The Valentine Circle

by Reinaldo DelValle

  “Sawed?”

  “Correct. It seems there was a purpose for this gruesome display. Someone cut out a hole and put her in there. But why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a sign of disrespect.” Belloc checked his watch. “We don’t have much time left. Try to capture everything of the murder, as horrible as that may seem.”

  “I’ll try my best,” Silas said, kneeling down next to the body. “How long do you think she’s been dead?”

  “I don’t really know. I would say a few hours at least. We’ll know more once the doctor gets a look at her. He should’ve been here by now.”

  Posy came in, stopping midway and gasping for air. She had seen quite a few grisly scenes, but they never got old. She carried an oversized box and bag, struggling a bit to keep it off the floor.

  “What’s that?” Silas said.

  “A camera,” Posy said. “What else would it be?” She began to take it out and assemble it.

  “No cameras!” the father screamed from the hallway. All three of them turned to the father, not knowing what to say. “I’ve spoken to the commissioner about this. No cameras.”

  “The commissioner?” Silas said.

  “I see.” Belloc motioned for Posy to heed the father’s words. “Put it away.”

  “Are you serious? We need to photograph her before we move the body.”

  “Just do what I say. We’ll just have to do with what we find here.”

  “Don’t worry; I’ll just make a mental picture,” Silas added.

  “Oh, that’ll help us a lot,” Posy said. “What you need to do is write everything down. It’s the first thing you should do, always.” She took out a brand-new journal out of her pocket and lobbed it at Silas quite forcefully. “And here’s a pen.”

  “Thanks,” Silas said, grabbing the journal but disregarding it for the time being.

  “How did she die?” Posy said.

  “Well—”

  “She bled out,” Silas interrupted Belloc.

  “Pardon?”

  “She lost most of her blood,” Silas said. “Look at her face. I...know these types of faces, the ghostly ones whose torsos have been cut to shreds.” He gestured with his hand. “She’s pale as can be, more than usual for someone who’s deceased. Her cheeks droop, gauntly-like, and there’s a sad expression on her face.”

  “We need to move the body out of the hole. Silas? Posy? You two will have to do it, and do it speedily. We don’t know how much time we have at the scene.”

  Posy gave Silas a pair of gloves.

  “Let’s bring her out slowly,” Silas said, grabbing one arm while Posy grabbed the other.

  They pulled Catherine’s body out of the hole, and to Silas’s surprise, the lower half of her body was intact, not mutilated at all. Feeling something slippery run down his wrists, he noticed spotted streaks of blood dripping down his arm. “All this blood,” Silas said. “Tragic.”

  “Oh dear,” Belloc said as he stood up.

  “It can’t be,” Posy said.

  “She was with child,” Silas said, walking down to the girl’s legs, bending down.

  “Judging by the size of her belly, she was somewhere in the thirtieth week.” Belloc put on his working glasses. He took out a couple of tools and some gloves, inspecting her thoroughly. “Oh my. This is truly horrible.”

  “What is it?” Posy said.

  “Someone tried to perform a c-section on her.” Belloc moved his finger across her belly. “See the cut here, and then whoever did it tried to sew the incision back up, as if trying to heal her.”

  Posy crouched down next to Belloc. “And the baby?”

  Belloc took his stethoscope and placed it on the deceased girl’s belly. He listened for a heartbeat.

  Nothing.

  “The baby’s dead. It was murdered as well.” Belloc took his hand and slipped it inside the part of the stomach that hadn’t been stitched up yet, feeling for the baby’s body. “Good God. The baby’s head is crushed. Whoever crushed the baby’s head did it with no tools or anything, just used their bare hands and then left the baby in there, only to sew the mother back up.” Belloc looked around the body. “He must’ve used some type of drug to put her out while he performed the procedure, and see these puncture marks around her hip? That was for the numbing agent.”

  “What sort of monster could have done such a thing?” Posy said.

  “Are you saying the baby was murdered along with the mother?” Silas asked.

  “Well, no, not exactly. The baby was badly mutilated, but the mother wasn’t hurt at all. The killer even tried to sew her back up. Eventually, the child would’ve had to be taken out, but still, the mother would’ve been able to live. It’s like he was only after the child.”

  “Just doesn’t make any sense,” Posy said.

  “You’re saying then that the killer meant to murder the child but not the mother?” Silas said. “And that’s why he stitched her up?”

  “Possibly,” Belloc said, closing her legs together, snapping off his gloves and pulling the gown over her lower body.

  “But the mother is dead,” Posy said.

  “Quite right.”

  Silas suddenly remembered something, the blood he’d felt on his hands. He knelt down in front of Catherine and took one of her arms. “When we moved the body, there was a lot of blood dripping down her arm. I noticed my hands caught a little bit of her blood after gripping her wrists.” He turned her left arm to check her wrist, and just as he suspected, it had been cut. “She bled out through here.” He checked the other arm—the same. “The killer couldn’t have done this. He didn’t want her dead.”

  “She must have killed herself,” Posy said. “She couldn’t live with the fact that she’d just lost her baby.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Belloc added. “If she did kill herself, it was a tragic way to go. Nevertheless, this changes things. It’ll now be ruled as a suicide, if it is to be ruled at all. The family will see to that. More than likely, the knowledge of the murdered baby will be kept secret, and the murderer won’t be sought out. Damn it.”

  “Where’s the knife?” Silas said, interrupting. “What did she use? There’s no razor or anything sharp around.”

  “That’s a good question,” Belloc said.

  “The killer must have taken it,” Posy said.

  “But why would he do that?” Belloc stood up. “He would have left by the time Catherine killed herself. Maybe he watched her do it and then he took it? For a memento? A trophy?”

  “It was his,” Silas said with a dour face. “That’s why he didn’t finish stitching her up.”

  “Come again?” Posy said.

  “The weapon was his. He gave it to her. He let her use it.”

  “So there was mutual cooperation?” Belloc asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Hmm.” Belloc reached for his journal. “Write down everything you can. I fear there are more powerful forces looming over us, intent on keeping us away from the truth.”

  Posy started writing down everything she had discovered, even trying to sketch a crude version of the scene in front of her. She turned to Silas. “Aren’t you going to take notes? We don’t have much time.”

  “Notes? I don’t really think that’ll be necessary.” Belloc and Posy would once in a while peek up from their writing to notice Silas’s strange behavior, hoping he didn’t mean what he’d said.

  Silas walked the room. “There’s no trace of evidence anywhere, nothing crude and clumsy. Whoever did this was a professional, if not trained to be this precise, then disciplined from a lifetime of learning. An untraceable presence like this requires superior knowledge of dark things, things people loathe speaking about, but then again, nothing is truly untraceable.” He walked up to the window and opened it. It opens easy. “There’s lubricant on the window sill.”

  “Come again?” Belloc said.

  “The window’s lubricated, not only from the inside but the outside as well.”

  �
��That’s sort of odd, don’t you think?” Belloc said, keeping to his notes.

  Silas inspected the window thoroughly. “He applied the lubricant cleanly and quite precisely, not sloppily. He knew just the right amount to use. He’s used to opening windows this way.” His eyes opened wide. “He’s done this before, and he’s good at it.”

  “A thief?” Posy said.

  “Not sure.” Silas stuck his head out the window, searching the outer perimeter. He felt a cold breeze whizzing by him, ruffling up his uniform. “It’s windy out tonight, muffling natural sounds, good for moving about in the dark.” Hmm.

  He turned to the right and saw nothing but a patch of woods and trees shadowed by the silver eventide. Yet, when he turned left, he did see something. It was only for a moment, just when the moonlight had done a quick sweep of the roof some twenty yards away. It appeared to be a man squatting down on the roof, covered in shadow. But after a second, the man completely disappeared. It was so quick that Silas had to reason it to be some sort of whimsical illusion. He shook his head, thinking he had just lost his wits.

  “Everything okay?” Posy said.

  “Strange. I think I just saw a man on top of the roof, though seconds later he was gone, as if he were never there.”

  “Are you sure it was a man?” Belloc said, walking up to the window and peeking out.

  “It appeared so. But it was only for a second.”

  “I think the scene is getting to you,” Belloc said. “After all, you’re new to all of this.”

  “Perhaps,” Silas said as he kept staring out the window. Then, out of the blue, he spotted a large group of horses in the distance. Two large carriages were on their way to the mansion. “We have company.”

  “Who?” Belloc said.

  “Officers. Good. We could use some help gathering evidence.”

  “Oh, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen,” Belloc said. “They’re not here to help us. They’re here to clean the place, to wipe away the scene from existence. It’s how it is with wealthy families. I fear we only have but a few more seconds to investigate this room.”

  “But that’s not right.”

  “Get used to it,” Posy added. “There’s not much we can do about it. That’s how the commissioner wants it, especially with these families. Gather what you can here and then we can discuss our ideas once we’re gone.” Then Posy realized that Silas had failed to write anything down. “Did you take your notes? Silas, surely you can’t believe you can just do with a mental image? You’re not going to be of any help to us if you’re just going to stand there and not write anything down. We brought you here for a reason, for an extra pair of eyes. Don’t disappoint us and make us regret our invitation.”

  “She’s right, Silas,” Belloc acquiesced. “You’re here to help.”

  For a second, Silas was slightly miffed, but that feeling died quickly when he realized that they were right. He had no business being there except for their generous invitation to work on the task force.

  “I understand, Inspector. But if I’m going to be part of this task force, you’re going to have to learn to be patient with me. You have to learn to trust me. There are things that I’m discovering about myself that are unique and troublesome.” He walked towards him and placed his hand on Belloc’s shoulder, and keeping his eyes on Belloc, he spoke with authority, with a sense of discipline, “You see, I knew this scene the instant I came upon it. I’ve learned that whoever I was before, I was someone who was experienced in taking in their surroundings. I know how to burn these images into my mind. Apparently, I’m very good at it.

  “For the past week, I’ve been dreaming and having memories of the life I had in Japan, in a place where the days were serene and the nights were terror. I learned to adapt, to engrave the likeness of my surroundings into my brain, and I learned to do it at a moment’s notice. From my visions this past week, I’ve come to know that I’ve sat under trees and huts, under waterfalls and rain, beneath gray skies and torrential storms. I’ve slept next to booming fires and dripping mud. I’ve folded clothes in windstorms, I’ve learned to fall asleep inches away from the fury of wild dogs, and I’ve knelt in beds of rock scorching from the rays of the fiery sun, all of this in an attempt to be attuned to what surrounded me.

  “From the minute I stepped into this home, I knew the floors were made of fake marble, and the wood moldings were no less than an inch thick. I could tell that most of the decor was of Italian make, imported—the real stuff—not what’s sold in the uppity boutiques lining up the downtown streets. As I walked up the stairs, I understood the rug leading down the hallway to have been recently replaced, because of the coarseness of the threads, so tightly wound and plastered together. And there was a stain about the size of a silver dollar, a dollop of some unexplainable substance right outside the bedroom door. Before I stepped in, I counted every single tear leaking down the poor mother’s face, eleven in total; only three ran down to her chin. And the father’s breath smelled like a bouquet of thistles. His lower lip was colored with a yellowish-brown hue.

  “Once inside the bedroom, I could tell the deceased was a young woman just from her distinct smell. She had recently been reading a group of books that are now stacked neatly upon the third shelf on the right; they were originally on the bed some hours ago. I knew this just by the way the books reeked of soap and fresh linens. And when I set my eyes on the bed, I realized that Catherine had been attacked as she lay there, even though the bed has been completely redone and turned down.

  “There’s a small dent next to the left front bedpost. By the depth of the indention and the color of the plaster, it has been recently made. By the angle of the dent, the bed must’ve been pushed with force from right to left, as if someone had jumped on the bed, seemingly accosting Catherine as she lay there reading her books. The killer has a heavy build, but not stocky—he’s tall. When a heavy man walks around a room with a wooden floor, the force of his movements shake and rattle the rest of the furniture, not enough to significantly move the furniture but enough to displace any knickknacks or decor on top of the tables. Only a trained eye can decipher that certain things have been moved unwillingly, especially by the lack of dust in certain places.

  “You see, Inspector, I know these things, and I know them without intending to do so. I can’t help it. It’s who I was and who I’m becoming once again. So forgive me if I am hesitant to jot a few notes down on a piece of paper. I’ll properly provide a record of the scene once I’m in my study. Please, I ask again to place your trust in me, since, like you said, we have little time to waste.”

  Silas kept on, mentioning every single characteristic of the scene in front of him, keeping with the smells and texture of the room and ending with what he memorized of the girl. He explained the entire crime scene in front of him, in extreme detail, and it left his two companions speechless with a sense of awe.

  After a few seconds of shock, Posy broke the silence. “Give me the journal.”

  “I’m sorry?” Silas said.

  “The journal—give it to me. It’s not cheap.”

  Silas gave it back to her.

  “And the pen.”

  Silas stumbled.

  “Quickly.”

  “Give me a moment, at least,” Silas said, handing it over. “Here.” He raised his hands up. “Has the emergency been averted?”

  “I didn’t ask for humor.”

  “Maybe you should’ve,” Silas mumbled under his breath.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  Alas, footsteps were heard coming up the stairs and down the hallway. Belloc stuffed his journal into his pocket and grabbed his cane as the officers burst into the room. “How can I help you, gentlemen?”

  “Inspector, we need you to wrap things up,” the officer said. “By order of the commissioner, we’re here to close the scene. We need to take the body to the doctor.”

  Belloc gave Silas a look then turned to the officer. “
I don’t suppose you could give us just a few minutes more?”

  “I’m sorry, Inspector. I have my orders.”

  “Very well. Let’s go. We have what we can for now.” The three of them made their way out of the room. Out in the hallway, Belloc questioned the parents one last time. “I sincerely apologize to keep on bothering you, Mrs. Decamps. But how long were you aware of your daughter’s pregnancy?”

  “What sort of question is that?” the father said.

  “If you could humor me. I’m just trying to connect things in my head.”

  “You don’t have to answer,” the father said to his wife. She didn’t listen.

  “We’ve known for a while, at least a bit over a few months,” the mother said, eying the father coldly.

  “I see. And who is the father of the child, may I ask?”

  “You may not,” the father replied.

  “We don’t know,” the mother added.

  “You don’t?”

  “She wouldn’t tell us.”

  “Really? Strange that you wouldn’t know the child’s father.”

  “Is that all from you, Inspector?” the father said. “What business is it of yours to know who the child’s father was?”

  “It helps us build a list of persons of interest.”

  “You be sure to keep your interest in check, Inspector.”

  “Right, I see,” Belloc said, dismissing the father’s sense of entitlement. “Were you the first ones to discover Catherine? Did anybody else see her or hear anything out of the ordinary? Did Catherine have enemies or anyone who would want to hurt her?”

  The mother began to cry again.

  “We’ve given our statements to the officers already,” the father said, furious. “Now leave us alone.”

  “Yes, but I need to know as well if we’re to catch the person responsible for her death.”

  The officer in charge stepped out of the room and into the hallway. “He’s right, Inspector. We have everything you need at the station. Reports are being written as we speak. You can view them at your convenience. We must vacate the premises as soon as possible.”

  “One last thing,” Belloc said before leaving. “Mrs. Decamps, are you aware of your daughter’s wounds on her wrists?”