Skin : the X-files (22 page)

“Quickly!” the larger of the two shouted. “Please! Terrible thing! Terrible thing!”

He waved his arms wildly, pointing down the cobblestone street. The second monk was babbling in Thai, and Mulder saw that there were tears in the corners of his eyes. Mulder rose quickly, following Scully down the steps. The monks nodded vigorously, then turned and 219

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rushed down the street. Mulder and Scully had to jog to keep up. The cobblestones were tricky to navigate, but there was no sidewalk, and the mud on either side of the street would have been even worse. Mulder kept his head down, ignoring the buildings that flashed by on either side, as he and Scully struggled to stay close to the sprinting monks.

“This sounds pretty serious,” Scully shouted, as she leapt over a puddle of murky rainwater in front of a small, open-air shop selling bowls filled with fishtails.

“How did they know where to find us?” Mulder shrugged, narrowly avoiding a rusted bicycle lying at the side of the road a few feet past the fishtail shop. He thought about Ganon and the man’s knowing eyes. But he decided it was probably nothing so mysterious. “It’s a small town. And we’re pretty hard to miss.” The monks turned an abrupt corner, winding out of the center of town. Residential homes sprang up on stilts to the left and right, triangular thatched roofs spitting rainwater toward the street in controlled, noisy water-falls. With a start, Mulder realized the direction they were heading. “Scully, don’t the Trowbridges live down the next street?”

Scully looked at him. Both agents hurried their pace, catching up to the monks. As they approached the Trowbridges’ home, Mulder saw that a small crowd of people had gathered on the front lawn. Mostly women and young children, dressed in loose smocks and homemade sandals. The women were whispering to one another in 220

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worried voices, and Mulder made out the distinct sound of weeping. He swallowed, a dull feeling in his stomach.

Then he saw Ganon at the edge of the crowd, and their eyes met. Ganon nodded, his mouth moving, the words disappearing in the gray rain. Mulder didn’t need to hear them to know their sound.

“Gin-Korng-Pew.”

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X Scully squared her shoulders as she and Mulder worked their way through the crowd. Her face and body quickly took on the controlled veneer of a career federal agent as her left hand slipped to her shoulder holster, checking to see that the snap was undone. She could tell by the grim faces in the crowd that something horrible had happened, and she prayed that the thoughts streaking from her own imagination were way off base. Then she caught sight of the open door, stained in bright red blood—and her heart sank.

There was no longer any doubt; they had arrived at a crime scene.

The two monks disappeared into the stilted house, but Scully stopped next to Mulder in the doorway. She surveyed the pattern of blood, how it spread upward along 222

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the inside of the wooden door. She then turned her gaze downward, to the crimson, riverlike trail leading into the house.

“Carotid artery,” she said, half to herself. The blood on the door was well above eye level, which meant the victim had been standing. From the angle and arc of the spatter, Scully knew it could not have been a bullet wound. It had been something sharp, like a knife or a razor blade.

“The kill was made here,” she continued, slowly strolling forward. She followed the trail of blood, walking as lightly as possible. The blood had soaked into the fading oriental carpet, darkening the crimson material like spilled red wine. She tried to forget that just hours ago, she and Mulder had eaten lunch a few yards away. She needed to be objective, to remain clinically detached—

Mulder grabbed her shoulder, stopping her in the narrow hallway that led to the living area. His eyes were wide, and he was pointing toward the edge of the open main room. Scully saw Dr. Fielding hunched near the end of the trail of blood. Fielding was on her knees on the carpet, her face hidden in her hands. The two bodies were on the floor in front of her.

“My God,” Scully whispered. She could hear her heart pounding as she plodded forward. Mulder kept his hand on her shoulder. They had both seen horrors before. Dozens of brutal crime scenes, corpses in states too miserable to describe. Still, the sight of the two bod-223

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ies was difficult to take. Despite all of her training, despite everything she had seen—Scully wanted to turn away.

“Skinned,” Fielding said, lifting her head out of her hands. “Every inch removed, along with a fair amount of muscle and interior tissue. I sent for you as soon as I got here. The police are on their way from Rayong; there aren’t any full-time officers here in Alkut. I figured you were the next best thing.”

“Christ,” Mulder said, standing over the corpses. The entire living room seemed covered in blood. The oriental carpet beneath the bodies was saturated with it. There were bits of muscle and organs sticking to the legs of the low pine table where Mulder and Scully had eaten lunch.

“It’s them, right? Allan and Rina Trowbridge?” Scully dropped to one knee, next to the larger corpse.

It was like looking at an animal on a butcher’s block—

but the animal was human, and the butchering had been crude and brutal. She tried to re-create the event, using the cues of her profession. She imagined that the first incision had been made directly under the jaw. The face had been peeled back, the ears sliced off, the entire scalp removed in one piece. Then the attention had shifted to the trunk. An incision had most likely been made down the center line, the skin pared open to reveal the rib cage and the organs beneath. Multiple slashes had been necessary to skin the pelvic region, the legs, down to the feet.

Scully shifted her eyes to the second body. Rina Trowbridge had not taken nearly as long. Scully could see 224

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strands of Rina’s silky dark hair stuck to the bloodied mass that had once been her face. Then she saw one of Rina’s eyeballs hanging from a strand of optic nerve, and her jaw clenched. She needed to concentrate. This was a crime scene.
This was a crime.

She turned her attention back to the larger corpse’s pelvic area, and below. “Dr. Fielding, do you have an extra pair of gloves?”

Fielding nodded, fishing through the pockets of her coat. Scully took the gloves from her and slid them over her fingers. She reached forward, gently running her index finger over a piece of exposed tibia. There was a sharp groove right above the knee. She found similar grooves higher up, near the pelvic bone. Then she found a series of slightly less pronounced scratches around the hip joint. She paused, thinking.

“The place looks pretty trashed,” Mulder commented, from somewhere behind her. He was carefully picking his way through the small house, searching for clues.

Soon, the Thai police would arrive—probably along with government investigators from Bangkok. Scully knew that the FBI would not be welcomed in the investigation, certainly not of a crime of this nature—and not in a town with Alkut’s history. Though the town was off the beaten trail, the nation of Thailand was a tourist’s paradise.

Heinous double murders—even in the sticks—did not make for good tourism.

So Mulder was using the time they had to conduct a quick survey of the crime scene. Likewise, Scully could 225

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not count on getting the results of an autopsy. She had to find answers right here, right now. “Dr. Fielding, do you see these grooves and these scratches?” Fielding leaned closer. She had been momentarily overwhelmed by the sight of the bodies; she had known the Trowbridges, had spoken very highly of Allan. But in her heart she was a doctor. “The grooves look as if they were made by some sort of blade. A few inches long. But I’ve never seen scratches like those before.” Scully nodded. The grooves were easy. Any forensic pathologist could have identified the blade. “The grooves were made by a straight razor. Very controlled, practiced strokes.”

“And the scratches?”

Scully paused a moment longer. “I can’t be sure. But I think the killer used a dermatome to skin these bodies.”

“A dermatome?” Mulder asked. He had paused in front of the Buddhist shrine in the far corner. The shrine seemed the only thing in the room that hadn’t been overturned. His surprised expression swam across the curved surface of the gold Buddha. “Isn’t that the tool that skin harvesters use? Like a supersharp cheese slicer?”

Scully nodded. The dermatome had been set to an incredibly brutal depth—all the way through the subcutaneous layer of fat, almost to the bone. “Whoever did this was extremely skilled. He’s had some level of medical training. And he’s done this many times before.”

“He?” Mulder asked.

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“Possibly a she. But it certainly wasn’t an it, despite what the crowd outside might think. These incisions follow a controlled, determined pattern. It isn’t easy to skin a body. It takes practice and a fair amount of strength.

More than that, it takes preparation. Someplace to put the skin, some way to carry it away from the scene.”

“But why?” Fielding asked, her voice weak. “Why the Trowbridges—and why like this?” Scully didn’t answer the first part of Fielding’s question. She had a sickening feeling that the Trowbridges were killed because of her and Mulder ’s investigation.

Either because of something the Trowbridges had said—or because of something they had withheld. The second part of Fielding’s question seemed even more obvious.

“To feed the legend,” Mulder answered for her. He was leaning forward over the Buddhist shrine, both palms gently touching the gold statue’s belly. It looked as though something about the idol was bothering him.

“It’s an easy cover for a double murder—and it turns Alkut against our investigative efforts. Two foreigners stirring up trouble—waking the beast once again, sending it on a deadly rampage. We’re going to be on our own from here on out.”

Fielding rose, taking a deep breath. “I’ll go and speak to some of the neighbors. Perhaps someone saw something. In any case, there’s nothing more I can do here. It’s so bloody tragic. I keep remembering their wedding—

how they looked into each other’s eyes. Both of them 227

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were foreign to this place—she a transplant from the north, he from America. But they had found each other.

That was all that mattered.”

Fielding sighed heavily, rubbing at her eyes with the backs of her hands. Then she shrugged and quietly exited the house, leaving Scully and Mulder alone with the bodies.

Scully pushed Fielding’s sentimental thoughts out of her head. It didn’t help to see these bodies as people.

With practiced clinical detachment, she ran her gloved fingers through the pool of blood covering most of the floor, trying to estimate the exact time of death from the consistency of the fluid. Without skin or forensic tools, she had nothing else to go by.

“We left them about three hours ago,” she said out loud. “Whoever did this must have been waiting just outside. Probably watched us leave.”

“Maybe he’s out there now,” Mulder commented.

“Still watching us to see what we do next. Or maybe he thinks he’s done what he came here to do—cut off our line of information.”

Scully rose, slowly. She crossed to Mulder’s side, watching curiously as he continued to rub the golden Buddha. The statue was three feet high, and looked as if it weighed more than fifty pounds. The gold was well polished, though there were dark hints where the smoke from years of burning incense had stained the soft metal. The Buddha’s wide expression was peaceful and strangely content—despite the flecks of fresh blood 228

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sprinkled across its globular cheeks. “Mulder, I’m just glad you’re not out there with them. I was expecting you to argue with my conclusions.”

“Monsters don’t search people’s houses after they kill them,” Mulder said, suddenly straining against the statue. “And they aren’t superstitious enough to leave a Buddhist shrine untouched.”

There was a loud metallic click, and the front of the statue came loose from its pedestal. Scully was shocked to see that the Buddha was attached to the back of its base by two oversized metal hinges. She stared at Mulder as he pushed the statue back, revealing a deep, rectangular hiding place.

“Mulder—how did you know?”

“Actually,” Mulder responded, as he reached into the opening, “the lunch menu gave it away, even before Fielding’s comments a few minutes ago.
Som-dtam
and
khao niew
are northern delicacies. That led me to believe that Rina Trowbridge was a transplant from the northern regions of the country—which Fielding just verified. But this Buddha has his arms crossed at the waist, palms up.

That’s usually a southern representation of the master. It didn’t make sense to me—until I saw the shrine untouched by our killer.”

He pulled a thick envelope from the pedestal, then stepped back from the shrine. “A southern Thai wouldn’t think to desecrate a shrine like this. That made it the perfect hiding place.”

Scully was impressed. Mulder’s eye for detail was 229

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truly amazing. She watched eagerly while he opened the envelope and peered inside.

“Photographs,” he said, evenly. “About a dozen, divided into two sets. And a few printed pages.” He reached inside and removed the photographs. The two sets were bundled separately with rubber bands.

Mulder crossed to the low lunch table and spread the two sets out against the wood.

The first set that caught Scully’s eye were almost as horrible as the two bodies on the floor. They were pictures of burned patients, lying naked on military-style hospital stretchers. Each picture had a date in the corner—and according to the notations, all were taken between the years of 1970 and 1973. “Full-thickness napalm burns,” she commented. “At least seventy percent of their bodies. These patients were all terminal—if not postmortem.”

She shifted her eyes to the second set of photos. These were of naked men as well, lying on similar hospital stretchers. But none of these men were burned. All seemed in perfect health. The second set of photos had dates as well—but all the dates were the same: June 7, 1975.