When you get invited to visit a mad scientist’s lab—even if it’s just a personal home workshop—you might think twice. But Archibald Victor wanted me to see his innocent do-it-yourself people kits.
I think he wanted to reassure me that his hobby was no more bizarre than collecting stamps or baseball cards. I’m not a judgmental guy in the first place. As a private investigator, I’ve represented monster brothels, a witch transformed into a sow, a bank robber ghost, an arsonist who claimed to be William Shakespeare, and a werewolf contesting her prenuptial agreement. Who was I to look askance at somebody who liked to stitch body parts together?
Still, at Chambeaux & Deyer, we try to give our clients the personal touch. I was happy to make a house call.
The coroner and his wife lived in a nice double-wide in a trailer park that had been converted from a bankrupt drive-in theater. At neighborhood get-togethers, the trailer-park management showed grainy old monster movies on the big patched screen. The tenants viewed them as comedies.
I was surprised that the Quarter’s coroner could afford only a modest residence, considering the work he had to do (including all the repeat customers). But Dr. Victor and his wife were newlyweds, starting a life for themselves, and they didn’t live beyond their means. I wondered how much he spent on his unusual hobby; I assumed mint-condition organs didn’t come cheap.
When I rapped on the door of the mad scientist’s house trailer I certainly wasn’t expecting the woman who answered. I’ve never seen so much hair on a woman other than a werewolf. She was covered with it: long curly locks that fell down to the middle of her back, long eyebrows that drooped to her cheeks, and a lavish beard that extended from her lower eyelids down to her ample bosom.
“You must be Mr. Chambeaux! Archibald told me you’d be stopping by.” She extended her hand, and her grip was warm and soft, indicating that she did not scrimp on lotions. The manicured nails were painted rose-petal pink; long and silky hair covered her forearm and the back of her hand. Everything about her had a freshly shampooed strawberry scent.
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Victor,” I said.
“Please, call me Harriet. Come inside. My husband’s in his lab.” She closed the trailer door behind me and kept talking. “Yoo-hoo, Archibald! That detective is here.”
“I’ll be right there, love,” he called back. “Just as soon as I finish installing this bronchial tube.”
“Sorry the place is a mess,” Harriet said. “Archibald takes over every table and countertop with his model-building hobbies and chemistry experiments. Someday, he’s going to make us rich with a great discovery. He always tried to impress me when we were dating—I think he still is. He’s such a sweetheart.” She bustled about. “Could I get you a snack? Some crackers and cheese? I’m just getting ready for work.”
“No, thank you, ma’am. I’m fine.”
As I stood in the trailer’s small living room, she put on a delicate necklace and bracelet, which were all but swallowed up in body hair. She primped her facial curls in front of a mirror. “Harriet isn’t actually my real name,” she said conversationally. “Just a stage name from when I worked for Oscar Kowalski’s vampire circus. I was the most popular bearded lady they ever had.”
“So you’re not an unnatural, then?” I asked.
“No, it’s just a hormone condition. I maintained a sunny disposition and made a good living, but I never liked being treated as a freak. Dear Archibald took me away from all that.”
As if she had summoned him, the coroner emerged from the trailer’s back room, shucking a pair of black rubber gloves and adjusting his prominent toupee to make himself presentable.
“I’m off to work, sweetie.” Harriet picked up her purse and gave her husband a peck on the cheek.
He worshipfully stroked her full beard. “I love running my fingers through your hair.”
Harriet giggled. “Now, don’t get carried away—we have company. I’ll leave you boys to your business.”
After she left the trailer, Archibald stared after her like a lovesick puppy. “Don’t know what I did to deserve her … or what she sees in me.”
I had no idea how to answer that, so I didn’t even try. “Let’s have a look at your kits, Dr. Victor. I have another appointment later this evening.” Actually it was my usual get-together with McGoo at the Goblin Tavern, but I wanted to keep this meeting on a business footing.
“Follow me to the back room. I’m just finishing a particularly challenging assembly.”
Archibald’s hobby area took up half of the trailer. A small bed was tucked off in the corner, and I couldn’t imagine how Archibald and Harriet both fit on it, unless they snuggled tightly—which, as newlyweds, they probably did. Jars, tubes, and bottles of every conceivable type covered the countertop around the single bathroom sink, but the vanity was divided in two, as if by an imaginary line. One half was crowded with shampoos, cream rinses, mousses, hair sprays, and arcane beauty treatments—Harriet’s side, I presumed. The other part contained beakers, flasks, test tubes, Bunsen burners, separation coils, differentiation cylinders, boxes of powders, jars of liquids.
“Concocting a new energy-drink recipe, Dr. Victor?” I asked, remembering his penchant for such things.
“No, no—an innovative new hair tonic. Top secret—it’s going to make us rich, rich! I could rule the world!” He started to cackle, then caught himself. Embarrassed, he pulled me away from the vanity and sink. “Actually, I prefer the quiet life, never understood the appeal of ruling the world. That’s not why I brought you here.”
On a pair of sturdy fold-out utility tables rested two of his build-your-own person projects in different stages of completion. One was a very tall human, nearly complete: The arms, legs, and torso were stitched together out of parts that originated from different sources; the varying shades of skin color gave the patchwork form a sort of calico appearance. The body cavity was propped open with Popsicle sticks and dowels.
I looked closer. “Why is one leg shorter than the other?”
He frowned. “Slight imperfections are to be expected. These bodies are individually handmade. It increases the collectible value.”
“But won’t he have trouble walking once you reanimate him?”
“Oh, these aren’t for reanimation—just art objects. I’ll enter them in the upcoming body-building competition, and I have a standing show over at the Night Gallery. This one still needs an acceptable spleen, as I showed you earlier. And, of course, a mint-condition brain.” He tapped the kit’s head, which had been sawed open, the top of the cranium set aside. The skull cavity reminded me of an empty garage waiting for a car to be parked there.
The second table held a skeleton on which some major muscle groups had been sutured with thick black threads. A set of lungs, looking like deflated balloons, had been tucked inside the rib cage, only recently attached. From the long canine fangs in the bony jaw, I assumed the head was a werewolf skull. Two eyeballs, one brown and one blue, had been installed, but the rest of the body needed a lot of work.
Archibald cracked his knuckles. “This hobby gives me an appreciation for the body’s intricacies. As a coroner, I spend my days taking bodies apart, so it’s gratifying to put them back together again in my spare time. Only the most skilled hobbyists start with the bare bones. And this”—Archibald tapped the long, yellowed fangs—“this is a genuine werewolf skull, very rare. Most werewolves revert to human form upon death, but this poor fellow died of a Gypsy curse—hardening of the arteries, I think—which messed up the reverse transformation. This one component cost me a fortune!”
I looked around the workshop. “If the hobby is so expensive, how do you afford it all?”
“I do consulting work to raise a little spare cash. So far, it’s mostly mummies who bring their canopic jars and ask me to reinstall their organs because they feel empty inside. Once a week, I donate time to the Fresh Corpses Zombie Rehab Clinic.”
I thought about the crime scene at the Motel Six Feet Under. “Do you think the murdered vampire had anything to do with hobbyists like yourself?”
The coroner gasped. “I’d be appalled to think so!”
“Why else would anyone plunder the organs?”
“You may be aware that there’s quite a demand for vampire organs on the black market—they just keep going and going, no matter how detached they are from the main body.” Actually, I wasn’t aware of that, but it made a twisted sort of sense. “Discriminating customers pay a lot for still-functional pieces.”
I walked around the hobby table, seeing all the preserved pieces just waiting to be installed in the body-building kits. “How can you be sure all these body parts are obtained legally? My partner can’t make a consumer protection case on your behalf if you’re buying from a shady supplier.”
He shook his head so vigorously that the toupee slid askew. “Body-snatching laws have been significantly tightened since the Big Uneasy. Many zombies came back to find themselves missing vital parts. Plenty of complaints filed.”
I was glad that hadn’t happened to me. “I see how it would be a problem.”
“That’s why I buy only from reputable dealers. I’m the coroner—I wouldn’t want to expose the department to a scandal! I assume Tony Cralo’s Spare Parts Emporium is fully licensed.”
“I’ll definitely look into Mr. Cralo’s operation—with complete discretion,” I said.
Suddenly, a cauldron-like gurgling came from the shower stall in the half bath, sounding like a drowning victim in the first stages of reanimation. Alarmed, Archibald rushed to the bathroom. “Not that drain again!” The shower drain bubbled, burbled, and splurted effluent as it backed up with a stench worse than a sewer dweller’s belch. Archibald snagged a long-handled rake propped against the shower and began fishing around with the tines, uprooting long, tangled masses of hair that had refused to go down the drain. The little coroner looked like a farmer moving hay with a pitchfork.
He set the tangled wad on the floor outside the shower, then emptied a gallon jug of drain cleaner down the shower drain. Fumes began to sizzle and smoke, and the coroner flicked on the bathroom exhaust fan.
“My dear wife is beautiful, and I love her hair, but she always forgets to use the hair trap or clear the shower stall after she’s finished.”
“At least you don’t have that problem,” I quipped, before I remembered how sensitive he was about his baldness.
He blushed and tried to block my view of his chemistry experiments on the countertop. “Just wait until I find a hair tonic recipe that works.”
“Good luck with that.” I glanced at my watch. “Thanks for showing me your work, Dr. Victor. I’ll be back in touch after I visit the Spare Parts Emporium. I’ll make sure you get a replacement brain and spleen.”
“And see if they’ll throw in an extra set of lungs, as you promised.”
“I’ll do my best.” I left the trailer very much looking forward to having a beer with McGoo.