Eyes that do not Open

by Claudio Hernández

  “Well, it didn’t look like it when you tried to open their eyes even knowing where they were,” Andrew said with a serious and hoarse voice.

  “That’s something else. I didn’t see them there. It was this man who informed me and doesn’t have a vague idea about that.” He pointed at Herbert who had put on some glasses like the ones you snorkel with. He was wearing a big smile with a white glare under the fluorescent light.

  “Ok, let’s stop the chit chatting and start with this autopsy. If you start to get dizzy Mr. Sheriff, there’s a sink for you to vomit in, over there.” Herbert pointed at the white door as bright as the fluorescent tubes, but nearby was a stretcher with a corpse with its arm coming out of the sheets and a purple finger pointing to the floor.

  Landon, with his hat down to his eyebrows and his Sherriff badge hanging off the side of his shirt in need of a stitch, looked at him with his wrinkled face.

  “This sucks,” Landon said very pissed off.

  “I’m sorry, but the bodies are stacking up. You know, the death rate here in Augusta has considerably risen. The number of drug addicts has increased and sometimes, they overdose.” Hebert Smith pointed with his eyes towards the many stretchers and let loose a smirk. His eyes were almost invisible behind the goggles. “Being this the main forensic office in Maine, you can imagine we are in demand here.”

  Sheriff Landon nodded his head. The smell of formaldehyde was making him dizzy, but he refrained from showing it on his face. It was his own secret but not for long.

  Andrew, on the other hand, could see how bad Landon was feeling by the look in his eyes. His sunglasses were gone and so was his toothpick.

  “You may proceed when you are ready,” Andrew said with a subtle voice. Raising his hand in that dense damp and sticky air in that huge room. “Do you always work on your own?”

  Herbert smiled.

  “No. It’s almost two in the morning and the shift starts at eight thirty. And sometimes much later on while the bodies stack up like sacks of potatoes.”

  ‘What an explanation’ Andrew thought.

  “Oh, okay.” Andrew rose his hand in silence again after hearing Landon moan. The three were looking at each other’s face like little kids, not knowing what to do.

  The coroner finally gazed at the sheet covering Hannah, who by now was as stiff as a board. He extended his right arm and grabbed the sheet to show the face of the victim. Hannah still had makeup on. Her eyes were closed but you could tell her skin started to show a blue complexion.

  Landon opened his eyes wider.

  Andrew swallowed some thick saliva and saw her again. Not Hannah, but another woman. The woman on the picture after Hannah. He didn’t remember her name and not because he had forgotten it but because of the anxiety that came up from within. It was like a projection of slides on a dark wall. He began to question himself on if he had crossed out Hannah’s picture, he couldn’t remember. It was absurd to think about that. He knew it. Those damn images. Always the same every time. Something so repetitive that made him sick, always the same M.O. Andrew started to hate himself. It was like a fucking nightmare like the ones you never wake up from, while you’re sweating, grabbing your bed sheets with your fists clenched and eyes shut. Luckily, these images didn’t produce a headache. Luckily they didn’t. But he knew was what was coming next. The car and all that information consumed his brain like the crack of a whip. After sixty-three years he started to feel like he wasn’t ready. It was if he had changed his way of thinking. Instead of being used to his gifts, he felt tired and disgusted. He couldn’t find a clue. He could only find out what would happen or where were the fucking victims’ cars that would always appear on the day of their death. It was chaotic, repetitive and absurd. Now he was in front of the autopsy and prayed to see with clarity. The killer was very elusive and even though he always left a message by his actions, for the life of him he couldn’t figure him out. Now he was seeing a fourth victim and Hannah’s face. He hated this situation so much!

  It was like as if on repeat waiting for the next move.

  Hebert began to speak while his white fingers softly touched Hannah’s face as if she could feel his touch. His right thumb pressed harder her right eyelid to open it. Somehow, he knew what was going to happen.

  “I think I’ll get the same I got with the other two women.” He said with a calm but serious voice.

  Landon arched his eyebrow as if arching his back. This produced many wrinkles on his forehead. His hat seemed to move, though unperceptively.

  Landon couldn’t say anything, but he was thinking it: The eye socket would be empty.

  Andrew was having an uncomfortable feeling in his head. Another face. Another pair of closed eyes. Another eyeliner. The moonlight caressing a sleeping face, tightly-closed lips, but almost as if they were smiling, as if she were peacefully sleeping and would wake up at any moment, but she wouldn’t. Not the woman he was seeing in the back of his mind. His mind was filled with despair and horrible thoughts when it came to his gift. Would it ever end? Would he have to do this till the end? Was it a good idea to tell Grayson or Landon? ‘You’re insane, man’, a laughing voice said. Andrew felt sweat on his forehead. He took out a handkerchief from his trench coat and dried his face like a sponge sucking up water. Like a slug.

  Landon was starting to get nervous and the smell of formaldehyde wasn’t helping much. Herbert, with his little evil grin, tried to open up the eyelid again. This time with more strength. You could hear the sound of flesh and something that sounded like a champagne bottle opening, well, maybe not exactly like that but he was able to open it up more.

  The eye socket was empty, dark even under the fluorescent lights, even though there was a tad of something left. It was like a transparent liquid with coagulated blood. Herbert put his nose closer to the eye socket almost touching it and aspired it deeply. Landon turned his head, he didn’t want them to see the expression on his lips. Andrew was still sweating looking at other eyes, but he spoke:

  “I think it’s what we were expecting. Apparently, he wants to send us a message.” Andrew put his hands in his pockets.

  “Or maybe it’s just the mind of a lunatic,” Landon said as he turned around. “I think the killer is out of his mind.”

  “Not everyone with mental illnesses is dangerous,” Andrew added.

  “But most of them are. Aren’t you seeing this with your own eyes? Serial killers are pathological.” Landon raised his voice like a wolf howling on a hill with snow.

  “Now, the best is yet to come,” Herbert said calmly. He knew what he was going to find. He knew it from the very first moment, and he didn’t need a special gift for that, he had experience from other autopsies.

  “I already know that,” Landon said taken his hand to his mouth partially cover it.

  “By the way...” Andrew interrupted looking at Herbert’s eyes. “Why did you stick your nose in that poor woman’s eye socket?”

  “To confirm what I was expecting,” Herbert explained.

  “And what have you confirmed?”

  “Perfume. The perfume he puts in their eye sockets. Can’t you smell it?”

  Andrew frowned.

  “With this disgusting smell, it’s hard to smell anything,” Andrew said while his eyes wandered around the room looking for piled up gurneys in the autopsy room. They were dismal

  Herbert smiled slightly.

  “Well, you get used to all this.”

  “And to that smell of alcohol and God knows what else!” Landon said without taking his hand from his mouth. His words muffled as if he had been talking inside an empty tube or an empty can.

  “A good deal of that is formol,” Herbert said.

  “Also called formaldehyde,” Andrew added while looking at Landon with his small eyes.

  “How interesting!” Landon said ironically. “So why did we come here? To make a mockery out of this?”

  “You could also smell the odor of stool. Most of the times, when a person
kicks the bucket, feces just fall from the anus.” Herbert explained with a vague smile.

  “Don’t you wash the bodies?”

  “That’s after the autopsy,” Landon answered. Herbert stepped away from the cold and shiny operating table, and his fingers grabbed a scalpel from a tray that was next to him. The sound of metal was as the one of a broken crystal.

  Andrew closed his lips like a zipper and his eyes were fixed on Hannah’s face that seemed paler with every second under the makeup. He could see it, though.

  “Is this a serious investigation?” Andrew grumbled. “I’m so anxious to find a damn clue just as much as you and we are acting like this a child’s game.”

  Landon pointed at Herbert.

  Everything was very confusing

  Ridiculous.

  “I’ll forget this chatter and I’ll keep going with the autopsy,” Herbert explained while the scalpel was near Hannah’s neck, where a tracheotomy would be performed

  When the scalpel dug softly into Hannah’s white neck, a line of dark blood sprung up, going down from her neck onto the metallic table. In an instant, Andrew, while getting new information, felt again a sharp headache that he managed to disguise.

  The Ford Mustang was abandoned in Long Sands. He already knew that but now he perceived some new information. It was music, loud music. He didn’t recognize it at first, but then he did. It was ‘In the Army Now’ from Status Quo.

  The lyrics followed the most popular chorus from the eighties. The Ford Mustang’s battery was running out and the headlights were fading as the four intermittent were on. Sweeping the darkness that followed the dawn, a neighbor stuck out his head through the window and let loose some expletives with his fist high in the air.

  That was all he could see and then he wondered:

  Why the hell did he always act the same way? Why the cars? What sense did it make? Would he tell Landon? He remembered that he had already said it and he almost got really angry. And he laughed in his face.

  A Police car with all its lights on reflecting strange forms on the sides of the buildings and on the asphalt stopped next to the Ford Mustang. The stubborn blue oscillating light drew blue shadows on the orange colored Ford, making it look like a carousel or a pub full of cheap sluts during rush hour. One of the doors suddenly opened and one of the agents with a dark blue short-sleeved shirt came out.

  That was all he could see this time.

  His remote vision had worked again, but he was tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. Andrew grunted inside, while Hannah’s neck was split open like a canal and in her wide-open larynx there were those green eyes that must have been very beautiful back in the day.

  Now they looked horrible and Landon looked away.

  The clock on the wall struck three in the morning.

  “I expected that,” Herbert said. “Do you know why does the killer always pus the victim’s eyes down their throats?”

  It was as if he was asking to the wall.

  79

  A pair of clean hands softly dropped on the fresh grass the warm body of a woman with blue hair. It was somewhere near Castle Hill Paint Lake’s shore, the second largest lake in town, a lake with a strange name that everyone knew no one had bothered to name nicer.

  A few moments later, the soft morning breeze blew some petals that rained over that poor woman’s naked body. She was face up with her eyes closed, perfectly made up with makeup with her arms relaxed on the floor as if she was really relaxed, you could actually say that it was the fourth victim of this sick bastard that had perfected his actions.

  An hour later, Bob Henderson, also known as Sponge Bob because of his ability to suck up, instead of drinking, Scottish whiskey until he was drunk as a skunk, tripped over the woman’s body. He was waking up from drunkenness, which had led him there during the night.

  The lake was about 5 miles away from Castle Lake Hill, and the woman was Emily Butler and was by his drenched feet.

  80

  The paper bags were used for the hands and perineum, so as not to lose any trace of DNA. There was a chance of finding something underneath the nails that could show if she had tried to defend herself or not before dying. As for the perineum region, they would look for saliva or semen which would indicate rape.

  Herbert did the autopsy almost towards the end. The first thing that should’ve been done was an eye screening, but this smart ass already knew what he would find by doing that, that’s why he discarded that possibility. However, he would now have to follow the common autopsy protocol.

  Landon was with a closed fist covering his mouth looking upon Hannah’s naked body evading contact with the eyes that had been placed on a metallic container on the shiny steel table by the gurney. Andrew, with his hands behind his back, as if he were grabbing his kidneys, looked at Herbert’s hands grabbing each tool he needed for the autopsy. Nothing made him sick, he was just looking for clues. Any clue, well, there were actually two clear clues; the blue hair and the thing with the eyes, but he wanted to know more.

  “Generally, I don’t start this way, but I’ll explain every step of the process,” Herbert said with a stupid grin on his face. “Now, I’ll start by the head that we all know as the cranium, then I’ll proceed with the thoracoabdominal, looking for internal lesions and hematomas, next, I’ll remove the skull cap to examine the brain. This means I will break the skull in half. When I’m done with that, I’ll examine everything internally, commonly known as a visceral pool that will later help with the toxicology and pathological anatomy examination to verify if there are any injuries or diseases.” Herbert elaborated on that last phrase. “The pool shows samples of each organ. This will show if the victim had alcohol or drugs in the system. I’ll also take a blood sample, to analyze the toxicology and immunohematology. I shall also take a urine sample from the bladder. Then I shall take a sample from the vitreous humor and also from the gastric region. The vitreous humor will be able to provide the time of the death of the victim and will show if drugs were used or other abnormalities in the organism as I stated before. After that, I’ll take her fingerprints and put them into the AFIS the system, this means, the system used to identify people by their fingerprints. This system contains all the fingerprints stored on several databases. It will help me identify the person. Once I’m done with this whole process, I’ll close up the body and I’ll clean it up so she’s ready to be handed over to her family.” After he was done, even Herbert himself was surprised at all the information that had sprung like mental diarrhea.

  Landon’s cheeks were like two balloons and, inside his mouth, something extremely acid had regurgitated. He felt dizzy. Speaking with clenched teeth to avoid vomiting, he blurted something out:

  “I’m going to th...row up.”

  “There’s the bathroom.” Herbert pointed with an ugly smile in his pale white face.

  Andrew made a gesture with his mouth. His forehead wrinkled like a bed sheet and he took his hands out of his pockets.

  “The thing that I enjoyed the most was that you said you’ll analyze the fingerprints to find out who it is and when spoke about the time of death. Do you actually think we are that stupid? It’s Hannah Ackerman! She disappeared four years ago, and her rigor mortis shows she’s been dead for only a couple of hours.” Andrew’s mouth was filled with saliva and he was spitting it out as if snowballs which almost landed on the victim’s breasts. He was silent for a bit with his finger in the air and added: “Now you’ll probably say that my DNA is on that... poor body.”

  Landon didn’t get to open the bathroom door and he spewed out brown and thick liquids. His face was pale, and he felt as if his toes and feet were asleep. He felt like he had no air, his chest felt heavy.

  “That’s disgusting,” Herbert said smirking. Yet, there was no response to Andrew’s questions.

  Andrew pressed his lips as if they were zipped up and just to screw a tad more with Landon, he said:

  “The Ford Mustang of this poor sou
l is at Long Sands, and the music is full blast. A neighbor called the police and found her ID. The car was left there a few hours ago. They told me this over the phone while my fat ass was driving here.”

  Landon lifted his head while his body was hunched over and with a thick slime that came from his lips, like that of a rabid dog, he said:

  “Again with those stupid comments?” His eyes were turning white like a sedated nutjob, or maybe, one ready to act out. He looked evil and the saliva coming from his mouth got stuck to the ground. “Nobody told me anything, believe me. Why would they tell you first?”

  Herbert was looking at them with uneasy eyes.

  Andrew went back to Hannah's body while he looked upon her with new images in the back of his mind. She looked as if she were sleeping, with her eyes closed. He still didn’t recognize her. And that was very strange. His nerves got the best of him. It wasn’t something from the future, if not the present and he felt tense thinking about that. Was he going to tell Landon about this? Hannah’s breasts were turning purple and stiff like two apples. His head had been rambling between her breasts and the image of the new face that calmly received the first rays of the sun. He saw a man trembling like a leaf in a storm. His eyes looked like those of a frog. So, after an endless lapse of time and with Herbert’s eyes waiting in his sockets while staring at both of them, Andrew seemed to come back to his senses and turned to Landon who was still holding on to his stomach.

  “I don’t know Landon. You know, I’ve been part of the police station for a long time and maybe they found my phone number. Actually, you shouldn’t worry because I’m pretty sure your men already know. Look at the positive side, we have another lead. Even if it a tad off, we still have something else to look at, well, I mean something to investigate. It would be a good idea if we concentrate on this. It’s vital to discover any trace that’s not mixed up with that bastard Parker.” He stopped for a moment to pick up that crap that made the air stink in the autopsy room and as if he had enough air in his lungs, he added: “I say strange things sometimes but it’s only because this case has me intrigued and the details distract me. Don’t you think the same?”