More tossing and turning. The source of the maidens had been figured out. It didn’t seem to mean we were any closer to catching the killer though.
The source of the Scavenger’s Daughter was still a mystery. It turned out the marks were similar, not the same. It was hard to tell until Michael blew up the pictures to examine them. I was hoping that Michael and Alejandro would return in the morning and give us the name of the guy who ordered the maidens. That would make things much easier.
However, there was still something nagging at me. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something that told me while we were close, we weren’t close enough.
“Get up,” someone yelled through the door of the hotel room. I could hear banging and shuffling outside. Xavier suddenly burst into the room.
“What?” I jumped from bed.
“He struck again.”
“He couldn’t have. It hasn’t been three months.”
“Lucas thinks that since he didn’t get to sign his work last time, he hit early. In the last two hours, ten women have gone missing.”
“Oh, yeah, that sounds like our guy.”
“No, that sounds like a tragedy. The fact that each was kidnapped from their bedrooms while they slept sounds like our guy. And we think we know how he is taking them. The last one put up a struggle. We found LSD in the apartment.”
“The hallucinogen?”
“Yep.”
“That would be one very bad trip.”
“Yep. We are on our way to look at a place with no dead bodies. We are hoping you can help.”
“Probably not.” I answered, but I was already pulling on my clothes.
The apartment was flooded with lights. The blinds were all down. The bedroom door was damaged. I frowned at it all.
Things were knocked over. There had obviously been a struggle, actually a hell of a fight. There were drops of drying liquid on the floor that had proved to be the hallucinogen.
Nothing jumped out at me, but I wasn’t a real investigator. I was just sort of here to round out the numbers.
“What’s this?” Xavier brought something over to me.
“It’s a dagger.”
“Like the one you keep?”
I looked at it very closely. It wasn’t like the one I kept. It was military grade.
“No, mine is a replica of a ceremonial knife. This looks like military.”
“How old?”
“The past century or so. The style looks vaguely familiar.”
“Why do you know so much about daggers?”
“I have a degree in History; I didn’t always set out to be a medievalist. That just sort of happened. I started out wanting to be an Egyptologist. When that failed, I tried my hand at military history. I got wrapped up in the Children’s Crusades and became a medievalist.”
“So medieval Europe was your third choice?”
“Something like that.”
“Which is why you know about daggers?” Xavier frowned.
“Some of it.” I frowned back. “What are you getting at?”
“Did you touch this?”
“No, until now, I hadn’t seen it. Why?”
“It has your fingerprints on it.”
“Oh,” I shook my head. “That’s very bad.”
“Yes, it is. Get out, go to the hotel, we’ll come see you when we are done.”
Gabriel ferried me back to the hotel. I looked at him before I got out.
“Hey, I don’t believe you did it. I believe that you touched that knife at some point though.”
“I don’t think I have ever seen it before.” I answered and headed back upstairs.
I tried to watch TV. It couldn’t hold my interest. I tried to surf the internet, but had the same problem. Finally, after five hours, Lucas and Xavier came into my hotel room.
“Why do you have a key to my room?” I asked as they entered.
“Why not?” Lucas shrugged. “Better me than him.”
“So, what’s the story with the dagger?”
“We don’t know. We just know it tested positive for blood and that we found a single fingerprint on it. It’s your fingerprint.”
“It isn’t really mine.” I told him.
“We don’t think you are involved in the killings, Ace. We think someone you know is. We’ve got a team sitting on all the Field Museum workers you came in contact with both today and your visit a few years ago.”
“Great, just great.”
“What do you know about the dagger?”
“It looks old. It looks military.”
“She was into art, not weaponry. This is the only piece we found. It was definitely out of place in her apartment.” Lucas said.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“We have to assume that you are victim number ten,” Lucas said.
“I thought you said we had ten?” I countered.
“We thought we did. One of them showed up though, already dead. We think he killed her and decided to replace her with you,” Lucas answered.
“Oh.” I considered that for a long time. I was used to serial killers, but I normally didn’t have to wait for them to strike, they just came at me. The waiting was going to be an issue.
“How do you think he will do it?” I asked, frowning hard enough that I felt a vein in my forehead suddenly pop out.
“Kill the next ten?” Xavier asked.
“I don’t know. Something more horrific than the first four. That’s what has been nagging me. Each one seems to be getting worse. Not by modern day standards, I’m not sure by what standards, but each seems a bit more horrific to me. The drawing and quartering was bad. Lots of blood, lots of body parts. The impaling was horrific, but then I realized he didn’t sit around waiting for them to die. The maidens were quick, painful, but quick. The hoop took longer and they suffocated. It was also very painful. I think the time he spends killing each victim is escalating, but the impaling threw us off because you kept pointing out it was a slow death.” Lucas answered.
“In other words, you think a device that is going to bring death even slower than the hoop thingy,” Xavier paraphrased.
“Yes.” Lucas answered.
“If it were me, I’d use rats or something equally disturbing,” I said.
“Rats?” Lucas looked at me for a moment.
“A head cage sits on the shoulders. It encompasses the entire head in a box about two foot wide and about two foot tall. There is a hatch in the top and the cage wires are spaced only a few inches apart. You put the victim in the cage, open the hatch on top and dump in a handful or more of starving rats. Non-starving rats work, but starving are better. They eat the victim while they are alive.”
“How are they restrained?” Xavier asked.
“Usually strapped to a chair or something,” I answered, “also, he’ll need to improvise this time. We have his maidens. We have his scavenger. Rats are easy to come by in a city like this. The head cage will be harder, but chicken wire would work.”
“Chicken wire and rats.” Xavier made a noise.
“Chicken wire, wood and rats.” I corrected. “Chicken wire won’t stand on its own; it would need a skeletal structure.”
“That’s pretty gruesome.” Xavier answered.
“Yep, but effective.” I remarked.
“Most of these would take planning and set-up time. You don’t just walk into the woods and chop down ten perfect sized impaling trees. You would need access to woods and trees. You don’t just find four horses and get them to tear a person apart. You have to learn how to drive four horses in different directions. You can’t go out and buy an Iron Maiden or a Scavenger’s Daughter at your local shopping mall. As improvised as all these sound, they aren’t. They have to be thought out and well planned.” Lucas commented, giving me a sly smile. “There’s a psychology to all of it as well. Drawing and quartering doesn’t look painful until
it happens. There isn’t much psychological torture there, unless he were to tell you about it in great detail before. Impaling has the same problem. The psychological aspect comes after you see the stakes. By then, you’ve been held for three days and realized that you are going to die. Seeing the stakes would be terrifying, but it isn’t a psychological torture method. The Iron Maiden on the other hand; that would have a psychological effect the moment you saw it. As Ace said, the ones we have are scary looking. Yet, not as much as the Scavenger’s Daughter. With the Scavenger’s Daughter, it is long, drawn out and there is always a hope that you will live. Whatever comes next probably has the same aspect, there is the possibility that you could live.”
“What if he already has all the devices he intends to use?” Gabriel entered the room.
“Then we are beating our heads against a wall. Hanging Coffins, skull crushers, maces, yokes, they all become very real possibilities.” I approved of Lucas’s analysis of the torture situation.
“Let’s hope it’s going to be improvised. That way we just need to track down the guy catching the city’s rat population.”
“If only it were that easy.” I shrugged.
Chapter 23