The halogens were still shining; bright, deliberate beams in the shadowy clutter.

Statue; goat-legged angel.

You idiot, Lestat.

I went up to it and stood before it, looking coldly at the details. Probably not seventeenth-century. Probably contemporary, executed by hand, yes, but it had the utter perfection of something contemporary, and the face did have the William Blake sublime expression—an evil, scowling, goat-legged being with the eyes of Blake's saints and sinners, full of innocence as well as wrath.

I wanted it suddenly, would liked to have kept it, gotten it down some way to my rooms in New Orleans as a keepsake for practically falling down dead in fear at its feet. Cold and solemn it stood before me. And then I realized that all these relics might be lost if I didn't do something with them. As soon as his death was known, all this would be confiscated, that was his whole point with Dora, that this, his true wealth, would pass into indifferent hands.

And Dora had turned her narrow little back to him and wept, a waif consumed with grief and horror and the worst frustration, the inability to comfort the one she most loved.

I looked down. I was standing over his mangled body. He still looked fresh, wrecked, murdered by a slob. Black hair very soft and mussed, eyes half open. His white shirtsleeves were stained an evil pinkish color from the little blood that oozed out of the wounds I'd accidentally inflicted, crushing him. His torso was at a hideous angle in relation to his legs. I'd snapped his neck, and snapped his spine.

Well, I'd get him out of here. I'd get rid of him, and then for a long time no one would know. No one would know he was dead; and the investigators couldn't pester Dora, or make her miserable. Then I'd think about the relics, perhaps spiriting them away for her.

From his pockets I took his identification. All bogus, nothing with his real name.

His real name had been Roger.

I knew that from the beginning, but only Dora had called him Roger. In all his dealings with others, he'd had exotic aliases, with odd medieval sounds. This passport said Frederick Wynken. Now that amused me. Frederick Wynken.

I gathered all identifying materials and put them in my pockets to be totally destroyed later.

I went to work with the knife. I cut off both his hands, rather amazed at their delicacy and how well-manicured were his nails. He had loved himself so much, and with reason. And his head, I hacked that off, more through brute strength forcing the knife through ten-don and bone than any sort of real skill. I didn't bother to close his eyes.

The stare of the dead holds so little fascination, really. It mimics nothing living. His mouth was soft without emotion, and cheeks smooth in death. The usual thing.

These—the head, and the hands—I put into two separate green sacks, and then I folded up the body, more or less, and crammed it into the third sack.