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Victor asked.
    The bloodshot eyes shifted at once to regard a smaller table in a far corner of the room.
    There, a living hand lay in a shallow bowl of milky antibiotic solution. As in the case of the head, this five-fingered wonder was served by numerous tubes and by a low-voltage electrical pump that could empower its nerves and, thereby, its musculature.
    The systems sustaining the head and those sustaining the hand were independent of each other, sharing no common tubing or wiring.
    After reading the status displays on the equipment and making a few adjustments, Victor said, “Karloff, move your thumb.”
    In the dish, the hand lay motionless. Motionless. And then…the thumb twitched, bent at the knuckle, straightened again.
    Victor had long sought those genes that might carry the elusive psychic powers that humankind had sometimes experienced but had never been able to control. Recently he had achieved this small success.
    This ultimate amputee, Karloff, had just exhibited psychomotor telekenesis, the control of his entirely detached hand strictly by means of mental exertion.
    â€œGive me an arpeggio,” Victor said.
    In the shallow bowl, the hand raised on the heel of its palm and strummed the air with all fingers, as if plucking at the strings of an invisible harp.
    Pleased by this display, Victor said, “Karloff, make a fist.”
    The hand slowly clenched, tighter, tighter, until the knuckles were sharp and white.
    No emotion showed in Karloff’s face, yet the hand seemed to be an exquisite expression of anger and the will to violence.

CHAPTER 15
    NEW DAY, NEW DEATH . For the second morning in a row, Carson chased breakfast with the discovery of a mutilated corpse.
    A TV crew was at the library, hauling gear out of a satellite van, when Carson jammed the brakes, twisted the wheel, and slotted her plainwrap between two black-and-whites that were angled to the curb.
    â€œI break land-speed records getting here,” she grumbled, “and the media’s already on the scene.”
    â€œBribe the right people,” Michael suggested, “and next time you might get the call before Channel 4.”
    As she and Michael crossed the sidewalk toward the library, a reporter shouted to her, “Detective O’Connor! Is it true the Surgeon cut out a heart this time?”
    â€œMaybe they’re so interested,” she told Michael, “because none of those bastards
has
a heart.”
    They hurried up stone steps to the ornate redstone building with gray granite arches and columns.
    Admitting them, the police guard at the door said, “It fits the pattern, guys. It’s one of his.”
    â€œSeven murders in a little over three weeks isn’t a pattern anymore,” Carson replied. “It’s a rampage.”
    As they entered the reading foyer with the elevated main desk, Michael said, “I should’ve brought my overdue book.”
    â€œYou checked out a book? Mr. DVD with a
book?
”
    â€œIt was a DVD guide.”
    Crime-scene techs, police photographers, criminalists, jakes, and personnel from the medical examiner’s office served as Indian guides without saying a word. Carson and Michael followed their nods and gestures through a labyrinth of books.
    Three quarters of the way along an aisle of stacks, they found Harker and Frye, who were cordoning off the scene with yellow tape.
    Establishing that the territory belonged to him and Carson, Michael said, “Yesterday’s hand bandit is this morning’s thief of hearts.”
    Frye managed to look greasy
and
blanched. His face had no color. He kept one hand on his expansive gut as if he had eaten some bad pepper shrimp for breakfast.
    He said, “Far as I’m concerned, you take the lead on this one. I’ve lost my taste for the case.”
    If Harker, too, had a change of heart, his reasons were not identical to Frye’s. His face was as boiled red as ever, his eyes as