American Devil by Oliver Stark Page A

on the desk as if to call the meeting to a close. ‘We got to try to get something more from the witnesses and this composite drawing. And if that fails, Harper, how about we’ll call up the Catholic Church and see if any angels are missing from heaven?’
    Harper didn’t say anything. There was no need. He wasn’t playing Nate’s game - he saw straight through the old man’s bluff and anger. Williamson was afraid of losing his potency again, afraid of being found out for not being quite as good as people imagined he was. Well, thought Harper, who wasn’t?
    As the team dispersed, Harper walked up to the photographs of the corpses. Each time, they blossomed to life afresh on the static image that was already in his mind. It was a strange sensation, as if the image was layering in his consciousness and becoming more and more detailed.
    On the board were ten close-up shots of each of Amy’s toes. The nails were red, but underneath the polish on each there was a faint outline of some other design. The forensics boys had X-rayed the images. He looked closer. A spider and web on an orange background, a Playboy bunny on purple with a crystal eye, two yellow-eyed daisies, a tropical sunset, a set of hotrod flames.
    He looked again at the nail art. ‘Williamson,’ he called. Williamson turned and gave him a long cold stare. ‘Maybe I got something here.’
    Nate lumbered across and pinched his nose in a gesture of nonchalance. ‘More spirit guidance?’
    Tom tapped the photographs of the girl’s toes. ‘Amy’s toes were painted with different designs. You need to find out which nail bar does these. It might be a point of contact for the killer. Maybe one of the places he scopes his victims.’
    Nate Williamson was staring hard at Harper. He flicked a glance at the nail designs. Harper tried again. ‘Your investigation needs a lead. I’m throwing you a bone, Nate. Pick it up, for chrissake.’

Chapter Fourteen
    The Lair
November 17, 4.34 p.m.
     
    T here was no doubting any longer that he was an artist. He could feel it more than anything else. It had become as real as the sky and the moon. He was the artist, the creator, the great artisan. The creative flow had just kept coming, bursting out of him like a fountain from a snapped hydrant. His masterpiece was finally coming together. Twenty-five years in the making. Twenty-five years of slow-burning these images and ideas inside his mind. He had waited and waited and now he was emerging from the close sweaty chrysalis of patience with great wings and enormous power.
    He rested his arms either side of the table to steady himself and looked down at the evidence. Amy Lloyd-Gardner’s small dark heart rested in a shallow aluminium tray. It had all happened, every moment. It really had happened. The girl’s heart had been steeping in the formaldehyde solution for nearly sixteen hours. The killer wanted to preserve it just as it was, full of beauty and mystery, but it wasn’t easy. He’d already filled each of its chambers with wax to keep the full rounded shape of the muscle; then he’d injected the tissue itself with a concentrated formaldehyde solution. He was desperate for it to work, but he was still experimenting and couldn’t tell whether the heart would disintegrate or hold its shape.
    He’d used small animals to test various ways of preserving specimens and thought he had his technique just about right: injecting the tissue with the right solution of formaldehyde, then steeping the organs in the chemical solution so that it entered every cell and stopped the process of decomposition. It sometimes worked well, but other times it didn’t. He didn’t know why. After all, he wasn’t a scientist, he was an artist.
    Still, it was the overall effect of his sculpture that would make his name, not the small, less-than-perfect parts. He looked across to the small glass vitrine that contained Mary-Jane’s two eyeballs. They were less than perfect too. The dazzling