I had seen worse, but that didn’t make the garish scene any easier to look at. The first horror to befall us when we reached the bottom of the stairs was the nude corpse of a young woman, hanging upside down from the rafters. Her flesh was pallid and so devoid of color as to appear ghostly, just as we had seen before. Her arms were bound tightly behind her in such a way as to bend her shoulders back into what had to be a painful curve. As with the two victims resting in metal drawers downtown, a starkly defined swan tattoo stood out on her right upper arm.
The odor of the musty basement mingled with the smell of old smoke from the fire that had partially destroyed the upper level. A sharp note of urine pierced through the aged funk, most likely where one or both of the victim’s bladders had evacuated upon death. As bad as it was, the intermingled malodor was an almost welcome change to the sickening stench permeating the atmosphere upstairs. It turned out that my stomach-churning ethereal brush with improperly prepared liver was nothing as compared to how it truly smelled in this plane of existence. I was beginning to think I would have to swear off the dish for some time to come.
Bright flashes from a camera strobe burst every now and then as a crime scene tech documented the sadistic tableau. I flinched upon the first then barely noticed when the second and third erupted to cast harsh shadows across the walls. Albright had already been taken out of the house by the time we entered, so it was just the corpses, him, and us down here. However, in some odd sense I felt all alone.
I stood motionless for a full minute, staring at the woman hanging from the rafter above. The crown of her head was only inches from the floor, her blue-black, stringy hair hanging down and splayed out behind her across the filthy cement like the strands of an old cotton mop tossed carelessly aside.
Still mute, I continued slowly around the suspended corpse. As I reached her left side, a plastic tube came into view. It was taped against her neck where it terminated in what appeared to be a large gauge needle piercing a vein. The opposite end was still dangling inside the mouth of a glass gallon jug, which was almost half full of red fluid. It didn’t take deep thought to figure out exactly what it was.
Glistening shards of a similar vessel were shattered in an outwardly showering pattern nearby. The same red fluid was pooled around it, as well as splattered several feet in an oblique circle. A healthy measure of it was already drying to deep rust on the dead woman’s face. Tented evidence markers littered the area.
“You okay, Row?” Ben asked in a low voice.
I didn’t reply with words. I simply looked back over my shoulder and gave him a shallow nod.
“We in your way?” he asked, looking past me and addressing himself to the crime scene photographer.
I hadn’t been paying attention, but I now noticed that the flashing from his strobe had stopped. I looked over at him and saw that he was standing off to one side of the room, observing me. He wore a flat expression, neither curiosity nor surprise evident in his features.
“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Just waiting.”
“Sorry. I can move,” I offered.
“You’re fine,” he told me. “I’m done with her.”
I glanced around the basement but remained quiet. I wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for, but I didn’t figure it was my place to ask.
I returned my gaze to the latest victim, wondering who she was when she was alive. I found myself in an odd quandary. My headache had subsided before we even arrived at the top of the street. I was certainly grateful for the relief, but at the same time I cursed the fact that I now seemed completely numbed to the ethereal. If this woman’s spirit was trying to talk to me, I couldn’t hear her. I was completely unaware.
I closed my eyes and took in an even breath. There seemed as though there should be some humor in the fact that I was mentally cursing the sudden lack of something I considered to be a curse in and of itself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it.
I opened my eyes and turned away from the woman. Several feet across the room, against the back wall of the basement, the second body was resting. He was nondescript, though somewhat effeminate in appearance. His skin was almost as pale as that of his drained victim.
He was in a slouched sitting position, partially propped up and appearing almost as if he had simply sat down on the floor right where he had been standing and fallen back. The obvious evidence to the contrary was the dark, wet stain on his chest and the two large blood spray patterns on the wall just above his head. Their relative positions told me they would be right at chest level if the man had been standing.
I took notice of the fact that his arms lay relaxed at his sides, hands empty. Sergeant Madden’s answer to Ben’s query about a weapon rolled through my mind, and I now considered it in a different light. I didn’t see anything nearby that would qualify. Nor were there any of the evidence markers that were prevalent in other parts of the room.
I kept my gaze leveled on the dead man for a moment, looking into eyes that were staring out of darkly rimmed sockets. A trickle of blood was running from the corner of his mouth, and I had to wonder if it was his or the woman’s. Although his face was slack, there seemed to be a surprised look in his sunken eyes. But the perceived expression was all I had to work with. Even where he was concerned I could feel nothing.
No malevolence.
No insanity.
Nothing.
As we stood there I heard the sound of footsteps above us, creaking and thudding purposefully across the floor. A few seconds later they grew louder as they started down the stairs. Soon afterward, a uniformed officer stepped off at the bottom and gave Ben a nod.
“You Detective Storm?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Ben answered.
The officer regarded him for a moment. “We just finished talking to Captain Albright,” he said then raised an eyebrow and nodded toward Felicity and me. “Lieutenant Penczak said you’d probably want to clear your consultants out now.”
Ben gave him a shallow nod in return as something secretive passed between them in the silent gesture. Turning to me he asked, “You done, white man?”
In a slow turn, I surveyed the horror one last time. There was nothing left to see, and for some reason, nothing left to feel. I came back around to face him and gave my own curt nod. “Yeah… I’ve seen enough.”
“Thanks,” Ben told the uniformed cop as we walked toward the stairs.
“All good,” he replied.
We started up the rickety wooden staircase, and a quick flash caught the corner of my eye. I assumed that the tech was snapping pictures once again and that it was simply his strobe that grabbed my attention, but out of pure reflex I still paused and turned my head in that direction.
“Keep movin’, Row,” Ben urged, giving me a light push in the middle of my back.
I continued up the steps, but before the upper wall obscured my vision, I caught a second glint of light through the railings. The cop was now squatting next to the body of the dead man, and I was almost certain I saw what appeared to be a large butcher knife clutched in a cold, once empty hand.
As we topped the stairs, I distinctly heard the uniformed officer say, “Okay. You can take pictures over here now.”
CHAPTER 33:
I stood in the front yard of the house, looking up into the sky with a blank stare. Cops and crime scene technicians were still moving in and out of the front door behind me, but I paid them no heed. I was well out of their way, and my attentions were focused elsewhere at the moment.