Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,71

vials did I think were in the box? A similar exercise to asking the alcoholic how many drinks she thought she’d had last night.

I went with twelve. An already shockingly high number. Rounding up, I told myself, because the answer on the tip of my tongue had been eight. So again, like the alcoholic who somewhat understands she has a problem—I want to say I had three drinks, but it was probably more like five . . . Forced honesty. If I’m not really in denial, then I don’t really have a problem.

I opened my eyes, counted the glass vials.

Twenty-one.

I swayed on my feet. Had to grab the smooth edge of my bathroom countertop to catch myself.

Twenty-one.

No. How? Not possible. Couldn’t be . . .

I counted again. And again.

And a curious sensation washed through me. Like my soul, taking in the awful, horrible truth, literally drained from my body. Sank from my head down to the heels of my feet, onto the bathroom floor, where it disappeared down the shower drain. Not a soul at all, but a dark spirit returning to the netherworlds from which it came.

I couldn’t . . .

I picked up a vial at random. Computer Tech, it said. I suffered a sudden image of a police snapshot from my father’s closet. Flowered Shirt, that mason jar had read in the forty-year-old police photo. A single, random detail that had been all that was left to tie the contents of the jar to the young woman who’d once lived in that skin.

My body started to tremble. I wanted to sit down, but I fought the instinct. Better to remain standing, to force myself to confront my own guilt.

“But no pain,” I heard myself whisper. “The lidocaine. They didn’t even know . . .”

Because after denial comes rationalization. I’m not really a monster like my father. He butchered young women, held them hostage and tortured them for days. So I removed a very small sliver of skin from my sleeping partners. They never even flinched, rolled over, felt the loss. An innocent token of our single night together. For the record, some might even have agreed willingly to such terms: I’ll give you one night of mad, passionate sex, no commitments, no obligations; all you have to surrender is a thin noodle of derma, which you’ll grow back in a matter of days. . . .

I held up the vial marked “Computer Tech.” Then stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Look at that nice-looking, obviously successful middle-aged woman. I wonder what she’s holding in her hand . . .

Then I remembered the sight of Detective Phil’s blood on my finger. The feel of it. The smell. The overwhelming desire to taste.

My knees gave out. I sank to the cold tiled floor. Because being someone who suffered from a rare genetic condition, I knew firsthand that nurture would never be enough. We were all products of nature as well. And this was my nature. This glass vial, clutched protectively to my chest.

Filled with formaldehyde and human skin.

My sister could not discover this. No one, absolutely no one must know. I had failed, been weak, succumbed to some kind of genetic obsession. But I could beat this. Sure. Why not? Except, of course, first I had to survive this strange, frightening week where the ghost of my father once more roamed the streets of Boston, and young women died and my crazy sister knew things she shouldn’t.

First order of business, dispose of the evidence. The box, the vials, the formaldehyde solution, the strips of skin. All of it must go.

Except how? Formaldehyde is actually a colorless gas, primarily used in aqueous solutions for preserving specimens. In addition to being poisonous in high enough concentrations, it can negatively impact the upper respiratory system and irritate the skin and has been linked to several kinds of cancer. Needless to say, safe disposal of formalin solutions generally involved identifying the solution as a hazardous waste and following proper protocols.

But I couldn’t risk being documented turning over hazardous waste.

The easiest thing would be to dump the clear solution down the drain, or flush it down the toilet, relying upon the city’s water system to successfully dilute the relatively small amount of formaldehyde. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure if that was foolproof from a forensics point of view. For one thing, the pungent smell might linger, a particular odor no one would mistake for toilet bowl cleaner. Also, later on, should my sister’s scheme