Predators

I slid out of my berth up forward and looked at the puffy-eyed stranger I saw in the mirror, threw on some clean pants and ran my belt through the loops, then hooked my badge over the left front pocket and strapped my old Sig P-220 into the crusty leather shoulder holster a wife -- which one? -- had given me twenty years and more than a few nightmares ago. Funny how some things from marriages last longer than others, even if the joke turns out to be on you. On second thought, maybe that isn't so funny.

I hopped off the boat -- another consequence of one wife too many -- and walked through the fog-shrouded marina to the department Ford sitting in the parking lot. I was soaked-through by the time I got seated, and I checked 'in-service' with dispatch, groaned when the light rain suddenly turned heavy. As if losing another night's sleep wasn't enough, I'd forgotten my raincoat, something you do in Seattle at your peril. Oh well, it's only water, right? Just like water under the bridge. You live and learn; at least, you're supposed to, anyway. Funny how we never do, and how all the unintended consequences pile up around us on our march to the big sleep.

The windshield wipers beat like drums ahead of a funeral march, lightning rippled inside clouds just overhead, and reflections of city streets drizzled by in the tired, mechanical cadence. My mouth tasted like horse manure, too, and to make the morning even more interesting I'd felt a sore throat coming on during the night, but that didn't matter: sick, well -- or even dead -- this was my call and I had to take it. Mine to 'make or break,' to solve or to seriously fuck-up. You never know what's out there, but that's the real fun of police work. Hell, at least the rain was supposed to let up later in the day. But would it? I've heard some rains last forever. That's why there's Prozac and bourbon, right? But that dark, endless rain is why some cops give up and swallow a hot chunk of .38 caliber ambivalence, too...

The address dispatch read-off didn't mean a thing to me, neither did the run-down apartment building I parked in front of ten minutes later: both were in a run-down, bleak area just south of downtown -- an area full of docks and warehouses -- and home to lots of broken dreams and burned-out souls. It's funny, well, maybe not, how such places seem to reek of despair. How phrases like 'income inequality' and 'collapsing American dream' take on a pathos of uncertainty and despair when you get up real close -- and smell that reality in every shadow you desperately try to ignore. But cops can't ignore the shadows, if you know what I mean.

Three squad cars were already parked out front, their red and blue strobes pulsing in the waterfront rain -- crystalline echoes caught in gravity's embrace. The frenzied light created strange moving shadows on the walls of this brick canyon, and the feeling was unsettling, even to my tired eyes. An ambulance was out front, too, and a couple of firemen sat in the brightly lighted back of the box; they looked bored -- tired and bored -- because they'd seen it all before, and probably ten times this week. Still, those guys looked as though they were sitting in an island of intense light, and that kind of clarity looked out-of-place here in this landscape of lightning and foggy shadows.

Out-of-place, too, because this part of the city is a land of shadows, and clarity isn't really welcome in the shadowlands. Truth is a painful subject to the down-and-out, a reminder of all the wrong turns some people made along the way to here -- to the last stop on their long road to nowhere, and I guess it can be kind of rough to turn around and everywhere you look you're reminded of how far you've fallen.

Like that pain in your gut where hunger used to live isn't enough?

A medical examiner's rain-streaked van, dull blue with official looking white letters on it, pulled up behind my old Ford right as I got out of the car; Mary-Jo something-or-other was behind the wheel writing on a clipboard but she looked up and waved at me as I walked away. I nodded and wished I'd worn a hat; no one ever told me when I was growing up that cold rain on a head with three hairs left on top could be so interesting.

Anyway. Mary-Jo something-or-other and her assistant got out of their van (both wearing rain coats and hats, by the way) and followed me into the building; I made it to an elevator just before the door closed -- and they squeezed in.

"Messy night," her assistant said. "Gonna rain for a week."

"No shit," I said. "Welcome to Seattle."

"Hey, Woody, you still on the boat?" Mary-Jo asked.

Funny, but I couldn't remember telling her I lived on the lake, but that's just another one of the joys that go along with white hair and hemorrhoids, and I'd known Mary-Jo through work for more than a few years. She was cute in a thirty-something kind of way, but the work had taken a heavy toll on her -- yet. She'd filled-out a little too much over the last few years, yet she wasn't what I'd call fat, either. She was like everyone I'd ever met on the M.E.'s staff: puffy dark circles under her dulled eyes, cigarette ashes on her blouse, and of course, the requisite weird sense of humor. Working around dead people does that to you, I guess. Even so, working around victims of violent crime sucks the humanity from the marrow of your bones -- and living that life soon leaves people like her pale and dried up. Having worked homicide for fourteen years, that's a statement I feel I can make with some authority. You get used to human degradation, to the meanness that lurks our there, waiting, yet even so there are things waiting for you out there you never get used to. Not and still consider yourself human, anyway.

These cheap apartment buildings are all the same. Grimy, rickety old elevators spit us out into a dingy, dimly lit hallway, and why the hell are the ceilings so goddamn low in these shit-holes? Virgil's "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here" should be carved in stone over the entries to these hovels, because it's my guess that's exactly what happens to the poor souls living in them. And man, did I feel it just then, looking down that empty, piss-soaked hall to the open door at the end. The walls even smelled like this was a place broken people came to die, to give up and drop dead on the floor, even if it took them years to get around to doing it. This was a world of frayed carpets and peeling, cracked linoleum, of bare light-bulbs hanging from broken fixtures -- like the necks of old men after that last trip up the stairway to heaven, into the hangman's waiting embrace. If I had to write building code violations for a living, I could have turned this place into a career.

Still, the essential truth of places like this is simple: nobody cares whether you live or die. All you need to do is make rent and everyone will just leave you the fuck alone. That's just the way it is when you live in the shadows: life is all the shit that rolls down on your head -- then you die.

Up on that third floor it was the same story: dim grunge everywhere I looked, haunted eyes looking through cracked doors, maybe a little curiosity -- but a whole lot of indifference too -- mixed with a little fear of the unknown, and the known. Just ahead, right down there in the gloom, I could see the door to Apartment 321 standing wide open, and I saw the indirect light of a camera flash strobe off an unseen wall -- so someone from forensics was already up here photographing the scene. A patrolman stood outside the door, looking bored, of course, and because, I guess, some things never change. A couple of nervous neighbors had gathered in the gloom across the hall and were hopping around like birds in a broken cage, but there was no place to fly now, and they knew it. Life had them trapped now, and held them fast to their despair.

I walked past a couple patrolmen on my way into the room and -- stopped dead in my tracks.

The first victim was a middle-aged man and what I saw was a shattered wreck; the sight of so much blood still gets to me. The young M.E.'s assistant walked-in -- but he turned away a little too late. I watched him stagger back from the sight, watched as he flashed hash by the doorway, and within seconds the poor guy fled to the safety of the elevator, retching as he stumbled away.

"Fuck a duck," Mary Jo said quietly as she came in the room.

"I don't think so, Ma'am," I said in my best Joe Friday. "No duck did this."

The guy was sprawled out on the living room floor, and the worn green carpet under him had been unable to absorb all the blood. Now vast pools of the stuff had coagulated under his head and torso. His throat had been cut and he'd been stabbed in the chest and belly too many times to count, and for good measure his penis had been cut off and stuffed in his mouth.

"Jealous wife?" Mary-Jo said as she bent down beside the guy.

"Or boyfriend," one of the techs from forensics said.

I bent down to have a closer look, saw something odd under the blood on the guy's belly.

"Somebody get me some gloves, and a wad of four-by-fours. Maybe some saline, too."

A paramedic brought me a wad of gauze pads and a one liter bottle; I gloved-up, popped the cap and poured a little saline on the guy's belly, just below the sternum, then I wiped away the coagulated -- and just had to shake my head at what I found.

Letters, carved in his flesh.

"What does it say?" Mary-Jo asked, looking over my shoulder.

"Love me," I said absently. Whoever had killed the guy had taken something really sharp and carved the two words into his flesh, even taken time to underline them with a nice, bold slash.

"Well, sometimes love hurts, I guess," Mary-Jo chuckled.

See, I told you working around dead people sucks.

Mary-Jo had her tackle box open and was taking samples from under his fingernails a minute later -- when I saw something in his hair.

"Better take a look here," I said, pointing at his scalp.

She came up, her gloved fingers sifting through the victim's hair: "Semen?" she thought out loud.

"Well, I sure ain't gonna smell it. Tell you what? Why not take a sample and do some of that science shit, maybe tell me just what the fuck it is? Okay? Maybe even whose it is?"

She chuckled: "Maybe he shot his load all the way up here..."

I rolled my eyes: "Mary-Jo? You need to get your fat ass laid. And bad, too."

"You volunteering, Woody?" she said as she removed some of the stuff with a sterile swab. She held it up and looked at the gunk with a UV light, then put it in a vial, before turning around and saying: "Cause, ya know, I swallow..."

I had to get away from her then. Even the dude from forensics stepped back and looked at her all wide-eyed, like she was some real crazy shit. Me? I didn't know quite what to say. Neither did the tech. Mary-Jo just laughed and laughed, before she looked at me and licked her lips, letting her tongue linger like a writhing phallus.

+++++

But the guy in the living room wasn't the only victim.

I moved to the bedroom, started poking around, trying to come to terms with one more senseless crime scene, but this one just didn't fit with what had gone down in other room. There was another middle aged white guy on the floor, but this one had a single entry wound in the middle of his forehead, his brains splattered on the wall behind, forming one vector. And he'd been shot at close range, very close -- almost execution style. I could see powder marks by the entry wound, and the entire back of his skull was simply gone. Vaporized. And there wasn't another mark on him that I could see.

And then there was the kid on the bed. And the camcorder on the tripod, aimed at the kid.

He was asian, maybe ten years old. Maybe. And the kid was dressed up like a girl. Stockings, high heels, makeup...the whole ten yards. Wrists and ankles tied to the four corners of the bed. Sex toys everywhere.

So, someone had been filming this scene. Maybe the guy on the floor with the headache? If so, who was fucking the kid...assuming that's what was being filmed.

I walked back to the living room. "Has this place been searched?" I asked the patrolmen standing at the door.

"Not really, sir. We came in, saw this shit on the floor and called it in, stepped out here."

I drew my pistol and wheeled around, walked quietly to the bathroom. The door was by the bed's headboard, and it was closed.

I tried the knob.

Locked.

I heard a patrolman come up behind me, turned, saw his gun out -- and I motioned him to take one side of the door, then stood back and kicked the door in.

The little room was basically all white tile, but the room as red now. It looked like a slaughterhouse, too, after a busy day.

White guy, twenties, was my first best guess, but his head had been cut off, and neatly, too. Like in one blow. His body was hanging from the shower head by the wrist, his gut had been sliced open from sternum to groin and his intestines had simply spilled out on the floor. His head was in the sink, the stump of a penis stuffed in his mouth.

"What the fuck is that?" I heard Mary Jo ask, and she in the doorway now, pointing at the bottom of the bathtub.

A white fabric shower curtain, blood soaked. Several light blue towels, ditto. And a foot. A woman's foot. I pulled the stuff back, saw a woman, handcuffed, and terrified. Very much alive, and out of her mind as pure terror filled her waking mind.

"Paramedics," I screamed at the patrolman. "Now, you fucking moron!"

I was furious. Not only had the idiot failed to search the place, there was a victim in need of serious medical attention just laying here, and for how long?

I heard paramedics running down the hallway, then turning into the room. I listened to their "Oh, Gods!" and "No fucking ways!" as they were led to the bathroom, and when the stepped inside it was like someone hit a switch. One of them retched, then made it to in the toilet and flashed hash, the other ran to the kitchen and let go in the sink there.

Let me tell you something...when paramedics can't stand a crime scene, you know it's bad. This was the worst I'd ever run across, and it was getting more so by the minute.

We got the woman out of the bathtub and I took off her handcuffs, put them in an evidence bag and sealed it, but then I looked at them, saw an FBI identifier stamped in the metal and shook my head, really confused now. The medics guided her through the slaughterhouse, and a few minutes later I heard the ambulance below, leaving with sirens on, but I was still caught up in the mess in the bathroom.

Caught up?

Well, yeah. Crime scenes like this one are usually loaded with symbols. Actions are metaphors. One kind of knife wound says anger, another type screams fear. Looking at a crime scene like this was like trying to read a book -- in a language you barely understand -- because each scene is created by a different writer. A monster with a language all his, or her, own.

The dicks, all savagely cut off and stuffed in mouths? Anger. Sexual anger. Or reprisal? A woman's sexual anger, or revenge? This was patient and methodical, not to mention seriously messy work, and it would take someone with a fair amount of intestinal fortitude to carry it out. And strength, too.

Or, more than one?

But everything was carried out with knives, except for the guy on the floor with the headache. FBI handcuffs? Where the fuck did those come from?

Turn around, walk back to the main entry, walk through the apartment again, play it back in my mind like a video recording of the event. Look at the guy on the floor with 'love me' carved on his gut. Clean cut, no beard, physically fit.

"Law enforcement?" I whispered. "FBI?"

Had he come in -- but why? -- and found this going down? Taken out the guy working the video camera? Had he interrupted the people in the bathroom? What happened then?

Too many questions.

The answers would be in the crime scene, but then I thought about the camera, and the kid.

A pedophile, making a film?

I shook my head, knew I couldn't put off getting my hands dirty any longer, yet I didn't know where to start.

I remember thinking you have to start at the beginning, and the beginning was the kid. Asian. Woman in the bathtub was too. Who the fuck was she? A hooker? The kid's mother?

Pulled out my notepad, started writing down ideas, theories, impressions. Leading the photographer around, take this picture, no, from this angle, over here, that smudge on the wall, that one too, lift the kid up, see the semen running out his ass, get that too...

When you do this for a living you get into the zone, you move like a robot, analyze this, bag that, get the ME to take samples of x, and y, and z. It's bursts of movement, interludes of pure thought leading to another burst, another insight, and on and on and on. Hours of it.

Ligature marks on the wrists and ankles on the man in the living room, and a few deep, small cuts inside his thighs -- like the victim had been tortured before he was killed -- yet the things I'd seen so far just weren't adding up to a routine murder. All the evidence was contradictory. Tied-up but no signs of a struggle? So had been some element consensual behavior? That was nonsensical. And if that was the case, then everything I was looking at had to have been some kind of pre-arranged encounter. A paid encounter -- with some really weird ideas about foreplay? Or...some kind of set-up? Lure the cop here, let him...? What?

Like I said.

Nonsensical.

Because all the evidence -- out here, anyway -- said most of his wounds had been the result of an aggressive -- and hardly consensual -- assault.

Before things went way south anyway, so the guy probably didn't really know his assailant all that well.

But what if he had?

Then he didn't know the perp well enough to have trusted her (or yeah, him) with his life. Probably, but then again, what if he had? But then, there was the explosive nature of the wounds on his torso, the penis stuffed in his mouth, the carved words on the gut -- Love Me! -- and all that added up to evidence of pure rage. The murderer, or even murderers, were uncontrolled or consumed with blinding rage at this point, either wild with rage or completely off-the-wall in some sort of frenzied lust.

Then there were the basic assumptions. Was the 'perp' a woman? What about motives? Envy? Jealousy? I went back, looked at the kid again. Still, without more to go on, I was grabbing at straws now, because without evidence, real evidence or witness statements, the scene was loaded with conjecture. What about the woman? Had she seen anything? Heard anything? What was her relationship to the scene?

"Yo! Woody!" Mary-Jo called out from the living room. "Better come take a look at this."

What else was I missing? I looked at the bed again before I turned to the other room.

"What you got?" She was bent over the guy now, her assistant holding his legs up, shining her UV light up his ass.

"Semen. All over the external anus."

"Swell." So there was another angle to consider.

"We'll have to wait until autopsy," she said as I bent over to take a look, "to sample what's inside."

"Peachy. Can't wait to read the results."

"Woody? You ain't going all soft on us down there, are you?"

The woman was merciless, just annoying, and merciless. Hell, it would probably be a month before my poor dick would get up again after seeing that smile -- while shining her light up that guy's ass. "You know, M-J, if I have to listen to anymore of your shit I'm going to go somewhere and join an order. Maybe the Benedictines."

"Yeah, sure thing Woody. You'll get all you want there."

"You're a twisted bitch, you know that, don't you?"

"Yeah, ain't it the truth? But I know you love me."