Chapter 3

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Chapter 3 - Cole

…Father Marcus Tarbot, 63….

I look up from the medical report and over at the wrinkled old man on the slab. He looks younger and stronger than 63. I look at the report for the millionth time. 

…Dead at the scene….

…likely dead twelve hours… 

I’m missing something. I feel like it’s obvious. I’m ignoring something small. Like a word stuck on the tip of my tongue. 

I sigh and turn to the two men who have long given up working for me. Dr Tio and Jahlani both sit on the bland office chairs around the coroner’s desk, shoulders slumped and eyes vacant. Tio even has his head in his hands. I’ve not been here that long. They’re just being melodramatic. 

“Dr Tio, can you take me through your findings again?” I ask curtly. “Please.” 

The look Tio throws Jahlani is pure exasperation. But I don’t care. I’m missing something that should be obvious.

“We found the signature under his eyelid this time-” Tio starts, his voice as dead as the man on the slab. 

“...The killer was sick of them being missed…” I guess, looking down at the notes. “He feels a sense of pride over his kills and these small love hearts show that need to be recognised.” 

“... Right…” Tio says before taking a breath and continuing to list attributes in a long bored list. “The victim was drugged and incapacitated in the same way of the others: pancuronium of sorts to incapacitate him completely with a benzodiazepine as well- although this time he also had ketamine in his system too. He has blood pooling in his back so he’s been on his back, likely unable to move while he was killed, just like the others, which meant he only had the one defensive wound…” 

“The finger,” Jahlani finally pipes up. “Do we really need to go back to the finger? Dude… it’s a bruise.” 

“I know it’s a bruise.” I run an exasperated hand through my hair. “OK, fine. Continue.” 

“As well as the through-and-through stab from a switchblade of sorts…” Tio continues, not bothering to look at his notes. We have done this a few times, and he probably knows it off by heart. 

“I still think that’s weird…” I say, flipping through the cold pages. 

Jahlani groans loudly. “We know! The angle of the wound!” 

“Well it didn’t go downward!” I justify. “Jahlani, hold up your hand.” 

“I’m not doing this again,” he says but holds up his hand. I take my pen and demonstrate a stabbing motion, leaving a biro line on his palm. “You see… the mark goes downward. Even if I…” I make a thrusting motion. This creates a similar mark. “It’s like…” I turn Jahlani’s hand, slowly as the idea forms in my mind. He holds it, palm up, and I stab downwards. I stare at the mark before flipping his hand over and doing the same with the pen from below. “The killer was below his hand.” I conclude. 

“Or… pens are different to knives, Cole.” Jahlani says dryly, examining the marks on his palm. “Are we done drawing on me?” 

“It’s not exact, I know. But it feels off.” I shake my head with a sigh. “Fine. Let’s go through how he was killed.” 

We turn back to the bored looking coroner. “Kidney,” is all he says. 

One single stab wound, straight into the kidney. 

“So he was paralysed with the drug, he woke up and was stabbed in the kidney. He bled out?” I say, my fingers drawing a timeline in the frosty morgue air. 

“Yes, killer missed any arteries and he bled out. Gnarly way to go. It would have taken hours for him to bleed out. With the cocktail he was given, he’d have been floppy and unable to fight back, he’d bleed out slowly and the ketamine…” 

“He’d have been hallucinating,” Jahlani concludes decisively, the conclusion making my stomach churn nastily. “While he bled out.” 

“Why would someone do that to a priest?” I think out loud, ignoring the exasperated glance between them. “And that’s it? Injection of drugs, stab wound to the hand, and one in the kidney. No other marks?” 

“And the bruise you’re obsessed with.” My partner rolls his eyes. 

“And the bruise.” I nod, my eyes on the bruised right index finger. The fingers of the hand are curled over, like normal for a body in rigor, but the index finger sticks up straight, a purple bruise around the joints. 

“It’s muscle spasm!” Jahlani says emphatically. “Seriously. The killer left his calling card, the origami heart- purple this time. That’s all we need. Now-” He takes my arm like I’m a stropping child and steers me away from the body. “It’s time to say goodbye and thank you to the nice doctor.” 

I open my mouth to protest, but then realise we’ve been standing in a fridge for two hours. His hand is cold on my arm. So is the guilt. I say a chastened “Thank you, Dr. Tio.” 

***

Father Marcus Tarbot lived in a church provided accommodation next door to the church itself. And they were pissed. There’s no other way to describe it. We have kept the diocese  off the property for twenty-four hours and they really wanted it back ‘to mourn’. It seemed like a losing fight as the Captain warned me we have only hours left before we need to move out of the crime scene. 

The grass patch where the Father was found is now just that: a patch of grass. No blood, no indent, just grass. But he’d been moved here for a reason.  I surmise that it has something to do with the accessibility to the gate- it would be found by the church groundskeeper in the morning without being visible from the path. The school only two streets away…Could it be that this killer cared that children not see this?

I shake the thought from my head. This killer drugged a priest with a pristine record and bled him out slowly while he hallucinated… no one could be so unhinged to do something like that and yet simultaneously have that empathy. 

“You know the killer won’t just land there if you stare at the grass long enough,” grumbles Jahlani from behind me. 

I ignore him and bring out a print of the body by the scene of the crime officers. This earns another chuckle from behind me. We have ipads. I know we have iPads. Is there something different about an iPad picture? Yes. So I print my crime scene photos. 

The Father is lying on his back. His legs straight, his left arm by his side, his right arm up over his head that straight, bruised index finger pointing straight as the other fingers curled, under his eyelid, the purple origami heart sticking out sadistically. 

I grimace. 

“Where do you think he was killed?” I ask Jahlani. 

“Dunno.” He shrugs. “But it means our killer has a van or something.”

I hum an answer looking through the pictures one by one. “Or a wheelbarrow.” 

Jahlani sighs, “Or a wheelbarrow. But the place was clean right?” 

I nod absently as I look again at the image of the victim on the ground once again. “Hey-” 

I cut off when my phone pings with a message and I have to heap my photos into one arm to pinch it from my back pocket. 

Unknown: For a detective, you’re not very smart, are you?

I frown. What the fuck? 

Then another message: 

Unknown: Detect in the direction of the finger. 

My heart lurches. Nearly dropping the phone, I scramble to look again at the photo. When found, I take a moment to figure out the exact orientation of the body. I find myself panting for breath as I line it up and follow the cadaver’s finger off the page and up to the real world, directly into the graveyard. 

Before my brain kicks into gear, my feet start to power walk towards the graveyard gate, light on the grass below. Jahlani makes a surprised squawk and follows in a rush. 

“Going for a run?” He jests, his short legs working double-time to keep up with me. I enter the graveyard through the gates and keep walking straight, I reach the edge of the space and turn around, my brow furrowed in concentration. “Seriously, what are we doing?” 

“Shut the fuck up Jahlani!” I throw back at him breathily as I sprint into the graveyard. 

My phone pings cheerfully once more and I throw my file on the ground to grab it easier. The message opens instantly. 

“Unknown: Time’s running out, Detective.”

I look around the graveyard, my heart thudding bruises on the inside of my chest. Someone’s watching me but I don’t have time to look. I scan every headstone, every crypt, every tomb. I don’t know why I feel this is so urgent. I can’t explain it, even as I start to feel sick with the pressing need to follow this game. 

Then I see it. A love heart. Carved into the wall of the biggest mausoleum at the site. It’s a huge structure and an ode to blind angels. I’m in front of it before I realise, and I swallow the air in gulps as I take it in. 

It’s a dominating building, pillars, a rectangular roof with a tiny tower. In which is a carving of a clock. ‘Time’s running out, Detective. The building is covered in ivy, leaves and dirt except for the door and the pathway that leads to it. Far from it, these look regularly used. I step over the small surrounding wall and walk entranced towards it. I put my hand on the door and press. 

The door opens with very little convincing. 

“Dude! What are you-?,” Jahlani shouts behind me but my feet know the way. 

The inside of the mausoleum feels solemn, a place of reverence surrounded by stone walls. A sarcophagus in the centre is ornately carved with crests of a family long since dead. But it’s not that that’s the centre of attention, it’s the blood. 

Carefully contained in one big puddle around a rusting metal folding chair. Opposite: a mirror. He watched himself bleed out as he was paralyzed and hallucinating. 

“Holy shit, dude. You did it.” A breathy awe-filled voice says behind me. “Come on, let’s get forensics out here, this is a crime scene.” 

But my eyes are on the sarcophagus, and the carvings on top. One small love heart standing clean amongst the others: new. It’s like the cold of the tomb sinks into my skin all at once. A little love heart, here in hell.l 

“Come on, man. You can’t be disturbing the kill site…” 

Time’s running out, Detective. 

I look onto the ground below the sarcophagus is mottled, cratered at the seal between the fake-coffin and the ground, like someone has recently tried to budge it. Multiple attempts. Dozens. I imagine someone desperate, trying for hours to move the marble by themselves. 

With what?

I look around and see the unassuming rust flecked crowbar sitting against the wall. 

Why?

I kneel down to the seal between the sarcophagus and the floor, a paper thin gap between them. It’s odd. But why?

I reach out a hand and feel it. 

Heat. 

Heat from the underground crypt below. 

Why would you heat a crypt? 

Time’s running out. 

I grab my phone and do without thinking. I take as many pictures as possible of the crowbar and its position. I take off my jacket- 

“What the fuck are you doing?” 

-And use it to grab the crowbar.

“Dude!” 

I hook it into the small gap. And push down. I press and push and shove against it. 

“Help me!” 

Jahlani looks conflicted but my hammering heart won’t let me stop. The sarcophagus begins to shift a crack. His hands join mine and we push down. It moves enough to get leverage, when we throw the crowbar to one side and use our shoulders to shove against the marble. And then…

The smell. 

Stench. 

Of human waste, sweaty bodies and a festering fear that eats away at your very soul. I look down into the gaping gap and see stone stairs that leads into the crypt below. Drips of blood that had seeped into the gaps painting the floor like confetti. 

I don’t look up at Jahlani, I just grab my gun and start to descend. 

The stairs are short. I wish I’d had time to prepare. 

The room is lined with dog crates. And within them-

Women. In cages. Filthy, silent, terrified. 

And all I could think was- 

Who the fuck was messaging me?