Chapter 22: Rain Rain Go Away 01
By late October, Westland was still often steeped in lingering rain. The rain wasn’t heavy, but it was endless and relentless, wearing on people’s nerves. The poor weather put enormous pressure on the transportation department and, furthermore, destroyed all the evidence of the murder case.
Bart Hardy stepped down off the road shoulder, one foot deep and one foot shallow, the mud beneath him soft and slippery. The police tape was strung up along a rural highway, and as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t even a single house in sight—a truly excellent place to dump a body.
A passing traveler had called the police after discovering a corpse in the wilderness: a common post-mortem body dump case, most of which in Westland ultimately turned out to be gang conflicts. A case this simple naturally didn’t require a profiler—Olga was probably teaching at the university right now, and Bates wasn’t among the CSI present today either.
But for some reason, Albanino Bax was standing outside the cordon with a beaming smile.
If Hardy remembered correctly, the forensic bureau had given Albanino paid leave until November 1st, as part of the compensation for his wrongful imprisonment, and the compensation payment was still under negotiation.
Hardy looked at Albanino standing there listlessly, then at the forensic scene investigators who were indeed busy at the crime scene, and felt a wave of dizziness.
“I’m so bored,” Albanino told Hardy with a lazy smile. “I asked the bureau which scene you were working, and I came over.”
“Where are your little girlfriends?” Hardy glanced at him with a helpless look. Someone was on paid leave while others were at work—how infuriatingly enviable.
“Didn’t you accuse me last time of having a chaotic love life or something? I haven’t lived that kind of nightlife since I got out of prison.” Albanino widened his eyes, his expression looking innocently like he’d seen a ghost. “I’ve been at home lately watching Shark Week documentary reruns.”
…So his days really had been quite boring. Hardy silently grumbled to himself while lifting the police tape and gesturing for Albanino to duck through, casually tossing him a pair of latex gloves. “This is a pretty boring case too. Someone dumped a body out in the middle of nowhere like this—you know, this kind of situation is usually gang-related.”
What he didn’t say was: fifty percent of cases like this go nowhere. The two of them walked over to the corpse. The forensic scene investigator crouching beside the body was a young man who hadn’t been in the job long, and he looked up somewhat nervously, calling out toward Albanino, “Dr. Bax.”
And lying before them was an exceptionally gruesome corpse: that of a tall blond man, his throat slit open, blood smeared everywhere across the front of his clothes. The killer must have slashed him many times during the murder—the flesh of his neck had split open so badly that the faint outline of white bone was visible.
Albanino gave the other man a smile as abundant as if it cost him nothing, and casually asked, “What have you found?”
“The victim has been dead for over twelve hours. He was probably killed sometime after the rain stopped last night,” said the forensic scene investigator, pointing through the air at the corpse’s fingers covered in livor mortis. “After he was killed, he may have been stuffed into a cramped space like a car trunk, and only then dumped here. The killer must have left him in that cramped space for a long time before disposing of the body—by the time he was dumped, rigor mortis had already set in. Perhaps the killer tried to break the rigor mortis, but you can see from the position of his arms what posture they were in before the rigor was disturbed.”
Indeed, though the victim lay face-up on the ground, his hands were not flat against the surface but rather raised strangely upward toward the sky, as if in an embracing posture. This was very likely because when the killer had stuffed the victim into that small space, he had been forced to arrange him in a knees-to-chest position.
“This is a bit strange,” Albanino muttered to himself.
Hardy shot him a sharp glance, clearly realizing something.
The forensic scene investigator was still visibly confused, and Albanino patiently explained to him: “Look, the current situation strongly suggests that after the killer murdered the victim, he stuffed the body into a trunk or a box; the rigor mortis throughout his body was likely broken once and then re-formed, so the killer probably dumped the body three or four hours after it was crammed into that confined space—by the time he disposed of it, even if the rigor mortis hadn’t spread through the entire body, it had very likely spread to the lower back; the victim was curled up in that tight space with both arms wrapped around himself, and his arms, shoulders, and back were all stiff. Then, what did the killer do?”
The scene investigator blinked, and in the tone of a schoolboy answering a question, said: “Uh, the killer broke most of the rigor mortis in order to lay the victim flat—”
“Exactly!” Albanino snapped his fingers, his tone very cheerful. “Why would he arrange the victim like that? If it was a gang dumping a body, as Bart initially guessed, then why go to all the trouble of breaking the already-rigid joints just to make the corpse lie flat on the ground?”
“You mean…” Hardy thought for a moment. For a police officer, this kind of scenario was not uncommon. “The killer had feelings for the victim?”
Albanino nodded. “Very likely. Even though the killer dumped the body in such a desolate, remote place, he went to great lengths to arrange the corpse into a posture where it could lie with dignity. Not to mention…”
He reached out and gestured toward the victim’s ashen face.
“The killer slit the victim’s throat, and you all know what the victim’s face should look like after the arterial blood sprays out like that,” Albanino said. “The victim’s face is very clean, completely free of bloodstains. Given that the killer likely dumped the body only after the rain stopped last night, I think we can suspect that the killer wiped the blood off the victim’s face.”
A conclusion like that was undoubtedly invigorating: if they could determine the victim’s identity, and then conduct a targeted investigation of people close to him who also had conflicts with him, the scope could naturally be narrowed considerably.
Hardy followed this line of thinking for a moment, and a new idea suddenly occurred to him.
His brow furrowed: “…But perhaps there’s another possibility.”
Albanino looked at him in confusion.
“Al, don’t these elements sound familiar to you?” Hardy said, staring intently at the corpse’s face, the more he thought about it, the more something felt off. “A handsome blond male, between thirty-five and forty-five years old, died by having his throat slit, the body abandoned in the wilderness on a night after rain—?”
“Ah.” Albanino let out a low breath.
By this point, even the young forensic scene investigator had caught on. He exclaimed in a hushed voice: “Officer Hardy, you suspect this is a victim of ‘Killer Johnny’?”
“Killer Johnny,” a serial killer who had been active around the Great Lakes in recent years, targeted handsome blond middle-aged men as his victims. Killer Johnny would abduct and imprison his victims for a period of time. Some investigations suggested that during captivity, the killer would provide his victims with good care—but would also violate them—and then, several days later, on a morning just after rain, he would dump the victims’ bodies in remote suburban areas.
“Killer Johnny” was originally a name coined by the media in St. Lawrence City, obviously inspired by the nursery rhyme “Rain rain go away, come again another day, little Johnny wants to play.” The media probably felt that linking a serial killer to a nursery rhyme was both witty and attention-grabbing, quite in the style of Agatha Christie.
Clearly, if Officer Hardy’s deduction was correct, little Johnny had come to Westland to play after the rain. Albanino looked at Hardy with sympathy, feeling that his expression had visibly darkened.
After all, Westland already had two at-large serial killers. They really didn’t need any more.
“Alright,” so Hardy nodded dryly at the forensic scene investigator, “take this corpse back to the forensic bureau. I want the scene investigation report completed as soon as possible, and have the forensic pathologist perform the autopsy quickly: if the body shows restraint injuries from captivity and traces of sexual assault… I’m afraid we’ll have to contact the FBI.”
Albanino stood up from beside the corpse, his legs slightly numb from crouching for too long, and he suddenly felt like smiling.
The sky was a washed-clean blue, but it was obvious that an autumn rain would be arriving before long.
Hestal had gone to visit a client in the afternoon. By the time he returned to the law firm and parked in the nearby lot, it was already late, and under the dim glow of the streetlights, he kept feeling as though a gaze was faintly pricking at his spine.
He was familiar with that kind of gaze—it usually meant a stalker: a gang underling unsure whether he was on the right side, a journalist looking to dig up a scoop, a WLPD officer who had no idea what case he was investigating, or a law firm intern nursing a secret crush. He didn’t pay it much mind. He had too many things to deal with every day to let a fleeting, elusive gaze distract him.
What truly deserved his attention was in his office—Albanino Bacchus had appeared in his office along with his glass lunchbox, as smug as if someone had invited them in.
Albanino smiled at Hestal: “Dinner.”
There was one possibility: Hestal’s barren refrigerator had deeply wounded some part of Albanino’s pride. It happened to be Albanino’s vacation period, so sometimes he even had the leisure to show up in Hestal’s office with dinner during overtime.
A “real” dinner—no cold instant food, no vending machine sandwiches, no wilted vegetable salad. An exaggerated number of glass lunchboxes were lined up in a row beside Albanino’s hand, and Hestal even suspected that one of them contained soup.
“I sometimes wonder whether you really know what you’re doing,” Hestal pointed out in a calm tone.
“I think I do: I’m creating an opportunity to meet with you,” Albanino answered frankly. The mint green of his irises looked unusually pale under the direct light, and the pupils ringed by that color were like a deep pool. This forensic pathologist and serial killer took a step forward before continuing, “And you know, when raising animals, you often have to ensure their diet in order to ensure their meat is…”
He paused, then lightly let the word slip out.
“Delicious.”
“Some people also believe in ensuring their death is completely painless. It’s said that fear sours the taste of the prey,” Hestal said coldly.
“Indeed. I don’t see anything wrong with granting prey a painless death, though I suppose you might not see it that way.” Albanino smiled slightly. “And yes, I did come here partly for business: the matter of compensation for the imprisonment obviously still needs to be discussed, and when the negotiations begin, my lawyer should be present as well.”
Albanino simply had a strange ability to subtly make the phrase “my lawyer” sound like some kind of private possession belonging exclusively to him. Hestal responded with a cold sneer: “If you still want to talk business, then I must point out that my consultations are billed by the hour.”
“Lawyers also charge by the hour for consulting a forensic pathologist. Perhaps the two of us could just offset each other’s fees.” Albanino made this absurd remark with a gentle smile, and without any sense of restraint, he settled himself beside the sofa chair near the floor-to-ceiling window. “Would you like to sit down too? The food is getting cold. I imagine you still have a bit of time before you continue working overtime?”
Hestal slowly scrutinized him, then walked over and sat down beside Albanino. They always maintained a proper distance between them, and even after sitting down, their knees never touched. Albanino pushed the dinner boxed up toward him, then spoke: “I know that expression of yours. It’s always the same expression you wear before you want to complain about my sense of social distance.”
“Any normal person would have some doubts about that behavior of yours. It’s only human nature,” Hestal said as he opened the box. All the more so since he also had to spare some attention to consider where on Albanino’s body he might be carrying a weapon, which made things even more complicated.
“You no longer belong to the category of ‘normal people,’” Albanino gazed at him, “and by the same logic, neither do I, Hestal.”
“If you’re looking for that kind of fellow, there are probably plenty out there. Why did you choose me?” Hestal asked. The lunchbox in his hands was filled with cut fruit—oranges and grapes.
“I didn’t want to choose you. It was inscrutable fate—” Albanino said. The many teeth revealed when he smiled made the expression no longer innocent. But he didn’t continue, because Hestal threw a grape at him.
“Save your clichés. I’m not interested in your Muse.” Hestal replied arrogantly.
The grape hit Albanino on the shoulder. He caught the small fruit in one hand before it could roll onto the ground. Albanino looked down at the grape as though he could see the answer to all things in the universe upon it.
Then he said, “You’re not wrong, either: there’s a killer in Salt Lake City who uses an axe to behead his victims, and a serial killer in Chicago who only targets underage redheaded girls. There are many of them, everywhere. These cities are hunting grounds devoid of novelty, teeming with innocent lambs led to slaughter.”
“But even though you have many options, you’re still not interested in them.” Hestal stated slowly.
“True, because this isn’t something I can control—whatever opinions Olga may have shared with you—I swear this truly isn’t something I can control; sometimes, I think I don’t even have the right to make a choice.” Albanino deliberately lowered his tone to a murmur, almost inaudible. He watched him from beneath slightly lowered eyelids, through pale golden-brown lashes that shimmered faintly under the light. This madman, so skilled at manipulation, used this gaze to win others’ favor. “Because when pursuing the pleasure of beauty, irrational desire overcomes the judgment that would inspire righteous action… it is the intense passion known as love.”
Olga said that as long as he was willing, he could stop.
“I sense a very dangerous tendency in your words,” Hestal said in a low voice.
“Is that so?” Albanino looked at him directly, revealing a smile. “That’s only human nature. You’ll witness it soon enough.”
“Those dominated by desire and enslaved by desire will naturally tend to seek the greatest possible pleasure from the one they love—just as what a sick person hates is anything that obstructs him. Anything equal to or stronger than himself makes him feel trespassed upon.
“Therefore, if he can avoid it, he will not tolerate those as good as or better than himself. He will always seek out those weaker than he is—and weakness is often found in the ignorant, the timid, the poor speaker, unlike the wise, the strong, the eloquent, the quick-witted.
“All these defects in the beloved’s soul must surely become a fountain of delight for the lover; if they were not already inherent traits, he would cultivate them, for to do otherwise would be to deprive himself of his present pleasure.”
When Olga heard the knock at the door, she had already been planning to go to sleep.
She felt utterly exhausted: clearly, having her class scheduled as the last session of the day and then driving home from the university district was not a good idea. Perhaps Bart and the others had been right in their advice earlier—she should have rented a place near Westland State University.
Before she opened the door, she had no idea who would be standing there. If she had been some kind of Cassandra-like prophet, she might not have opened the door at all.
But in any case, Olga Moroz had no prophetic abilities, and the door was indeed opened. Standing in the doorway was a tall, dark-haired man with skin tanned to a healthy wheat color, looking both strong and sexy—unfortunately, he was completely not Olga’s type.
“Long time no see, Moroz.” said Lavasa McCard, the head of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, who should have been in Quantico.
Note:
[1] This chapter quotes a well-known English nursery rhyme. The Chinese translations never quite rhyme, and the words are so simple anyway, so you can just read it directly:
　　Rain rain go away
　　Come again another day
　　Little Jonhy wants to play
[2] “When pursuing the pleasure of beauty, irrational desire overcomes the judgment that gives rise to righteous action… it is the intense passion known as love.”
This sentence and the bold text in the next passage both come from Plato’s Phaedrus.
The “love” discussed in these paragraphs refers to the love between an older man and a youth. The quote in the second paragraph mainly discusses that “a lover likes those weaker than himself.” Because the love between an older man and a youth is not equal, and is obviously not a normal romantic relationship in modern society at all, Hestal would say, “I sense a very dangerous tendency in your words.”
But in reality, these dialogues are foreshadowing, not Albanino’s views on love (