by Alton Gansky
“Flogging, like Rolf Brady—the guy beaten with the wood dowels?”
“No. Worse.” Ellis raised his head. “Flogging was done with a Roman flagellum, sometimes called a cat-o-nine tails. It’s a whip with several strands attached to a wood handle. The strands were weighted on the ends with small, lead weights and bits of metal and glass. It was designed to remove the skin from a man’s back. There are historical accounts of the victim being beaten so badly that bits of bone could be seen. Many prisoners died from the beating.” He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. If only he could slip back to his tiny boat and never leave. “And that’s not the worst.”
“What could be worse than that?” Carmen’s voice was hushed.
“Your man is planning to crucify someone. I can’t even describe how horrible that will be. It’s beyond imagination.” Ellis jerked to his feet and swayed. He looked at Carmen. “The correct door is just a little farther along the hall?”
“Yes. Heywood can go with you—”
Ellis raised a hand and belched. “No, I prefer to do this alone . . .”
He ran from the room.
31
The problem with having voices in your head is the inability to be alone, to have a thought, an urge, a home, a dream that isn’t known to the invaders. Sometimes they complimented him, but more often they mocked him, discouraged him, even threatened him, twisting his emotions, analyzing every thought.
Then there were the images: grotesque figures. One was the shape of a beautiful woman in a flowing, white wedding dress, moving as if floating an inch above the ground, closer, closer, nearer still until he could gaze beyond the veil at her faceless features.
Others were dark, insectlike. At times he would wake in the night and see them scampering on the ceiling like cockroaches, falling on the bed next to him—falling on him, scrambling, clambering, scrabbling over his petrified body.
Still others hovered just outside his peripheral vision. He would detect the motion of something black-red approaching, but it never arrived.
The sensations bothered him most. The caress of an invisible finger on his ear, its skin like sandpaper; the feeling of hot breath on his neck, and when he would turn he’d find nothing but empty space.
Space. It was one thing the voices did for him. They knew he had a breaking point. He was never afraid. He was incapable of it. Nor could he feel regret. Physically, he was better than any man he had ever met—powerful, agile, dense, tall, broad, with the build of the largest heavyweight boxers—but he had been short-changed in the emotion department. He had never known love. His parents didn’t use the word and didn’t express kindness. Certainly not when they would lock him in the bathroom for a week at a time. No food, only water from the sink to drink, only the tile floor or bathtub for a bed.
He was small then. When his father abandoned them and his mother died of a drug overdose a week later, he was handed off to a string of foster homes. Two were abusive, one kind, the last three didn’t care what he did as long as they received their money from the state.
Pain, he knew. He had felt it; he had delivered it. There was joy in both. He remembered his first school fight. A kid two years older, a sixth grader, and his pals had snatched him after school. They called him names. They stripped him naked, then laughed. Then the large boy punched him in the stomach. He expected excruciating pain. Instead, he felt—joy. Another punch confirmed it. This was new. As a younger child, the beatings his father delivered hurt and left marks. Now . . . it was different.
Then he found an even greater joy.
He clenched his fist and let it fly, catching the other boy on the side of his head. The kid went down, his head bouncing off the pavement in the alley where they had dragged him. He turned to the kids. They fled.
Calmly he dressed himself, smoothed his clothing, gathered his school books, then stepped to the unconscious twelve-year-old. He raised a foot and brought it down on the boy’s abdomen. Even unconscious, the boy moaned.
That felt pretty good, too.
This led to his first stint in a reform school.
Work. Work. Work.
There was no sense in arguing with the voices. They had been with him continually for the last year and he had come to know their habits. They would repeat the word until he complied, or make it so he couldn’t eat or drink.
“I’m going. I’m going.”
The small office of the abandoned warehouse had become his home. His place of work was the empty expanse of the storage area. He walked through the space, his boots echoing off the concrete floor and hard walls. Today’s task was easy:
Mount the large Douglas-fir crossbeam to the upright member of the twelve-foot-high cross in the making.
Ellis Poe didn’t know whether to feel good or bad. He had gone to the police station to confess what he knew about Shelly’s murder, to admit that he was a coward, to apologize, and then take whatever came next, even if that meant arrest. It had taken him all night and most of the day to conjure up the courage to make the trip and to ask to speak to Carmen.
He didn’t know if he could do it again.
He steered his car north toward his Escondido home. Traffic was coagulating along the Interstates, something he expected. It didn’t matter. His class for tomorrow was ready, requiring only a little review. He’d pick up fast food, go home, eat, read, and hopefully sleep.
He did have one odd sensation. Earlier, while on his boat, he had tried to pray, but God seemed so distant. He thought he’d feel the same way after failing in his confessional mission. Instead, there was a warmth in him. He could imagine Jesus sitting in the passenger’s seat. Maybe he had done some good today. That would be nice. He desperately needed to feel that he had done something useful.
Just once in his life he would like to feel valuable instead of cowardly.
The slow traffic gave him time to think. Normally a good thing, but his mind kept running to the sickening wall of murder Carmen had erected. He was certain of his interpretation.
Interpretation.
That was his skill, his superpower. To understand the teaching of the Bible, the reader had to understand the context. When was it written? By whom? Under what circumstance? To whom was the author writing? What did the writer want to achieve? Hermeneutics was not the same as criminal investigation, but there were points of commonality. All events happen in context.
What was the killer’s context?
As usual, Ellis steered into the far right lane to take his time. Let the other drivers race home. He had nothing to race to. Once settled into the flow of traffic, he returned to his thinking.
Context. Why kill people to replicate the passion of Christ? And to do it so brutally? Was it a hatred for Christians? Did the killer have an axe to grind with God? Maybe he was trying to hurt God by killing Christians and Jews.
No, that couldn’t be it. Carmen had revealed more of the details. Only two were Christians, and one—Wilton—didn’t fit the killer’s pattern at all. Only one victim, as far as the police knew, was Jewish, although two of the crimes were somehow tied to a Jewish home. Sometimes scholars worked on instinct, and his instinct was telling him he had gone off-course. If every victim had been an active Christian, then the supposition might make sense. The same was true if each victim were Jewish. Neither was the case.
Clearly, the killer had some biblical understanding. At the very least he knew a little about the physical abuse Jesus suffered at the hands of his accusers and the Romans. Maybe he knew more than Ellis supposed. Maybe Ellis hadn’t looked deep enough. For example, the man tied to the tree with the purple fabric. Was the killer thinking of Paul’s letter to the Galatians? He paraphrased the verse aloud: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”
Maybe. He couldn’t be sure. Who could guess what a crazy man was thinking? The best thing
to do was to let it go. Let the police handle everything. It was their job. They had been trained for such work. Just forget it.
If only he could.
Carmen brought Hector up to speed on their meeting with Ellis Poe. They sat in the case room.
“Wait a minute. He ran into the women’s restroom.” Hector laughed. “That’s a good one.”
“Funny as it is, Hector, you’re missing the point. He’s on to something. At first, I thought he’d rounded the bend or was something of a holy roller out to save all our souls, but his logic is unassailable. It seems obvious now. Maybe if I were a churchgoer, I’d have picked up on it myself, but I wasn’t even close.”
“None of us were close, but let’s be honest, Carmen. What good does it do us? So what? Maybe the killer has a biblical bent, but how does that help us catch him?”
“I don’t know. I suppose we can canvass all the churches in the city—”
“Do you know how many churches that is? Hundreds. Maybe a few thousand. He may be doing this because he hates churches. If so, he won’t be attending one.”
Carmen had to acknowledge the wisdom in the comment.
“Did your guy have any ideas about when all this might stop?” Hector leaned back in his chair. He looked worn to the bone. The case was taking a toll on her team. On her.
“He thinks there will be a least one more murder, maybe two or three, depending on how the guy breaks down the Passion of Christ. He thinks the next one will be a guy wearing a crown of thorns with the flesh whipped from his back.”
“Ouch. Where does one get a crown of thorns these days?”
“I don’t know, but remember, much of this is symbolic. Mulvaney was strapped to a tree with purple cloth. Poe tells us that the purple mentioned in the New Testament would probably have been a robe Jesus’ tormentors threw over him, not strips of cloth.”
“I guess.”
“You look bad, Hector.”
“Thanks, Boss. I love you, too.”
Carmen chuckled. “You know what I mean. I’m beat. When we find this guy, I may just shoot him over all the sleep I’ve lost.”
“I’ll cover for you.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Ready for the preliminary ME report?”
“Sure. Can’t wait.”
“Max Mulvaney died of strangulation. Had been dead for three hours when he was discovered. He showed bruising from a beating, and there were also two puncture marks indicating a Taser-like weapon was used. The ME thinks he was beaten unconscious after that. I checked DMV, and Mulvaney drove an old GMC pickup. I’ve put out a BOLO for the vehicle. I got his address, and I’m heading there as soon as we’re done. For all I know, the car is there. Or it could be in a ditch.” He stood.
“I’ll go with you. I’ve had it with this place.” Carmen rose and stretched her back.
“I appreciate the company.” He studied the floor for a moment. “I’ve seen horrible things, Carmen. That includes stuff I saw in the military that I can’t talk about. But this stuff? It’s making me sick. I may have laughed at your professor buddy, but there are moments I feel like tossing my cookies, too.” He paused and lowered his head. “Sorry. I’m feeling sorry for myself.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me, Hector. I’ve been thinking about selling flowers on the street corner.”
He snickered. “I know what you mean. There are days when I think those guys really have it going on.”
She put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “We’ll get ’im, Hector. You, me, Bud, Joe, the cap—we’ll get him. One way or the other.”
“I hope you’re right.”
So do I, buddy. So do I. They walked from the room.
32
Mulvaney’s apartment building was a dump, a one-bedroom on the second floor of an apartment building on Del Monte Street in Ocean Beach. The apartment building looked a century old, but Carmen was sure it had only been around since the ’40s or ’50s. The building was small, with stucco walls that someone thought would be improved with lime-green paint. The windows, double-hung affairs that dated the building, were trimmed in an off-white that could do with a good sanding and fresh gallon of paint.
Carmen and Hector identified themselves to the landlord, informed him he was now shy one tenant, and asked to be let into Mulvaney’s apartment. The manager was an old surfer with long, stringy, sun-bleached hair. His skin was dry, with traces of salt. Carmen guessed the man had been surfing a short time ago.
Old surfers never die; they just wash out to sea.
“Dead? Really? Murdered? Whoa, dude.” The guy was well past his fiftieth birthday, but he spoke like an eighteen-year-old from the seventies. “Bummer.”
A part—a large part—of Carmen wanted to search the man’s apartment for drugs. The air was perfumed with the stench of marijuana. Nothing like a relaxing toke after a few hours in the Pacific. She took a couple of sniffs but said nothing.
“Um, yeah. Sure. His apartment. Glad to help. Just let me get the keys.”
“Leave the door open, please.” Carmen smiled. A simple message saying don’t bail out the back window. To the man’s credit, he returned in fifteen seconds, crossed the threshold, and closed the door behind him as if the damage hadn’t already been done.
Carmen had no desire to bust the man. She had bigger fish to fry. Surfer dude led them up the exterior stairs. The concrete treads and wood runners bounced with their steps. The stairwell held.
“What kind of tenant was Mr. Mulvaney?”
“Max? He was all right. Stayed to himself. Didn’t bother nobody. When he rented the place, he mentioned he had been in the military. I think the war affected him in the head, if you know what I mean.”
“Did he do any entertaining?” Hector walked directly behind the manager.
“Nah. Not him. I’d see him go to work and come home. Most nights he went fishing on the pier. Always went alone, came back late, then he’d start the whole thing over.”
“So you never saw anyone going to his apartment?” Hector pressed.
“You mean like . . .” He started to use a term then changed his mind midsentence. “You mean like, um, ladies of the evening?”
Hector’s voice took on a sharper tone. “I mean anyone.”
Surfer dude shook his head. “Like I said, I never saw anyone go to his place. No one complained about the guy. He was jus’ a lonely dude, doing his own thing.”
They walked down a porchlike walkway. Carmen had a question. “Did he pay his rent on time?”
“Oh, yeah. He was always good about that. Never late. Never had his utilities cut off. You know the utility companies inform us when they cut someone off. They must think we’ll cover for the tenant or somethin’.” He chuckled “Like that’s gonna happen.”
Mulvaney’s apartment was a street-side corner unit with a fine view of the apartment building directly across Del Monte. The manager started to insert the key into the lock.
“Hang on a sec.” Carmen pulled on a pair of latex gloves and twisted the doorknob. It turned easily. The door was unlocked. A closer look at the lock showed scratches around the key slot, perhaps the result of years of use or from being picked. She looked at Hector, who had already pushed the manager to the side. Carmen and Hector drew their weapons.
Carmen already had the doorknob in hand. She would be the one to open it. Hector stepped to her side. Carmen pushed the door open and Hector charged in. “Police!” Carmen followed so close she almost tripped over Hector’s trailing foot.
Hector veered to the right, Carmen to the left, their weapons extended before them. There were only two doors in the apartment, one slightly narrower than the other. The smaller had to be the bathroom; the wider, the bedroom. Hector positioned himself next to the bedroom door and opened it with a fluid motion, waited one second, then disappeared.
A second later, “Clear.”
Carmen moved to the bathroom door as Hector came to her side. She opened the door fast and hard, stepping into the small space. Empty. The shower curtain was drawn. She pushed it back but saw only brown stains on white fiberglass. “Clear.”
A voice from behind them. “Cool.”
Carmen turned to see Surfer dude smiling.
“Just like television.”
“I told you to stay outside,” Hector said.
“No way, dude. You told me to move out of the way. You didn’t say nuthin’ about staying outside.”
“Um, Hector . . .”
“I see it. I think we’re gonna need Field Services here.”
Carmen nodded. “You think?”
Hector moved closer. “Is that lipstick?”
Carmen had been paying attention to the message, not the medium.
She holstered her weapon, leaned forward, and fought the urge to use every swear word she knew.
THAT’S FOUR, CARMEN
They walked the manager from the apartment. Carmen knew her anger must show on her face—it radiated heat. After Hector jogged down the stairs, she spun on the manager. “I thought you said women didn’t come up here.”
The scraggly haired man’s face went white. “No, I didn’t. I said I never saw anyone come up here. At least that’s what I meant to say. I never saw the guy with a chick. Maybe he’s a cross-dresser or somethin’.”
This guy was a total waste of time. “Okay, sir. We have some work to do here. I want you to go back to your apartment. We may have more questions.”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say. Glad to help. Just ask—”
Carmen turned her back on the man and reentered the room just as Hector was coming up the stairs with a roll of crime-scene tape. While he taped off the second-story walkway leading to the apartment, Carmen took a slow look around the room. What was she missing?
The place was neat, orderly, but plain in every other way. No ornamentation. The kitchen counters were clean, no dishes in the sink. The only decorations on the walls were a triangular wooden frame holding a folded US flag and some medals.
