Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(100)

So he’s trying. That’s good, she thinks.

If you’re going to make me discuss procedure, I want to hear yours. Why are you going after this guy yourself?

“It’s a long story,” she answers.

So’s mine, but you seem to know it all already.

“I know the version your brother knows. That’s all.”

Touché I guess.

“How sure are you this is the guy?” she asks.

85 percent.

She laughs.

Let me put it this way. If you’re planning to share what I tell you with the press, I’d say I’m 90 percent sure. If you’re planning on taking out a hit on this guy, I’d drop it to 75 percent.

“Well, that is certainly manipulative, Bailey Prescott.”

???

“So whatever you’ve learned, you’re willing to see the guy’s life destroyed by the media, but you don’t necessarily think he deserves to die. Is that it? Do either of those things have anything to do with whether or not he’s a serial killer?”

White space.

Luke returns, sets two Sprite Zeros down on the desk next to the keyboard, starts reading over her shoulder.

“Did we lose him?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

Answer me this.

They both perk up.

You’ll do surveillance on this guy before you do whatever it is you’re planning to do, right?

“Yes,” she answers. “Lots.”

OK. It goes like this.

Luke hurries into the kitchen and returns with a dining table chair, which he places right next to hers as the Word doc begins to fill with text.

The masks are made with a process called plastination. It’s patented, and you can buy the equipment from a company in Germany. It’s a great way to make medical samples of body parts because the process stops the decay and replaces fat and body fluids with polymers. LAPD’s tracked down all the customers in Southern California and found users are medical and/or legit. For the most part. But they’ve got suspicions about one. The Bryant Center in Newport Beach. Heard of it?

“That’s where that exhibit is, right?” Luke asks.

“What exhibit?” she asks.

“The one with all the bodies. You know, where they’re all preserved and posed and you can see the muscles.”

“Oh yeah, I saw pictures. That’s disgusting.”

The exhibit is just part of it. Bryant Center is run by multimillionaire real estate guy Denny Bryant, who started a center for “youth sciences.” Antiaging stuff. Mostly quack medicine. But the exhibit pays a huge chunk of the bills. It’s been sold out since it opened. Plastination is how all the bodies in the exhibit were made.

“You didn’t send us a picture of Denny Bryant,” Charlotte says. “You sent us this Pemberton guy.”

Chill. I’m getting there. Robbery Homicide Division thinks Bryant might either be their guy or he’s covering for their guy. He’s got a history. Charges of spousal abuse from an ex-wife. Some shit with hookers he got buried. Classic rich fuckhead. But he’s not the killer.

“Why are you so sure?” she asks.

There’s a lot that’s not made it into the press about the masks . . . yet. Surgery behind them is excellent. Top-notch. Killer has to be a skilled surgeon. But there’s no shortage of those in Southern California.

“But they also have to know how to . . . plastinate, or however you say it,” Luke adds.

That part isn’t as hard. It’s a four-step process. You just need the space and the equipment and some practice. Real problem is they haven’t found individual surgeons who have bought plastination kits and materials. Also both abductions super skilled. From different crowded areas. They think first outside nightclub in downtown LA, but not sure. Second, side street off Ventura Blvd. in Studio City. More sure, not 100 percent. No one turning up on surveillance cameras scoping out areas in advance. But abductions as methodical as surgeries. If the masks hadn’t turned up, the two disappearances might never have been linked by police.

“Denny Bryant’s not a surgeon, I take it,” she says.

No. But they think the Mask Maker is connected to the center in some way. They think he’s using their chemicals and equipment. Problem is Denny Bryant knew he’d be implicated as soon as the first mask was found. And he was smart about it. He had his lawyers go in on day one and hand over purchase records for all the center’s labs so it looked like they were being cooperative.

“Isn’t that cooperative?” Charlotte asks.

No. It’s bullshit. He knows what they’re gonna be after, and it’s his employee records and security access logs. They’re going to want to look at the names of anyone who had access to the chemicals and equipment. And for some reason, that’s what he wants to keep secret. And a judge just agreed he had a right to.

“So the cops went after a warrant, and it was denied?” Luke asks.

Judge said it had all the makings of a fishing expedition. And apparently he shared the suspicions of Bryant’s lawyers.

“Which were?” she asks.

That the warrant had less to do with the Mask Maker and more to do with the fact that the state anatomical board has raised ethics questions about where Bryant got the bodies in his exhibit. He says he’s got legal paperwork for all of them, but he’s never volunteered to show it to anyone, and the anatomical board doesn’t have the authority to make him. Also, LAPD didn’t help their case by not going after similar warrants for the personnel records of other major medical facilities that do plastination in SoCal. Made it look like Bryant was being targeted without significant probable cause. Which he was. Because he should be.