Edge Of Hell

Bolan took a notebook and pen from the pocket of his gray windbreaker. “Is that only the Peruvian Third Naval Commando unit, or is that indicative of the level of opposition?”

Dean sighed heavily. “We’re going to check out the body at the morgue, smart-ass. Are you going to join us, or are you going to try and join the cast of Dead Ringers?”

“Melissa, as much as I’d love to see you get into a catfight, I think you’d have to have it with a woman,” Goh said. “I’m sorry, Detective Cooper. She’s not usually like this.”

Bolan looked Dean over. “I’m not offended. If a foreigner was going to step into one of my cases, I’d be uptight too.”

Dean stood, grabbing her brown leather jacket, flipping it around her slender shoulders. Hard eyes met his. “Uptight? Try suspicious.”

The Executioner watched her as she was leaving the squad room. She stopped halfway to the door and glared back at Goh and him. “Are you two coming?”

Bolan looked to Goh, who could only shrug. “We’re coming, Melissa.”

The two men followed the detective.

AS THE IRATE Vincent Black strode to his car, his two men fell into step behind him. He spent a moment checking the .50-caliber Desert Eagle he had in a shoulder holster, then waited for Sal to open his door while Tony stepped around to the driver’s side.

Black ducked his head and got into the back seat.

The old man was a pain in his ass, calling him out on jobs whenever he felt like it, but in a way, that pain helped Black along.

After all, Black was in the business of hurting people.

And he was good at it.

“Just watch whoever’s going into the Met today,” De Simmones told him. “We’re looking for a tall man, six-three. Black hair, blue eyes. Someone who looks hard and businesslike.”

Black settled in comfortably for the surveillance. Being caught with an unlicensed handgun right in front of the police station would land him in more trouble than he was willing to pay his lawyers to get him out of. He shrugged, flattened his coat lapel with the palm of one hand, and watched from across the street.

It wasn’t long before the man matching the description De Simmones had given him drove into a parking garage next to the police station, then headed inside. Black checked the guy out.

He was big, but he was lean and proportional, moving with the facile grace of a panther. He also had confidence, layered under an alertness not based on paranoia, but on the kind of awareness you only got when you walked into some hard places nobody expected you to walk out of.

Black could identify with the guy. He’d been in a lot of traps, and he bore the knife scars and more than a couple of circular bullet scars from close encounters with men who had tried to be as bad as he was.

Black still walked. They didn’t. Some of them didn’t even smell fresh air anymore.

I’d like to see this big bloke in action, he thought. And when it’s all over, I’ll put a single .50-caliber slug into the middle of the stranger’s face and blow out his brains.

THOUGH HE COULD HARDLY be considered squeamish, the Executioner rarely went to a morgue. He rarely needed to, and he had seen enough of the people he loved and respected laid out under cold white sheets on flat metal tables. Too many soldiers on the same side, too many beloved, too many family members, all cold and on a slab, never to move again. Posing as a detective, though, he had no choice.

Bolan looked at the familiar face, staring up. Her eyes were still open, and he was tempted to ask why they had been left that way, but he knew particulate matter sometimes showed up on the cornea, which would provide some clues as to who killed her or how she died. It was often the little details solved a mystery. Sometimes looking into the eyes of a dead woman could give a moment of insight into her murder.

He was leaning over her, examining her more closely when the medical examiner, a balding man with a hooked nose and gunmetal gray hair, cleared his throat.

“Are you in any way a forensic technician, Detective Cooper?” the ME asked.

Bolan shook his head.

“Then kindly piss off.” The irate glower dissolved into a friendly wink. Bolan snorted, an abortive laugh in these dreary, desolate surroundings, but at least it was a moment of wry humor on the part of the examiner. “I’m Dr. Felix Randman.”

“Matt Cooper.”

“From New Hampshire, aren’t you?”

“You’re pretty good at catching accents,” Bolan said. However, for the purposes of his charade, for the purpose of working with the local British homicide cops, he was reverting to how he spoke when he grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. For a long time, he had sublimated his accent, having learned to speak with a more anonymous tone, akin to the voice that the network news anchors called “Midwest neutral.”

“I spent a year at MGH,” Randman stated. He came around the table and looked down into the dead girl’s eyes.

Bolan looked serious. “One of the first graduates?” he asked.

Randman glanced up at Bolan, then grinned at the soldier. “You give as good as you get.”

“What’s that mean?” Dean asked.

“Massachusetts General Hospital is the third oldest hospital in North America,” Randman explained.

“So he called you a dried-up old fart?” Dean asked.

Randman narrowed his eyes at her. “Yes.”

“I may like you yet, Cooper,” she said with a hint of approval.

Bolan nodded. “Now that we’ve broken the ice, you were going to show us something about her eyes?”

“Yes. They were dilated prior to her demise. She was in a drugged state,” Randman said.

“Well, the insides of her thighs were a mass of track marks, according to your report,” Goh spoke up.

“Small problem. All the track marks were clean and uniform and about the same level of scarring, meaning they were almost the same age,” Randman explained.

“Was this the same as with the other women?” Bolan asked.

“You catch on quickly.”

“Someone wanted it to look like these girls were just off the street, full of smack and doing their tours,” Dean said, walking around.

“On top of that, she has none of the long-term effects of heroin abuse,” Randman stated. “Her legs show a lot of track marks. But she has no collapsed veins, no signs of bacterial infections or abscesses. The heart looks perfectly fine, uninfected and no damage to the valve or the lining. I’m betting that once I saw her skull open, I’m not going to find any neurological trauma.”

Bolan frowned. “And what is that circular scar on her stomach, just poking out of her navel, see it?”

Dean and Goh looked for it. Randman pointed it out with the tip of a probe. “You’ve got sharp eyes, Cooper.”

“It looks like someone performed laproscopic surgery on her,” Randman stated. “Something was inserted.”

“And that someone took it back,” Bolan answered. “The whole Ripper reenactment would just be a smoke screen.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Goh answered. “Some historians believe that the Ripper murders weren’t so much a serial killer at work, but someone covering up a conspiracy.”