The smell of scorched varnish and hot lard filled the alcove outside Room 808.
Sub-Inspector Harker lay crumpled on his left side. His heavy trench coat was soaked in black tallow grease that seeped from beneath the sealed oak double doors.
His right arm was pinned flat against the carved oak wainscoting.
The flesh of his forearm had lost all human curvature. It was compressed into a paper-thin, rigid plane of translucent amber wax, bonded directly into the dark wood fibers of the hotel wall.
Beside his twitching fingers lay a small, handheld chemical blowtorch.
The brass nozzle of the torch was charred black, smeared with bubbling crimson residue.
“Don’t touch that torch, Elena,” Julian warned softly.
Elena knelt two feet away, her penlight beam illuminating the scorched metal.
