Façade (AHS: Hotel)

Chapter 1

Walking into one of the bloodiest crime scenes he had ever seen in his career, Detective John Lowe was never so shocked as he paced his way into a hotel in downtown Los Angeles. He had seen someone, perhaps a lifeless corpse wrapped in a body bag by the forensics team, carried out strapped on top of a gurney. He looked around, his distinctively-shaped face and furrowed, dark brow moving slightly as his cold, inquisitive blue eyes found the crime scene's main focus.

A man and a woman, who looked to be engaging in sexual acts during the crime, were in a reversed cowgirl position on the white sheets covering the bed. The man beneath seemed to be alive, mumbling unintelligibly with agony, but his face was unrecognizable and covered in blood and torn tissues. The woman was still on top but impaled by a harpoon through the chest that went right through the ivory-toned headboard. The officer walking behind Lowe, who led him to the scene, broke the ice in discussing the mysterious case.

"We think the culprit took the master key from housekeeping," he informed the detective.

"No one heard anything?" Lowe asked.

"It seems like both were chloroformed the minute they got into the door," the other officer said.

"Just great." The sarcasm in the detective's voice was evident now; the forensic photographer kept taking pictures of the scene, even of crucial pieces of evidence found around the bed upon which the victims were laying. John made his way to the bedside table, careful not to disturb the current state of the scene, and noticed three familiar-looking body parts laying there stuck by the natural fluids remaining.

"These are his eyeballs and tongue," Lowe noticed, looking at the pieces disgustedly.

"This area has already been documented," the officer urged.

"Not by me."

The living but injured man beneath the woman impaled by the harpoon to the headboard kept mumbling. If he was crying, then tears were not coming from the empty sockets he now had for eyes. John could not help but notice another key clue that the others had overlooked at the scene-the dead, impaled woman was wearing a wedding ring on her left finger.

"They were married," he indicated. "But not to each other. They were cheating. There was no pissed-off spouse involved. It wasn't jealousy at all. It was something else. Who would drive someone to this extreme an act?"

"Beats me," the officer said with a shrug. John continued his way toward the injured man beneath the woman's corpse, who seemed to weep and cry in pain and fear at what had happened.

"Sir?" the detective said. "We are going to get you out of here as soon as possible."

"He's still inside her," the officer said.

"I can definitely see a lot of Viagra in his system. You won't be able to detach them here. Take him with the corpse and cut him loose."

It was the voice of a woman-it immediately caught John Lowe's attention as he turned around.

She did not look like a detective on duty, or any kind of law enforcement occupation for that matter. In fact, she looked like a regular civilian. She was quite attractive, as well-she was rather short but slim-figured with long strawberry-blonde hair, easy blue-gray eyes, and an oval face with rosy lips and a kissed complexion. Her manner of dress amazed John in not so much a negative way, but he never expected someone on a crime scene to be vested in a brightly-patterned maxi skirt, a silk button-up blouse, and a dreamcatcher necklace with real feathers and suede to hang it around the neck. There was a slight smile in her lips, and she looked to the officer who led Lowe to the crime scene, who stared back and gasped.