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GRUESOME DISCOVERIES
The ringing of the phone jarred him awake.
"Wilson here."
"Sorry to disturb you, sir. But we've got a bad one."
Damon listened for a few
moments more, and then hung up. He was dressed and out the door in less than
ten minutes, using both the sirens and lights as he climbed the hills into
Harrington Falls. As he made his way down Chestnut Street, it was easy to see
the activity that surrounded the house at the end of the block.
It
was a beacon, shining in the darkness, calling out to him, demanding the
justice which he could supply, commanding him to avenge those who lay still and
silent inside.
Though
he was still half a mile away, he could see the house clearly. It stood out
from the rest because it was the only one on the block with every window bathed
with electric light, like a blazing torch in an empty field, and he moved
toward it reluctantly.
The unspeakable had occurred. For
the first time in over twenty years, there had been a murder in the Falls.
Damon didn't want to see what lay
waiting inside those four walls, didn't want to smell the freshly spilled blood
or see the wounds, didn't want to stare into lifeless eyes and wonder what they
had seen in those last few precious moments before death.
He continued on, for the simple
reason that he knew he had to do so. It was his job. There was no one else to
do it.
He'd only gone to bed moments
before the call had come, and as he put down the receiver he realized he hadn't
been surprised to learn that someone had been killed. All evening since leaving
the office he'd been nervous, watchful, unable to relax and settle down the way
he usually did after a day's work, his conversation with Strickland replaying
over and over again like a Top Forty record in his mind. It was almost as if
he'd been expecting something to happen.
When he arrived he could see the
house was set back from the street on a thickly wooded lot. In the drive were
several police cars, their blue lights flashing, giving the house's white paint
a sickly glow. Two ambulances were parked at the curb. Their rear doors were
thrown wide, awaiting their next occupants. Damon parked behind them and
approached the nearest of the two, where he could see one man standing in front
of the bay, attending to a second who sat just inside.
Carl Duncan was a middle-aged
paramedic whom Damon had known for several years. His black emergency care bag
lay open on the floor beside him. He was just replacing a sphygmomanometer when
he heard Damon come up behind. He turned and nodded once, curtly, before
reaching back into his case and handing a packet of pills to his patient.
From where he stood, Damon could
see that the man Duncan was tending to was Michael Flyte, a fellow officer.
Though he hadn't been with the force all that long, Damon had a good deal of
respect for the young man. He had graduated top of his class at the academy,
and his work since coming to Glendale had been a cut above the rest. In time,
with the proper encouragement and guidance, Flyte would be a superb officer,
despite the expression currently on his face.
It was an expression that said
right now he wished he had never become a cop.
His uniform shirt was unbuttoned,
presumably so that Carl could get to his chest with a stethoscope, and Damon
could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest. A heavy amount of perspiration
matted the hair there to his skin, making him look as if he'd just run a
particularly grueling marathon. The Detective was unsure if it was the flashing
blue lights of the patrol cars that gave his face such a ghastly hue.
"How ya doin', Mike?"
Damon asked the younger man.
"I'm okay, Sheriff," he
said in a weak voice.
Damon could see the man's eyes
were rolling in their sockets, his gaze never resting in one place for longer
than five or ten seconds before jumping elsewhere. The sight dismayed him,
instantly reminding him of a panicked animal, and he wondered what the man had
seen that could reduce him to such a state.
Whatever it was, he knew he would
see it for himself soon enough.
He motioned to Carl to follow him
back out of earshot. The other man nodded, bending to whisper something to his
patient before complying with Damon's request.
"What's the matter with
him?" Wilson asked, the concern in his voice evident.
"Shock. His mind is having a
hard time coping with what it has seen, so it’s trying to bury it. His training
as a police officer is preventing him from doing so. Combine that with the
fright he's had, and you end up with what you see here. It’s a mild case. Nothing
to worry about." Duncan ran a liver-spotted hand through his sparse gray
hair and sighed. "It's no fun to go through, but he's not in any real
danger. Give him a day or two off to rest and sort through it all, and I'm sure
he'll be fine."
Damon agreed. Mike would have all
the time he needed, he assured the older man. He inclined his head toward the
house. "It's bad, huh?"
The other's weary brown eyes met
his own, and in them Damon could see a shocking bleakness, letting him know the
true extent of what awaited him inside. There was no need for a verbal answer,
and he wasn't surprised when Duncan didn't give him one.
Damon's palms were suddenly slick
with sweat.
Carl said, "Castiglioni is
waiting for you at the top of the stairs on the second floor. The bodies are in
the back bedroom."
"Bodies?" Damon asked,
surprised. The information he'd gotten said there had been only one victim.
"Yeah. At first we didn't
realize there was more than one." Seeing the puzzled expression on Damon's
face, he said a little more compassionately, "You'll understand better
when you see for yourself. I can't describe it to you. Just be prepared for the
worst."
Damon thanked him, letting him get
back to caring for Flyte, and then turned to get a closer look at the house behind
him.
It was a split-level, as were many
of the others in this neighborhood, though some work had been done to subtly
alter its appearance. There was a small addition, probably a den or TV room,
jutting out from the rear left corner, and from this a wide latticed porch
extended around to its opposite corner on the front. The original windows
facing the street had been taken out, and two large bay windows had been
installed in their place, looking to Damon like the bulbous eyes of some giant
fly.
The Sheriff looked away, suddenly
uncomfortable.
For just a moment, he'd been
struck by the uneasy feeling that he was being watched.
His attention turned to the thick
row hedges that lined the path from the front door to the drive, and the manner
in which the pines in the back yard crept across the rear of the property. Both
areas would provide fine places for concealment for anyone trying to approach
the house undetected, and he made a mental note to have the boys check them for
any sign that the killer had indeed been there.
Deciding he couldn't postpone the
inevitable any longer, Damon resigned himself to what lay ahead and walked to
the front door.
Inside was chaos.
The living room was in shambles. A
recliner had been overturned, its leather upholstery slashed. Cushions from the
sofa and loveseat were strewn about the room, ripped as well, their white foam
interiors spilling out around the jagged tears. It looked as if someone had
taken the same knife to the heavy drapes as well, for they hung in ragged
strips. The floor was littered with chunks of ceramic and glass, all that
remained of what Damon guessed had once been a pair of table lamps.
Two technicians were crawling all
over the debris like industrious rats, pausing now and again to exclaim aloud and
scoop some object into one of the many clear plastic envelopes that jutted from
their pockets.
One of them looked up and waved a
hand in the direction the hallway was leading, and Damon followed it to a wide
stair that made a great, curving ascension to the second floor.
At the top, Deputy Frank
Castiglioni stepped out of the shadows to greet him. Frank was a ten-year
veteran of the force, and one of Damon's most hardened and experienced
officers.
"Hey, Sheriff," he said
in greeting.
"How's it going,
Frankie?" Damon noticed Frank was very pale, his voice shaking slightly.
The Sheriff was about to ask his man if he'd been hurt, when he noticed
something else.
Behind the man's back, where he
obviously hoped Damon wouldn't be able to see it, Castiglioni's right hand was
shaking violently.
Looking up, Damon met the man's
eyes. Before Frank could look away, he saw something slithering deep in their
depths, reminding him of what he'd seen in Duncan's eyes, and after a moment
Damon realized what it was.
Fear.
Frank was scared.
The Sheriff didn't like that idea,
not at all. It would take something pretty horrendous to break Frank's cool.
"Is it bad?" he asked,
for the second time that night.
The other man swallowed once,
hard, and then nodded. He tried a weak smile but failed to bring it off.
Oh, yeah, Damon thought. It’s
bad all right. He laid a comforting hand on Frank's shoulder, and then
moved passed. He stopped at the entrance of the room just beyond, his bulk
framed in the narrow doorway.
What he saw in front of him made
the bile rush to the top of his throat, and for a moment he thought he might be
sick at a scene for the first time in many years, but after a moment or two the
sensation passed.
"Holy Mother of God," he
gasped aloud, when he once again had found his voice.
What he saw here was far, far
worse than what he'd expected.
The room was a slaughterhouse.
Blood was splattered everywhere;
on the floor, on the ceiling, on the walls. It was as if someone had taken
buckets of the stuff and merrily splashed it around.
Pieces of bloody human flesh were
likewise cast about, scattered across the floor and atop various pieces of
furniture.
A hand, with only three fingers
intact, dangled from an open dresser drawer, the missing digits ripped off at
the first knuckle.
A foot, still clad in a
blood-stained slipper that had once been pink and was now a shade of rusty
brown, lay in the middle of the floor. The shinbone was shining whitely through
the torn and bloody flesh.
Many of the other pieces were
unrecognizable as to what part of the body they had originated from, a fact
which Damon found increasingly disturbing as his gaze kept returning to them
repeatedly, his mind trying to discern what they once might have been, so as to
give order to the chaos.
What he took to be glistening lengths of rope dangled
about the curtains that concealed the surface of the king-size bed, reminding
him of the tinsel he used to decorate his Christmas tree every year.
Curious, he stepped closer, only
to realize with rapidly escalating horror that they were actually human
entrails.
In the back of his mind an evil
little voice began singing, "A
Slinky, a Slinky, a wonderful, wonderful toy, a Slinky, a Slinky, they're fun
for a girl and a boy."
Vomit surged back up into his
throat, and this time he barely managed to choke it back down, leaving a foul
taste in his mouth that matched nicely with the reek of death that hung in his
nostrils.
In all his years of police work,
he had never seen anything so vile.
So twisted.
So undeniably evil.
Conflicting emotions ran through
him as he stared down at the carnage before him. The wanton waste of human life
had always sickened him, but over the years he seemed to have grown used to it
in some way. He became harder, less emotional about it. He'd been forced to do
so; if he hadn't, he never would have made it as a police officer. The job
practically demanded it. While the display of violence here was especially
gruesome, at the same time he was thankful that such was the case. It had
triggered emotions he thought had long since been burned away by the things
he'd seen. It reminded him that he was indeed still human, still capable of an
emotional attachment to the victims, that he had not become some kind of
unfeeling robot. His soul had not been scoured away by all the carnage he'd
witnessed in the past.
Anger reared its ugly head, and for once he welcomed
it, knowing it would help calm nerves that were dangerously close to the
breaking point. Hatred for the one who had done this would help get him beyond
the need to be sick. It would allow him to look at the situation objectively,
but with a driving need for success. He clung to it, wrapping it around him the
same way a child might envelope itself in a comforting blanket on a cold
winter's night.
I'll make the bastard who did this pay, he vowed to himself, and
felt a little better for the thought.
For the first time Damon noticed a
police photographer was in the room with him, had indeed been clicking away the
whole time Damon had been standing there, ignoring his presence, wanting to
finish up and get the hell out of there.
Damon didn't blame him.
"There's more, boss," a
voice said from behind him. "The rest is worse, if that's possible to
imagine."
Damon didn't trust himself to
speak, so he just turned to look at Frank. The
rest of it? Worse? What the hell could be worse than this?
Castiglioni motioned the Sheriff towards the bed and
Damon followed, his feet as heavy as cement blocks. He didn't want to get any
closer, didn't want to see what his fellow officer had to show him, but duty
compelled him to follow. Frank ducked under a low hanging piece of intestine,
and drew back the hanging curtains, exposing the bed itself and what lay atop
it.
Damon felt the breath sucked from
his lungs at the very sight.
A human corpse was on the bed, and
from its musculature Damon could tell it had been a male. From its chest gaped
a savage wound, and it was from here that the internal organs had been pulled
and stretched forth to the canopy around them. If that wasn't enough, the body
had also been dismembered.
And beheaded.
The sheer brutality of the act was
sickening. Damon hoped to God that the victim, whoever he had been, had been
dead long before the killer had performed his grotesque artistry. To even
contemplate what the man might have endured had he been alive was unthinkable;
his mind balked at the very concept.
When he had recovered sufficient
breath to speak, Damon asked, "Where's his head?" He noticed his
voice trembled when he spoke, and wondered if Frank had noticed it, too.
Frank laughed, a strange eerie
chuckle. Wilson instantly recognized it for what it was; the type of laugh you
make to chase away the willies when you're alone in an empty house in the dead
of night. It was the sound of a man doing his best to reassure himself.
And miserably failing.
It was anything but comforting.
"In the bathroom," Frank
replied. He hesitated, clearly considering how much to say, and then decided
against saying anything at all, for he merely indicated once again that Damon
should follow. The two of them crossed the room, to where a door stood next to
the bureau.
The stench of vomit hit him as
soon as he stepped inside. Ignoring it, Damon took a long, slow look around. It
was not the extravagant master bath he had expected. An oval-shaped mirror hung
over the marble sink. A toilet stood to his left, a claw-foot tub to his right,
the bottom of which was covered with a layer of vomit.
Seeing the look on Damon’s face,
Frank said, "Mike got sick when he first found the body. Not wanting to
damage the scene, he ran in here to puke, only to find something worse waiting
for him in the toilet. The tub was the next closest thing."
He didn't explain what Mike had
found. He didn't have to.
Damon reached down and pushed the
toilet cover up by its edge, using only the flat portion of his finger, being
as careful as he could to prevent damaging any prints that might have been left
on the seat. He knew Mike had already touched it, and in a state of emotional
turmoil probably hadn't been that careful, there was no need to disturb it
further. Peripherally he was aware that Frank had stepped back out of the room,
but if that was to spare his own reaction or Frank's, he was uncertain. He
ignored him, trying to summon the courage to see what he knew was there.
He looked down.
The man's missing head was stuffed
in the toilet bowl, the once blue-tinged water a sickly purple hue from the
blood that had been spilled into it from the leaking head.
The man's white hair writhed about
his head like living seaweed. His ghastly dead face was frozen in an expression
of horror; his mouth open wide in a silent scream of pain, his empty eye
sockets still leaking blood.
For just a split second, Damon's
mind told him it wasn't real.
But it was.
And deep down inside, he knew it.
He turned away, unable to face
that eyeless, accusing stare a moment longer, only to find he could still feel
its gaze burning into his back even after he'd done so. No wonder they'd closed
the lid again.
"You poor bastard," he
muttered under his breath, not knowing if he meant Mike or the victim. He
supposed it didn't matter; it was befitting either of them equally well.
Numbed by all the destruction, he
stood there for a moment, seeing himself in the bedroom mirror, his eyes
reflecting the questions that were rushing around inside his head.
What the hell am I gonna do? This was worse than anything he had
imagined. In fact, he wasn't at all sure he could handle something this big.
That he was the best man to be in this position was beyond a doubt; the rest of
the men on the force had probably never dealt with any type of violent crime,
no matter how long they'd been Glendale cops. They were good, yes, but
something like this was beyond the scope of their experience. They were police
officers in a small town, and things like this just didn't happen in a place
like this. In the city, it was different, and Damon knew that from too many
years of personal experience.
Now he wondered if those years
would be enough.
And then another, more chilling
thought occurred to him.
What if the bastard killed again
before they could stop him?
The thought of bodies piling up
around him while the investigation floundered sent a stream of sweat rolling
down his back, dredging up all the old concerns and self-doubts. He wondered if
history was going to repeat itself. The mountainous weight of responsibility
settled about his shoulders like a cloak, and he was suddenly more scared of
failure than he'd ever been.
What if his best just wasn't good enough this time? he asked
himself.
What then?
It was a question that had plagued
him at the start of every major investigation in his career. As always, he
found he had no answer.
He forced his doubts away, knowing
he needed to concentrate in order to get the job done. Frank was waiting for
him in the bedroom.
Now that the initial shock had
passed, Damon found he could think a bit clearer. He asked the first, obvious
question, "I thought Duncan said there were two bodies up here?"
Frank glanced away, uneasily.
"There are. Look around,” he directed, waving his hand about the room.
Damon did. All he saw were bits
and pieces of flesh everywhere. No second body. So what the hell was Frank talkin'...
The implication of his officer's
words sank in slowly.
He turned to face him. "You
mean he..."
"Yeah. There's not enough
flesh missing from the male's corpse to account for all this mess, so most of
it had to come from the guy's wife. We can't find the rest of her body though,
so we think maybe whoever did this took it when he left."
"We got an I.D. on the body
yet?" Damon asked.
"Yeah, but its still
unconfirmed. Some of the pictures in the house match this guy here, near as we
can tell. George Cummings. We have to wait until the coroner does the prints to
be sure, but I'd bet next week’s pay on it. We've got an A.P.B. out on the
wife, just to be sure she isn't the cutter and that it wasn't some young bimbo
that got chopped up with him."
"Anyone call
Strickland?"
"Right after Mike called it
in. Suspect he'll be here any minute now."
Damon nodded approvingly. His men
were doing their jobs despite the atrocity around them, and of that he could be
proud. "Okay then, let's get out of here and let the techs do their
jobs." He waved Frank out of the room before him, and the other man seemed
more than happy to oblige. Damon didn't blame him; if he had to spend another
moment in that room he thought he might scream. Back downstairs, the two of
them gathered the other officers who weren't currently involved in securing the
sight from the crowd that was beginning to show up, and assembled them in a
loose huddle by the patrol cars.
Damon began giving out
assignments, doing his best to get the situation under control and the investigation
rolling. There was no time to lose. He knew the cardinal rule of homicide
investigations; most killers will be caught in the first forty-eight hours of
the investigation, if they were going to be caught at all. When he was
finished, one of the men raised his hand.
"What do we do about the
press?" the officer asked. "The local papers have got people already
out there, mixin' with the crowd and tryin' to get inside. The TV crews can't
be that far behind."
Damon swore beneath his breath. He
knew he couldn't contain this for long, but letting it out now would just cause
panic in the streets. He thought hard for a moment. "Okay, listen up. I
want all of you to keep your mouths shut on this one. If they get one hint
about what we got upstairs, I'll come down on every one of you, you got that?
At the moment we're the only ones who know how bad it is, and we've got to keep
it to ourselves until the P.R. people can assemble a press conference in the
morning. We don't know if this is a one-timer or not, and we don't need any
other loonie out there starting to act like a copycat. Keep the details to
yourselves. If anyone asks, let 'em know we got a suspicious death, and leave
it at that. If anyone gives you any trouble, you send 'em direct to me, got it?
Questions? Okay then, get to work."
The men moved off to follow their
orders, leaving Damon alone for the moment. He slumped against the side of his
vehicle, suddenly drained. For the space of several heartbeats he wondered anew
if he was up to the job ahead, wondered if he was physically capable of doing
what needed to be done, but he pushed the thoughts quickly aside. He couldn't
afford the luxury of self-doubt; he had more important things to worry about.
Like who had done this.
Damon stood there and stared out
into the night, wondering.
Who was he? What did he look like? Why had he done this terrible deed?
And, most importantly, where was he now?
At the moment, Damon didn't have
any answers. But he would discover them in time.
Before the killer got to anyone
else.
He hoped.
And prayed.
But somewhere in the back of his mind, Sheriff Damon Wilson didn't think it was all that likely.