“I went along to help smooth things over with the nightclub owners, and to get them to call me directly instead of the station.
“Of course, I still had my doubts, but I was willing to go along with it just the once. Nothing I’d done up until then had worked.
“As it turned out, one of the club owners called me that night and reported a patron going crazy. For some reason, the perpetrator was unable to leave through the exit, and had started to lash out at the other club goers.
“When I got there with Father Webber, the perp had already killed half a dozen patrons and two of the bouncers, and was fending off three others—and these were large guys.
“I’ve never seen anything like it outside of movie special effects. The kid moved fast. No one could touch him, but every time he struck out, he connected. And his eyes…” The detective let out a sharp breath. “They were so full of rage. Pure hate. It was as if he were hungry for death.”
His words reminded me of the look on Lawrence’s face when he was trying to kill us.
Hollingsworth ran a hand over his scratchy beard and fell silent, as if lost in his own memory.
He didn’t speak again until I prompted him. “Was it the guy? The Casanova Killer?”
He nodded. “Father Webber and his priests surrounded him and told me to stand back.”
“What did they do?”
“All I knew about exorcisms was what I saw in movies. This kid, though…”
Taking a deep breath, the detective finished his story. “None of the bouncers could even slow down the killer, but whatever kind of prayer Father Webber recited stopped him dead in his tracks. The killer reacted as if he were being splashed with battery acid. The screams were … the only way I can describe it is ‘ungodly’. It went on for two or three minutes, but it felt like two or three hours.”
The detective looked directly at me, as if to ensure I was paying attention.
“No one laid a hand on this kid, but once the ritual was over, it looked as if he’d been through a meat grinder.”
He shook his head as if he disbelieved his own memories.
“By the time the father was done with the prayer, the killer had no fight left in him. A couple of the priest’s helpers bound him with some kind of contraption. When the young man started to recover from the ordeal, he couldn’t get out of the binding, no matter how much he struggled and cursed. They poured something down his throat—holy water or something—and then it was over.”
“So it worked,” I said. “The demon was exorcised.”
“No.” The detective’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. “The father said exorcism wasn’t possible with this type of possession. The spirit would just jump to someone else. If we wanted to end the killings, he said he would need to keep the host in custody.”
“What would he want with someone who was possessed?” I asked, aware that I was enthralled by the story despite myself.
“I don’t know, but I wasn’t about to trust anyone with the fate of a serial killer. The victim’s families wanted blood, our superiors wanted an arrest, and the newspapers wanted to tell the story. The city wanted justice.
“Father Webber warned me that without constant vigilance of the type only he could provide, the evil inside the young man would eventually get out. As long as the human form, the vessel, continued to be incarcerated in one of our prisons, all was fine. If he should die, however, the evil presence within him would move to another host, and the cycle would begin again. He asked me to be patient for a little while longer. The least I could do was look at his facility, listen to his story, and judge for myself.”
“And you did,” I said, guessing.
“I did, and what I saw was chilling…” Detective Hollingsworth’s words faded off.
“So you bought into this story of Father Webber’s,” I said. “You let him take custody of a serial killer, and now you’re, what, working for him?”
“No, not working for him,” Detective Hollingsworth said. “I keep an eye out for the signs of others like the Casanova Killer.”
“And you think that’s what happened with my father? That Lawrence was possessed and killed him?”
“I didn’t think that right away,” the detective said, “but once I saw the second body, and how it bore the same markings as we found on your father’s face and neck, I contacted Father Webber. He confirmed that it was the work of one of the Watchers.”
“Watchers?”
“That’s what he calls fallen angels.”
I wasn’t religious, and though I’d heard the term several times in my life—through books and movies—I realized I really knew nothing about fallen angels.
“We’re here,” Hollingsworth said, interrupting my thoughts.
I looked out the window and was surprised to see where we were. I knew the place. I’d been there a few times before.
It was Tim and Phil Bellows’ house.
Chapter Nine
“Here?” I asked. “Who was murdered?”
“It seems someone finished the job he started with Tim. Soon after Phil Bellows brought his son home, someone broke into their house and killed them.”
Hollingsworth parked the car at the curb and disentangled himself from his seatbelt.
I paled. Tim was dead? “What happened?”
The detective cracked his door open but didn’t get out right away.
“The reports are still coming in, but from what we can piece together, the unknown assailant may have followed the ambulance that took you and Tim to the hospital. A janitor, who was on a break, said he saw a suspicious individual pacing in the shadows just outside the emergency doors. When he called for one of the security officers to come and investigate, the suspect ran off. It’s possible he saw Phil and Tim leave the hospital, and may have followed them home.”
“Lawrence,” I said.
The detective nodded and got out of the car, and I followed a moment later.
Together, we walked up the driveway.
“Why do you think he followed Tim?” I asked.
“I was hoping you might answer that question.”
“Me?”
“He obviously wanted something from him. Whatever it was, it was enough to murder him.”
I didn’t want to answer him. Even after what the detective had told me, my suspicion sounded crazy. Instead, I asked, “How would I know what Lawrence wants? As far as I can tell, he’s another psychopath.”
“Like the Casanova Killer?” the detective asked. “But he wasn’t just an ordinary psycho. There was much more to it. I saw it with my own eyes.”
I still didn’t want to voice my thoughts.
Before we got to the front door, the detective grabbed my arm to stop me from going into the house. “What was this experiment your father was performing?”
I took a deep breath and decided to tell him what I knew. “He developed a compound called ‘OrganKnit’.”
“What does it do?”
“One of the dangers of organ transplant is rejection. With this compound, my father was trying to get around the entire transplantation process by causing the organ to regenerate itself at an accelerated pace.”
The detective gave me an incredulous look, and I gave out a short laugh, understanding his doubt.
“All the organs in our body have the ability to regenerate. Cut yourself, and in a couple of weeks, your skin will repair itself, and look like new. The problem is, for major organs, it takes far too long to heal, so long as the organ isn’t too damaged, that is. In most cases, by the time an organ has repaired itself, there’s too much ancillary damage, and the body fails. According to my father, OrganKnit utilizes stem cells to initiate rapid regrowth.”
“Still sounds like something out of a science fiction movie.” The detective narrowed one eye at me. “So what went wrong?”
“I’m not certain. My father only brought me on board a few days ago, and I haven’t had time to run through all the research.”
“If you had to guess…?”
I sighed. “The independent computer simulations I ran failed. My father didn’t give me all the variables; I’m sure of it. He held something back. Without knowing more details, I couldn’t even begin to guess.”
“Why do you think Lawrence had such a strong reaction to the compound?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe there was an unknown factor in his blood chemistry; maybe the compound wasn’t complete in some way.” I remembered how crazy Lawrence had become. “Whatever it was, it definitely triggered some primal emotions.”
The detective said, “Maybe this Lawrence character thought there was an antidote, or a way to reverse the effects. Perhaps he killed Tim when he didn’t get what he was looking for.”
“If you let me look through my father’s research, I might be able to figure it out.” I gave him a sharp look. “Whatever it was, there’s a rational, scientific explanation. I can assure you, there’s nothing supernatural about it.”
Nodding, Detective Hollingsworth opened the front door. “I’d like you to see what Lawrence did, and then you can tell me there’s a rational, scientific explanation for it.”
* * *
The front area of the house was packed with cops, both those in uniforms and those in suits. Forensic technicians were going over the walls and furniture, dusting for prints, looking for trace evidence, and cataloging everything in the event the case went to trial.
I recognized Detective Gary Vanderburgh. He turned around when Detective Hollingsworth and I entered.
“Hello, Frank,” he said, taking a few steps toward us. “What’s he doing here?” He gave me an appraising look.
Hollingsworth said, “He’s a physician, and he’s familiar with the medical aspects of the case.”
“Well,” Vanderburgh said. “I hope he can shed some light on what happened here.”
Gesturing for me to follow, Hollingsworth walked toward the kitchen area. There, I saw scuff marks on the linoleum. At the back of the room, the main door was wide open, and there was a large, foot-sized hole near the bottom of it. The screen door lay on the deck, as if having been ripped off its hinges.
“The perpetrator entered there,” Hollingsworth said to me. “We figured Phil Bellows was letting his dog out, when he must have noticed someone in the back yard. He managed to run inside the house and lock the door, but the assailant kicked it in and attacked him.”
I peered into the backyard and saw a blood stain on the cement walkway near the deck stairs. “The dog…?”
“He didn’t make it,” Vanderburgh said, and I looked at him, waiting for more details, but he pressed his lips together grimly.
Hollingsworth headed back to the main room and picked up the story again.
“The perp dragged Phil Bellows’ body through the kitchen and out here,” he said, “then headed straight upstairs.”
I could see more scuff marks on the main foyer floor and the stair steps.
“We’ve been looking for trace, but it seems he didn’t go into any of the other rooms on this floor.” He exchanged a glance with Vanderburgh. “It’s possible he correctly guessed where Tim was from the bedroom lights. We assume Phil Bellows was unconscious or dead at the time.”
Just as Hollingsworth started up the stairs, I asked, “What about Mrs. Bellows?” I had never met the woman, but I’d seen her in the company of her husband at a few of the conferences I’d attended in the past.
“She was visiting her sister in Milwaukee. We left word there. She’s on her way back.”
We ascended the stairs, and Hollingsworth turned left, stopping only when he reached a bedroom door. An officer with a ‘Chicago Police Forensic Services’ badge on his jacket stood outside the door, a troubled look on his face.
Before opening the door, Hollingsworth turned to me.
“I didn’t bring you here on a lark, Kyle. I sincerely hope you can tell us what happened, but I have to warn you,” he said, sharing an uneasy look with Vanderburgh, “it’s very unsettling.”
I thought he was going to say something about how disturbing or gruesome the crime scene was, which I was more than prepared for. As a doctor, I’d seen my fair share of blood and death.
Though he’d warned me, the state of the room was more bizarre than I could have imagined.
Upon entering, the first thing I noticed was the smell of decaying flesh, as if the dead bodies had been there for several weeks. My eyes watered as I held the back of my hand to my nose to block the stench.
I couldn’t help but notice the room was in complete disarray. All the furniture—the bed, the nightstand, the dresser—was in pieces. The floor, walls, and ceiling looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to them. The bedroom window was smashed.
An instant later, however, my focus was ripped away from the physical state of the room by what I saw spread out on the floor.
At first, I thought the entire area had been taken over with rampant growth of vegetation or fungus. White and flecked like the skin of wild mushrooms, long, ridged tubes of the substance ran along the length of the floor like roots of a tree. Vine-like, the tubes converged in the center of the room, focused on the two dead bodies.
Tim Bellows and his father, I guessed. I couldn’t distinguish one from the other, however, since their heads were completely covered by the white roots.
I couldn’t process what I was seeing. It was like something out of a macabre nightmare.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice coming out nasal as I tried not to breathe through my nose.
“You tell us,” Vanderburgh said, and knelt beside one of the branches closest to the door.
I sank to one knee and examined the tendril closer. It was only then that I realized it was human dermis.
“Skin!”
Looking up sharply at the bodies, I said, “It’s their skin.” The tendrils had come from them, growing out of the exposed flesh of their faces and necks. I suddenly remembered what I thought were flesh-colored worms coming out of my father’s neck.
The forensic technician, who had followed us in, said, “I came to the same conclusion.”
“It’s still growing,” I said. Was this what had happened to my father after he died? Was it still happening?
“I can only guess, but I think there’s some kind of mutation happening,” the technician said. “There’s no trace of bacteria. It doesn’t look like it’s contagious or anything, like flesh-eating disease. Actually, this is kind of the opposite effect: flesh-growing disease. Whatever’s happening, it’s on a cellular level.”
“This is so creepy,” Vanderburgh said, earning him a reproving glance from Hollingsworth.
The forensic technician said, “I’ve taken a few samples and sent them to our lab for analysis. I recommended they overnight some of it to the CDC just to be on the safe side.”
Hollingsworth said to me, “Can you tell us how this happened?”
I couldn’t imagine how this could be. I shook my head.
The detective asked, “Is it possible this compound, OrganKnit, caused their skin to regenerate like this? Maybe some of it was transferred by Lawrence.”
My mind spun, trying to extrapolate what little information I had on the compound.
“Yes, it might be possible,” I said finally. “But the skin cells couldn’t replicate without an energy source.” Carefully, I stepped closer to the nearest body. Was this Tim, or his father? “The bodies look emaciated. The compound could have used their existing healthy cells to fuel the regeneration.”
Hollingsworth asked, “So, essentially, their bodies consumed themselves to make the extra skin.”
“Yes.” I looked up at him. “But neither Tim nor his father received any OrganKnit injections.”
“Would Lawrence have had access to the compound?” Vanderburgh asked.
Shaking my head, I stood up. “No. He ran out of the lab before I did. The fire had spread throughout the room by the time I got Tim a
nd my father into the hall. Whatever compound was left in the lab would have been destroyed.”
Vanderburgh said, “I’m not a scientist, so I might just be way off base with this. Is it possible, once injected, Lawrence’s body is now producing more of this compound?”
I nodded. “But why?” I asked aloud, but the question was directed at myself.
I knelt again, looking at one of the dermal tendrils closely, being careful not to touch it. Though it made me gag, I sniffed. Trying to keep my gorge down, I straightened and nodded.
“What is it?” Hollingsworth asked.
“The smell is coming from the skin growth.”
Vanderburgh made a face, as if to say that was an obvious conclusion.
“It should take days for human organs to decay this fast, not hours,” I said.
“And what does that mean?”
“It’s possible the OrganKnit formula was flawed. While it did seem to produce results right away, I think the regrowth might not be sustainable over the long term.”
Clearing his throat, the younger detective prompted, “And…?”
I stepped away from the bodies and back to the door. “Lawrence had most of the flesh of one arm and the side of his face burned in a fire. The OrganKnit started to regenerate a small section of the skin. Now that a part of him has healed, his body is screaming for more. The problem is, the only fuel it has is from his other, healthy cells. Basically, his body would kill itself in an attempt to heal the damaged skin. Now, if he used healthy cells from another body, he could regenerate without destroying himself.”
“So why pick Tim and his father?” Hollingsworth asked. “Why not just grab the nearest available person?”
“It’s possible he already did,” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
I pointed to Tim and his father’s bodies. “It follows that the healing effect only lasts for a short while. Just because you eat now, it doesn’t mean you won’t be hungry later.”
The younger detective frowned. “Hungry…?”
The Complete Book Of Fallen Angels Page 46
