The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (40 page)

“There is an incision, a very small incision, on their left side.”

“All three?” Bat asked.

“Yes.”

“And that’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Could the organs have been removed through that?” Bat asked.

“It doesn’t seem possible, but . . .”

“But what, Doctor?” Bat asked. “If you’ve got an idea, don’t hold back.”

“That’s all it is,” she said, “an idea. Just something I remember from medical school. If I could have some time—”

“Give us an idea of what you’re talking about,” Bat suggested, “and then take the time you need.”

“Well, I’m thinking about . . . mummification.”

“Mummi-what’s that?” House asked.

“Mummies?” Bat asked. “You mean like, in ancient Egypt?”

“Yes.”

“Egypt?” House asked, still looking confused.

“When they mummified their dead,” Dr Ford explained, “part of the ritual was to remove all the internal organs.”

“But . . . through a small incision like the one you described?”

“I seem to remember . . . something about a small incision, but I don’t recall how it was done. I can do some research at the museum, talk to the Egyptian expert there.”

“Can that be done today?” Bat asked.

“I don’t see why not?”

“Then I’ll take you there, Doctor.”

“I don’t need to be taken, Mr Masterson—”

“Sorry, Ma’am,” Bat responded, “what I meant was, I’ll go with you, if you’ll allow me to.”

“Well . . . why not?”

“Just let me walk the Inspector out and I’ll have a cab waiting when you’re ready.”

“Very well.”

Outside the hospital Bat said to House, “You go and tell Flaherty what I’m doing. After the doctor and I go to the museum I’ll come and find you.”

“What the hell, Bat—” House said. “I can’t go back to the Chief with this.”

“This could be the only explanation we have for what seems to be impossible,” Bat said.

“Ancient Egypt? Mummies? Do you believe all that?”

“Don’t you ever do any reading, son,” Bat said. “We’re talking about history.”

“Still,” House said, as they headed down the hall, “It’s hard to believe.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Who do we ask for?” Bat asked, as they entered the Denver Museum of History, located on Broadway.

“The Egyptology expert,” Dr Ford said.

“I’ll let you start to do the talking.”

“Shouldn’t Inspector House be with us?” she asked. “After all, he’s the policeman.”

“Inspector House had something else to do,” Bat said. “Don’t worry, we have official standing.”

They walked down a long hall until they encountered a man standing at a desk.

“Can I help you?”

“My name is Doctor Ford,” she said, “and this is Bat Masterson, the, urn, columnist. We are hoping to speak to whoever is your expert on Egyptology?”

“Bat Masterson?” the man asked. He was a small man roughly Bat’s age, but he stared at the frontier legend with a little boy’s enthusiasm. “Really?”

“Yes,” Bat said, “I’m afraid so. Do you have an expert in, urn, Egyptology?”

“Ooh, yes, we do,” the man said. “You want Mr Vartan. I’ll get him for you.”

“Thank you,” Doctor Ford said.

“Doctor, how many of these experts could there be in Denver?” Bat asked while they waited.

“I would think only one.”

“And would he know how to do this, how to . . . what? Mummify?”

“I know what you mean, and I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose we’ll have to ask him.”

They waited in silence, and after a few minutes had past the doctor looked at Bat curiously. “Did you mean that you . . . suspect this man, even though you haven’t met him yet?”

“No,” he said, “of course not. I just thought if he’s the only expert that maybe the killer had come to see him, just like we have.”

“Oh, I see.”

But now that she mentioned it, why couldn’t the one man in Denver who had the know how be a suspect in the crime? Bat decided he would give this jasper a real close going over and watch him carefully.

They heard footsteps coking towards them and saw the small man returning with a very tall, dark-skinned man wearing a suit and tie.

“This is Mr Vartan,” the small man said.

“I am Michael Vartan. I understand you were looking for me?” Vartan asked. “Sam said one of you is a doctor?”

“I am Dr Ford,” Justina Ford said.

Vartan looked at her in complete surprise.

“I did not know we had any black doctors in Denver, let alone a woman. How fascinating.”

“Mr Vartan?” Bat said. “My name is Bat Masterson. We would like to ask you some questions about—”

“The famous killer?” Vartan asked.

Bat closed his mouth and glared at the man.

“I am a columnist for the newspaper
George’s Weekly.”

“Ah, but surely you are the famous Bat Masterson,” Vartan said. “There could not be two men with such a name.”

“I am perhaps famous,” Bat said, “but not as a killer.”

“I am so sorry,” Vartan said. “I have offended you.”

“Mr Masterson has been many things, Mr Vartan,” Dr Ford said, “among them a lawman.”

“And now a writer,” Vartan said. “How commendable. I apologize again. You have some questions concerning what?”

“The process of mummification,” Dr Ford said.

Vartan stared at them for a few moments, then said, “I have an office. Would you follow me, please?”

He led them through hallways of the museum, so that they never saw any displays except through doorways as they passed. Eventually they came to a room with a desk and a few chairs. He invited them in to sit, and closed the door before circling his desk and seating himself.

“Please, tell me your problem.”

Dr Ford looked to Bat, who took up the tale. He told Vartan about the three women who had been killed and what had been found by Dr Ford during the autopsy.

“What we need to know is,” Dr Ford said, “could the organs have been removed through this small incision?”

“Interesting,” Vartan said. He paused to consider and while he did he picked up an instrument from the desk. It was a long copper needle with a small hook on the end. “Do you see this? It was used by the Egyptians to remove the brain through the nasal passage.”

Bat remembered Dr Ford mentioning that earlier.

“Could it be used for the organs, too?” Bat asked.

Vartan didn’t reply to Bat’s direct question, but went on in his train of thought. Bat thought Vartan warmed to his gruesome subject too much.

“No one knows how the brain was removed, but it must have been in pieces,” the man went on. “It could not have been removed this way as a whole.”

“The organs couldn’t have been removed as a whole either,” Dr Ford said. “At least, not through that incision.”

“The incision you refer to was indeed used to remove the organs,” Vartan said, “and then they were put into a jar and buried along with the body.”

Bat didn’t like the way Vartan’s eyes shone during the telling.

“But no one knows for sure how it was done,” Vartan continued, “just as we don’t quite know how the brain was removed.” He set the bronze tool down. “But we know that they were.”

“So no one,” Bat said, “not even you, who is an expert, would be able to do such a thing now?”

“I?” Vartan asked, looking shocked. “I would never-no, no, too bloody. I would be too . . . squeamish, I think.”

Bat doubted that Vartan was squeamish about much of anything. The man seemed to be enjoying the spotlight and also – to Bat’s trained eye from years of not only gambling but sizing up men who may or may not try to kill him – he thought the man seemed amused.

“Mr Vartan,” Dr Ford said, apparently unaware of these things, “has anyone else come to see you about these things in, say the past six months or so?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Vartan said, making a steeple of his hands and fingers and regarding them above it. “I rarely get to speak of these things in this way.”

Another thing Bat noticed about Vartan was that the man’s gaze never wavered from his own. Even when he speaking to the doctor, he was looking at Bat. Many men had looked at Bat that way over the years, as if they had or were getting his measure. They had all been disappointed.

Oddly, the room seemed bare. There were no Egyptian objects of any kind on the walls, and the only one on his desk was that bronze tool sitting on the edge of his desk.

“I am so sorry these women were killed – how were they killed?”

“That’s still something of a mystery,” Dr Ford said, “but their organs were removed after death.”

“Shocking . . . in this day and age, I mean.”

“Yes,” Dr Ford said, “quite.”

“They were peaceful in death, Mr Vartan,” Bat said. “What would make them die so peacefully?”

“Well, certain poisons would have that effect,” Vartan said. “There are poisons which cause horrible, painful deaths, but there are several which could cause a person to simply . . . fall asleep . . . forever. Some of these were used in ancient Egypt.”

Poison was not a common form of killing in the West – at least, not in what people were now calling the “old” West.

“And you would know what kind of poisons those were, wouldn’t you?” Bat asked.

Vartan looked embarrassed and said, “Well, I am an expert on things Egyptian.”

“Yes, you are,” Bat said.

“That’s fascinating,” Dr Ford said.

“Well,” Bat said, “I think we’re done here, Doctor. Obviously, Mr Vartan won’t help us with anything more.”

Bat got to his feet, stumbled and almost fell, righting himself by catching the edge of Vartan’s desk. He knew the man must have been thinking, “What an old fool.”

“Can’t,” Vartan said.

“Excuse me?” Bat asked, back on solid footing.

“You said I won’t help you with anything more,” Vartan said. “You meant ‘can’t’.”

Bat looked the man in the eyes and said, “Did I?”

Outside the museum Dr Ford said, “What a rude man. He never looked at me the entire time.”

“That’s because he was lookin’ at me,” Bat said. “He’s the one.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He did it. He killed those women and removed their organs.”

“How can you—”

“He looked me in the eyes the whole time, challenging me. Believe me, Doctor, I know what that look means. He did it.”

“Is that what you will tell the Chief? Would they arrest him on your word?”

“No,” Bat said, “they wouldn’t, but I don’t think they’ll have to.”

“Why not?”

Bat put his hand in his pocket and came out with the bronze hook from Vartan’s desk. Carefully, he wrapped it in a handkerchief and handed it to the doctor.

“How did you – you took that when you stumbled.”

“Yes. Check it. I’m sure there’s some flecks of blood on it. He’s so arrogant that he still keeps it on his desk. And I’m sure there’ll be some rare poison in that museum somewhere-unless he’s destroyed it all now.”

Dr Ford looked down at the hook in her hands. “You think he used this?”

“I’d bet on it. But even if he didn’t, he knows I know,” Bat said. “He knows if he stays in Denver, I’ll have him.”

“But . . . if he leaves, and goes somewhere else . . . is that good enough?”

“It’ll have to be, Doctor,” Bat said. “It’ll have to be.”

But it wasn’t, not for Bat Masterson. That evening, as Vartan came out of his apartment carrying a suitcase Bat was waiting, leaning against the building. He hadn’t been wearing his gun that afternoon in museum, but he was wearing it now. He chose one with a pearl handle, so that it gleamed in the moonlight.

Vartan saw him and stopped. There was no slump to the man’s shoulder, no diminishment of his arrogance.

“You stumbled on purpose,” he said. “I realized it afterward.”

“I was going to let you go,” Bat said, “let you run, but I decided I had to know why. Why would you do that to those poor women?”

“I am afraid my explanation will not give you much satisfaction.”

“Try me.”

The man shrugged.

“To see if I could. I have studied the Egyptians for so long. I believe they were a master race. I wanted to see if I could do what they did. And after I did it once, I knew that if I kept trying, I would succeed.”

“Did you do more than those three?”

“No,” Vartan said, “Just those-so far.”

“Just those, period, Mr Vartan.”

“Now that you know the why, perhaps you would . . . ?”

“Put the suitcase down, Mr Vartan,” Bat said, pushing away from the wall so Vartan could see the pearl handle, “you won’t need it where you’re going.”