Page 172 of Forever Dead

“You keep everything on paper?” Selena asked.

“Everything important.”

“That seems unusual for someone with this much equipment.”

"Computers encourage people to believe information lasts forever. I prefer the old-fashioned ways, myself." He let out a friendly chuckle.

He opened the second drawer and began moving through hanging files.

Selena stood beside the worktable.

The room was clinical and organized, but such places always left Selena feeling a little on edge. The sterility of it all. Foss, however, had spent most of his professional life around laboratories.

He pulled out a thick folder.

“No. Wrong one.”

Another drawer opened.

Selena checked her phone. No messages from Connor. One from Eric asking whether she would be back before the trick-or-treaters invaded the motel.

She slipped the phone away.

“Here.”

Foss placed a file on the worktable and opened it.

Inside were photocopied pages from an old forensic text. Several photographs had been reproduced in black and white.

Foss turned the folder toward her.

“Ed Gein.”

Selena studied the page. “The serial killer from the fifties?”

“Yes. Wisconsin.”

One photograph showed objects recovered from Gein’s farmhouse. Selena recognized enough from documentaries and old case summaries to understand why Foss had made the connection.

“He robbed graves,” she said.

“Repeatedly,” Foss replied. “He exhumed corpses, removed skin and other anatomical material and fashioned objects from them. Among those objects were masks.”

Selena glanced at the photograph on her phone, then back at the folder.

“Stitched together like this?”

“The surviving photographs are not always detailed enough to make direct comparisons, but the principle is similar.”

Foss tapped the page.

“Gein selected material, preserved it and shaped it into forms he wanted. There’s planning involved in that. It isn’t simply mutilation.”

“He started with bodies from cemeteries.”

“Yes.”

“And then that wasn’t enough.”