by Deborah Noel
I snapped more pictures at more angles.
When I was done with that section, I moved on to the next. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The scene before me made what I had just witnessed seemed like a peaceful walk in the park. I stopped dead in my tracks.
The man who occupied this workstation was in pieces. Well, it was more like he was torn to shreds. One didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know this man had fought with his attacker. His head was not entirely decapitated, attached to the shoulders only by two ligaments. The torso was sliced up. A gaping hole was opened over his heart and the rib cage broken open with bone fragments sticking through the hole. Pieces of white bone were strewn on the floor. His heart no longer inside his body. His legs were broken in numerous places, with jagged edges of each femur protruding out of the skin. His feet were ripped from the bottom of his legs – one foot was stuffed into his mouth. His head, though barely attached, was smashed in so far that that part of it resembled a pancake. His eyes were “bugging” out of their sockets. The remains were strewn throughout the small cubicle. Unlike the others’ desks, his showed the signs of the struggle. Sticking out of the monitor was one of the man’s arms. The tower of the computer was actually bent in half over his torso as if it took no effort to bend the metal casing that way. His other leg was wrapped around the base of the chair upon which he used to sit. His other arm hung, elbow bent, over the wall separating his co-workers’ space.
These pictures were harder for me to take.
Blood dotted the few family photos that decorated his walls. From the large pools of blood that collected on the desktop it was baffling to understand it all came from one man, even though he was a larger man. If I had to guess, I would have said he was about 325 pounds.
The blood that lay on the floor was almost impassable. I carefully made my way around it, making certain not to step in any.
I gathered my composure and moved on.
The next cubicle was the last in the line. It was completely different from all the rest. It was untouched and clean.
There were photos everywhere. I immediately recognized the girl, who was still in the bathroom, in the photos standing next to a young good-looking man. It was the day of their wedding. Congratulation cards were among the pictures. Perplexed at the lack of mayhem, I looked around. I peeked my head around the corner, looking down the makeshift hallway between rows of cubicles. A single shoe littered the path. I slowly walked towards the shoe, looking down the next row of square offices. It was empty. I stopped at the shoe and took a picture. Nothing unusual, save for the scene.
Three isles down and toward the back of the building I found the body laying face down on the floor. It was completely intact. The back of the man’s shirt was sliced from looked like four razor-tipped fingers. My instincts had me rush to the man’s side and search for a pulse. I found one. I jumped back. The razor scratches had broken his skin and the wounds were trickling with blood, oozing.
The man’s face was pale. I recognized him from the wedding pictures I had seen in the cubicle of the woman in the bathroom. I whispered to the man that things were okay now, so was his wife and I told him not to move. In the quietest of groans he only acknowledged my instructions. I stood up and sighed in relief for the girl curled up in the bathroom.
I snapped pictures to document the last of the scene. I captured images of the man as he lay on the floor and the wounds on his back. All were now accounted for. And two of the six had been spared. I called over my walkie-talkie for medical and within seconds, paramedics were hovering over the man giving him the attention that he needed.
The pictures of the scene were hard for me to review. I piled them up, pushed them aside and opened the file notes. The man who had been spared was reunited with his bride as he was taken to the awaiting ambulance. Neither had much to say during their interview a day later, according to my notes. Neither had seen the attacker. And both thought there was more than one person. The girl had told her story when we got there and never once deviated from it.
The man said he heard the commotion and screaming. He peeked around the corner to see what was going on, thinking it was the girls celebrating something stupid and saw two figures, cloaked in long dark trench coats. They had long dark hair, though one was streaked with silver. He said he simply turned and ran for the back door exit. He ran out of his shoe as he heard the heavy fellow start to holler at the assailants.
He remembered getting up and stumbling down a few rows away. Suddenly he felt sharp pain ripping down his back. He fell to the floor. He got kicked in the ribs, (the kick cleanly broke all but one of the ribs on his left side) and he drew in as much air as his lungs would take in. The last thing he remembered was someone grabbing a handful of hair from the back of his head and pulling his head up from the floor.
A low voice hissed in his ear, “Today is your lucky day, stay here or join the others…”
It was a low hiss that haunted his brain, he had said.
The thing we never figured out was where the other man’s heart went.
I sat back in my chair, cross my legs and tried to think of what it was that we had missed and also tried to put together a common denominator. I hadn’t found one four years ago and wasn’t sure if I would be able to find it after all the time that had passed.
The married couple, Dick and Harriet Musslebaum, packed up soon after Dick was released from the hospital and moved to Sweden where both of their families had come from. They had checked out; no criminal records. And although they were in their 30s, neither had been married before. Each had been given family names, and from what everyone had to say about them, they were a loving couple looking forward to starting a family.
The first girl lived an ordinary life. She was born and raised in the area and was in her middle 20s. She had been hired one week prior to her untimely death.
The second female victim was just 21 years and two days old. She and her boyfriend had just moved to the area from Rhode Island. Neither of them had any criminal records nor any particular story to tell. Just two simple people cut down to one. The boyfriend had flown her body back to Rhode Island for burial. He never returned to Pennsylvania.
The third lady was much older than the other two. She was in her late 40s. Her record was impeccable. She married right out of high school and 25 years later had watched three of her four children graduate from college. She volunteered at the schools all of her children had attended. The fourth had gotten married young and given her two grandchildren. Her husband had preceded her in death by just a year. He had suffered a fatal neck break after falling off an extension ladder that was two stories high.
The lone man whose murder had been the most brutal was known as Butch. Louie Henderson was a faithful 25-year employee. His record was spotless. He emigrated with his family from Scotland when he was just a year old. During his 53 years on this planet, he had married twice and watched his only son and two daughters grow up and themselves have successful lives. Neither of his wives had anything negative to say about him. He was a charmer, and all the younger employees looked up to him as a mentor.
No one had ever found his heart that had been ripped from his body.
Nothing jumped out at me. I neatly stacked all the relative notes and pictures to the call center murders and put them toward the back of my desk.
I opened up the folder that contained the information on the third murder scene I had investigated. Declan joined me as I laid out the pictures. This one was much simpler as murder investigations go.
There was just one victim, a 62-year-old male.
Reading over my notes I remembered I was told he was a miserable grumpy old crone, to be nice. He had maybe two friends, if he was lucky enough to stretch the meaning of friendship to include them. He had been married four times that people knew of, and when I tried to interview his past wives, all they had to say was; “It’s about time the old prick left this earth.” I chuckled under my breath when the fourth wife had
repeated the same sentiments to me as the previous three.
He lived alone above an old abandoned strip mall. His apartment was deplorable at best. When I stepped foot inside it, I actually thought that the condition that the apartment was in was what had killed him, but one had no trouble seeing that he had struggled for his life.
He was the last surviving member of his family, even though he had been one of fifteen children. The other siblings had lost their lives to drugs or medical conditions. A few had died young from bouts with influenza. He had one child of his own, but she hadn’t talked to him. Her parents had divorced when she has only a year old. She had only known of him what her mother had told her, and she moved from the area after she graduated from high school at 17 and never returned. She had nothing to add to the investigation, other than saying her mother once asked if she had wanted to be put in contact with her father and she declined. She said people from around the neighborhood all had the same opinion of him, he was a crotchety old man, miserable on his best day; ornery, loud and arrogant on a good day and downright nasty on a bad day. She couldn’t be bothered with such negativity and resented that he hadn’t taken the time to spend any with her. She told me that he had blamed her mother and that that just wasn’t how it went down. Both her and her mother held great animosity toward this man.
In his apartment, furniture had been tossed around like rag dolls. Holes the size of a head broke each wall at least a dozen times. I had been hard pressed to find a spot that wasn’t coated with blood.
He shared his apartment with two cats. From what I had heard about him, they were probably the only living things that could tolerate being in the same place as him. They were dead. Both were left lying on the floor in the living room area in a heap. It looked like their necks had been ripped open. There were no pools of blood beneath them, leaving me to believe they had been killed elsewhere and thrown to their resting places.
The small bedroom was the final resting place of the man’s battered body. A rifle was on the floor beside him; apparently, he had been in the middle of reloading it. A half-filled clip had slid down his side to the floor. Bullets were still tightly grasped in his hand. The rifle was a .30-06, bolt action and he had fired it several times, as bullet holes penetrated the already ragged drywall surrounding the doorway into the bedroom. There were several blood pools in the entrance of the bedroom and the door frame had streaks of what looked like should be blood from a wound.
I took several photos of the streaks, along with everything else in sight.
The man’s body was badly beaten and tattered. Slashes riddled his flesh. Black-and-blue welts would have turned a few nasty shades of green and yellow had he survived. He had several hundred puncture marks on his arms and legs. His skin tone was extremely pale, even for a dead man; he just looked drained.
Declan and I bantered back and forth, using each other as sounding boards, but came up with nothing to tie the cases together. I was going to pull the file to the fourth murder scene, but the alarm went off letting us know we had to pack up and head home to be there when Shane and Marcy dropped off Mattie.
We did just that, put everything away and secured the entry with the new door Declan made. We made our way back to the Jeeps and headed home.
As promised, Shane brought the girls home with no problems. Mattie was so excited about her trip to the ice cream parlor she couldn’t wait to report all the details to me as we got her set up to do her homework.
In her excitement, she had asked if Shane and Marcy could stay for dinner. Declan had agreed it was a good idea and the two men disappeared outback to prep the grill. I called Marcy’s parents to let them know what was going on.
Dinner was pleasant. Declan and Shane manned the grilled, each trying to top the other. Declan made his famous hamburgers filled with fresh parsley and lots of spices. Shane tried his hand at hand-made cheese-stuffed hot dogs, also using fresh garden herbs. The winner, though, was Declan’s portabella mushroom pizzas. He topped the mushrooms with my homemade salsa and provolone cheese. It was an explosion of tastes on the tongue with a continuation of pleasure that continued down the throat. It was a mouthful of Heaven. We were all stuffed to the brinks by the time their little competition was over.
Declan built a fire in the fire pit and we all sat around watching the flames dance in a rhythm all their own. The crackling of the logs was all that made noise. Each of us was lost in our own minds.
A short time later, Mattie was curled up on my lap snoring lightly. Declan carried her upstairs to tuck her in bed. Marcy’s parents came to retrieve their daughter and asked Shane not to stay out late.
“Mattie is quite an amazing little girl, Mrs. Fitzgerald,” Shane broke the silence. “Marcy told me I would just love her to pieces immediately.”
I looked over the fluttering flames to capture his glance. His eyes showed the utmost sincerity.
“Thank you. She is a unique little person. And, Shane, you can call me Cianna.”
We fell silent again.
When Declan returned, I excused myself to start the cleanup of the dinner dishes. As I stood at the sink, my mind drifted off to somewhere in outer space. I robotically washed the dishes. That was, until I realized I cut open my finger and my palm washing a sharp knife. Blood mixed with the running water and turned the flow red. I stopped myself from screaming out loud, but Declan knew instantly something was wrong and came rushing in.
I stood at the sink, closing the opened skin together, wrapping it in a wet paper towel as best as I could. I held my hand up above my head. It was a clean, deep cut and though it bled profusely, there was no pain.
Shane wasn’t too far behind Declan, who was making a fuss trying to take a look at the wound. He insisted that I sit at the table and let him look at the cut. Between the two of them, I had no choice but to cooperate. Declan ordered me, in the gentlest way, to turn my head and look away while he unwrapped the make-shift band-aid.
“It’s a deep, long wound, Ci. You are going to need stitches.”
“I know.”
“Do you want me to stay here with Mattie while you take her to the hospital?” Shane asked.
“Declan,” I whispered, still looking away. “Can you just do it here, please?”
I turned back around and looked at the gaping hole in my finger that traveled down into my palm and that’s when it hit me.
Declan felt my jolt. “What is it,” he asked in my head.
“I figured out what is consistent in all of the murders.” I replied in my brain, though the enthusiasm nearly bounced out of my mouth.
Declan raised an eyebrow at me in question. I looked down and wiggled my bleeding finger in his hand.
After contemplating it for a few seconds, he nodded in agreement.
Chapter Nine
While Declan stitched me up, we discussed my realizations in our heads to keep Shane out of the loop.
“I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection of the slashes before,” I said telepathically.
“Are you sure all of the victims were cut open?” Declan asked me silently.
“Yes.”
Every now and then I cringed and sucked in my breath for good measure. I really felt no pain. But then again, I had always had an abnormally high tolerance for pain.
“Cianna,” Shane sounded worried, “Your nose is bleeding.”
With my free hand, I wiped my nose. The flow was light.
“It does that sometimes. It’s not a bad one.”
Shane ripped a paper towel from the roll and handed it to me.
“Where’d ya learn how to stitch like that, Declan?” Shane asked. “You’re pretty good.”
“Irish Military when I was a lad,” Declan answered.
“Oh.”
I was getting more impatient. I wanted to be able to go to take a look at my pictures and notes to confirm my theory.
“It took you to filet your finger and palm open and get more than a dozen stitches for you to final
ly make a connection between the murders,” Declan scolded me in my head. “And almost five years later to boot.”
“I know, I know.” I answered inaudibly, getting increasingly antsy. I started squirming in my seat. I really didn’t feel any pain. I was too excited for that.
After the last stitch Declan turned to Shane, “Maybe I better take her to the hospital as a precaution. I know the doctor on call in the emergency room tonight.”
Shane nodded in agreement. “Yeah, she will probably need some antibiotics and maybe even some pain relief medication.”
Declan said it would probably take us a few hours. Shane told him that he didn’t mind staying with Mattie. He was glad to help.
Declan ushered me out of the house and we jumped into the Jeep and headed to the Castle.
We didn’t chat much on the way. Declan asked me a few times how I felt. I assured him I was fine. I had taken some ibuprofen before we left the house. I moved my finger again, just to check, and had no problem in doing so. Declan’s stitches were better than any I had ever gotten during a hospital visit. Besides, I knew I had some penicillin in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. I would be fine. I searched my mind’s memory to try and pull the images of all the pictures of the murder scenes front and center so I could compare them. I was almost positive I was right.
I must have been really lost in my own little detective world, because the next thing I knew we were parking the Jeep at the end of the dirt road. Declan escorted me along the path through the woods and hurried to get the canoe.
He rowed like an Olympic racer to get us to the other side of the lake. We were down the path and behind the waterfall making our way into tunnel. I would have walked right by the entrance if it hadn’t been for Declan. His stone door looked so authentic.
