Your Heart Belongs to Me

not let anyone into the suite, yet he felt that he was no longer alone.
    Resisting the irrational urge to search every corner and closet, he took a quick shower. When steam clouded the glass door, he wiped it away to maintain a clear view of the bathroom.
    Dressed and ready for the night, he felt neither refreshed nor less concerned about the possible presence of another in the suite. Surrendering to paranoia, he searched closets, behind furniture.
    He tried the sliding door to the balcony. Locked. No one was out there anyway.
    In the spacious foyer, he glanced at his reflection in the mirror above the console. Although he half expected someone to appear in the suite behind him, no one did.
     

 
    SEVENTEEN

    S pencer Barghest, indicted twice for murder in Texas and twice found innocent, lived in a middle-class neighborhood of single-story ranch houses.
    After George Zane drove past the address to park half a block away and across the street from the Barghest residence, Ryan walked back to the house.
    The warm night air was so dry that it would not support the fragrances of trees and flowering shrubs, only the generic alkaline scent of the desert upon which the city had encroached but over which it had not triumphed.
    Landscape spotlights, fixed high in lacy melaleucas, cast on the front walkway leaf shadows so crisp they ought to have crunched underfoot.
    Light glowed behind the curtained windows, and the nameless brunette with the soft mouth and the stony eyes greeted him before he could ring the bell.
    Inside, as the woman closed the door behind them, Ryan said, “How long do I have?”
    “Three or four hours at least. He’s out to dinner with Rebecca Reach.”
    “They take that long for dinner?”
    “Dinner and horizontal dancing at her place. According to our sources, Barghest is a Viagra cowboy. There’s not a day he doesn’t take a dose and ride.”
    “Dr. Death is a Don Juan?”
    “You’re giving him too much credit. He’s a slut.”
    “What if they come back here?”
    “They won’t. Maybe a few nut-case women find this decor arousing, but most don’t. Rebecca’s one who doesn’t.”
    In the living room, she showed him what she meant. In addition to the expected furniture, there were two dead men, one dead woman, all naked.
    Having read a newspaper story about exhibitions of cadaver art touring fine museums and galleries and universities nationwide, Ryan knew at once that these were not sculptures, not mere representations of dead people. They were painstakingly preserved corpses.
    These dead had been treated with antibacterial solutions, drying agents, and numerous preservatives. Thereafter they were submerged in polyurethane, which sealed them in an airtight glaze that prevented decomposition, and were strapped to armatures supporting them in various postures.
    One of the men apparently had died of a wasting disease; he was emaciated. His narrow lips were pinched tight. One eye closed, the other open, he appeared to have lacked the courage to turn his full gaze on approaching Death.
    The second man looked healthy; the cause of his death was not evident. He seemed to be alive, except that the polyurethane made him glisten head to foot like a well-basted holiday turkey.
    Evidently the middle-aged woman had died soon after a single mastectomy, because the lurid scars had not yet healed before she passed. As was true also of the men, her head had been shaved.
    Her blue eyes fixed Ryan with a look of mortification and horror, as though she were aware of the atrocities to which she had been subjected after death.
    When he could speak, Ryan asked: “The authorities know he has these?”
    “Each…person in the collection either signed over his body to Barghest before death—or the family did so. He’s displayed them at various events.”
    “Health hazard?”
    “The experts say no, none.”
    “Certainly isn’t good for anyone’s mental health.”
    “It’s all been adjudicated. Courts believe it’s legitimate art, a political statement, cultural anthropology, educational, hip, cool, fun.”
    Squeamish not because he stood in the company of the dead but because he felt that their exploitation was an affront to human dignity, Ryan looked away from the three specimens.
    “When do we start feeding Christians to the lions?” he wondered.
    “Tickets go on sale next Wednesday.”
    She returned to the foyer to allow him to tour the house alone.
    A hallway led off the living room, and a