Crime Zero by Michael Cordy Page B

side. Along the far wall were three basins. Part of the left wall was made up of stainless steel drawers. A skinny guy in a soiled white coat stood by the drawers mopping the floor. Walking over to him, Pitt introduced Decker. "Steve, this here is Special Agent Decker. He's from the FBI. He needs to see the Axelman stiff." Pitt left him then, telling Decker he'd be back in exactly five minutes.
    With the casualness of a clerk locating frozen peas in a grocery store, Steve wandered over to the row of stainless steel drawers and pulled out number seven. Extended to its full length, the drawer acted as a table, displaying its contents. The body lay on its back, a sheet loosely draped over it.
    Steve picked up a tag next to the corpse's head, then read in a bored voice, "Executed on Thursday, October thirtieth, at seven twenty-three A.M. Cause of death: asphyxiation from gas." Steve checked his watch. "I got to go clean up a few things. What else you need to know?"
    Decker continued to stare at the contours of the shrouded corpse below him. "Nothing."
    "OK, I'll leave you to it. But you better hurry. This one's on a fast track for cremation pretty soon."
    As the sound of the man's footsteps receded, Decker tried to maintain some professional detachment. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the sheet back off the head.
    Luke had seen many corpses in his life, but rarely one so white before. The man's face had the pasty bluish pallor of soft cheese. Luke examined Axelman's face more closely, trying to see any likeness in the features. The more he looked, the more he imagined his own features reflected there, the high cheekbones, the wide forehead. He reached forward to open one eyelid, revealing a cloudy iris as green as his own. Then he pulled the sheet back farther and reached for one of the hands, comparing his with the cold digits curled on the slab. There was only one way to be certain.
    With careful fingers he plucked three hairs from the dead man's head, checking that each follicle was still intact. He stared at the bare patches of scalp, amazed how much hair the man had lost since his recent file photograph. Placing the hairs in a small plastic evidence bag, Decker again studied Axelman's face, this time staring at the unusually pale, acne-pitted skin. It was as white as the victims he had examined in the past who had bled to death.
    Suddenly wishing his task over, he pulled the sheet off the body. At first he couldn't see the wound, because it was detectable only by what had been removed. Grimacing, he moved down the drawer and examined the jagged, torn flesh beneath the gray penis lying inert on the man's left thigh.
    The scrotum was missing, severed by what must have been a dull blade. By the look of the wound Decker guessed it had been done before the execution. But it was still recent, and there were flakes of congealed blood on the hairs of Ax-elman's inner thigh. Peering more closely, he studied the angle and nature of the purple cuts and the surrounding bruises.
    Decker straightened then and tried to mimic the cutting action required to make such a rough laceration. It wouldn't be the first time a convict had been castrated in jail by vindictive or vengeful inmates. But Decker couldn't see how any other inmates could have reached him on the row. He didn't believe the guards would have done this either. And however Decker tried, he couldn't get the required angle to duplicate the wound. Then, with an insight that chilled his blood, he mimed one more series of movements, and the angle of the ripped cuts tallied perfectly.
    Karl Axelman had inflicted this on himself.
    It was incomprehensible and went way beyond mind games. Why had a serial killer notorious for his lack of remorse castrated himself? What could have motivated Axel-man to do this?
    Hearing footsteps approaching, Decker quelled his feelings of disgust and reached out to pick two small flakes of blood off Axelman's inner thigh. The hair follicles would be enough