The Skin Worshipper

Chapter 41

 

  "It has been a long time since I did this," says Hawk, trying yet another lock pick on the door.

  "I didn't know it was part of the police training to pick locks," says Holmes standing next to him.

  "It isn't, it's one of those things you pick up on the way."

  There is a faint click and the door swings open. Hawk stands in the doorway and listens. There is no sound coming from within and outside, they can only hear the breeze through the trees and some birds.

  "Do you smell it?" he asks.

  "A little, but I know what you mean."

  They step inside and Hawk begins with the living room. Holmes walks into the kitchen and starts to open cupboards and looking in drawers.

  "This place is spotless, no dust, and no dirt on the floor, nothing," she hears Hawk say from where he is looking behind the TV.

  "Still, there is the smell. It must come from somewhere."

  Hawk moves into the master bedroom. The bed is made with military precision; the corners are perfectly lined up. There are no clothes strewn around. The wardrobe is perfectly ordered. Shoes are on the floor, and clothes hanging in neat rows, everything on a hanger and according to color.

  "He must be a pain in the ass to live with," says Hawk.

  Holmes is in the boy's room and says, "let me guess, everything is in perfect order right."

  "Yeah, even the underwear and socks are according to color."

  "Same in here, his toys are all lined up on shelves, cars to the right, dinosaurs in the center and books to the left. Nothing is out of place."

  They meet in the living room and Hawk sighs. "Do you have any ideas?"

  "We have been here for half an hour, let's double check the bedrooms again. Maybe if we can figure out where the smell is coming from we might find something."

  Together they go back to the master bedroom and standing in the middle of the floor, Holmes closes her eyes, and inhales deeply through her nose.

  "I think the smell is stronger here than anywhere else in the house."

  "You must have better skills than me, because to me it's the same."

  "No, it's defiantly stronger in here," she says slowly turning around in a tight circle. Her eyes are still closed and he can see her nose flare as she breathes in.

  "There, I think it's coming from over there," she says and opens her eyes. Her finger is pointing at the wardrobe Hawk checked earlier.

  They open it and Holmes sticks her head inside. Moving some clothes hangers to the side, she says, "it's from in here. Help me take these clothes out."

  Together they place all the clothes on the bed, and take out all the shoes and line them up against the wall. When the wardrobe is empty Holmes steps inside. She smells along the walls and then kneels down.

  "It's coming from the floor."

  Hawk kneels beside her and begins knocking on the floorboards. After a few knocks the sound changes, it's hollow.

  "There is something down there, like a hole or something," he says.

  Together they check the edges of the floor and it's Hawk, who finds the thin string along the floorboards. He pulls at it and the entire floor comes up.

  "Christ!" says Holmes and takes a step back.

  The smell coming at them is strong, and burns their eyes. Hawk gets up and they both walk back a few steps and look at the empty black hole in the floor.

  "What do you think?" asks Holmes.

  "Chemicals, and something else. Something rotten."

  "I agree. Do you have a flashlight?"

  "No, but there might be one in the kitchen"

  While Hawk goes looking for the flashlight Holmes kneels by the hole and tries to see something. She thinks there is some kind of ladder or steps leading down, but she is not sure.

  "Here we are," says Hawk, coming back. He points the strong beam of light from the flashlight down into the hole and they can see it's a ladder leading down.

  Hawk pulls his weapon and says, "I'll go down first, you hold the light and I'll let you know when it's safe."

  It's only five or six rungs and then he is standing on a concrete floor. He looks around in the gloom, but can only see shapes, a few tables and a chair.

  "Come on down, " he calls up.

  When Holmes is standing next to him with the light they can see they are standing in a rectangular room, all painted in white. On the wall next to the ladder is a switch and when Hawk turns it on the room is flooded with white light from several fixtures in the ceiling.

  "OK, now what?" asks Holmes.

  "Follow the stink."

  He walks towards the other end of the room where there is a wooden structure. There is a metal ring on the top beam and two on either side beam. The entire thing is anchored to the floor with heavy bolts. The corners are reinforced with metal supports.

  To the right along the wall there are plastic sheets hanging down from the ceiling. Hawk walks up to them and pulls one to the side.

  "I think we found something."

  Holmes, who has been looking at a stainless steel table on the other side of the structure looks back at him, and asks, "what?"

  She walks over and when she sees what he is looking at she gasps, "are those-?"

  "I think so, first I thought they were just mannequins, but look at this one. I swear that's a trickle of blood." He points at where the neck meets the shoulder. Holmes steps closer and looks carefully at the few drops of red. Then she tilts her head to the side, and steps to the right.

  "What are you doing," he asks.

  She doesn't answer him, instead she walks back to the table, she looked at before and when she comes back she has a stainless instrument in her hand. It looks like a long thin tweezers. She carefully places it next to the two red drops and presses down. A third drop appears.

  "Shit," says Hawk.

  Holmes gently pushes the tweezers against the mannequin and the tip disappears. She pulls it out and reinserts just one leg and then takes hold of the material and slowly pulls it to the side.

  "What is that?" asks Hawk.

  Holmes pulls a bit more and a few inches of the material come away and below is a white plastic.

  "It's skin, real skin," she says and pulls a bit more.

  "No, it can't be. It looks so perfect, if it was skin wouldn't it have been damaged by now?"

  "I think he uses chemicals to cure it somehow. Look at these stitches; it must have taken him hours to do it. I'd say the entire skin from the head has been pulled over the mannequin's and then sewn on to the rest. He even added make up to cover the stitches.

  Hawk looks at the eyes of the mannequin. They are dark blue, and her hair frames her beautifully.

  "I think this is Katie. What I don't get is why would she still bleed, she has been missing for weeks, and if she has been dead that long there should be no blood, " he says.

  "Maybe the chemicals stop it from coagulating properly. It's only three small drops, that's all.'

  Hawk pulls away more of the sheeting," look at this, there are even kids and teenagers here, all perfectly stuffed."

  "We need to call this in," says Holmes, stepping away from Katie.

  Kerry is looking out the window and watches as the deputy parks the police car on the curb and walks up to his house.

  "Hi, I'm Friedman, I'm here to take you to Doc's for you to ID the bodies."

  Kerry opens the door more and lets the man inside. As he walks into the house Kerry pulls a long kitchen knife from behind his back and stabs Friedman on the right side of the neck. He then turns the knife and rips it out, and by doing so opens a big wound. The blood squirts out in an arch, and Friedman gurgles while falling to the floor where he twitches a few times and then lies still.

  Kerry watches the dead man for a second or two, and then grabs a backpack he put by the door earlier and walks out into the sunshine. He has made up his mind while waiting for the deputy. He will go to the cabin and get a few things before driving to Canada, and from there fly
to Brazil. He will miss his family, but he can't take the mannequins with him, but he is sure the od will forgive him. He can always build new ones.

  When he arrives at the end of the trail he sees a police cruiser parked there. He recognizes it as the same cruiser Chief Hawk had used when he came to see him earlier. Kerry is not carrying any weapons with him, he had left the kitchen knife by the body, but he has some hidden by the shed. He knows he is faster and stronger than most men. An alcoholic Chief of Police will not stand in his way.

  "Do you hear that?" asks Holmes.

  They are standing outside on the porch and Hawk is trying to get a signal on his phone so he can call the FBI.

  "Yeah, it sounds like a Quad,"

  "Could it be Kerry?"

  He listens more carefully and then says, "I don't think so. It sounds as if it was driving away from us."

  Holmes has to agree, the sound soon stops and the clearing is quiet again.

  "Any luck?" she asks.

  "Yeah, there is a weak signal," says Hawk, leaning against one beam on the porch with his phone to his ear.

  Kerry is on the other side of the clearing, he had started the Quad, but then realized they would hear him coming, so he took his clothes off and began running naked through the forest. When he arrives, he is hardly sweating even though the day is warm. He lays down behind a tree trunk and watches the two people on the porch. The woman is walking back and forth while the man is talking on the phone. They must have found something, they both look a bit pale and the woman is biting her fingernails.

  Kerry slowly crawls to his right and foot by foot makes it to the back of the cabin. He sticks his arm inside a dead tree trunk and pulls out a blow gun with four darts attached to it with tape. Back up.

  "When can you be here?" asks Hawk into the phone.

  The other person says something, and then Hawk says, "please, get here as fast as you can, this is serious. Meanwhile, I will have my people arrest Kerry."

  "What did they say," asks Holmes when he hangs up.

  "They should be here in a couple of hours, I'm going to call Friedman and have him wait for Collins, then arrest Kerry."

  Hawk hears the signal go through but no one answers.

  "Shit, he might have left the phone at the station, and I'm not carrying a radio. We have to go back to town and-"

  Holmes sees how Hawks eyes open wide, and then he slowly drops to the floor. He doesn't fall, it's more like if his legs give up on him slowly and he goes down. She stares at him, and doesn't understand what has happened.

  Suddenly there is a sting on her cheek, and when she looks down, she can see a thin dart sticking out, and then it just falls to the deck. Suddenly her legs turn to jelly and everything around her begins to spin.