Prodigal Son

party.
        She descended the grand staircase, and as she reached the foyer, the doorbell rang. The first guests had arrived.

CHAPTER 21
        
        AS ROY PRIBEAUX dressed in black slacks, a pale-blue silk sport jacket, and a white linen shirt for his date with Candace-those eyes!-an all-news channel on TV did a segment about the Surgeon.
        What an absurd name they had given him. He was a romantic. He was an idealist from a family of idealists. He was a purist. He was many things, but he was not a surgeon.
        He knew they were talking about him, though he did not closely follow the media response to his harvests. He hadn't begun his collection of female perfection with the hope that he would become a celebrity. Fame had no appeal for him.
        Of course his quest generated public interest for all the wrong reasons. They saw violence, not art. They saw blood, not the work of a dreamer who sought perfection in all things.
        He had only contempt for the media and for the audience to which they pandered. Knaves speaking to fools.
        Having come from a prominent family of politicians-his father and grandfather had served the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana-he had seen with what ease the public could be manipulated by the clever use of envy and fear. His family had been expert at it.
        In the process, the Pribeauxs had greatly enriched themselves. His grandfather and father had done so well in public service that Roy himself had never needed to work and never would.
        Like great artists during the Renaissance, he had patrons: generations of taxpayers. His inheritance allowed him to devote his life to the pursuit of ideal beauty.
        When the TV reporter mentioned the most recent two victims, Roy's attention was suddenly focused by the coupling of an unknown name-Bobby Allwine-with that of Elizabeth Lavenza. He had harvested Elizabeth's lovely hands before consigning the depressingly imperfect remainder of her to the City Park lagoon.
        The heart had been removed from this Allwine person.
        Roy had no interest in hearts. He wasn't about internals. He was about externals. The kind of beauty that moved Roy was skin deep.
        Furthermore, this Allwine person was a man. Roy had no interest in the ideal beauty of men-except in the constant refinement and perfection of his own physique.
        Now, standing before the TV, he was further surprised to hear that Allwine was the third man whom the Surgeon had murdered. From the others he had taken a kidney and a liver.
        These murders were linked to those of the women by the fact that at least one of the male victims had been chloroformed.
        Copycat. Misguided imitator. Out there somewhere in New Orleans, an envious fool had been inspired by Roy's murders without understanding the purpose of them.
        For a moment, he was offended. Then he realized that the copycat, inevitably less intelligent than Roy himself, would eventually screw up, and the police would pin all these killings on the guy. The copycat was Roy's get-out-of-jail-free card.

CHAPTER 22
        
        THE PROJECTION BOOTH might have seemed too small for two men as large-in different ways -as Jelly Biggs and Deucalion. Nevertheless, it became the space they shared when they preferred not to be alone.
        The booth was cozy, perhaps because of Jelly's collection of paperback books, perhaps because it felt like a high redoubt above the fray of life.
        For extended periods of his long existence, Deucalion had found solitude appealing. One of those periods had ended in Tibet.
        Now, with the discovery that Victor was not dead, solitude disturbed Deucalion. He wanted companionship.
        As former carnies, he and Jelly had a world of experience in common, tales to tell, nostalgic reminiscences to share. In but one day they found that they fell into easy conversation, and Deucalion suspected that in time they would become true friends.
        Yet they fell into silences, as well, for their situation was similar to that of soldiers in a battlefield trench, in the deceptive calm before the mortar fire began. In this condition, they had profound questions to ponder before they were ready to discuss them.
        Jelly did his thinking while reading mystery novels of which he was inexpressibly fond. Much of his life, imprisoned in flesh, he had lived vicariously through the police, the