“The killer you’re investigating skinned his victims, correct? The Boston Globe didn’t provide many details, but based on your interest in Harry, I’m going to guess the skin was removed in long, thin strips. More to the point, you didn’t recover all the strips at the scene. Meaning the killer took some of the flesh with him. As a trophy. And now, based on what you’ve heard about Harry Day, you’re wondering if some of these strips aren’t preserved in glass vials, suspended in a special formaldehyde solution Harry perfected for just such a purpose.”

D.D. gave up standing, took a seat. She spread her hands before her, wincing as the unconscious gesture aggravated her left arm. “Gotta say, helluva coincidence. Two murderers, forty years apart, both with a fondness for excising and preserving their victims’ flesh. How many women do you think Harry killed?”

“He’s credited with eight.”

“The eight bodies they found at your house. What did the press nickname it at the time? House of Horrors, something like that?”

Adeline shrugged faintly. She had an impassive look on her face; D.D. had seen it before, on family members distancing themselves from terrible truths about people they should’ve known better. Or on the faces of victims, resolutely telling a story about something that surely happened to someone else.

“Harry’s trophy collection,” D.D. continued now. “I’m told the police recovered thirty-three glass jars containing pickled human skin. He’d hidden them beneath the floorboards of the bedroom closet.”

The doctor flinched.

“First dozen were small mason jars,” D.D. said, “but it appeared Harry got more sophisticated as time went on. Not only improved his formaldehyde solution, but moved into glass vials, like the kind used for perfume. And he labeled them. Not with names but some kind of random detail that must’ve meant something to him. Hair color, a place, an item of clothing. A unique but completely dehumanizing identifier for each specimen in his collection.”

The doctor flinched again.

“Did they ever finish identifying them?” Adeline asked. “I thought . . . I’d read a few years ago that a cold case team had the idea of analyzing the . . . preserved tissue . . . against a list of missing persons from the same time period. They were hoping to get DNA samples from surviving family members of some of the women who went missing in the late sixties, and look for matches.”

D.D. hadn’t heard that, but it made some sense. “Don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But it might explain why so many details from a forty-year-old case were in ViCAP.”

“They were going to look at open rape cases, as well. Many sexual sadist predators start with assault, correct? Their twisted fantasies escalate over time, taking them from voyeurs to rapists to killers. Meaning Harry’s total victim count is probably well more than eight.”