Oliver Stark - American Devil

Tom Harper and Eddie Kasper felt the icy breeze coming through the open sash window at the end of the hall. Someone had already been feeling queasy. The smell of a corpse could choke you, but the sight was worse. They looked down at the body.

The stark glare of a naked 100-watt bulb illuminated the grainy early-morning darkness of the room. Below it, the bloody remains of a sweet college kid, her future now brutally crossed out with yellow police tape: college, life, marriage, career, kids, grandkids — nada. No entrance.

Both men felt their nerves jangle. The girl’s body was directly in the doorway, her legs close together, a white cloth covering just her groin as if hiding her modesty. She was cut to pieces.

Eddie grimaced and popped a strong mint into his mouth. He offered one to Harper, who declined and pressed his palm to the door frame. ‘This bastard wanted that to be the first thing anyone saw.’

They had to step over the body to get into the apartment. The floor was red and slimy throughout with large bloody footprints all over the carpet and linoleum. This killer didn’t care enough to cover his traces.

The victim’s body was lying cruciform and naked, posed like a dead Christ. Harper looked down across the body. Small cuts all over the arms, down the thighs and calves, and even in the feet. The Medical Examiner called them torture cuts. Too shallow to kill, deep enough to really hurt and always on the veins so there was enough blood to cause fear.

‘He’s taken another trophy,’ said Harper. ‘See?’

Kasper was looking round at the room. ‘I ain’t sure I could say what organs you’re supposed to have.’

‘He’s cut off her breasts,’ said Harper.

It was their man again. It had all the savagery of the three earlier kills and the body was again strangely posed. She was a young blond-haired student who had started the day with her whole life ahead of her and ended it cut to ribbons. Tom saw the two highball glasses on the small side table and leaned in. He smelt the vodka and cranberry. ‘Seems like the kid here had a guest.’

‘A date?’

‘Yeah, maybe. They had a drink and then he put enough holes in her to make a sieve. Some date. He likes to cause pain, doesn’t he? And he likes to shock. You see any flowers anywhere?’

Eddie shook his head and then pointed at the white loincloth and screwed up his face.

‘Maybe. You want to take a look?’ said Harper.

‘No. You?’

Harper pulled on a latex glove and reached across. The white gauze lifted easily from the corpse. ‘What you see?’ said Eddie.

Tom replaced the gauze, shook his head and looked closely at the victim’s hands and arms. ‘So many cuts. Jesus.’

‘It’s the American Devil again,’ said Kasper. He clicked on the CD player. ‘Hound Dog’ by Elvis erupted into the room. The two men looked at each other. ‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ said Eddie.

‘Music you can torture by — loud enough to hide the screams.’ Tom kept looking at the corpse, counting the small black knife slits. ‘There’s a lot of work gone on here. Upward of fifty individual wounds.’

‘What are you thinking?’

‘She’s got a similar look to the others. He likes them fair-haired, wide-eyed and pretty. And if she’s a student, then she’s got a helluva place. Wealthy parents, no doubt.’

‘I got something else, Tom.’

Harper looked up. ‘What?’

Eddie Kasper was standing further into the room. From behind, Tom could see the tension in his shoulders as he kept himself from throwing up. ‘He’s left a picture.’

Harper rose slowly and moved to the window. He felt the horrible anticipation from the slight quiver in Kasper’s usually deep and robust voice.

On the window was a photograph printed out on a sheet of plain white paper. It was a picture of the victim before she was dead. She was sitting on the floor in an old dress, staring up. Both her feet and her hands had already been cut but she was smiling a horrible forced smile and staring up at the camera.

Below the photograph, there was a quotation. Subtle he needs must be, who could seduce Angels.

The two men remained speechless. They found somewhere inside themselves to hide as they stared at the photograph. Her eyes were so full of pain and fear, yet she thought she was going to live if she behaved. This killer was enjoying the feeling of absolute control.

‘What’s your reading?’ said Kasper. ‘He’s some kind of religious nut? Maybe it’s some kind of revenge attack.’

‘No damage — look at the place. Nothing turned over. No struggle.’

Harper had a strong sense of pitiless evil. He looked at Kasper. ‘This is going to get worse before it gets better. He’s a well organized killer with a plan and he has all the features of your all-American psychopath — sex, religion and violence.’

The two cops walked out of the room to wait for Crime Scene to arrive. They both headed straight for the open window in the corridor and gulped the cold air.

November 19, 2.02 p.m.

Out in East Manhattan later that day, at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Tom Harper and Eddie Kasper were led into the blue-tiled morgue for Jessica Pascal’s autopsy. It was windowless and claustrophobic, with great banks of white and steel drawers.

Closets of the dead.

Robert Toumi, the diener, had worked for the OCME for twelve years. He pointed across to the autopsy room. ‘We’ve not even got her on the slab, gentlemen. Laura’s scrubbing up. You’re welcome to watch me work, but it ain’t pretty.’ He went across to a body bag on a gurney. ‘I’ve weighed her and she’s had an X-ray. Pretty busted up by the look of it. Gangbangers, was it?’

Kasper shook his head as Toumi wheeled the gurney through to the autopsy room. The two detectives followed silently. It was never nice being inside the morgue. Dead or alive.

In the centre of the room, the stainless steel autopsy table shone clean and bright. Kasper took a sideways glance at the instrument table and began to feel less than comfortable. Bone saws, hammers, scalpel. Kasper suddenly jumped.

‘Jesus, man, that’s a fucking pair of garden secateurs!’

Toumi laughed. ‘Gardening equipment is cheaper than surgical stuff, often better too. The ribs can be a little tough.’

‘That’s not right,’ Kasper said and took out his shades. He put them on. He would be able to close his eyes if it got too much.

Toumi rolled the gurney beside the autopsy table and unzipped the body bag. ‘Seeing as you’re so quick on the case, I’m figuring this ain’t your average murder. What’s the situation? She been cut down by the new psychopath in town?’

‘That’s what we want you guys to tell us,’ said Kasper, watching intently as Toumi lifted and dropped the corpse’s feet on to the steel and then humped the upper body half on to the slab.

‘You got to roughhouse these babies,’ the diener said, yanking the torso across and letting it drop unceremoniously. ‘This one’s only a hundred twenty-two pounds. You should see how I get the obese ones on the slab. I played football in my younger days — you ever watched a linebacker sack a corpse?’

‘I imagine it ain’t like watching the salsa,’ said Harper.

The floor, like the dissection table, was sloped slightly towards a drain. A hose in the corner indicated how they did their cleaning. The whole room smelled of disinfectant. On the gurney, Jessica’s naked pale blue corpse glowed under the strong lamps.

Harper hadn’t seen a corpse on the slab for a while. He felt a stab of anger and breathed deeply. There was nothing more liable to make you question your belief in the soul than a lifeless, mutilated corpse.