R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

‘Anyway, as I was saying, there was a series of different incidents back in the late fifties and early sixties, maybe half a dozen or so, different things, hands cut off, eyes taken out, tongues snipped at the end so the guy couldn’t talk properly. Taking the heart was for a betrayal-’

‘Like the Dvore thing in ’68,’ Verlaine interjected.

Cipliano nodded. ‘Sure, the Dvore thing, but that was way after these. That was maybe the last of the line on this kinda thing. Taking the heart was for a betrayal, someone whom the betrayer counted close would have to do it, someone on the edge of the family, a cousin, a mistress, something like that. I’m not saying that this was the case here, but the fact that the heart was cut out is a similar sort of thing to what was happening back then. Usually you’d only get the heart back, the body would be filled up with stones and dumped in the glades or somesuch. Here you got the same sort of thing, but the heart is put back inside. It’s hard to tell on the blows as well. So many, and all coming at different angles, like whoever did this was walking around the guy in circles while he whacked him.

‘I went down to look at the car early this morning, and I figure that maybe the chest was opened up while the guy was on the back seat. And the way the blood ran off the seat was more like splashes, and that made me think that the body lay on the back seat all opened up for the world to see while the guy was driving down to Gravier. Maybe he figured to leave the body on the back seat, but when he got down to the parking lot and saw how well lit it was he decided to stick the vic in the trunk. There were no prints, gloves worn very tight, perhaps surgical, no grain. The sheet, rope and hammer were all like the first report said, standard hardware gear he could have picked up any place. Your guy is strong in the arms, a little under six feet though I can’t be certain of that. He… I say he because we don’t find many women doing this kind of thing, and also I can only reserve judgement on the possibility of your perp working alone. Whatever, right? Anyway, seems he carried the body out of the back seat, used the rear wing as support, and there are scratches that are consistent with those little rivets they put on denims. If that was what they were, if they were on the top corners of the back pockets and if your man was standing straight as he carried the body, then he’s five-ten, maybe five-eleven. There were no hairs or fibers that couldn’t have come from the back seat or the floor of the trunk, nothing there worth mentioning. You’ve got the killer’s blood type, if that was in fact his blood, and that’s pretty much all you’re gonna get out of me on this one.’

Verlaine had listened intently, nodding every once in a while as he tried to digest everything Cipliano was telling him.

‘You get a make on your prints?’

Verlaine shook his head. ‘Gonna go check again now.’

‘Christ, that crew of yours are a lazy bag o’ smashers, eh?’

Verlaine smiled.

‘So you got any smartass questions for me?’

‘Ritual or psycho, whaddya reckon?’

Cipliano hesitated. ‘This is criminal psychology you’re talking here. I’m a coroner, but from what I can see-’ He shook his head. ‘This is not my field. I can’t give you anything other than a hunch.’

Verlaine nodded. ‘So give me a hunch.’

Cipliano shrugged. ‘I’d say you have someone who did this for someone else maybe-’

‘Why for someone else?’

Cipliano was quiet for a moment. ‘There’s a mentality, a thinking pattern, always some sense of motivation back of these things. If they run into a serial there’s always a common thread, and usually it’s not until the third or fourth killing that you find it. Then you look back and see that common factor right the way through, like it’s an embryonic thought, something that grows, like he’s testing something out, putting something there, getting whatever kick he gets out of his own reasoning. He gets a bit adventurous, embellishes the original idea, really makes it obvious, and that’s when it comes to light. That’s when you have the trademark. This one… well, this one’s different. If you had a psycho working for himself he’d have maybe left the vic where he killed him, perhaps cut the body up and distributed it someplace. The psycho thing is all about showing everything for the world. Here he wants the thing seen, but he hides it first. He wants it known, but not immediately… almost like it’s a message to someone perhaps.’

Cipliano scratched the back of his head. ‘The majority of actual psychopaths, serial killers, they have the desire for others to share in what they’ve done, for others to understand, appreciate, sympathize. It’s an explanation. The killing is an explanation for something – guilt, sadness, rejection, desperation, anger, hate, sometimes just as simple as getting mom and dad’s attention. Your man here, he beat the shit out of the vic because he wanted to, but I think the heart was something else entirely. I think the heart was cut out and then left in the chest because he wanted someone to know something. Then you have this shit with the quinine. I mean, what in fuck’s name was all that about?’

Verlaine shook his head.

‘You gotta understand, I don’t really know a thing about this, right?’ Cipliano grinned and winked. ‘All of that I just told you could be complete bullshit and I’m just making out I’m smart. You go check on your prints, and let me know who he was, okay?’

Verlaine nodded. He turned and started towards the door.

‘Hey, John.’

He turned back to Cipliano.

‘Thing to remember, however bad it might get, is it’s never as bad for you as it is for these poor suckers.’

Verlaine smiled. It was a small mercy indeed.

The image of the constellation drawn on the victim’s back haunted Verlaine’s thoughts as he drove back to the Precinct House. It was a twist, perhaps significant in the fact that quinine was used, perhaps in the constellation itself. It would all start to open up with the identification of the body. And, figuratively speaking, that was where it had ended as well.

He pulled into the car lot back of the Precinct and went up the steps into the building. Duty sergeant at the desk told him the captain was away for the rest of the day; also told him there’d been one message left for him.

Verlaine took the piece of paper and turned it over.

Always . A single word printed in the duty sergeant’s neat script.

Verlaine looked at the sergeant.

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘Some guy called up, asked for you, I told him you were out and about someplace. He was quiet for a moment, I asked him if there was any message and he said that. Just one word. “Always”. And then he hung up before I had a chance to ask him who he was.’

‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ Verlaine asked.

‘If you wanna go there that’s your choice, John.’

‘Seems to me I don’t have a choice, right?’

The sergeant shrugged his shoulders again.

‘Can you call Prints and ask if they have a make on my trunk vic?’

The sergeant lifted the receiver and phoned through. He asked if they had an ID, and then nodded and held out the receiver towards Verlaine. ‘They wanna speak to you.’

Verlaine took the handset. ‘Yes?’

He was silent for a moment, and then ‘Okay. Let me know if anything comes up.’

The duty sergeant took the receiver and replaced it in its cradle.

‘Security tagged,’ Verlaine said.

‘Your prints?’

Verlaine nodded. ‘It’s come up as a security tagged print.’

‘No shit! So it’s a cop or somesuch?’