Angel of Death

by J. Robert King

  “Well,” Elwood said, blushing just slightly along his clean-shaven jaw, “even a dog knows not to shit where it lives. I guess he’s no more canny than a dog.”

  Leland blinked, amused. It had been a long time since a man had felt uncomfortable in her presence, desiring to please. She rather liked the feeling. “I think you’re right. We’re dealing with a stray who instinctively trots off into the sticks to do his business. I’d guess he doesn’t even drive himself.”

  Elwood’s amazement was plain on his face. “Someone else drives him? And doesn’t ask why he’s all bloody?”

  “He wasn’t bloody – he put on a coat before he left. I’m guessing the sleeves and body of the coat were long enough to cover bloody hands and clothes. He walked out of here carrying a black plastic bag, got on a bus or train, and rode home.”

  “Leave the driving to us,” said Elwood grimly.

  “Even when the dogs get here, I bet they’ll lead to a bus or train station,” Elwood said. “Damn it. This train stop’s a main feed into Chicago. He could have gone anywhere.”

  “What about the ticket office?” asked Leland.

  “Wouldn’t he have to buy a ticket?”

  “You buy them on board,” said Elwood. “Hundreds of people every day buy them on board, unless they have a weekly or monthly pass.”

  Leland took a deep breath. She glanced around at the church, wondering how long it had been since she’d stepped into one.

  “Keep your boys busy. Get samples of everything he came in contact with. Check both sets of fingerprints against Father Mike’s personal possessions, and eliminate the priests’ prints. I’m going to take what we know and punch it into the Criminal Information Bureau and NCIC. I’ll bet we’re seeing just the tip of this iceberg.”

  At last, Detective Leland was back behind her desk, hiding behind a redoubt of paperwork. John McHenry had liked being the man in the field and had often saddled Leland with the desk duties. She’d resented it then, but tonight – tonight, the benign stacks of forms were welcomed. None of them bled. None of them committed heinous acts. They lived in a flat and quiet world and feared nothing.

  If I’m going to feel so lonely, this is the place to feel it.

  The phone rang. Leland jumped. She grabbed the receiver and said, “Leland.”

  “Detective? This is Elwood, from the Woodstock PD.”

  “Hi, Detective. What’s up?”

  “Just got the prints back from the doorknob. Something strange. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “What is it?”

  “The prints are the priest’s.”

  “What?”

  “They match prints we pulled off stuff in his room –

  private stuff. Even the communion cup.”

  Leland sat, breathing quietly. “He used the priest’s hands to open the door?”

  “Just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thanks, Detective.” Leland hung up the phone and stared into space for a while. “Got to keep going, or I’ll never get home tonight.” Leland pulled her keyboard toward her and tapped into the Wisconsin Crime Information Bureau. She entered the vital characteristics of the crime scenes: decapitation and manual amputation, high risk male victims, gun use, necrophilia, male Converse basketball shoe prints at size ten, crimes crossing jurisdictions, use of public transportation. She punched in the data and pressed Enter.

  As the computer grunted quietly within its casing, Leland doubtfully scanned the list she’d made. This offender was disorganized, psychotic. That was also comforting. To know this person was sick made his actions somewhat less horrifying. She understood mental illness, knew it was a thing of brain chemistry, not a matter of demons and monsters. This guy needed a doctor, not an exorcist. But if he’s psychotic, why’s he so tough to track down? In most cases psychotics were easier to find than psychopaths, more likely to do something obvious or stupid. But not here. Whenever the killer required a particularly subtle act – like riding the train or bus to and from the crime scenes, committing murders in different county and state jurisdictions, taking off his coat before killing and then putting it on again, cutting off hands and head to prevent victim identification and ballistics match-ups, carrying the dismembered parts in a bag beneath his coat – he was suddenly capable of doing it. Jeffrey Dahmer exhibited similar presence of mind when it was needed, and thus avoided detection. It was as though the guardian angels of these killers were especially adept at protecting them.

  A slow scroll of matching cases began to slide up the screen, listing first the murder of editor Jules Koenig, and then the homicide of butcher Lynn Blautsmeyer in Bohner’s Lake, five years back. Leland watched intently, scanning the case information for new clues. Koenig’s case was too fresh in her mind to provide new insights, but Blautsmeyer’s…

  Leland’s eyelids drooped with fatigue as she recalled that scene.

  The sign read “Blautsmeyer’s Homemade Sausage” and pictured a wiener dog snapping at the last frankfurter in a chain of them. It had always seemed to Leland that the dog was part of the string of sausage. That image was enough to drive some customers away, and Lynn Herman Blautsmeyer’s missing index finger brought even more jokes – speculations of accidental cannibalism in Bohner’s Lake. Lynn was missing more than a finger, now. The young investigator drew a handkerchief from her pocket and opened the blood-stained glass door. Within, yellowed tiles and walls were stained with blood. Even to eyes unfamiliar with homicide scenes, the stains formed a portrait of the murder.

  “Mother of God.” Leland positioned the cloth over her face.

  In front of one old-style deli display, blood pooled in the shape and color of a liver. That’s where the killing occurred – a quick slash to the neck while victim and killer stood face to face. The two concavities on the upper edge of the puddle were from the toes of Lynn’s shoes. He’d stood just there. The blood had been a gushing spray. The killer had held the man up for some moments before pushing him over. Lynn fell back and cracked his skull where the larger pool was. The killer knelt beside him, knee prints in the blood, and used the cleaver he’d snatched from the butcher to hack off the man’s head and hands.

  This was messy work. The killer had left fingerprints all over the body and clothes as he performed his inexpert butchery. He had done a ragged job of it, as if he had not known how difficult it would be. This might have been his first kill.

  Once done, the killer went behind the counter and experimented with the shrink wrapper. Tangles of redspotted plastic wrap showed various trials with the machine. Once he had learned what he was doing, he apparently wrapped the hands and head and stowed them in an Igloo cooler that Mrs Blautsmeyer had reported missing. A very clear handprint hung like a sunburst on the tile wall above where the cooler had been.

  As for the body, a wide red path wound like the yellow brick road back behind the counter to the meat locker. There, the butcher at last was hooked and hung among his stock. By the time Blautsmeyer’s wife discovered the scene, the blood beneath her husband had thickened to a syrupy brown.

  The killer had dipped his left index finger – the prints were positively confirmed from three other locations –

  in the blood and written on the parchment-pale chest of the corpse, “Samael 5:2:356.”

  Leland blinked away the scene. The only Wisconsin crimes that matched the priest’s murder were the two she had already been involved with.

  Strange that I’ve worked both cases. I was only an assistant investigator five years ago. It’s like the killer has me targeted.

  She shook away that idea. The long hours and gruesome scenes, the memories of poor Kerry and his homemade noose, the death of her partner – all of it was tumbling around in her head. Chronic loneliness had deepened to bona fide isolation. Perhaps she would go to Lakeland Animal Shelter to see if they had any calico kittens, but it would only be cruel to leave a kitten alone for so many hours a day. Besides, in the midst of all this welling inhumanity, she needed
human contact. How late is Fred’s Burgers open? She checked her watch. Not tonight. Tonight, she’d hit the NCIC and get to bed.

  Sighing, Leland switched to the National Crime Information Center computer network and began typing in information. While she did so, she thought back to that most puzzling clue: Samael 5:2:356. Debate about the other clues had quickly been replaced by speculation about that one bit of writing in blood. What was it? A Bible verse? A date? A license plate? A verse of poetry?

  The Bible verse seemed most promising. Though there was not a book of Samael, there were a pair of books of Samuel. The first book of Samuel, chapter 5, had no verse 356, but one young patrolman, formerly a seminarian, calculated on a long night shift that, starting with Samuel 5:2, the first 356 words read thus:

  When the Philistines stole the ark of God, they hid it in the temple of their god Dagon, and set it by the idol of Dagon. Early next morning, the men of the house of Ashdod rose to find that Dagon had fallen upon his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord. And they righted Dagon and set him in his place again. Next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stumps were left on the idol. Therefore unto this day, neither the priests of Dagon nor his worshipers tread on the threshold of the temple of Dagon in Ashdod. The hand of the Lord was heavy on Ashdod, and he annihilated them and plagued them with genital boils. When the men of Ashdod saw these terrible things, they said, “Let us take the ark of the God of Israel away from us: for his hand is hard upon us and upon our god Dagon.”

  The men of Ashdod called together the Philistine lords and said to them, “Where shall we hide the ark of the God of Israel?” And the lords answered, “Carry the ark of the God of Israel to Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel to that place.

  But when it arrived, the hand of the Lord struck the city of Gath with a terrible annihilation: and he struck the men of the city, both poor and rich, with boils in their private parts.

  The people of Gath sent the ark of God to Ekron. But when the ark of God arrived in Ekron, the Ekronites cried out, “They have brought the ark of the God of Israel to slay us!”

  So all the Philistine lords met again and said, “Send the ark of the God of Israel away, back to its own place so that it will not kill us or our people: for there was a terrible annihilation all through the city; God’s hand was very heavy on them.

  The fact that the false god Dagon’s hands and head were missing was taken as an ominous sign. So, too, was the mention of tumors in the groin, which some interpreted as a reference to sexual perversion. A columnist of the Burlington Gazette irresponsibly speculated that the killer considered himself to be the ark of God, righteous and powerful but captive to the Philistines – corrupt society at large. As long as he felt trapped in this hostile world, the reporter said, the man would kill again and again, and be the Death that brought panic to the city. God’s hand was heavy upon him.

  The young patrolman who had discovered these things had collaborated with the columnist and was suspended for it. He took the suspension as a sign, quit his field training, and went back to seminary. Leland’s remembrances were interrupted by a beep, and by a listing of violent crimes in the three-state area of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Bleary-eyed, Leland scrolled through the accounts. Some involved decapitation, others amputation, and still others necrophilia, gun use…

  She began to read the individual entries but glanced up at the list tally – the screen showed only five of four hundred eighty-two entries. She requested a crossindex of amputation and decapitation, and sat back as the computer began its contented grunting. The piggish sound reminded Leland of another speculation about Samael 5:2:356. One officer, speaking facetiously, said that since the corpse had been hung up among the pork carcasses, 5:2:356 must be a reference to the act, scene, and verse in Hamlet: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” A fitting enough verse, except that the butcher had been no prince, and the killer no singing angel.

  Dead ends everywhere.

  The cross-check came in, narrowing the field to two hundred thirty-one cases. Though the name “Samael“

  had not been found on either the priest or the newspaperman, Leland’s recollections had piqued her curiosity. On a whim, she typed in a check for the name Samael. She leaned back and took a sip of coffee. Officer Greenberg had said Samael was the name for the Jewish Angel of Death.

  “Mother of God.”

  The screen blinked, producing a list of eighty-eight murders in the tri-state area, each of which included decapitations, manual amputation, and, somehow, the name Samael.

  Angel of Death.

  FIVE

  At last, Keith McFarland is slated to die. The death will come in a month, so I have plenty of time for orchestration. I want his end to be bloody, slow, and somewhat perverse. Already, I have many ideas, most shaped by the fact that the detective assigned to his case, a Detective Leland, is scheduled to die the same day. I might as well let them kill each other. Before that sweet moment, though, I have a very difficult case before me. A newlywed couple. Many cultures believe that angels of death seek to steal virgins on their wedding day. Actually, we do. A rose is best snipped before it opens. Also, deaths become tricky around any rite of passage. A death date scheduled for a virgin adolescent will be inappropriate for a sexually active adult. Once a rite of passage is completed, the person is new, and a whole new death date must be arranged.

  There are various traditions meant to prevent virgin abductions. One is the white wedding runner, which can supposedly stop an angel of death from reaching up through the floor to snatch a bride on her way to the altar. Oddly, virgin grooms are not similarly guarded. Another is the Jewish tradition of breaking the wine glass, a symbol of the broken hymen. It is thought that this symbolic consummation will fool angels into giving up. If such preventions are unsuccessful, grooms must ready an arsenal of tricks and wards for battling angels throughout the wedding night. They will appear in various hostile guises – drunk drivers, fires, jealous boyfriends, muggers, poisonous snakes, and so forth – until consummation is achieved. Some noble grooms lay down their lives to protect their brides, all the while unaware that it is their own virgin soul the angel has come to collect. Today, though, I must collect them both. The couple is driving through Chicago, en route from Waukesha, Wisconsin, to Kissimmee, Florida. It is the morning after their all-night wedding party, and they plan to drive to Louisville for their first day and on to Kissimmee afterward.

  They will not reach Indiana.

  It will be a car accident. That much is simple on the Dan Ryan Freeway. Husband and wife both, at intervals, break into tears at how beautiful their wedding has been. That fact will make the moment’s inattention even easier to arrange. The difficulty is organizing a suitable end for such promising young lovers. He drives. The roads are dry and cold this January. The shoulders hold filthy snow. The sky is white like paper.

  His brown hair is combed back long, like a prophet’s, and his beard is coarse and reddish. His blond mustache disappears against lightly freckled skin. From a distance, he looks Amish, or Lincolnesque. He does not disapprove of either impression. He talks. He talks and talks, in a fluid, self-impressed bliss of hopes. The breath pulsing in and out of him fans the eager flames in his eyes. He pauses now for a comment from his bride, but when she does not immediately volunteer, he turns up the CD player and points at intervals toward it, as though a guitar solo could be seen as well as heard.

  Sighing at the sublimities of feedback, he clutches the wheel in large, strong hands. Since puberty, those hands had moved with the rhythm of mantis claws. It makes sense. He has spent much of his adolescence in trees.

  A bit of egg and Canadian bacon is perched on a groin fold of his thin canvas pants. Ratty deck shoes leap from gas to brake to gas again in the graceless dance of young nerve on the Dan R
yan. Despite an athletic build and a freckled tan from life guarding, he is no true athlete. His disabling fear of competition extends even to card games and attempts to drive through Chicago. His bride sits beside him, glowing in their first morning together. Her oval face and bright hazel eyes are intense. She listens, mostly because she loves him, but also because she has nothing to say about the bizarre flurry of fancies he spins out. This particular eruption will be spent as quickly as all the rest. She waits, patient and powerful. A force of nature, the bride is both fragile and indomitable.

  Her shoulders shiver beneath her coat. Long-nailed fingers flick the heat control to the foot well symbol. Those actions are enough to draw the man’s attention. He looks suddenly concerned – no, worried – and reaches out one of his mantis hands to fumble inexpertly with the temperature controls. She stretches and yawns. His attention drifts from levers and knobs to her figure. The drifting asteroid has been snagged by the grand silence of a spinning world, and he curves inward, willingly and eternally captured by her. Oh, how deeply they will be mourned – twin roses plucked just as they begin to open. If this were the sixties, there would be a folk song. Now is the moment. They both must die, and I know how it will happen.

  He glimpses me. I stand in the salty freeway lane before him – the slow lane, in which they are overtaking a semi that rumbles along in the center lane. He can see me for but a moment. If I were real, my pierced feet would even now be striking the undercarriage as my shins break upon the bumper and my loincloth is sucked from my shattering pelvis into the front grill. Bleeding hands would strike the fiberglass fenders as my pierced side slides in its own blood and water to send my thorn-crowned head through the windshield to slay him. But I am not real. He swerves, too late, loses control on a sheet of black ice, spins once completely and strikes a cement piling of an overpass.