by Hadena James
The plane ride was uneventful. Alejandro was silent, brooding. He smelled of whiskey and coffee. Lucas looked bright eyed, busying himself in a book. Xavier went back to sleep the moment we boarded. Michael sat playing video games.
We landed about an hour later in a small airport just outside of Chicago, Illinois. Alejandro barked orders at the pilots as we exited the plane. Outside was a small army. I counted four local police cars and an SUV. We were herded into the SUV.
Alejandro and the driver of the SUV made small talk about the case, but nothing important seemed to be said. I didn’t tune them out, but I wasn’t sure how they could be talking so calmly. I felt like I was about to crawl out of my skin.
Lucas gave me a wink. I gave him the best smile I could manage. I was going to the first crime scene where I wasn’t involved. It was different to be sure.
The car stopped. The driver looked at me as we stepped out of the car.
“It’s not pleasant,” he said to Alejandro.
“She’s our torture expert.” He responded. The driver shrugged and we began trekking through the woods.
Light was beginning to brighten the sky, which seemed to make it darker on the ground. Even without their leaves, the trees cast extensive shadows on the undergrowth. Xavier walked right next to me, a flashlight on the ground. Silently I thanked him from keeping me from tripping over a stick and making myself look like an idiot.
We entered a clearing. There was a small, wood cabin that looked at least a hundred years old. Planks were missing out of it.
“Some bow hunters found it. They are at the hospital and can be interviewed there. Although, I think it might take a while before the sedatives wear off.” The driver said to us.
He opened the door. I was let into the cabin second. They had set up flood lights. It made the scene even more gruesome and surreal. There was nothing in the room that looked like a torture device. There were ten bodies though.
Each seemed twisted and broken. Several were in a fetal position. There was a bruise visible on one of them across the back. It seemed about two inches in width.
“Xavier?” I motioned him over.
“What?” He asked, kneeling down.
“I think it’s a Scavenger’s Daughter,” I pointed to the band. “But I won’t know for sure until the autopsies. I need a catalogue of every broken bone. If I’m right, there will be lots of them.”
Xavier picked up a hand. The arm flopped wrong as he did it. He dropped it.
“I’d say there’s at least four fractures to that arm,” he looked at me.
“What are you two whispering about?” Alejandro asked.
“I think I know what did this. It’s called a Scavenger’s Daughter. Basically, it’s a hoop. You put the victim inside and a screw on top allows the hoop to tighten. It was rarely fatal, but when it was, they died of either trauma to the spine or suffocation. Everywhere the band touches, it breaks. So victims have multiple fractures.”
“Why would a hoop cause multiple fractures?” Xavier asked.
“Oh, it isn’t a hoop like you are thinking. It’s like an upright hula hoop. The victim was forced to kneel in it; the bottom of the hoop would be just below the knees. The arms were tucked in at the sides. And the top of the hoop went over their backs. It was common to dislocate the knees, break the tibia and fibula, break the arms in multiple places and break the spine. In some cases, it would cause multiple spine fractures because once it broke a vertebra; the stress on the spine could be increased. The increased pressure caused more damage to the spine.”
“You said it was rarely fatal.” Alejandro pointed out.
“Rarely because it was torture and dead people don’t endure public humiliation. It wasn’t meant to kill people, just injure them severely and it was used in public. Most of the time, it was tightened just enough to keep the person from moving. It would break the arms or legs and be done. It also wasn’t a tool meant to be endured. Fifteen or twenty minutes, not longer. However, you tighten it enough and your knees are in your lungs, your bones are breaking and eventually you suffocate.”
“How long it took to suffocate would depend on the tightness of the hoop,” Xavier clarified.
“Here, look at this,” Michael had his laptop out. There was a picture on the screen.
“That’s the Scavenger’s Daughter,” I said, looking at the picture. “If I’m wrong, we’ll have to figure out what made that bruise. But based on it and the boneless flopping of the victim’s arm…”
“You got all that from a mark on the back and a broken arm?” The anonymous man sneered.
“Do you know the exact number of hours it requires before you can be considered an expert on any subject? 10,000 hours. That means that I have spent over 10,000 hours looking at torture devices and their aftermath. I have read medical reports, seen drawings and pictures and read accounts of things that you can’t even begin to imagine. So, yes, I can pretty accurately say that the device involved is a Scavenger’s Daughter. If I’m wrong, I have another theory or two, but they don’t work as neatly and means he is torturing them by hand as well.”
“What else could it have been?” Alejandro asked.
“A wheel possibly, but that wouldn’t account for the fetal position or their death and it isn’t exactly portable. And they should have other injuries, external injuries from fire or spikes. I don’t see that here. A rack might account for the broken bones or dislocations, but a rack is less fatal than a Scavenger’s Daughter. It can kill, but that’s pretty extreme and normally means that the limbs have become detached or the abdomen split open. Again though, a rack isn’t all that portable. A Hanging Coffin might do it, but that would be weird and there should be marks on the feet, the face, and scavengers should have attacked.”
“She lost me,” Michael said.
“Me too.” Alejandro looked at me for a second. “Is that your expert opinion?”
“Yes, my expert opinion is that while we could find other devices that would cause the mark on the back or the break on the arms, it is unlikely that they would cause both. A Scavenger’s Daughter would cause both and is very portable. If tight enough, I imagine he could have killed all ten of them in the space of two hours.”
“How does he subdue them all? Especially the tenth one who is watching the others die?” Alejandro asked.
“That I don’t know. That sounds like a medical and psychological question. Not a torture question.”
“Any ideas how he manages to impale ten women, draw and quarter ten other women, put ten women in Iron Maidens and then use this scavenger thing on ten more without them fighting back or retaliating?”
“Wait.” I frowned at him. “He used five Iron Maidens.”
“So?”
“So why didn’t I think of it before? Iron Maidens were thought to be a myth until the 1800’s when one was found in a castle in Germany. Since then we’ve found others, but they aren’t plentiful. You certainly can’t buy them from any place or steal five of them without it making international news. You’d have to have them made. Iron Maidens have very specific specifications. Most iron workers couldn’t do it. And with the spikes, that would be an odd order indeed. Someone had to make them. Someone who knows how to make them. I need to see the Iron Maidens.”
“What about the hoop thing?” Xavier asked.
“Would be fairly easy to make, except the precision device that tightens it. Another custom order from a blacksmith that has a clue about medieval blacksmithing. I imagine the killer didn’t do it, they were ordered. Specialty shops will make all sorts of things; some specialize in the darker side of life. The steel items probably have a maker’s mark. That kind of work, it would be a shame not to sign it.”
“We didn’t find a maker’s mark on the Iron Maidens.” Alejandro frowned at me.
“Then either you didn’t look in the right spot or our killer is a blacksmith, possibly in
his spare time and probably dealing with renaissance period items.”
“Huh?” The driver, who still hadn’t introduced himself to me said.
“You don’t create works of art like Iron Maidens and Scavenger’s Daughters without signing them. It would be like creating the Mona Lisa and not signing it. There is a renaissance subculture in the world, along with a vampire subculture and a werewolf subculture and who knows what else. These subcultures still collect and make things from their respective periods. I once met a man who had hand-carved a Torture Wheel. He did it to see if he could. He sold it for several hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Could he or the buyer be our killer?” Lucas asked.
“Seems unlikely. The carver was a woodcrafter, not a blacksmith. The buyer, maybe, but he bought it for a museum display piece. They were getting ready to open a medieval exhibit. It would seem weird for a museum curator to buy a Torture Wheel and then use other torture devices to kill.”
“Is the Scavenger’s Daughter in the book?” Lucas asked.
“Yes, but not with a picture plate. The Book of Torture covers almost 200 different methods of torture. There are only 11 plates in it. The Scavenger’s Daughter does not have a plate.”
“What’s on the plates?” Alejandro asked.
“Impaling, drawing and quartering, rats in a head box, a Skull Crusher, a Pear of Anguish, the Torture Wheel, the Breast Ripper, Iron Maidens, a Hanging Coffin with spikes, burning at the stake, and possibly the worst ever, a Yoke.”
“Like the thing they put on oxen?” Xavier asked.
“Sort of, same principle, but the Yoke had a blade in the back of the harness. It would slowly sever the head of the wearer.”
“Why not just take it off?” The driver asked.
“Who are you and why do you keep asking dumb questions?” I finally snapped.
“I’m Special Agent Gabriel Henders with the FBI and it isn’t dumb if I don’t know the answer.”
“You would have your hands bound behind your back when you were yoked or broken at the elbows. It weighed a little over 100 pounds. If you fell, there were safe-guards to keep it from slipping from your neck. Medieval torturers took their jobs very seriously. And to them, every device they built was a work of art.”
“Yeah, but didn’t most of that come from…”
“If you say Spanish Inquisition I am liable to leave the room. Torture was an art long before the Inquisition. It was an art long after the Inquisition.”
“I was going to say that,” I got my first smile from Agent Gabriel Henders.
“Torture has been around as long as human civilization.” I told him.
“And you can tell the method by the marks?”
“You can when you’ve seen as much of it as I have,” I answered.
“Cain, you’ve earned yourself a trip to the morgue with Reece. You can watch him do the autopsies and see if they match what you expect.” Alejandro said.
“Yes sir.” I looked at Xavier. He smiled back at me. It seemed wrong in a room full of death.
Chapter 16
