Vicarious

by Jon F. Merz

  Curran watched Kwon make a few quick slashes with his scalpel. He heard the squishy and springy sounds of tendons and ligaments snapping after being cut. He saw the precision with which Kwon operated.

  And still he didn’t feel comfortable.

  Kwon looked at him. “You ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kwon scooped out the organ block, which ran from just under the neck to down into the intestines and slid the gooey mass into Curran’s cradled arms.

  Curran saw his arms instantly slick over with bright red. His fingers closed around the organs and he hurriedly dumped the block into the stainless steel tray over the corpse’s feet.

  Kwon yanked the body block out and positioned it under the corpse’s head. To Curran, it looked like the corpse was reaching up for a kiss. Kwon’s scalpel bit into the corpse’s head behind his right ear. Kwon cut all the way up and over the top of the head, down to behind the other ear. He took the scalpel out and smiled at Curran.

  “Ever scalped someone before?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There are now two sections of the head. The front flap and the rear flap. We need them both pulled back to expose the skull. Which end do you want?”

  Curran wanted a cigarette. Badly. “Front, I guess.”

  “Don’t be afraid to use a little strength. That can be tough sometimes.” He motioned for Curran to position his hands. “Okay, give it a good yank.”

  Curran felt his fingertips slide under the lip of skin on either side. He pulled and it suddenly came loose in his hands. The skin came down just over the forehead. It looked like the corpse had a mask halfway off his face.

  Kwon repeated the procedure for the rear flap. Curran saw the skull exposed and tried to keep from remembering what the image looked like.

  “Hand me that Stryker saw, would you?”

  Curran picked it up and handed it to Kwon. Another high-pitch whine filled the air. Kwon bent low and began cutting around the equator of the skull. Curran stood back.

  Please, he prayed, please don’t let it be.

  Kwon finished cutting and looked up. “You okay, Steve?”

  Curran opened his eyes. “Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “Are we almost done?”

  “I’m ready to remove the calvarium – what we call the top of the skull. Don’t get freaked out by the sound.”

  “Is it bad?”

  Kwon grinned and grasped the top of the skull. Curran heard a wet sucking sound and then the top came off in Kwon’s hands.

  No!

  “Jesus H. Christ.”

  Curran exhaled. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not now!

  Kwon leaned back against the counter, skullcap still in his hand. He pointed at the exposed brain. “Is that your theory, Mr. Homicide Detective?”

  Curran nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

  “You’ve seen this crap before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That brain is green, Steve.”

  Curran sighed. “Yeah. It is.”

  “That’s not normal. Not one goddamn bit.”

  Curran shut his eyes, but the images already filled his mind. After all this time. After the peace. The quiet.

  Shattered.

  God help me, thought Curran. God help us all.

  Chapter Two

  Curran drove the long way back to his three-bedroom Colonial in West Roxbury after the autopsy. They’d finished around two-thirty. Curran was due at work by nine, which meant he’d have about six hours worth of sleep.

  He figured he needed about a million times that amount to help make him forget the realization that the horror he thought he’d left behind all those years ago – the horror that had infected his life - seemed to have once again returned to his world.

  Cold drizzle still coated Boston’s streets and gave them a black tarry look. Curran could almost imagine his tires getting stuck in the wet ooze, like some kind of evil force was reaching up for his car.

  And him.

  His right hand withdrew the crumpled pack of Marlboros and flipped it until one of the butts inside tumbled onto the seat next to him. He jabbed the cigarette lighter in his car and waited for it to pop moments later.

  I ought to quit these damned things, he thought. Gotta be a cheaper method of suicide out there. The lighter popped and he almost grinned.

  Later.

  He touched the hot metal coil to the end of the tobacco stick and inhaled, nursing the cinder. It caught and he took a lungful of smoky death into his body.

  He savored the nicotine.

  His pulse steadied.

  Could it be something else that had killed the guy tonight? Some other cause for the death that he hadn’t looked for yet?

  Kwon had sent some blood down for a toxicology work-up, but he seemed convinced that the green brain was somehow a major factor in the death.

  Unfortunately, so was Curran.

  He already knew what to expect from the toxicology screen. There’d be substantial amounts of glucose present, the result of an incredible surge of adrenaline just prior to death. Curran had seen the toxicology reports from six other cases back when he’d been with the FBI.

  Toxicology hadn’t helped one bit.

  Nothing had.

  He wheeled his way down the Jamaicaway, rounding dangerous curves that sent most drivers whimpering for second gear. Curran handled them at forty miles per hour, enjoying the slight fishtail action of the car before he righted it again.

  It had to be him. The same killer Curran had unsuccessfully tracked. A killer so adept at dealing death that his victims showed no signs of it, other than the green brain.

  The sole souvenir of their demise.

  Curran drove past Holy Name on Centre Street. The spire rose high above the other rooftops nearby. Almost like it was calling out to get his attention. But he hadn’t been to church in years. His faith had suffered. Curran wasn’t sure it could ever be salvaged.

  Not after…

  He blocked the images and drove on, anxious to get home.

  His mind’s eye played back the image of the corpse on the floor of the nightclub. According to the wallet the first uniforms found on him, Gary William Fields was thirty-two years old. His short brown hair and thin mustache made him look older while the sleek black satin shirt, gold chain, and tight black pants made him look sleazy.

  Witnesses? Hardly. Curran frowned and skirted another pothole. The people closest to Fields when he suddenly dropped said that they hadn’t noticed a thing. And the club had been far too crowded for it to seem unusual if another person wandered close by.

  The club’s video surveillance system covered everyone coming into and leaving the club, but Curran doubted he’d get lucky there. Thousands of people passed through the doors of a club each night. Still, it was a lead one of the junior grunts in Homicide would no doubt get stuck with. Especially if they eventually got lucky.

  Luck.

  Curran sniffed. As if such a thing even existed.

  He slid the window down and tossed the cigarette butt into the slipstream. What made Fields so special that he had to die tonight? And would this mark the start of another wave of bodies just as it had all those years ago?

  The key, he decided as he turned on to his street, was Fields. In the morning, he’d pore through the computer databases and put a picture together of what Fields might have done that warranted someone killing him.

  Curran felt pretty certain he knew who had killed him.

  But after so many years, he wondered why.

  ***

  In the darkness he felt the pressure of its gaze. The heavy stare cloaked his mind from an unseen source, boring into his skull with relentless zeal. He could feel it lapping at the fringes of his subconscious, tasting and drooling with desire at the thought of causing mayhem in the city.

  It will be.

  The velvet voice oozed over his mind, seeping
into his head. It repeated itself over and over again like a mantra of evil.

  It will be.

  Curran wanted to shout but his throat felt thick. He wanted to claw at the voice but a million arms grabbed him and held him fast. He struggled but nothing would work. His legs felt rubbery and his arms were pinned behind him.

  In the darkness in front of him, a face emerged. But it was unlike any he’d ever seen before. It didn’t look human. It didn’t look like anything he knew.

  Two cold yellow eyes swept over him. He felt himself go cold as the stare bore down on him.

  From a gaping maw a spindly tongue rolled out, flicking at the air by Curran’s face. Flecks of spittle dropped onto Curran’s skin and he almost retched. The tongue touched his cheek. Curran grimaced as the wet sandpaper rubbed against him.

  The voice spoke inside his head again. You will never be able to stop me.

  “Why are you back?”

  I never left.

  “Why now?”

  Because now is the time. It will be.

  “NO!”

  Sunlight exploded into Curran’s eyes as they snapped open. He shot upright in bed, whirling his arms around trying to punch and kick at the same time.

  “-wha?”

  The alarm clock on his nightstand read 6:30.

  Curran slumped back against the pillow.

  A dream?

  “Jesus Christ.”

  A nightmare?

  The sheets – what Curran thought were arms holding him – had wrapped themselves around his body. They felt wet. Sticky. Soaked with Curran’s sweat. In the struggle of the nightmare, he’d managed to get tangled up in them.

  Or was it a nightmare?

  The voice.

  Curran rubbed his eyes. That voice. It spoke to me. And I spoke to it?

  Impossible.

  He felt wrecked. Like the four hours had rushed by in the space of five minutes. Curran glanced at the bedroom window, at the gray daylight poking in through the wooden blinds he’d installed a few months previously. Another cold November day.

  But Curran wasn’t thrilled at what today might bring.

  More sleep, he thought as he closed his eyes again. He needed more sleep.

  If he could just keep the dark at bay.

  And the evil he knew it contained.

  ***

  Curran took Centre Street down to Columbus Avenue to work after he’d showered and shaved. Next to him on the seat, he’d brought a large container of orange juice and a banana muffin – testament to his fledgling exercise program. Curran wasn’t fat and he wasn’t out of shape, but he did want to lose a few paunchy pounds.

  He sighed when the glass brick building that house the Boston Police Department headquarters appeared. A few years before, the department occupied a white stone building over on Berkeley Street just outside of Copley Square. Over the years, the number of cops inside had grown while space had dwindled. The city finally coughed up some money and built a new police headquarters.

  Curran would have rather stayed at Berkeley Street and he knew plenty of cops who felt the same. The new building looked like someone had gone bargain shopping on the set of the Brady Bunch and pocketed the savings. The building was a shoebox of glass bricks and blocks. Even the simple sign wasn’t original. It was a direct rip-off of the one used by Scotland Yard.

  Curran parked his car and walked into the building, showing his identification to the bored desk sergeant before heading upstairs on the elevator to the homicide division.

  He sat at his desk, placed the bag of orange juice and muffins on one side and then unlocked his file drawer. Just as he was about to reach in, the phone on his desk purred. He grabbed it.

  “Homicide, Curran.”

  “It's Kwon.”

  Curran glanced at his watch. “It's only nine. Shouldn't you be home asleep?”

  “I should be, yeah. But I’m not. I'm at the office. You busy?”

  “I was going to get a detailed jacket on the deceased from last night. Try to figure out why he got clipped.”

  “Can you come down later? I want to run some more tests on this guy’s brain and see if we can’t figure out exactly why it is…the way it is.”

  I already know, thought Curran. But he couldn’t very well tell Kwon that modern science didn’t have an explanation for it – annoying as that was to Curran. “Gimme two hours.”

  “Good.” Kwon disconnected leaving Curran holding a dead phone and looking at his banana-nut muffins with a sudden lack of appetite.

  He took a bite and swallowed, flushing it down with a healthy drag of orange juice. He turned and looked at the files in the drawers. Toward the back, he scooped out a five-inch stack of them and spread them out over his desk. Most of them were marked with the words “FBI: Official Government Property.”

  Curran opened several of them and instantly felt himself transported back to when these cases were still fresh. He felt the sudden stir of adrenaline. The thrill of the chase reappeared.

  For just a moment.

  Now the case files were several years old.

  Dusty.

  Old.

  Like Curran.

  He frowned.

  These files might just be useful again. Curran hoped they would be. He didn’t want to have to go through that hell again of trying to solve a case all of his former colleagues considered a dead-end.

  Of course, things were different now. Now he didn’t have a wife to worry about. And now he didn’t have to think about his career with the illustrious FBI.

  He slid the files aside and looked at his dark computer monitor. Curran liked it fine when it was dark and lifeless. Unfortunately, nowadays everyone worked on the things. And Curran’s old method of writing and using notebooks was deemed archaic.

  There were a few older cops who still worked like Curran did. But most of them had been farmed out to the district offices where they couldn’t infect the minds of younger cops coming up through the ranks.

  Somehow, they’d missed Curran.

  He grabbed the muffin and took another bite, tasting the walnuts and banana flavors mixing together. He chewed slowly and then flicked the computer on.

  It beeped once and then began prompting him for a series of access codes Curran still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to memorize them all. Security had become a lot tighter in recent years thanks to the war on terrorism.

  Curran didn’t mind this part, though. After all, he’d lost a lot of friends in the attacks in New York and Washington. Security was one thing he could put up with.

  After completing the log-on process, Curran switched over to the criminal database and entered the name of last night’s victim into it. The computer beeped once and then the screen blossomed into a long list.

  Curran opened his favorite notebook and began taking notes.

  ***

  By eight-thirty, he had a decent picture of the victim from the previous night.

  And it wasn't a pretty one.

  Gary William Fields, at the ripe young age of 32, had been a real slimeball. Curran looked at a rap sheet printout twice as long as his left leg and shook his head. Starting at twelve, Fields had been involved in a series of burglaries. By the time he was fifteen, he'd graduated to grand theft auto, assault, and armed robbery. He served a stretch at Norfolk House of Corrections back in the late eighties and then got out early on good behavior.

  Good behavior. Curran smirked. As if there really was such a thing.

  As soon as Fields got out, he went from bad to worse. Suspected in a series of horrible armed rapes out in Amherst, he was never indicted. And there was also suspicion that he'd killed at least five people in connection with drug trafficking. Sprinkled here and there were relatively “minor” incidents of indecent exposure to children, driving under the influence, assault, conspiracy, and racketeering charges.

  “Real piece of work,” muttered Curran. He sighed.

/>   If only this was a simple murder case. If only the modus operandi didn’t seem so familiar to Curran.

  If only…a lot of things.

  He grabbed his beeper off the desk and picked up his car down at the parking lot. Traffic crawled up Columbus Avenue thanks to the rush hour being in full swing. Curran flipped around the radio station until he found a music station he could actually tolerate. Lately, there didn’t seem to be many of them left.

  Kwon split his time between the Albany Street office and the morgue down at Boston City Hospital. Most of the time he was in both places at once. At least that was what people thought. Kwon worked harder than six people and still managed to have an unusually active social life.

  Unlike Curran.

  He parked beneath the Suffolk County Court House close to where the runoff traffic from the federal offices parked. Upstairs, Kwon was still finishing the paper work when he walked in.

  “'Morning.”

  “The hell,” said Kwon. “I'm dead on my feet here.” He finished writing something and then looked up. “Got any thoughts on last night?”

  “Sure. I had a nightmare about it and everything.”

  “A nightmare? You?” Kwon smiled. “I’ve never known you to be scared of anything.”

  “Some things,” said Curran. “They scare me plenty.”

  Kwon’s smile disappeared. “Like green brains?”

  “Not the brain’s themselves. But what they represent.”

  Kwon looked like he was going to ask a question, but he never completed it. The door buzzer sounded. Curran looked at the office. “What’s that?”

  “Someone’s coming down. Family, I think. Gonna ID him.”

  “Is he…presentable?”

  “Yeah, I put him back together.” Kwon held up a needle and thread. “I worked my way through college in a funeral home. So, what'd you find out about this guy, anyway?”

  “Grade A scumbag,” said Curran. “Rap sheet's a testimony to that fact. If he didn’t buy it last night, someone would have killed him sooner or later.”

  “So somebody did us a favor,” said Kwon. “Getting rid of scum like this, eh?”

  “If this is what I think it is, it won’t seem like much of a favor.”