At the house’s front door, Hunter and Garcia were given disposable forensics jumpsuits. They suited up in silence, signed the crime-scene manifest and entered the house.
In the living room, a forensics agent was dusting the windows for latent prints. Just like with their previous two crime scenes, there were no signs of a struggle anywhere in that first room. Hunter and Garcia greeted the agent with a head nod before moving left, in the direction of the door that led into the kitchen, but they both stopped almost immediately.
‘What the hell?’ Garcia said, his gaze on the forensics evidence identification marker on the floor, displaying ‘1’ in black ink. ‘Are those rose petals?’
Hunter nodded. ‘They look to be.’
They both understood the reason for the identification marker as soon as they stepped into the kitchen.
‘It’s a trail,’ Garcia said, his tone more surprised than confused. ‘The killer left a rose petals trail leading down to the basement? This is new.’
Hunter got down on one knee and picked up one of the rose petals.
‘Not fake,’ he said, bringing it to his nose. He picked up a slight fragrance.
Other than the rose petals on the floor, nothing seemed to be out of place in the kitchen.
The trail led to an open door on the left, just past the cooking island. Hunter and Garcia could hear voices coming from downstairs. The one that they immediately recognized belonged to Dr. Slater.
The narrow steps, twelve in total, were now fully lit, courtesy of the powerful forensics crime-scene light that had been set up at the top of the stairs. Hunter and Garcia took them slowly, being extra careful to avoid the several other identification markers on eight of the steps, each next to a full or partial bloody footprint. Once they reached the basement, they both stopped dead, their breaths catching on their throats as their brains tried to take in the enormity of the scene before them.
It was clear that the basement had been transformed into a sex-play dungeon, with different props everywhere and a vast selection of implements hanging from the wall to their left. On the wall to their right, just like Sergeant Logan had told them, someone seemed to have left a message, written in large, red letters, but the true horror down in that basement… what really made Hunter and Garcia’s hearts beat to a different tempo, was the victim’s body and the manner in which it had been posed.
Positioned directly in front of them, just a few feet from the back wall, Oliver Griffith’s naked body was spread-eagled against a large X-shaped wooden cross. His wrists and ankles were held in place by thick leather straps that sprung out of the cross’s wood beams. Another thick leather strap looped around his waist, pinning his core down. His head was slumped forward. Inside his wide-opened mouth, Hunter and Garcia could see a red ball-gag, also secured in place by a leather strap that had been buckled up behind the base of his skull. His torso looked to be untouched – no cuts, no marks. It was from his waist down where things seemed to go completely insane.
There was blood everywhere.
Starting from his groin region, it caked both of his legs before spilling down onto the floor beneath his feet, forming a huge pool of coagulated blood that extended to just about a foot from where Hunter and Garcia stood. The blood on his groin, legs and feet had already dried, but despite the sheer amount, there was no mistaking the wound that had caused such intense hemorrhage.
Oliver Griffith had been viciously castrated.
His penis and testicles had been severed at their base, leaving behind a large, raw, exposed flesh wound, made to look even worse by the position of his legs – widely spread apart on the X-shaped cross.
Though the savagery of the scene before them had made Garcia grimace, his eyes never left the victim, and despite the strong forensics light illuminating the whole of the basement, he was still unsure about what he was looking at.
‘What… the hell… are those?’
The question, which stumbled out of his lips, was intended for Hunter, but it was heard by Dr. Slater and both of the forensics agents already working the scene.
‘I imagine that you’re referring to the lobsters.’ The answer came from Dr. Slater, who had been standing just a little to their right.
‘That’s what it looks like from here,’ Garcia said back, his gaze moving to her for just a second before returning to the body. ‘On his legs?’
‘As crazy as that may sound and look,’ the Doctor confirmed, ‘that’s exactly what they are – lobsters.’
With their bodies pressed against each of Oliver Griffith’s upper thighs, the killer had pinned two raw lobsters in place – one to each thigh. Their antennas and antennules had been made to stick up and out, away from their bodies, creating a disturbing thorn-like effect. Their pereiopods, or walking legs – eight on each lobster – had been spread out to mimic their walking motion, as if both crustaceans were crawling up Oliver’s thighs. But the really ominous detail came from their claws. With both of their heads pointing toward the wounds on Oliver’s groin, their crusher claws had been positioned to give the impression that the lobsters had severed the victim’s organs. The one on his left thigh had its crusher claw against the lacerations to his testicles, while the one on his right leg had its claw at the base of the penile wound.
The overall visual effect was as sickening as it was shocking.
‘Please tell me that that’s not really what the killer used to…’ Garcia left the sentence unfinished, ending it with a shake of the head.
‘No.’ This time, the answer came from Hunter. His voice sounded somewhat calm, but there was disbelief in his tone. His gaze remained on the victim. ‘Lobster pincers aren’t powerful or sharp enough to cut through muscle in that way. In fact, they don’t actually cut at all. They crush and pinch. That’s why they’re called “pincher” and “crusher” claws. The crusher claw is the stronger of the two, but even if it were sharp enough, it wouldn’t be powerful enough to severe the organs from his body.’
‘Robert is right,’ Dr. Slater confirmed, stepping around a restriction chair to join both detectives. ‘I left everything as we found it so that the two of you could see the crime scene in situ.’ She indicated the body on the cross. ‘This would be hard to explain even with photographs, but I was able to quickly examine the wounds. The cuts seem razor-sharp clean.’
‘Knife?’ Hunter asked.
‘A very sharp one, sure,’ Dr. Slater replied. ‘The perp might’ve also used something like a scalpel, or even a pair of shears… maybe large scissors. If the killer has left whatever instrument he’s used behind, we haven’t found it yet.’
The answer made Garcia press his legs against each other, like a kid who was dying to go to the bathroom. The grimace on his face intensified.
‘Maybe the killer was looking for the shock effect with the lobsters,’ one of the forensics agents ventured. ‘Because this is one hell of a shocking image.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Garcia countered. ‘Just look at this setting.’ He indicated the victim on the cross. ‘It’s shocking enough without the lobsters, and you’ve seen this killer’s previous crime scenes, right?’ He addressed Dr. Slater. ‘This guy doesn’t need gadgets or gimmicks to make his murders shocking. They simply are.’ A sliver of exasperation slid into his voice. ‘Like Robert has mentioned before – we might not understand it now… we might even never understand it, but there’s got to be a meaning behind all this… including the lobsters.’
Hunter stepped around the pool of blood on the floor to get a closer look.
Garcia did the same.
Hunter first studied the victim’s neck, where he saw no hematomas, no bruises, no ligature marks… no signs of any choking or strangulation. The ball-gag in his mouth, together with his lips, were plastered with dried bile and food residue that had dripped down to his chin and bare chest, indicating that Oliver Griffith had vomited during his ordeal… probably more than once. Hunter didn’t need to move the ball-gag to see that there was still vomit inside his mouth. The sickening smell was strong enough to make his eyes water.
Garcia instinctively took a step back and brought a hand to his face to cover his nose and mouth.
Hunter squatted down to have a look at the fatal wound and at the two lobsters pinned to Oliver Griffith’s thighs. The killer had used two large T-shaped taxidermy pins through their bodies to fix them in place. The incisions to both wounds did look very clean and precise.
From his squatting position, Hunter looked up at Oliver. His eyes were closed, but his face was contorted in an expression that gave away the tremendous physical pain that he had gone through – unbearable… devastating… final – not to mention the panic… the horror… the fear that had undoubtedly taken over Oliver once he’d realized what the Mentor was about to do to him. In his mind, Hunter could practically hear the desperate screams, muffled by the ball-gag in his mouth, as Oliver tried to beg and plead with his attacker.
‘Did he bleed out?’ Hunter asked, his eyes leaving the body and moving to the pool of blood on the floor.
‘That’s the assumption,’ Dr. Slater explained. ‘Just like I mentioned before, the cuts are clean and right at the base of both the penis and the scrotum. The whole of his penile arterial and venous supplies were severed and left undressed. Despite the arteries and veins that form both supplies being small in comparison to the body’s major ones, if left unattended…’ Her gaze shifted to the pool of blood on the floor before going back to Hunter. ‘In time, the hemorrhage would be fatal.’
‘In time?’ Garcia asked. ‘How long would he have lasted?’
‘Very hard to tell,’ Dr. Slater replied. ‘It would’ve depended on several factors – his general health, the condition of his heart, and so on. Those would’ve also dictated how many times he would’ve lost consciousness. Even without any help, or the use of his hands to try to lessen the bleeding, he could’ve bled for over an hour before he’d lost over forty percent of his blood. At that point, most of his major organs would’ve shut down.’
‘Any guesses to the time of death?’ Hunter asked.
‘Just like with the previous victim, the body is already in full rigor mortis, so easily over twelve hours, but given its temperature, I’d say less than twenty. He died sometime in the very early hours of this morning.’
‘This is just insane,’ Garcia whispered.
‘No doubt,’ Dr. Slater agreed. ‘And then you still have this to add to the insanity.’ She called their attention to the words that had been written on the wall.
Hunter got back on his feet and joined Garcia. Their attention finally refocused on the wall to the right of the stairs.
Across a portion of it, about six feet from the floor, fifteen words had been written in large red capital letters that seemed to measure around six to seven inches each.
If there were still any doubts that the atrocities down in that basement belonged to the Mentor, those doubts vanished once both detectives read what was clearly a new line from his ‘poem’:
‘THROUGH THIS SOUL, NO PAIN WILL EVER BE GREATER THAN THE PAIN OF LOSING YOU.’
Hunter unzipped his jumpsuit and reached for his cellphone before snapping a couple of shots of the new line. That done, he approached the wall to have a closer look.
‘This is blood,’ he stated, instead of asking, an uneasy shiver caressing the back of his neck.
‘It is, yes,’ Dr. Slater confirmed.
Hunter stepped back from the wall and allowed his stare to crawl back to the pool of blood on the floor.
‘The victim’s blood.’ Once again, not a question.
‘Presumably, unless this killer brought a couple of bags of somebody else’s blood with him.’ Dr. Slater’s head tilted slightly right. ‘Which given what we have here and what we’ve seen in his previous crime scenes, wouldn’t really surprise anyone, would it? Anyway, for confirmation you’ll need to wait for the lab results.’
‘This is another change to his MO,’ Hunter said, addressing Garcia, who nodded.
‘You mean, using blood as ink?’ the doctor asked. ‘Writing the quote on the wall, instead of on a piece of paper?’
‘Yes, that too,’ Hunter agreed. ‘But there’s something else, which is a lot more significant. With the previous two crime scenes,’ he explained, ‘the killer forced his victims to write down the verses from his “poem” before killing them, but this line is written in blood… presumably the victim’s own.’ Hunter shook his head. ‘No way that the victim wrote that.’
‘Not a chance,’ Garcia agreed.
‘So that must be the killer’s handwriting,’ Dr. Slater said.
Hunter nodded. ‘And that’s also probably the reason why the whole line is in block letters, instead of cursive writing. It makes graphology analysis a lot harder.’
The room went quiet for a moment before Garcia spoke again.
‘The severed body parts,’ he asked, instinctively looking around. ‘Have they been found?’
Dr. Slater paused to wipe some of the perspiration from her forehead. The heat from the forensics light was gradually transforming the basement, which had been soundproofed, into a sauna.
‘Not yet.’ She shook her head. ‘But we’re looking.’
‘How about the victim’s cellphone?’ Hunter, this time. ‘Has it been found?’
Another head shake from Dr. Slater. ‘Not down here, in the living room or in the kitchen. We haven’t looked through the rest of the house yet.’
Hunter rounded the pool of blood to get back to the stairs. ‘We’ll get out of your hair and let you guys finish down here, Susan, but I’ll stick around for a while, so please let me know if you come across anything new.’
‘Of course,’ Dr. Slater replied. ‘Will you be outside?’
‘Eventually, but I need to go talk to the victim’s wife first. From what I understand, she found the body.’
‘That’s also my understanding,’ the doctor agreed. ‘But she’s in shock, Robert. You won’t get any info out of her… not today.’
‘I’m not going to question her,’ Hunter said, taking the first step back upstairs. ‘I’m going to warn her.’