God Makes Them Mean

Chapter 8

It isn't. Somebody has gone to town here.

Somebody has taken a page from the Devil's playbook and made a tableau vivant out of it. Well, not so vivant.

'What the fuck happened?' I ask.

Pat fails to reply. There's a lingering stench of puke around me that suggests his stomach hasn't held fast at the sight of the mess. Judging by the ashen faces around me, he hasn't been the only one.

Somebody has painted ribbons of blood on the walls. Somebody has hacked and stabbed. Somebody has cut fingers and pushed them inside empty eye sockets. Somebody must've taken the eyes themselves because they cannot be found. Somebody has cut tongues and placed them inside the victims vaginas. Tongues belonging to two other victims, since these two have their tongues still lolling from the corner of their mouthes. Somebody has been lost to bloodlust, each one of the two corpses showing cuts enough to kill a hundred people, let alone just two.

'Holy fuck,' Jeff whispers. Even he has been sobered by the sight.

Both women have been tied wrists-to-bedposts, at opposite ends, and had their feet tied to each other, their legs creating a rhomboid shape inside which blood has pulled like rainwater around a clogged gutter. Their long hair is matted with gore. In places it's been glued to the skin by the drying blood. Maybe they had been blondes, or brunettes. It's impossible to say.

Sometimes it's hard to imagine that the human body contains only about ten or eleven pounds of blood. Here it looks like ten gallons have been used.

'Nobody is going to be happy to examine this crime scene,' Jeff says. An uniform standing beside me loses it and walks out of the apartment. I can hear retching sounds coming from the corridor, and I have to marshall all my strength to keep everything down.

'Nobody can survive with their tongues cut off, right?' Jeff asks me.

'No, the loss of blood alone would do them in.'

'So we're looking at two more corpses somewhere.'

'Yep.'

'I'm losing my appetite.'

He tries to get closer but I stop him. My hand looks delicate and boyishly when I grab his arm. 'That's a no go zone. We should wait for the lab people to work it.'

He looks at me with his small eyes deeply set in that square, hard face of his. 'Why did he flayed them?'

'He removed the patches of skin where the tattoos were. It makes it harder for us to identify them.'

'Trophies?'

I shiver at the thought of somebody collecting patches of skin and making a scrapbook out of them. 'Could be. Very well be.' So much has been done to this girls they don't look human anymore. They are like mannequins made of flesh, or the artwork of a deranged visionary with an insane mind. I shiver and close my eyes. The bodies remain there, etched inside my lids, like an after-impression forever burnt into my retina. I fight back the tears because I'm a grown-ass man who has seen his fair share of bodies.

But this is different. This is madness and violence and utter joy at human suffering.

This is a fiend's handiwork.

I funnel my horror into rage for whoever did this. That's it Eric, I tell myself. Turn disgust into hate, into dogged determination. I open my eyes and the corpses are still there.

'I need to step out,' I say.

The block is being cordoned off. The night is cold. Uniforms everywhere. Ambulances are screaming. I sympathize with the poor bastards that will have to collect those things upstairs. People are cramming the edge of the do-not-cross line. CPD officers keep them at bay. The day is long dead, and the strobe lights of a score vehicles make the street look like a disco. I sit against my car. I wish I had something to drink. Something strong and unforgiving.

'Is it bad?' a voice asks. I look up. McPhaerson is a gaunt apparition, a Scot-Irish who looks like he has never recovered from the potato famine. His mutton chops make his cheeks look like they're sinking even deeper. His hair is thinning on top, his hands are long and liver-spotted, and should belong to Nosferatu. He has gloomy demeanour as his natural setting. Now he looks even worse. Now he looks as if he's just been raised from the dead. How such a ghostly individual was kicked up to Division Captaincy is a mystery. The newspaper will have a field day with him tomorrow. They usually do.

For now the fourth estate is kept well away from here. Thank god. Exactly what I don't need is a journalist ready to misquote and misinterpret me.

'What do you know, Captain?'

'That it's something out of a TV show.'

'Not Sesame Street. But it is. Somebody lost it. Or maybe he was well aware of what he was doing. There is a touch of unhinged genius to the scene.'

'Two corpses right?'

'Yes, but with two extra tongues, which means we'll be looking for two bodies for the foreseeable future.'

'You and Pat on the case?'

I nod, he clicks his tongue. He knows as well as everybody else Pat will be useless. 'Ok, I'll put two more teams on it. Plus you can have all the help you need. This will be big I guess.'

'You have no idea.'

'Walk with me.' We take the lift. Just the two of us. 'Talk to me,' he orders.

'Two girls. Tied, stabbed, mutilated, flayed.'

'Fuck.'

He pats Jeff on the back as we walk in. Everybody wants to stay on Jeff's good side. Just in case it turns out he has one. I tell him with a stare to vacate the room a moment. The Captain takes it in. It's a ghoulish scene. In his long black coat, he looks like a vampire surveying a carnage of his own doing.

'Jesus fuck, Jesus,' he mumbles. He shakes his head. His expression is one of disgust at the whole human race. We can raise skyscrapers and discover vaccinations. We can do this as well. 'This is sickening.'

I think he's got the hang of it.