Not bad technically, but false. He isn’t primarily her teacher, and she isn’t his student in any meaningful sense. Player and toy. Master and possession.
“Martie, when these images return to you during panic attacks, they will disgust and sicken you, fill you with nausea and even with despair… but they will
The doctor had brought two large and beautifully illustrated textbooks with him to the couch. These expensive volumes were used in criminology courses in many universities. Most police detectives and big-city medical examiners were familiar with them, but few in the general public knew of their existence.
The first was a definitive study of forensic pathology, which is the science of recognizing and interpreting diseases, injuries, and wounds in the human body. Forensic pathology was of interest to Dr. Ahriman, because he was a man of medicine and because he was determined never to leave evidence — in the organic ruins resulting from his games — that might result in his transferral from mansion to cell, padded or not.
GO TO JAIL, GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL was a card he intended never to accept. After all, unlike in Monopoly, this game included no GET OUT OF JAIL FREE cards.
The second textbook was a comprehensive study of the tactics, the procedures, and the forensic techniques of practical homicide investigation. The doctor had acquired it on the principle that good gamesmanship requires one to understand fully the strategies of opposing players.
Both volumes held galleries of Death's dark art. The forensic-pathology textbook featured more examples and a greater variety of soul-shriveling grisliness, but the volume on homicide investigation offered more shots of victims in situ, which had a charm not always to be found in photographs taken at the morgue, as any slaughterhouse is visually more arresting than any butcher-shop display. Guggenheims of blood, Louvres of violence, museums of human evil and misery bound with tables of contents and indexes for easy reference.
Docile, she waited. Lips parted. Eyes wide. A vessel ready to be filled.
“You’re quite lovely,” the doctor told her. “Martie, I must admit, blinded by Susan’s light, I had too little appreciation for your beauty. Until now.”
Seasoned by more suffering, she would be exquisitely erotic.
He began, then, with the homicide-investigation textbook. He opened to a page marked with a pink Post-it.
Holding the volume in front of Martie, Ahriman directed her attention to a photograph of a dead man lying supine on a hardwood floor. Naked, he was, and ravaged by thirty-six stab wounds. The doctor made sure that Martie noted, in particular, the imaginative use to which the killer had put the victim’s genitals.
“And there, the railroad spike in the forehead,” Ahriman said. “Steel, ten inches in length, with a one-inch diameter nailhead, but you can’t see much of the length. It pins him to the oak flooring. A crucifixion reference, no doubt — the nail through the hand and the crown of thorns combined in one efficient symbol. Absorb it, Martie. Every glorious detail.”
She stared intensely, as instructed, gaze traveling wound to wound across the photograph.
“The victim was a priest,” the doctor informed her. “The killer most likely found the oak flooring regrettable, but no manufacturer of home-improvement products has had the panache to market dogwood tongue and groove.”
Blue jiggle. Blue stillness. A blink. The image captured now and stored away.
Ahriman turned the page.
As worried as he had been about Martie, Dusty had not expected to be able to concentrate on the novel. The peace of mind that had settled upon him when he entered Dr. Ahriman’s office did not fade, however, and he found himself more easily captured by the story than he expected to be.
