***
“Nice and slow,” Lord Combermere instructed.
Alex lowered the scalpel. She formed a straight cut down the torso of her subject. Blood eeked out from the incision lines, trailed down to the sides as her subject lay on top of Lord Combermere’s operating table.
The previous night’s hunt had gone surprisingly just as well as Lord Combermere predicted it would. In many ways, better. Alex had been able to subdue Edward Kipper all by herself, a mighty accomplishment for a girl so young. Fortunately for her, Edward Kipper took very little convincing. Now here he was, a study buddy for Alex’s test tomorrow. And did I mention he was still alive?
“Let me go! Let me go let me go let me go! Aaaahhhh!” Edward screamed.
For the better part of five minutes, he thrashed about, unable to move due to the tight straps wrapped around his naked limbs. Then, whether due to shock or blood loss, he died.
Just as well, decided Alex. Besides, it was hard to study someone when they were constantly shaking about.
Once Alex was done loosening the man’s skin, she separated his flesh and saw what hid inside.
When people often told her that it is what’s inside a person that truly matters, Alex wasn’t so sure if this was what they meant. Blood, organs, and bones, all visible for the eyes to see. Surely, one needed all these things to survive. Given that, there was no doubt that they did in fact, matter. But when the motivational speaker ranted on about the importance of a person’s inner being, internal body parts never seemed to find their way in any of their speeches. Well, except for the heart.
Strange though it may be, Alex didn’t fret about it either way. Her main concern was passing her human anatomy test tomorrow. And what better way to study than to have a first-hand account right before her eyes?
“That is the liver,” Lord Combermere pointed his latex-gloved finger at a brown colored organ. “And down there is the gallbladder.” He raised his finger up to the man’s opened breast. “I’m sure you know what that is.”
“That’s the heart.”
“The key element of all life.”
Alex disconnected the bodily tubes that held the heart in its place. She held it in her palm, studied it in the light. It weighed less than she expected.
“Is this where the soul comes from?”
“Please. The heart is just an organ like any other.”
“If all we are is a suit of skin on top of organs, then what makes us all so different?”
“Science. Nothing more. Genetic structures forming together to create different patterns of beings. That’s all we are. There’s nothing special about the human anatomy. Nothing magical.”
Alex placed the heart back in the concaves of her subject’s carcass. Her encyclopedia of human anatomy was standing beside her, turned to a page with a map of a silhouette man with different organs labeled with arrows. With her rubber hands, the thing she touched next was an organ that stood out like a dog’s tail. A pancreas, it was called, and it was also much more yellow in her book than it was in front of her. She dropped it, proceeded to study his raw intestines trailing in a strange path below his stomach. Interested was she, in how awfully weird and yet sophisticated the human body was. Everything was wired together like a computer, or a pipe line. If there truly was a God of the universe, he/she/it had a lot to be proud of.
“Satisfied?” Lord Combermere asked.
“Very,” Alex replied.
“Perfect.”
“Lord Comber-, I mean, Henry?”
“Yes?”
“How would you dispose of the bodies?”
Such a demented question, asked in such an innocent voice.
“It all depends on what’s accessible. There are so many different ways to get rid of a body, but not all these options are available to everybody. Tell me Alex. What, specifically, is accessible for you?”
“The ground?” she conjectured. “Suburnia’s practically filled with forest trees. I could bury him anywhere.”
“Suburnia does have a lot of forests in the nearby vicinity. And you could certainly use it to your advantage. However, forgetting for a moment the effort required in digging graves, a burial ground is not something that’s easy to conceal. Add to that how often the people of Suburnia hike up along the trails each morning. Trust me. It won’t take long for them to find it out. And when they do, all it takes is a spot of your own DNA near the scene, or around the victim, and they will find you too.”
Alex considered his rebuttal, and believed that he was right.
“Take a second guess,” offered Lord Combermere.
Her eyes trailed off, searching the nearby environment for any helpful suggestions. She paid close attention to the open stomach of her subject. It laid inside him like a pouch strapped to his guts. And just like that, a flash of brilliance entered her mind.
“Acid.”
“Acid,” Lord Combermere thought aloud. “That’s certainly creative.”
“My science teacher Professor Eldridge keeps his lab stocked with chemicals. If I can get some, we can use it to dispose of everything. He’d burn into thin air.”
“Technically my dear, he would burn in a pool of concentrated acid. But you definitely have the right idea. The problem with what you’re suggesting lies in method. Now, I do not know your Professor Eldridge. But any responsible scientist would know well enough to keep their equipment in check. And to keep charts and data of their inventory in case one of their students comes upon the desire to perform a few scientific experiments of their own.”
Professor Eldridge had never been once to keep his materials organized. But Lord Combermere had a point nonetheless. Even a remote suspicion that some of his chemicals were missing would be enough to bring even bigger problems. And with the amount of acid it would take to burn a human being, suspicion was likely.
“So how would I find what I need?”
“The same way you find everything in life. Buy it.”
“How?”
“Simple. With money and a few friends in the right market.”
“I have no such friends.”
“But I do.”
Alex wasn’t sure which was harder to believe. That a man like him had use for a black market, or that he had friends. She ended with the latter.
“I will go bring what we need. While I’m out, there’s some porridge in the fridge you can have for supper. Stay here. I’ll return soon enough.”
Alex took note of the time on the clock. It was fast approaching seven at night. She hadn’t realized all the hours that flew past until now. As Lord Combermere left her presence, she found herself with nothing to do.
She loomed over a dead Edward Kipper, studied his organs for a few more minutes until she was confident in her ability to label all the different internal systems of the average human being. What she still wasn’t able to identify, what her encyclopedia and Edward Kipper’s open guts hadn’t been able to tell her, was where the human soul was located. What had been growing inside Edward Kipper for all his years of being alive that wasn’t in Alex Frost since the day she was born? Where was that part that allowed him the ability to love, hate, fear, admire, regret? What had he done to deserve such an ability, and what had she done to lose it before she even had it?
As she felt her stomach pang, Alex went upstairs to the Combermere kitchen. In the fridge, she found a bowl of plain white porridge. Without warming it up, she placed the cold ceramic bowl in front of her on the dining room. She was about to dine when her pocket began to vibrate.
“Hello?” Alex spoke into her phone.
“Alex?” It was Aunt Melanie.
“Oh hi Aunt Melanie. How have you been?”
There was static interference on the other line. Or was it coming from her?
“Why aren’t you in the apartment?” said Aunt Melanie in the midst of electronic hissing and buzzing.
Alex got up and exited the Combermere estate, stepping far and
away until the signal cleared up, and her Aunt Melanie was perfectly audible.
“Why aren’t you in the apartment?” Aunt Melanie reiterated. “I’ve been calling the phone over and over, and the landlord tells me that there is nobody there. Where are you Alex?”
“I’m staying at a friend’s house,” Alex retorted. “Right here in Suburnia.”
“But blazes, why? I told you to stay in the apartment.”
“It’s safer here than it is in the apartment. It’s a better neighborhood. And besides, it takes less time for me to get to school from here.”
Aunt Melanie requited, and her temper quickly died down into despondent worry.
“You should have told me Alex. I was scared sick.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and could not help but feel as though she honestly meant it. “I’ll come visit you tomorrow ya?”
“Please do. You’ve been a good niece, and a good friend.”
Trailing up the steep hills that led to the Combermere residence, her mind was heavy with the word friend. Why had it slipped from her Aunt Melanie’s mouth? What did she mean when she said it?
For those of us fortunate enough to have friends, we all know why we call people our friends, and we also know what friendship entails. When someone is your friend, you enjoy wasting your time in their company, talking to them about utterly unimportant things, and doing completely trivial things together. But to our own Alex Frost, who lived devoid of any need for such close ties, friendship had been nothing more than an act. A social code she lived up to in order to seem normal.
By the time Alex reached the top of the hill, and the front door of Lord Combermere’s home was visible in the dark, a thousand or so questions had already run laps around her mind. When she went inside the house, Lord Combermere had already been standing in the vicinity of the doorway, eyeing her curiously.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
After taking in a breath of air, she spoke. “I was talking with my aunt.”
“Why?”
Alex struggled to make sense of the question.”
“I wanted to see how she was doing. What with her injuries and all.”
“So she is the one you protected.”
“Yes,” Alex answered back.
“And the boy you killed. He wronged your school friend, so you decided to kill him. Tell me. Why?”
“Why what?”
“What do you see in these people that requires so much of your attention?”
Alex had to briefly search her mind before the answer to that question unraveled. When it did, she answered with, “I need them to seem normal.”
“And is that important to you? To seem as though you’re just like everybody else, when in fact you aren’t?”
“It’s the only way to survive,” she told.
“That’s not true my dear.”
Lord Combermere approached her, lowered himself so that they were staring one another eye to eye. He gently touched her face, examined it with his icy fingers. Alex didn’t react. The cold didn’t bother her.
“With me, you’ll never have to hide yourself under that mask.”
“I have to see my aunt tomorrow,” Alex suddenly remembered. “She’s expecting to meet me in the afternoon.”
“Can I expect you to come back tomorrow?”
Alex paused. “Yes.”
Lord Combermere didn’t smile, but she could tell that somewhere deep inside, he was satisfied.
“I have a proposition I would like to make,” Lord Combermere said.
“What kind of proposition?”
“I am leaving soon for Vienna.”
“Oh?” Widened eyes. “How soon?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
This, Alex took with complete surprise.
“Being what we are, it’s important never to stay in the same place for too long. “
“Why Vienna?”
“I have property there. Ideally, I should have moved back long ago. The only thing that has stopped me is that I’ve encountered some trouble with the Italian law in the past.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Nothing related to killing I assure you. A man I once defended during my years as a lawyer was a known criminal in Italy. The authorities there have never taken very kindly to my helping him. But that’s beside the point. I’m telling you that I’m going because I want you to follow me.”
The first few seconds after the question hung in the air, Alex was almost certain that Lord Combermere was trying his hand at humor. As it turned out, he was serious.
“Stay with me indefinitely, and I will teach you everything you will ever need to know. I will be your mentor and legal guardian.”
“How would you do that?”
“You won’t have to worry about that. For a lawyer, all things are possible.”
“But what about my aunt?”
Lord Combermere shook his head. “Your aunt won’t be a problem. What’s important is that you and I can continue our arrangement. I can take you to a place where you can restart your life from scratch. So you won’t be pressured into conforming to those who aren’t like you. Stay with me, and you will never have to lie to yourself again.”
Lord Combermere reached out his cold, frail hand.
“I want you to consider it. In the meantime, come with me.”
She did. Together they went down to the basement where Edward Kipper’s unclad body was lying in a large plastic container, the likes of which Alex had never seen before. The container had a dark blue hue, and was big enough that it fit his head and torso. His arms and legs were an altogether different story. They stuck out from the sides of the container, his arms touching the ground while his bare feet stuck in the air.
“The container is acid resistant,” Lord Combermere stated. “Polyethylene.”
“He’s pretty big,” Alex remarked.
“It will do.”
Lord Combermere unloaded buckets of hydrofluoric acid onto their victim. The liquid corroded his skin, burned through his flesh. Quickly it melted his body to reveal chunks of searing muscle. His bones evaporated, completely devoid of his own meat. Together, Alex and Lord Combermere stood back and watched as Edward Kipper burned in a pool of acid. Burned, until there was no trace of him left.
Alex Frost Meets The Killer Page 27
