The young man didn’t have any identification on him at the scene. His nude corpse had a giant gaping hole in its midsection. The sheriff had been right, beetles had infested his internal organs enough that his flesh was literally moving when they crawled around.
Several officers were puking their guts up in the bushes about two hundred yards away. I was sipping on a soda from Arby’s. Xavier was in exam gloves and squatting next to the coroner. They hadn’t moved him because they were afraid the insects had been attracted by some sort of bio-agent. Fiona and Rachael were talking to the officers that had found him. They had noticed his body as they drove past on routine patrol.
Whoever had dumped him, hadn’t bothered to try and cover him. He’d been tossed into a ditch only a few feet from the road. Granted, the average person would have just seen something fleshy toned, but even they might have realized it was a body. Or they might not have because people tried to be oblivious.
Sheriff Vic Elway had seen his share of dead bodies. This was obvious by his demeanor. He stood next to me as Xavier and the coroner poked at the body. He didn’t look pale or even bothered by it.
“A few years ago, we had a girl show up in a similar manner. Her lower body was just bones being held together by a few ligaments, but her upper half was infested by flies. Think it could be your guy?” Sheriff Elway asked.
“Sounds about right and he would have needed to practice to get this good, even with insects.”
“We’ve had a couple of murderers over the last twenty years or so that were serials. Most of them were caught pretty quick, I’m guessing this is one of those that fell through the cracks.” Sheriff Elway spoke as if he was remembering things. “When I was younger, there was a guy in the next county that came here to get his victims. Always women. They never caught him. He just stopped one day and we never had another person go missing without an explanation or found another body until that girl. She wasn’t from around here though. She was from somewhere else though, not a local, we were just the place he decided to dump her. We never got an identification for her from Missouri or Kansas. I always felt bad for her. Her bones showed stab wounds on her legs, fresh ones. Cause of death was a puncture wound to her liver though. Internal bleeding is a painful way to die.”
“Do you know what caused the puncture wound?”
“A bolt gun. Smashed a couple of ribs as it went into her flesh.”
“So he disposed of her because he realized he had caused damage,” I said to Xavier.
“He’s gotten a lot more sophisticated,” Xavier pulled on the wound, exposing more of the internal section. “Part of his bowel is missing. But I don’t think he would have gotten rid of her because he damaged her bones. I think he did it because she, like this poor guy, would have bleed copiously on the outside. We haven’t seen a cause of death in most of his victims. Looking at this wound, it makes sense. If he stabs upwards, missing the bone and then only pulls out the knife from the exact same angle he put it in or if he waits until they are dead to do it, they aren’t going to bleed much externally. Cause of death in all of them would be exsanguination from a perforated bowel and possible puncture to the liver, stomach, spleen, or kidney. A large hematoma would form under the skin, but only a small amount of blood would leak out. Using a bolt gun would ensure lots of blood, just like this wound. For whatever reason, once he stabbed this guy, he jerked the blade out at a right angle to the wound. He would have bleed out externally. Killer, victim, floor, everything would have been covered in blood and fecal matter. Intestines would have come out of the wound, it’s a miracle he didn’t lose any internal organs.”
“You think the killer doesn’t like blood?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what I think. Explains the cleaning method too. There are ways to clean flesh from bones, but it’s a lot messier. They’re also faster and easier. This guy might have been inside a tank of beetles for a couple of hours, but it would have required a lot of beetles. They were laying eggs when he was taken out. The adult beetles and their larva are in this corpse. The larva are all newly hatched. He changed his mind. Probably after cleaning up the mess.”
“Hey, Cain!” Caleb shouted my name. He was standing near the road. “Think you need to see this.”
I was fairly certain that whatever he wanted to show me, I didn’t want to see. I walked over there anyway. Near Caleb’s foot there was a small spot of grass that was disturbed. It looked wet and was slightly yellow. I turned my head as if that would make the smell go away.
“Did someone throw up here?” Caleb asked. His sense of smell was bad, like most psychopaths.
“Um, yeah, can I go now?” I tried not to gag. Few things smelled worse than bile. My eyes started to water. I preferred decay.
“Sure, I’ll have tech people scrape it.” Caleb answered. I nodded and walked back to the body.
“Killer’s?” Xavier asked.
“How should I know?” I asked him. “Maybe a rabbit happened upon the body and got sick.”
“At least the rabbit was nice enough not to throw up on the body,” the coroner said and I couldn’t help but smile. It was exactly the sort of joke I would have expected from Xavier. I dug out a card.
“You ever want a career that pays more and ensures you’ll die faster, call this guy,” I told him.
“You have to have a pretty twisted sense of humor to do this job every day,” Xavier told him. He nodded. “Ready to load him and move him?” Xavier asked.
“Sure, how do we keep the beetles in?” The coroner asked.
“Triple bag him,” Xavier shrugged. They both nodded and I felt like I was staring at Xavier’s soul mate. If the coroner had been a woman, they would have been perfect for each other.
We had our own forensics team and I called them. About twenty minutes later, a helicopter landed and people in what appeared to be HAZMAT suits got out. Our forensics unit was always on standby and they had very interesting jobs. It was nothing like the movies. I knew none of them by name. I didn’t even know what they looked like under their suits. It was about anonymity. They were the only place not hit when someone organized an attack on law enforcement and federal court system last fall. I was sure it was because no one knew where they were or who they were. They began walking around dropping markers on the ground and two people carrying multiple body bags came over to us.
We all stepped away, including the sheriff and the deputies, state police, and the coroner. The crime scene techs did their thing. They even marked where the officers had been tossing their cookies in the bushes. They were incredibly thorough. I never wanted their job, ever. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know someone that worked there.
“Someone come look for tire prints,” a guy in a HAZMAT suit shouted. It sounded tinny and fake, like he was using some sort of voice alteration equipment. This was why we stood back. They were like magical beings who could find things we never imagined existed.
“I’ll send you the files for the girl we found a few years ago,” Sheriff Elway told me.
“Thanks,” I answered. “Flies and beetles.” That meant something. What it meant was beyond me at the moment, but it did hold significance. If we figured it out, we might be closer to finding out who did this. “Xavier, are we talking haemophobia or just a severe dislike of blood?”
“Dislike would be my guess. Haemophobia and he wouldn’t be stabbing them at all, the stab wounds are probably smallish, but they are still going to bleed.”
“What about the flies and beetles?” I asked him.
“I’m not an entomologist, I’m a medical doctor who sometimes has to deal with insanity,” Xavier responded with a quick giggle.
“Fine, how common is haemophobia?” I asked.
“Rare,” he answered. “However, people who dislike blood are fairly common. It makes people feel queasy to see it. People who pass out when they see blood are most likely haemophobes, but people have all sorts of reactions to blood. When I was a resident, I saw a girl who every time we had to treat someone who needed stitches would turn white and start puking. I don’t know why she decided to be a doctor.”
“But there was no blood here,” I said. “Someone else found our crime scene. I’ll be damned and they drove away from it. The entire thing might be contaminated.”
“The bile doesn’t belong to our killer because he’d already had his little meltdown and just needed to dispose of the body. It wouldn’t have made him sick,” Fiona said. “I’ll see what I can dig up about traffic on this road this morning.”