Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

“I can’t get him up there by myself,” she said, looking at Milo pleadingly. “Just let me lie him on the floor on his back to minimize the bleeding and I’ll do whatever you say, I promise.”

“Let me get this straight. You’ll do whatever I tell you to do, as long as I don’t make you put him in the chair?”

“That’s right. I promise,” she whispered.

“Well,” Milo replied. “That’s quite the generous offer. Let me see…” He crossed his arms and cupped his chin in his hand, pretending to be deep in thought. He knew he should be hurrying things along thanks to the complications that were bound to arise from the dead cop lying on the floor, but this was just too much fun to pass up.

“Uhhh…no,” he said after a satisfying pause.

“Please.”

“Here’s the problem,” Milo answered. “In order to bargain, you need leverage, and you have none. You say you’ll do whatever I want if I only let your dying boyfriend stay on the floor, prolonging his suffering, but the fact of the matter, missy, is that you’re going to do whatever I want, anyway. I have all the leverage.

“So drag his ass into that chair and tape him in. He’s probably not going to regain consciousness and that’s a damned shame, but just on the off chance he does suddenly pop his eyes open, I want to be sure he has a prime view of the display of performance art to come.

“However. Just to show you I’m not unreasonable, I’ll help you. Hold this,” he said, flipping the knife into the air and catching it by the blade in the fingers of his bare hand. It was an impressive trick, one he had mastered years ago. He offered it, handle-first, to the young woman.

Her eyes grew wide and she froze, confused, then reached hesitantly for it. At the last moment, Milo yanked it away like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. He had always thought that comic-strip gag was stupid, that there was no way in real life Charlie Brown would actually fall for it, but apparently the guy drawing the cartoon had known a little bit about human nature.

The dumb bitch moaned and Milo laughed companionably. This was too much fun. “I guess I’ll just hold on to this for now,” he said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

She looked away and didn’t answer.

“Now, let’s get on with it. I’m afraid our time will be cut short thanks to this guy.” Milo nodded toward the body of the dead cop. “Once he fails to check in at headquarters on his hourly donut run, they may send someone to look for him.”

He grabbed the unconscious hero wannabe by the shoulder with both hands, holding the knife handle nimbly in the fingers of his right. Then he flipped the man over so that his back was leaning against the chair seat. A great swell of blood bubbled out of his chest and the young woman gasped and quickly reached for him as well. Together they lifted him—she wasn’t kidding, he really was quite solid—head lolling, into the chair.

The girlfriend held him steady while Milo reached for the duct tape, expertly rolling it around his ankles and wrists, taping them to the chair. He added a couple of long swaths, securing the man’s waist to the chair-back and the tops of his legs to the seat for support. His head still rested on his right shoulder, but Milo supposed there was nothing he could do about that. This would have to suffice. The odds against the hero wannabe ever regaining consciousness were astronomically long anyway, especially after his eventful trip across the floor. Besides, the clock really was ticking.

He clapped his hands together and smiled at his two other companions. The conscious ones. “What do you say we get started?”

Holland Montvale had been a homicide investigator for longer than he cared to remember, and over the course of his career had seen the bodies of hundreds of murder victims, all suffering various desecrations and all in varying stages of decomposition. One thing they all had in common—maybe the only thing—was the ugliness of the crime’s aftermath.

Gruesome injuries, tissue breakdown, a stricken look etched on the victim’s face, the stench of bowels and bladder being voided, all served to make the act of leaving the world via violence even messier than entering it had been. Learning to compartmentalize the reaction to that messiness was essential for any homicide dick and Holland Montvale had long since become accustomed to doing so.

But Holland had to admit this scene was worse than most. The young woman had suffered, and terribly, from the wounds inflicted upon her small frame, and it was clear, even this early in the investigation, that death had come slowly. His gaze lingered over the ravaged body and he said a fervent prayer that when his time came, it would be over quickly.

The CSI techs were busy doing their CSI tech stuff. Holland tried his best to stay out of the way until their work was done. He stood off to one side of the room, waiting patiently, watching the flurry of familiar activity with a professional detachment as he tried to put himself inside the killer’s head while the crime was taking place. It was awful to contemplate.

A full complement of BPD officers had descended on the tenement building and fanned out in all directions, canvassing the area, searching out potential witnesses and, as unlikely as it seemed, hoping to get lucky and retrieve the murder weapon. Holland knew he would have to wait for the coroner’s report to be sure, but he felt confident the wounds had been caused by a common kitchen knife. What else would someone use to strip skin from bone?

Assuming it was a knife, maybe it had been thrown or dropped by the killer in his haste to escape the scene.

It seemed unlikely, but based on the condition of the victim’s body and the damage that had been done to her, Holland felt there was at least some chance the patrol officers might uncover something useful. He was no psychologist, but as a longtime homicide dick he felt he could reasonably make a few assumptions based on both the condition of the victim and of the apartment itself.

The nature of the wounds on the body suggested that the suspect possessed, in addition to a terrifying level of psychosis, a meticulous personality and high intelligence, as evidenced by his preplanning skills. It couldn’t have been easy to set up the torture device and to lure the young victim here without being discovered.

But the sloppiness of the execution—blood splattered everywhere, the corpse still strapped into the chair, the crime scene not even the subject of the most perfunctory cleanup—gave Holland pause.

He had worked similar scenes before. If his theory was correct, the man—it was almost always a man when the crime was this vicious—was dissembling. He was being overtaken by his psychosis. He was becoming even more dangerous and unpredictable than he clearly already had been. The thought gave Holland a sinking feeling in his gut.

He wandered around the tiny shell of abandoned apartment, concentrating mostly on the room where the young girl had been butchered. The living room. He thought about the irony of such a vicious murder occurring in the “living room” and a chuckle that sounded suspiciously like a choked-off sob escaped before he was able to stop it. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed and was relieved to see no one had.

He considered the murder weapon. Or, more accurately, the absence of a murder weapon. What did it mean that the knife was gone? In most cases, it would simply mean the killer had maintained the presence of mind to take it with him when he left and had disposed of it elsewhere.

But in this case, Holland wasn’t so sure. The perpetrator had not made any attempt to hide the mutilated body of his victim or in any way clean up his mess. Would it be consistent with the apparently mindless, frenzied nature of this attack to assume the man had regained enough logic and preplanning skill after committing this horrifying crime to take the murder weapon with him and get rid of it somewhere?