Fic: Jabberwocky, Part 17b
When the Cortina finally plowed onto the crime scene, forensics and the uniformed officers that Phyllis had ordered were already arriving, surrounding the scene. Some of the plod had started to cordon off the scene, an act that was drawing the attention of the otherwise oblivious onlookers, and reporters were just starting to arrive. Dozens of them were racing out of their cars and swamping Gene and Ray, calling out questions over each other, each one trying to shout more loudly than the last.
“DCI Hunt! Is this another murder from the Butcher?”
“Is it true that there are at least three other bodies that have yet to be reported to the general public?”
“What’s the status on the injured officer?”
“DCI Hunt, can you tell us what body parts were removed this time?”
“A serious lack of results, DCI Hunt! What measures are being taken to catch the killer?”
“How many more of these deaths do you think the city can look forward to, DCI Hunt?”
“DCI Hunt! DCI Hunt!”
The screams and shouts followed Gene and Ray all the way past the cordon and towards the crime scene, the reports moving in like a wave, grabbing and scrabbling at the protesting uniformed officers. Gene felt hot, bitter rage bubbling inside of him and shoved at the nearest reporter, sending the man sprawling back into the crowd as he stepped under the cordon. Ray followed suit, sending a man from the Gazette back into the fray, where he knocked down several other reporters and photographers like a well placed bowling ball amidst the pins.
“Bastards!” Ray shouted as he and Gene quickly made their way to where the body lay. This time, a deep gash had been made to the corpse’s chest, the rib cages pried up and severed from the breast bone, jutting out of the man’s chest cavity and gleaming white in the soft grey light that filtered down from beneath the layer of clouds that had settled over the city. The familiar pattern of cuts stood out on the naked man’s arms, glaring red and oozing blood, and an expression of terror was fixed on his eyes, which were surrounded by deep bruises. Further bruises covered his chest and body, and bite marks, deep and shining with welled blood, stood out on the man’s thighs and buttocks.
One of the forensics officers was taking close photographs of the body, and then moving back amidst his coworkers, taking farther shots. Gene walked up to him, “We need to get this one to the morgue as fast as we can, all right? But no cutting corners. There any way that you can keep working around here even after I get the body pulled out and down to the mortuary?”
The officer shook his head, “We can’t do that, it’ll disturb too much in the scene. It’s a much less open space than any of the other drop-sites, lots of buildings, walls, items on the ground that we need to go over. Bringing in the hearse now is just going to upset the whole thing.” Gene bit his lower lip as his fists clenched at his sides, and he raised one of them and started to poke a finger into the chest of the forensics officer.
“Listen, this is the fifth victim, sixth if you count one of CID’s own, and those journos out there aren’t going to stay put for long. So I need you and the rest of your bleedin’ team of hairy poofs to get this thing sorted, pronto. I need a way to get the body out, and down for the post-mortem so fast that it makes the Grand National look like ponies on a trot, all right? Now you make me a path, and you do it now! Have plod cordon off more of the site, if you need, but just ignore all but one line in to the body, just for now. I need that corpse on the slab yesterday, not in a few hours!”
The forensics officer, unused to even being spoken to by Gene Hunt, nodded at him, and then moved off to start a conversation with some of the other bearded men that were still shifting around the scene; then all five of them clustered around the side of the body, and started talking with rather animated gestures. In a few moments, they were fanning out from one side of the body, one of them reaching the end of the alley that Gene and Ray had come down, the others in place in what appeared to be a straight line between the corpse and that point. Several of the journalists that were crowding around the scene started to push forward, and Gene saw some of them draw up in cars down the same alleyway. He grimaced, and then moved back towards those cars, which were parking near the Cortina.
“You lot, shift yourselves! I’ve got pickup of the body coming down here, and I don’t need your bloody arses getting in the way!” One of them started to crawl out from under the cordon, and Ray moved forward and grabbed him by the lapels of his coat, thrusting him back and over the rope. He landed with a hard thud on his rear, fuming.
“That should be classified as assault, I’ll have you know!” The man shouted, and Ray advanced on him again, barely stopping before he reached the cordon. The reporter was so shocked by this that he took a few steps back, cowering under the angry expression that Ray was throwing his way.
“Justifiable, I’d say, considering that your poncy arse is obstructing a police investigation at the moment. You head the Gov, you an’ the rest of your sorry lot of nonces get your slimy bastard selves out of the way, or I arrest you all for obstruction! Is that understood?” Ray was about to cross the cordon, his fists balled up at his sides, but Gene stopped and pulled him back. Ray threw Gene off instinctively and turned with a raised fist, then stopped when he saw Gene standing there. “Sorry, Gov,” he muttered, but Gene only shook his head and called out to the other reporters.
“I’d say you’d better soddin’ well listen to my sarge on this one, you damned jessies. You’ve got about five minutes to move before I start calling out to the other journalist bastards that the arseholes from the…” He paused and tried to figure out which paper they were representing, only to have one of them actually shout it out for him. Arrogant bastards, he thought.
“The Mail,” one of the small group shouted out, and the one that had been attempting to cross the cordon shot him a dirty look.
“Right. You’ve got five minutes to clear the path here, or I march right over there and tell them that if The Mail has any more bloody damned details on the crime scene than they do, it’s because a lot of them vacant-skulled vultures were obstructing the crime scene and holding up the course of justice. Don’t think they’ll take too kindly to that, you lot are cannibals, aren’t you? Eat your own kind, when it suits?” Gene cocked an eyebrow, and the pack of reporters filed into their two cars and pulled away from the Cortina. Gene turned to Ray.
“I’m going to the mortuary with the body, I want you to stay here, make sure that that lot,” he gestured towards forensics, “does their bloody job as best they can. Don’t let anyone get in their way, not even you, and don’t say anything to those damned journos. If any of those bleating bastards steps past the cordon, bang ‘em up for obstruction, and make sure that their names get out to the others. That should help to keep the arseholes in line.”
“Roger that, Gov,” Ray said, and then paused to look at his watch. “Nine thirty. Should be done by the time that I take my shift with the boss; you want me to stop down the mortuary once I finish up there?”
Gene nodded, “And give Cartwright a brief on this before she heads out to look for that damned bird from the studio. Make sure she understands that I still want her looking for that little bitch before she heads off in any other direction; we can get her briefed in full once she gets back. I’m going to have them call off the questioning on the old witnesses, get Chris, Fletcher, and the other plod that we’ve seconded out and into this area. Big place like this, someone had to bleedin’ see something.”
Ray nodded in response, and then headed back to watch over forensics, occasionally shouting dirty epithets and threats out at the flock of gathering reporters and shouting at the forensics boys to hurry it up. Gene took a moment to survey the scene, taking it all in as the hearse pulled up and the morgue workers started to collect the body. He moved over towards them and watched as they pulled a blanket over the entirety of the corpse, seeing Sam’s face appear on the body time and again, and trying not to think of how close his DI had come to being just another link in the chain of victims, which was growing at an alarming speed.
Once the body was finally strapped down in the back of the hearse, Gene climbed into the Cortina and took off, following it, far too slowly, it seemed, back to the morgue. Five now… Six, counting Sam, and all at regular intervals: whoever it was that killed the first, fourth, and fifth victim, they were definitely counting the second and third, which had technically been Myers’ kills, amongst their own. It was the only way to make the time pattern work out, and it meant that the killer they were still looking for had been present enough to count all three of Myers’ victims, including Sam, amongst his own. Which meant that whoever they were looking for, he had been directly involved in Sam’s kidnap, and torture.
Gene beat his fists upon the steering wheel as the idea that someone that could have done so much damage to one of their own, let alone to his city, was still out there, and probably planning yet another murder, even as he and his team were trying to track him down. Gene’s certainty that it was Barrie grew into a massive hatred for the man, spilling out and into his blood in a stream of boiling fury. That man could have been plotting this each time that he was looking over Sam; he could have come in and poked and prodded at Sam’s helpless form while he still had this latest victim, or the last one, chained up or pinned up or whatever the hell he was doing to them, in his cellar. The thoughts continued to come, one by one, an endless list of tiny visions of Barrie, coming in to check on Sam with another man’s blood barely washed off of his hands. Gene slammed on the brakes as he reached the mortuary, and then slowly made his way out of the car and into the cold, tiled halls of the building.
Gene followed the morgue workers down and into the examination room, still carrying the body on its stretcher, and Oswald was there, still setting out his tools upon a metal tray. Gene followed them in and watched as they piled the body onto the slab, and one of them gave Oswald the body’s liver temperature as they left. Oswald looked up at Gene, “Normally I look up these things myself, but, seeing as we’re all in such a hurry on this one, and you likely don’t want to be here for the post-mortem itself, could you by any chance look up some temperatures for me? I need the low temperature last night, temperature at about four this morning, and temperature when you found him.”
Gene gave Oswald a curious look, and then racked his brain. “Last night at midnight, was about 46, this morning when we got to the hospital, about 49, and last I saw it was about 51. Got a thermometer in the Cortina, on the dash. I know these things work into what you do.” Oswald gave Gene an appraising look, as if he’d only just realized an obvious fact about the man, and was just now taking in the fact that his eyes were green, or his hair was a mousy blond color, or he was about six feet tall. Gene gave him a nasty look under the scrutiny.
“What? You think Tyler was the only one that knew how some of the shit you do works, did you?” Gene’s anger rose even further as his thoughts circled back to Sam; truth be told, the Cortina had come with the thermometer on the dash, as well as a compass, and he’d taken to looking at them whenever he felt the need for a tiny distraction.
“Based upon your man’s liver temperature, I’d say he died around midnight last night, then. Possibly earlier, if the body was kept in a warm area before it was dumped; perhaps ten to twelve last night,” Oswald gave the fact with a tone of questioning, the way that he always gave rough figures, and it annoyed Gene far more than it normally did.
Gene grunted, and then crossed his arms over his chest. Oswald had finished sorting out his instruments on the tray, and was pulling large scales into the room on a rolling table, the shelves of which contained several metal pans. He looked up at Gene with a quizzical look. “You’re going to stay for the actual post mortem proper? I don’t think that’s wise, really, DCI Hunt.”
Gene scowled and reminded himself that doctors were not good people to hit, especially not ones that were on his side. “You think I’m not going to be able to stomach it, then? I’ve seen a bloody damned lot worse, all right?”
Oswald nodded, gave Gene another one of his long, uncomfortable stares of appraisal, and then started to slice open the body on the slab. Gene stared as Oswald made notes on a clipboard and removed organs, weighing them on the scales and placing them into the small metal trays. The skin on the man’s body pulled back far too easily for Gene’s liking, lifting up in thick, rubbery sheets away from the chest cavity, but he kept his eyes locked on what Oswald was doing and tried to understand what he was seeing.
“Any chance of you saying what you’re writing down out loud, then? Only I don’t quite know what the hell I’m supposed to be learning from looking at what you’re doing,” Gene said, trying to remain as calm as possible, despite his growing exasperation with Oswald’s silence and his own inability to comprehend the situation. Oswald stared at him, and then started to point at different places in the chest cavity.
“Your man was in a much bigger hurry this time, it would seem. This poor fellow’s rib cage was crushed in much more than any of the others’ were; it would appear that he bled to death internally from the wounds to the chest. A great deal of the blood is missing, though, so it’s to be assumed that it was left at the murder scene, like forced out of the chest cavity as the thymus was removed. That was what was taken this time; yet another of the seven primary organs in the endocrine system.”
Gene’s head snapped up on his neck, “Wait - there’s a system with the organs that are being taken? Something that they teach in medical school?” Barrie’s smug little face crystallized in Gene’s mind’s eye, and he felt his anger start to bubble up again. “Why the hell wasn’t that in any of your other reports?”
“It’s not a system taught in school, DCI Hunt, it’s a system of the body. The endocrine system is made up of glands, and there is currently quite a bit of debate, mostly coming from the Americans and Canadians, as to whether or not the lymph nodes should be included in it, or counted as their own system. A system of the body, you see, is a set of linked parts that fulfill a certain function. The cardio-pulmonary system is concerned with the circulation of blood and air throughout the body, and is made up of the heart, blood vessels, and lungs, whereas the respiratory system is concerned with the intake and outtake of air, and is comprised of the lungs, bronchial tubing, and other parts used in breathing. As you can see from the fact that both of those systems include the lungs, there is some overlap between different organs into the different systems.”
Gene nodded forcefully, trying to urge Oswald to continue without actually shouting obscenities at him.
“The endocrine system is comprised of all of the major glands of the body; the universally recognized parts include any pieces that are strictly concerned with the secretion of hormones that regulate chemical functions in the body: testicles or ovaries, pancreas, adrenals, thymus, thyroid, pineal and pituitary glands are all considered the major glands, although the pancreas serves other functions and fits in with other systems, and the liver and kidneys, while not primary sources of endocrine function, also serve their purposes. There are also several minor glands that are included in that lot, but of the seven major glands in the system, your five victims have had a separate one removed each time; all that appears to be missing are the pineal and pituitary glands, and those are the hardest to remove, of course.”
“I don’t know any bleedin’ ‘of course,’ you prat, I haven’t hardly a clue what you’re talking about. But all of the pieces that were cut out, they all did the same job in the body, then?” Gene asked, trying to wrap his brain around all of the information that Oswald was throwing at him, and trying to understand why the killer would want glands. The idea had been that the killer was removing edible portions of the body, but there were certainly large pieces of meat left on all of the corpses, and Myers’ hadn’t said anything about eating them…
“The two glands that have yet to be removed are inside of the skull, DCI Hunt, and, therefore, much harder to remove. And the pieces definitely don’t fit the same function inside of the body, but they all have similar functions,” Oswald trailed off as Gene threw him a withering look, and then changed his tactics as he continued his explanation, trying to stick with things that might prove more useful to Gene. “There is no relation between the patches of flesh that were removed on the backs of the victims, or between the wounds on the arms and the other wounds that were inflicted upon the victims, to the endocrine system. But it is only major glands that are being removed at this time, along with those patches on the back. All of the other damage seems to serve other purposes: the arms for restraint, most of the bruising and lacerations to the body appear sexual in nature. The rib cage, I’m not sure of, but the damage appears to have been inflicted before any of the other wounds, so I’m assuming that it’s a form of subduing the victims. The only injuries that don’t have a reasonable explanation are the removals of flesh: the patches on either side of the back, and the major glands of the endocrine system.”
Gene mused over this in his head, and then asked, “So it’s likely to be a doctor, then, someone that knows about all of this endo-shit system bollacks?”
Oswald nodded, “Or at least someone with a passing interest in matters medical, yes. The removal of the thymus here was very methodical, the cuts incredibly sharp and precise, very surgical in nature, which is again in sharp contrast to the brutality of the other wounds. I haven’t had time to examine the wounds on his back yet, but I have a feeling they’ll match the rather exact measurements that we took off of the other victims.”
Gene grimaced as he looked down at the spread open body on the slab, and then looked back up at Oswald. “Why would you say he was in a bigger hurry, this time; rib cages might just be more bashed in because the bastard was angry,” Gene asked, thinking back to what Denslow had said about the damage to Sam’s ribs.
“True, very true, but there is other evidence to support the fact that he was moving much more quickly - the wounds are overlapping more, much less meticulous, although the removal of the thymus remained incredibly fastidious and exact. The removal of the gland had to have occurred just after death, based upon the way that the chest was cut and the welling of blood in the severed arteries and veins, and as I said before, the death would have been much swifter in this case. The bites and bruises on the thighs and around the penis and testes are also much more hurried: before, they appeared in various degrees, some older than the others, whereas here, they were all inflicted within a few hours of each other.”
Oswald suddenly started to pick up the organs from the trays, one by one, and place them neatly back into the man’s body. Gene gave him a quizzical look. “What are you doing now?”
“I’m replacing the organs and sewing up his chest cavity, making sure that everything is in its proper place and closing him up before I begin an examination of the wounds on his head and back. It’ll only take a few minutes,” Oswald stated, and Gene waited for what seemed like hours, and was, when he checked his watch, a good hour. Gene felt his patience growing thinner as Oswald closed up the man’s chest, leaving them with a much less mangled looking corpse.
Oswald moved to examine the eyes then, shining a small light into them, and then he looked up at Gene with a mild look of shock on his face, saying, “It looks as though your killer really was in a hurry here: the eyes aren’t flash burnt. There’s no sign of any sort of corneal damage, but the bruising around the eyes is much heavier on the upper cheeks, the bridge of the nose, and the brow bone. It would appear that the man was blindfolded, extremely tightly and forcefully, as opposed to being blinded in another fashion.”
“So if he wants them to not see him until he’s just beginning to kill them, he wouldn’t have had enough time to burn the eyes on this one, just had to settle for blindfolding him?” Gene asked, stretching forward a bit to look at the corpse’s face.
“Exactly.” Oswald continued to probe the man’s eyes and face, making a few more notes, and then deftly flipped the body over and straightened it out on the slab, looking at the wounds on the man’s back. He measured the cuts, and then started to examine the man’s rectum. Gene found that he had to look away as Oswald did so, staring angrily at the floor.
“The wounds to the lower back are very exact, once again, the exact same dimensions as the wounds on the other victims, and the cuts were very precise and made after the man had died, and after the thymus had been removed. The other wounds, however, are very rushed yet again. It would appear that instead of waiting for periods of time between each act of sodomy, the killer instead only raped the victim several times in succession. There’s much less semen in the rectal tissue, which has been ripped far more brutally than it was in the other victims.” Silence fell for a few minutes as Oswald continued his measurements and examination, and Gene continued to stare at the floor. After nearly a half hour, Oswald added, “I’ve finished.”
Gene looked up and watched as Oswald flipped the body back over, straightened it out, and then covered it with a sheet. He then returned to making his notes, and Gene stared at the face of the man: once again, he was a good match for Sam. “Victim the same height as the others, then?”
Oswald nodded, “Standing, he would have been about five feet nine inches. The width of his chest is also within an inch of that of all of the other victims.”
Gene stared at the covered body for a few moments, and then looked back up to find Oswald looking at him again. He threw a sneer at the pathologist, and then decided to ask a few more questions before he left to receive the forensics reports. “So there’s no connection at all between the patches of meat taken off of their backs, but there is a connection between all of the other parts taken?”
Oswald shook his head, “No connection at all between the flesh removed on all of the victims, and I can’t find any correlation between the size of the patches taken and the glands that were removed. But all of the parts that were removed are from the seven major glands of the endocrine system.”
“And the only parts that haven’t been taken, they’re both in the skull?” A sick feeling was starting to spread in Gene’s guts as he said it; if what Oswald was saying was true, then the killer was after something inside of Sam’s head, and there was no way that he was going to get at it without bashing Sam’s skull open and ripping through his brains. The thought made Gene’s innards twist upon themselves.
Oswald was nodding at him, and Gene nodded back. “Anything else? What do the parts that were taken do, in plain English, not in medical bollacks.”
“The parts regulate chemical function… They change hormone levels…” With each sentence that he began, Oswald noticed that Gene’s stare became stonier. Eventually he settled upon, “The missing parts all change levels of chemicals called hormones in the blood stream; it’s one of the more complicated and least understood branches of medicine, I’m afraid, so there’s nothing that I can really say that’s not going to be a bit confusing to any layman.” Gene grunted at this, and Oswald continued, “The chemicals, these hormones, regulate everything from the functions of all of the major organs to emotions to thought processes.”
Gene nodded at Oswald, still upset that he was unable to fully wrap his head around what the parts were for, and then left the morgue without saying anything further. He slowly wound his way around the hallways and towards the station proper, and then took the lift slowly up to CID. When he got there, Ray was already gone. DC Turner informed him that Chris and Glen were out taking more statements and working the door to doors with a team of plod, fanning out from around the latest dump-site, and then turned a worried look to Gene.
“We’ve got another killing, Gov, not related to the serial killer. Looks like this one’s been dead for over a month, some poor sod in a higher-rent house, landlord didn’t even know his name.” Turner swallowed hard as Gene cast a hard glance his way, locking his eyes onto his.
“And you’re sure that it’s not related?” Gene felt his eyes burning as he bore down upon Turner.
“Definitely not, Gov. Victim doesn’t match the description, he’s a higher rent sort, a doctor, transferred here from a hospital in Halifax, subletting a semi-detached rental house from some lawyer bloke. That’s why the landlord doesn’t even know who he was - all of the paperwork was for the lawyer, and all the lawyer told him was that he was letting the place out to a doctor who was moving down to start work here and hunt for his own house before moving his family. Stiff’s been rotting away for over a month.”
Gene nodded at Turner, “I want you on it, and take Turnball and Bailey with you. Anything odd comes up, or you have any problems, you let me know. I can’t take time away from this bastard serial killer.”
Turner nodded and moved away, and Gene was about to move to his office when Phyllis came in, a very haunted look on her face. She was holding a large, clear plastic bag in her hands, filled with what looked like clothes, and moving towards Gene very slowly, as if she didn’t even notice that she was walking amongst the desks. Gene stared at her for a moment, and then at the bag in her hands. “This has just came up from forensics, Gov… There’s a note in it for you,” Phyllis held out the bag.
“A note?” Gene felt his blood suddenly cease boiling and turn to ice as he took the bag.
“Forensics has already dusted everything inside, it’s the latest victim’s clothes and wallet; I let Skelton and Fletcher know that it was found, and they’re going to notify the victim’s family. The thing is, Gov…” Phyllis paused and drew in a shaking breath, “They found all of his things like that, already in the bag. They were set out just about a mile from where the body was dumped, along with the note. Forensics say that the prints on the note, and on the wallet and shoes, all match the ones that we already have for the killer.”
Gene shoved some papers aside on the nearest desk, scattering one of the other DC’s phones onto the floor as he did so, and then dumped the contents of the bag out onto the desk. The man had worn standard clothes, the shirt in a bizarre print and the jeans widely flared, and his wallet was beaten and used. Gene scrambled through the mess until he eventually found what he was looking for, and stared at the note.
“DCI Hunt. Hope you’re enjoying your hunt as much as I am mine. It’s been a pleasure meeting you. And please remember, I want what’s mine, and I’ll be taking it, soon.” The message was signed with the same crooked and swirling symbol that had been carved on the wall of Sam’s ICU room, and on the sculpture at the museum. The handwriting was neat and simple, very much like a child’s handwriting work at primary school, although it slanted upwards at an odd angle, as if it had been written… Gene swallowed. It had been written by someone left handed, he was sure of it.
Gene stared at the note in silence, and then swiped all of the items off of the desk, and kicked the side of it so hard that a loud metallic clang resonated through the CID offices and the drawers shot out of it, partially opened. He crumpled the note in his hand. “The bastard’s playing with us.” Gene heard Sam’s words from the Twilling case inside of his head, ‘He thinks he’s above us…’ Gene slammed his fist down on the desk, and then stormed into his office, flinging the door open so widely that it smacked into the filing cabinet outside of it, a new crack forming in the frosted glass from the impact.
“I’m getting that warrant, and we’re getting those bloody prints from Barrie tonight!” Gene screamed as he stormed to his desk and picked up the phone.
Comments and feedback are highly encouraged and much appreciated. I like comments, they are glorious, addictive things! And please, feel free to mutate the bunny - this story definitely wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for the input and influences I've gotten from everyone.