The Barrens & Others by F. Paul Wilson

N.Y.U., killed in Washington Square Park on January 5. She was the first.
    Mia Chandler, 25, a secretary at Merrill Lynch, killed January 13 in Battery Park.
    Ellen Beasley, 22, a photographer's assistant, killed in an alley in Chelsea on January 22.
    Hazel Hauge, 30, artist agent, killed in her Soho loft on January 27.
    Elisabeth Paine, 28, housewife, killed on Feruary 2 while jogging late in Central Park.
    Joan Perrin, 25, a model from Brooklyn, pulled from her car while stopped at a light on the Upper East Side on February 8.
    He picked up the eight by ten again. And the last: Liza Lee, 21. Dancer. Lived across the river in Jersey City. Ducked into an alley for a toot with her boyfriend tonight and never came out.
    Three blondes, three brunettes, one redhead. Some stacked, some on the flat side. All caucs except for Perrin. All lookers. But besides that, how in the world could these women be linked? They came from all over town, and they met their respective ends all over town. What could –
    "Well, you sure hit the bullseye about that roof!" Jacobi said as he burst into the office.
    Harrison straightened in his chair. "What you find?"
    "Blood."
    "Whose?"
    "The victim's."
    "No prints? No hairs? No fibers?"
    "We're working on it. But how'd you figure to check the roof top?"
    "Lucky guess."
    Harrison didn't want to provide Jacobi with more grist for the departmental gossip mill by mentioning his feeling of being watched from up there.
    But the killer had been watching, hadn't he?
    "Any prelims from pathology?"
    Jacobi shrugged and stuffed three sticks of gum into his mouth. Then he tried to talk.
    "Same as ever. Money gone, throat ripped open by a pair of sharp pointed instruments, not knives, the bite marks on the face are the usual: the teeth that made them aren't human, but the saliva is."
    The "non-human" teeth part – more teeth, bigger and sharper teeth that found in any human mouth – had baffled them all from the start. Early on someone remembered a horror novel or movie where the killer used some weird sort of false teeth to bite his victims. That had sent them off on a wild goose chase to all the dental labs looking for records of bizarre bite prostheses. No dice. No one had seen or even heard of teeth that could gnaw off a person's face.
    Harrison shuddered. What could explain wounds like that? What were they dealing with here?
    The irritating pops, snaps, and cracks of Jacobi's gum filled the office.
    "I liked you better when you smoked."
    Jacobi's reply was cut off by the phone. The sergeant picked it up.
    "Detective Harrison's office!" he said, listened a moment, then, with his hand over the mouthpiece, passed the receiver to Harrison. "Some fairy wantsh to shpeak to you," he said with an evil grin.
    "Fairy?"
    "Hey," he said, getting up and walking toward the door. "I don't mind. I'm a liberal kinda guy, y'know?"
    Harrison shook his head with disgust. Jacobi was getting less likable every day.
    "Hello. Harrison here."
    "Shorry dishturb you, Detective Harrishon."
    The voice was soft, pitched somewhere between a man's and a woman's, and sounded as if the speaker had half a mouthful of saliva. Harrison had never heard anything like it. Who could be–?
    And then it struck him: It was three a.m. Only a handful of people knew he was here.
    "Do I know you?"
    "No. Watch you tonight. You almosht shee me in dark."
    That same chill from earlier tonight ran down Harrison's back again.
    "Are…are you who I think you are?"
    There was a pause, then one soft word, more sobbed than spoken:
    "Yesh."
    If the reply had been cocky, something along the line of And just who do you think I am?, Harrison would have looked for much more in the way of corroboration. But that single word, and the soul deep heartbreak that propelled it, banished all doubt.
    My God! He looked around frantically. No one in sight. Where the fuck was Jacobi now when he needed him? This was the Facelift Killer! He needed a trace!
    Got to keep him on the