Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz
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the skull was self-aware but had only the most rudimentary personality, sufficient to the experiment.
Approaching the table, Victor addressed the resident of the open Lucite tank: “Time to work, Karloff.”
No one could say that Victor Helios, alias Frankenstein, was a humorless man.
In the head, the eyes opened. They were blue and bloodshot.
Karloff had been selectively educated by direct-to-brain data downloading; therefore, he spoke English. “Ready,” he said, his voice thick and hoarse.
“Where is your hand?” Victor asked.
The bloodshot eyes shifted at once to regard a smaller table in a far corner of the room.
There, a living hand lay in a shallow bowl of milky antibiotic solution. As in the case of the head, this five-fingered wonder was served by numerous tubes and by a low-voltage electrical pump that could empower its nerves and, thereby, its musculature.
The systems sustaining the head and those sustaining the hand were independent of each other, sharing no common tubing or wiring.
After reading the status displays on the equipment and making a few adjustments, Victor said, “Karloff, move your thumb.”
In the dish, the hand lay motionless. Motionless. And then … the thumb twitched, bent at the knuckle, straightened again.
Victor had long sought those genes that might carry the elusive psychic powers that humankind had sometimes experienced but had never been able to control. Recently he had achieved this small success.
This ultimate amputee, Karloff, had just exhibited psychomotor telekenesis, the control of his entirely detached hand strictly by means of mental exertion.
“Give me an arpeggio,” Victor said.
In the shallow bowl, the hand raised on the heel of its palm and strummed the air with all fingers, as if plucking at the strings of an invisible harp.
Pleased by this display, Victor said, “Karloff, make a fist.”
The hand slowly clenched, tighter, tighter, until the knuckles were sharp and white.
No emotion showed in Karloff’s face, yet the hand seemed to be an exquisite expression of anger and the will to violence.
NEW DAY, NEW DEATH. For the second morning in a row, Carson chased breakfast with the discovery of a mutilated corpse.
A TV crew was at the library, hauling gear out of a satellite van, when Carson jammed the brakes, twisted the wheel, and slotted her plainwrap between two black-and-whites that were angled to the curb.
“I break land-speed records getting here,” she grumbled, “and the media’s already on the scene.”
“Bribe the right people,” Michael suggested, “and next time you might get the call before Channel 4.”
As she and Michael crossed the sidewalk toward the library, a reporter shouted to her, “Detective O’Connor! Is it true the Surgeon cut out a heart this time?”
“Maybe they’re so interested,” she told Michael, “because none of those bastards has a heart.”
They hurried up stone steps to the ornate red-stone building with gray granite arches and columns.
Admitting them, the police guard at the door said, “It fits the pattern, guys. It’s one of his.”
“Seven murders in a little over three weeks isn’t a pattern anymore,” Carson replied. “It’s a rampage.”
As they entered the reading foyer with the elevated main desk, Michael said, “I should’ve brought my overdue book.”
“You checked out a book? Mr. DVD with a book?”
“It was a DVD guide.”
Crime-scene techs, police photographers, criminalists, jakes, and personnel from the medical examiner’s office served as Indian guides without saying a word. Carson and Michael followed their nods and gestures through a labyrinth of books.
Three quarters of the way along an aisle of stacks, they found Harker and Frye, who were cordoning off the scene with yellow tape.
Establishing that the territory belonged to him and Carson, Michael said, “Yesterday’s hand bandit is this morning’s thief of hearts.”
Frye managed to look greasy and blanched. His face had no color. He kept one hand on his expansive gut as if he had eaten some bad pepper shrimp for breakfast.
He said, “Far as I’m concerned, you take the lead on this one. I’ve lost my taste for the case.”
If Harker, too, had a change of heart, his reasons were not identical to Frye’s. His face was as boiled red as ever, his eyes as challenging.
Running one hand through his sun-bleached hair, Harker said, “Looks to me like whoever has point position on this is walking a high wire. One mistake on a case this high profile, the media will flush your career down the toilet.”
“If that means cooperation instead of competition,” Michael said, “we accept.”
Carson wasn’t as ready as Michael to forgive the toe-tramping they had received from these two, but she said, “Who’s the vic?”
“Night security man,” Harker said.
While Frye remained behind, Harker ducked under the yellow tape and led them to the end of the aisle, around the corner to another long row of stacks.
The end-stack sign declared ABERRANT PSYCHOLOGY. Thirty feet away, the dead man lay on his back on the floor. The victim looked like a hog halfway through a slaughterhouse.
Carson entered the new aisle but did not proceed into the blood spatter, leaving the wet zone unspoiled for CSI.
As she quietly sized the scene and tried to fit herself to it, planning the approach strategy, Harker said from behind her, “Looks like he cracked the breastbone neat as a surgeon. Went in there with complete professionalism. The guy travels with tools.”
Moving to Carson’s side, Michael said, “At least we can rule out suicide.”
“Almost looks like suicide,” Carson murmured thoughtfully.
Michael said, “Now, let’s remember the fundamentals of this relationship. You are the straight man.”
“There was a struggle,” Harker said. “The books were pulled off the shelves.”
About twenty books were scattered on the floor this side of the dead man. None was open. Some were in stacks of two and three.
“Too neat,” she said. “This looks more like someone was reading them, then set them aside.”
“Maybe Dr. Jekyll was sitting on the floor, researching his own insanity,” Michael conjectured, “when the guard discovered him.”
“Look at the wet zone,” Carson said. “Tightly contained around the body. Not much spatter on the books. No signs of struggle.”
“No struggle?” Harker mocked. “Tell that to the guy without a heart.”
“His piece is still in his holster,” Carson said. “He didn’t even draw, let alone get off a shot.”
“Chloroform from behind,” Michael suggested.
Carson didn’t respond at once. During the night, madness had entered the library, carrying a bag of surgical tools. She could hear the soft footsteps of madness, hear its slow soft breathing.
The stench of the victim’s blood stirred in Carson’s