The masks are made with a process called plastination. It’s patented, and you can buy the equipment from a company in Germany. It’s a great way to make medical samples of body parts because the process stops the decay and replaces fat and body fluids with polymers. LAPD’s tracked down all the customers in Southern California and found users are medical and/or legit. For the most part. But they’ve got suspicions about one. The Bryant Center in Newport Beach. Heard of it?

“That’s where that exhibit is, right?” Luke asks.

“What exhibit?” she asks.

“The one with all the bodies. You know, where they’re all preserved and posed and you can see the muscles.”

“Oh yeah, I saw pictures. That’s disgusting.”

The exhibit is just part of it. Bryant Center is run by multimillionaire real estate guy Denny Bryant, who started a center for “youth sciences.” Antiaging stuff. Mostly quack medicine. But the exhibit pays a huge chunk of the bills. It’s been sold out since it opened. Plastination is how all the bodies in the exhibit were made.

“You didn’t send us a picture of Denny Bryant,” Charlotte says. “You sent us this Pemberton guy.”

Chill. I’m getting there. Robbery Homicide Division thinks Bryant might either be their guy or he’s covering for their guy. He’s got a history. Charges of spousal abuse from an ex-wife. Some shit with hookers he got buried. Classic rich fuckhead. But he’s not the killer.

“Why are you so sure?” she asks.

There’s a lot that’s not made it into the press about the masks . . . yet. Surgery behind them is excellent. Top-notch. Killer has to be a skilled surgeon. But there’s no shortage of those in Southern California.

“But they also have to know how to . . . plastinate, or however you say it,” Luke adds.

That part isn’t as hard. It’s a four-step process. You just need the space and the equipment and some practice. Real problem is they haven’t found individual surgeons who have bought plastination kits and materials. Also both abductions super skilled. From different crowded areas. They think first outside nightclub in downtown LA, but not sure. Second, side street off Ventura Blvd. in Studio City. More sure, not 100 percent. No one turning up on surveillance cameras scoping out areas in advance. But abductions as methodical as surgeries. If the masks hadn’t turned up, the two disappearances might never have been linked by police.

“Denny Bryant’s not a surgeon, I take it,” she says.

No. But they think the Mask Maker is connected to the center in some way. They think he’s using their chemicals and equipment. Problem is Denny Bryant knew he’d be implicated as soon as the first mask was found. And he was smart about it. He had his lawyers go in on day one and hand over purchase records for all the center’s labs so it looked like they were being cooperative.

“Isn’t that cooperative?” Charlotte asks.

No. It’s bullshit. He knows what they’re gonna be after, and it’s his employee records and security access logs. They’re going to want to look at the names of anyone who had access to the chemicals and equipment. And for some reason, that’s what he wants to keep secret. And a judge just agreed he had a right to.

“So the cops went after a warrant, and it was denied?” Luke asks.

Judge said it had all the makings of a fishing expedition. And apparently he shared the suspicions of Bryant’s lawyers.

“Which were?” she asks.

That the warrant had less to do with the Mask Maker and more to do with the fact that the state anatomical board has raised ethics questions about where Bryant got the bodies in his exhibit. He says he’s got legal paperwork for all of them, but he’s never volunteered to show it to anyone, and the anatomical board doesn’t have the authority to make him. Also, LAPD didn’t help their case by not going after similar warrants for the personnel records of other major medical facilities that do plastination in SoCal. Made it look like Bryant was being targeted without significant probable cause. Which he was. Because he should be.

“Bailey, how do you know all this?” Luke asks.

“Maybe later, you guys could—”

Told you. I don’t discuss procedure.

“Did you hack Parker Center?” Luke asks. “Call me crazy, but if I have a brother who just hacked one of the largest police departments in the country, I feel like I should know. It’ll help me figure out what to buy you for Christmas.”

Relax. We hack Parker Center all the time.

“Who’s we?” Charlotte asks.

“Oh, fuck. Did you join Anonymous?”

Those guys are all over the place. We’re more focused.

“On what? Ending up in jail?”

No. Making sure only the right people do.

“Bailey, can you get us to Pemberton?”

I got access to the Bryant Center’s security access logs and payroll records since it opened. According to what I found, not a single doctor worked on the plastination for the exhibit. That’s impossible. Each body would have taken fifteen hundred hours to make. Process is insanely complex. The idea that they could have done that with just the three surgical techs they have listed as employees is absurd. Nobody would ever believe it. But they still purged them from the rolls anyway. Because they’re panicking.

“So you think they know the Mask Maker worked for them, and they purged all evidence of him from the rolls because . . . why? They’re afraid of the scandal?”

No. I think the Mask Maker did something else for the Bryant Center, and they don’t want anyone finding out what it was. And they’re so eager to cover it up, they don’t give a shit what other crimes he’s committed.

“What could he have done for them that’s that significant?” Charlotte asks.

“Get them the bodies,” Luke answers.

“Jesus. You think he murdered everyone in the exhibit?”

“No,” Luke says. “He just probably got them through some unethical means.”

“So . . . Pemberton?” Charley asks.

His name was purged from every payroll record, except for one. They missed it, but he’s marked “direct deposit.” Means he wasn’t a onetime indie contractor. He was a regular employee. I found another one they missed. For another doctor. Dr. Ella Stanovski. But I ruled her out.

“Because she’s a woman?”

No. Because she’s five two. Likely victims overpowered at some point. Pemberton is six three, has a gym membership he uses daily. He’s also single. And he’s got a country house near Temecula with plenty of land around it and enough square footage for an operating room. Which he bought the equipment for a year ago.

“So he’s doing surgery out of his house?” Luke asks. “Is that really that weird?”

He doesn’t advertise it. And there isn’t enough room in his offices in Newport Beach to house the extra equipment he bought.

“He wasn’t just replacing stuff?”

No insurance claims on busted or outdated equipment.

“Jesus Christ, Bailey.”

I know. I’m good.

“You’re thorough,” Luke says. “Let’s leave good and bad out of it for now.”

“Did Pemberton buy any of the stuff needed for plastination?”

No.

“OK,” Charley says. “So we know Pemberton was on staff at the Bryant Center, along with at least one other doctor. We know someone, possibly Denny Bryant, purged their names from the rolls. Possibly because he played some hand in getting bodies for the exhibit through unethical means—”

“Which we have no proof of,” Luke says.

“True. We also know he’s a skilled surgeon with the time, the means, and the literal space to commit the murders. And possibly access to equipment he could use to make the masks, which means he would have to be sneaking into the facility—”

Wait. There’s more.

“What?” she asks. “I’m listening.”

Plastination requires a vacuum pump chamber that removes acetone from cadavers and forces polymer into cells. According to sales records Bryant Center showed LAPD, they purchased four. According to security camera system I hacked, they only have three on-site right now.

“Well, that’s something,” Charlotte says.

It’s not all. Denny Bryant called Pemberton’s cell phone three times yesterday from a cell phone he usually uses for hookers, four times the day before that. I couldn’t get to the voice mails, but earlier today he broke down and sent the guy a text. I got it.

“What did it say?” Luke asks.

Bring it back.

“The vacuum pump chamber,” Charlotte says.

“Maybe,” Luke says. “Did he answer?”

You’ve got mail.

Luke clicks through to his e-mail account. This time the message is from a different Hotmail address: [email protected] Luke has attached a screen capture he took on his computer monitor of a text dialogue—no names, just phone numbers. There’s Pemberton’s text, just as Bailey described it. The response is a photograph, an aerial shot, probably from a helicopter, of a vast field of tin roofs on a barren, scorched plain.

“So Denny Bryant says bring it back, and Pemberton sends him a photograph of . . .” Charlotte stops so Bailey will finish. The browser minimizes, thanks to Bailey’s invisible hand.

The Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. The largest refugee camp in the world. Pemberton went there on a volunteer mission with a group called Global Healers two years ago. Guess who’s one of their biggest donors.

“Denny Bryant,” Luke answers.

“Who doesn’t call or text him again after getting the picture of the refugee camp.”