundred pounds, this guy was