Chapter 24: Rain Rain Go Away 03
Hestal blinked her eyes.
His muscles ached, his vision immersed in utter darkness; he struggled slowly on the thin, washed-out bedsheet, a small pained groan escaping between his lips. Then he realized his hands were firmly bound behind his back, and his ankles were tied as well.
Alright, apparently “being stunned by a stranger with a taser and locked up in some godforsaken place” wasn’t even a scenario your average mob lawyer would go through. He shifted with difficulty, looking around.
The air was filled with a pungent smell of smoke, and lying on his side, his gaze past the edge of the bed could see a stretch of floor—strictly speaking, quite filthy: a thin layer of dust was one thing, but the ground was also scattered with fallen ash and stubbed-out cigarette butts.
He was clearly in a very run-down bedroom, lying on a mattress whose springs were about to collapse. And at the far end of the room, in a sagging armchair worn soft with age, sat the young man he had seen that morning.
The young man was watching his direction nervously and uneasily, one hand resting on his leg was clumsily wrapped in bandages, blood seeping out from beneath the bandages—that was clearly his handiwork.
“Good afternoon, you’re finally awake!” The young man noticed he had woken up, and abruptly sprang up from the chair, darting over to him in a few quick strides, one leg pressing onto the mattress, which sank with an ominous creak. That young face, somewhat pale from lack of sunlight, broke into a brilliant smile. “You were out for so long, I was so worried about you! Hestal… that’s your name, right?”
That’s because you jabbed me with a stun gun. Hestal grumbled inwardly.
“You’re the one who was following me yesterday?” Hestal leaned himself against the wall, ignoring the other’s pointless question. He struggled to adjust his posture using his tightly bound ankles as support. “…’Killer Johnny’?”
It was no wonder Hestal had guessed. After all, he watched the news too: a serial killer who specifically abducted blond men from secluded places had already caused a huge uproar in the Great Lakes region.
And this serial killer had not only abducted him, but had clearly done a thorough investigation of him beforehand. That was hardly surprising either—as long as someone searched the name of their law firm, his photo would immediately pop up on Google.
“I’m really so happy that you remember my name. Please call me Elliot, I’m begging you.” The young man answered with a huge grin on his face. He threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around Hestal’s shoulders, his lips clumsily kissing his face. “So, since we already know each other now, you also know what we’re going to do, right?”
Hestal fought hard to suppress the urge to flinch backward. He let out a low laugh, his voice as soft as a gentle breath: “What, are you planning to rape me?”
The midday sun was quite intense; after the rain, such clear weather was more or less expected. But clearly, the mood of the WLPD detectives had not improved much just because of the pristine blue sky.
Albanino stepped down from the crime scene vehicle, with Bates and Olga following behind him. Not far ahead, at least three police cars were parked. And Lavasa McCade and Officer Hardy were standing in the center of the open area enclosed by these police cars: right in the middle of the road sat a Rolls-Royce Wraith that was as conspicuous as it could possibly be.
“Oh my God,” Bates said with complete sincerity. They had already heard part of the sequence of events on the way over, but clearly, actually seeing it with their own eyes made it very hard to accept.
“Honestly, too many things have been happening to Hestal recently. I strongly suggest we really apply for a witness protection program for him,” Olga grumbled under her breath.
They walked all the way to the back of the Rolls-Royce parked alone in the emergency stopping lane, their footsteps anxiously striking the ground. Hardy looked toward them, a faint crease pressed into his brow.
“What happened?” Albanino asked softly.
“A car got a flat tire on the road and had to stop,” Hardy said. He raised his hand and showed everyone the evidence bag he was holding: inside lay a metal object resembling caltrops, every spike glittering under the sunlight. “Because someone scattered these on the road surface. Then the unlucky car owner discovered a Rolls-Royce abandoned by the roadside, with some bloodstains near the car door, so naturally he called the police immediately.”
“I want to see the bloodstains,” Albanino said.
Hardy nodded and led them around the back of the car. There was quite a bit of blood on the ground along the side of the vehicle closest to the middle of the road—some of it had pooled into a small puddle, some had dripped haphazardly onto the ground, and some had been smeared, dragging out a shocking long streak across the pavement.
“This victim was still quite lucky,” McCard observed calmly. “The car keys weren’t even pulled from the ignition. If the first person who found this car had chosen not to call the police and instead driven it away, who knows how long it would’ve taken before anyone realized he was missing.”
Hardy nodded with a headache and continued, “The DNA has been sent to the lab. The results aren’t out yet. I hope it’s not Mr. Armalite’s blood—when Thomas Norman was killed, we collected a blood sample from him just to be safe. The comparison should come back soon.”
Meanwhile, Bates had already crouched carefully beside the bloodstains. His fingers lightly brushed the gradually drying edge of the blood pool as he said, “Although bloodstain pattern analysis isn’t something you can rush—we have to go through many rigorous steps before we can reach a conclusion—but regardless… I think a struggle took place here.”
Everyone was looking at him.
It was Albanino who spoke first. He had evidently reached the same conclusion just moments ago: “The blood loss wasn’t fatal, but it wasn’t exactly minor either. This probably isn’t a pool of blood left from breaking someone’s nose—one of them was carrying a sharp weapon.”
“The blood droplets on the ground are very chaotic—not the spatter pattern you’d see from a major blood vessel being severed. Maybe that person’s wound wasn’t serious to begin with, and these droplets were flung off as he moved quickly.” Bates picked up the thread, pointing emphatically at several blood droplets on the ground, though no one else could see any difference in them at all. “And these smearing marks—after the blood hit the ground, someone rolled over it. Their clothing absorbed the blood, and then it was smeared back onto the pavement. Look here—the blood left an imprint of fabric fibers.”
“Hestal must have put up a fierce fight,” Olga pointed out, letting out a soft, worried hum. “This seems like the kind of thing he would do.”
“Yes, after all, Mr. Armalite is a very brave man, as we could see from that kidnapping case orchestrated by Martin Jones.” Bates nodded in agreement. “Regardless, the killer must have subdued Mr. Armalite in the end. The ground is too hard—I don’t think there’s any trace with extraction value. But just to be safe, I’ll have someone check that car, though I don’t think the killer would have left fingerprints on it.”
He stood up and went back to the other CSIs. Albanino, however, was still staring at the bloodstains on the ground. He was silent for a moment, then said, “It could be something like a stun gun—several of ‘Killer Johnny’s’ previous victims had burn marks from electric shocks on their skin.”
Hardy also looked in that direction. He seemed to have remembered something, and slowly furrowed his brow. “If the killer planned to take down Hestal with a taser, then it’s unlikely the killer stabbed him with a knife or some other sharp weapon, right?—Use a knife first and then switch to a taser? Would anyone do that?”
“So the blood could have been left by the injured killer? The victim wounded ‘Killer Johnny’ while resisting?” McCade suddenly spoke up, sharply scanning the other few people. “Is the victim you all knew the type to carry a sharp weapon on him?”
“This is Westland, McCade.” Olga snorted. Whenever she faced Lavasa McCade, she was always this full of hostility. “This place is full of people who carry weapons for self-defense to ensure their own safety. I’m quite sure the chief forensic officer next to me has a pair of underarm holsters under that pretty coat of his.”
Albanino gave McCade an innocent smile.
“Alright. In any case, I hope we can extract the killer’s DNA from these pools of blood—that would save us a lot of trouble,” McCade said firmly. “I think there’s nothing else here worth documenting—Officer Hardy, please continue with your officers in canvassing witnesses and the victim’s friends. Perhaps the people around Mr. Armalite might have noticed when Johnny set his sights on him.”
Hardy nodded and quickly whispered instructions to one of the officers beside him.
“Schwandner should be able to bring us the latest progress on the trace evidence analysis from the CSI crime lab soon. We’ll use that to reconstruct exactly what happened at the scene,” McCade continued. Then he looked at Albanino inquiringly: “Dr. Bax, I’ve brought the autopsy reports of the other victims in this serial murder case from Quantico. If you’re willing, you could take a look at those reports for us—perhaps you might find something new?”
“I’d be delighted,” Albanino answered with a smile.
“——Molozer.” Finally, McCard said this, his tone sounding somewhat uncertain.
“No.” Olga answered without even raising her head, staring down at the ground as if the ants crawling across it were the source of her inspiration.
An awkward pause, then McCard’s voice softened a little: “You’re a consultant for the WLPD. We need you. You know as well as anyone that you used to be the best among us… Not to mention, Hestal Amalite is your friend, right?”
“They’re as transparent as glass before my eyes, McCard.” Olga frowned as she replied, “So my intuition tells me you probably won’t like this case, or everything that follows after it—you never did like madmen, right? I don’t think Westland City suits you.”
“We need to solve this case.” McCade answered with a tense expression, nodded to Olga, and then strode off toward the forensic vehicle.
There were still CSIs in blue protective suits working, and Bates stood among them, frowning deeply; Albanino and Olga stood amid the busy crowd, looking like reefs standing firm between rushing blue rivers. Albanino scanned the bustling crowd, then asked Olga, “Actually, you’re not really going to just ignore the progress of the case investigation—you’ll come back to the police station with us, right?”
“I guess I can’t sit out this case just because I hate McCade, can I? Besides, this matter involves Hestal too.” Olga shrugged, her voice sounding almost like a sigh.
Albanino laughed. “I guess it has nothing to do with Hestal himself—for you, what you really can’t miss is the chance to seek the truth.”
“‘The truth is rarely pure and never simple.'” Olga replied, “You know that perfectly well, don’t you, Al?”
“—Wilde.” Albanino answered with a smile, that expression settling on his face as neatly as a mask.
“Let’s go.” Olga finally showed her first smile of the day, “In that case, we need to hurry: given that serial killer’s peculiar obsession, Hestal could be killed at any moment once it rains again.”
Hestal’s hands had gradually gone numb from being bound behind his back for so long, though he hadn’t expected his situation to improve: it was clearly unlikely that a serial killer would trust you enough on the first day to untie your hands. And “Killer Johnny”—who insisted on having Hestal call him “Elliot”—clearly enjoyed taking care of a man who was trussed up like a package.
There was a fervent, gentle look in the young man’s eyes: most people would call it love, but Hestal preferred to call it madness. Elliot was now sitting at the edge of the bed, holding a silly Chinese takeout paper box, and said in a cheerful and soft voice: “Time to eat.”
—Looking at the spoon in the other’s hand, Hestal knew this person intended to feed him.
Everything Hestal knew about “Killer Johnny” came from the newspapers. Obviously, when the Westland Pianist and the Sunday Gardener were not committing crimes, the local media had a great deal of interest in this killer who frequently committed crimes in several nearby states.
From the newspapers, one could learn that this killer would not deliberately torture his victims, nor would he abuse, beat, or starve them—provided, of course, that one was willing to exclude sexual assault from the category of “abuse.”
Based on this, Hestal had formed a vague understanding of this madman, and the other’s current appearance further confirmed his suspicions.
He didn’t know how long he would be locked up in this place, but for now it was better not to resort to a hunger strike; he accepted that spoonful of food from Elliot’s hand, slowly chewing the greasy grains of rice, while the other watched him with a delighted grin at his compliance.
In that moment, Hestal’s mind wandered: if a person like this were unfortunately arrested and imprisoned, and he were the other’s defense attorney, he would certainly use mental illness as his defense strategy.
That’s right, it was easy to see. Hestal had spent less than four hours with Elliot and had already determined that the other was a genuine mental patient, perhaps suffering from delusions or something of the sort—the killer Johnny was a completely different serial killer from the Sunday Gardener. Albanino Bacchus might indeed be a psychopath, and it was well worth questioning whether he could truly empathize with others, or even whether he could regard himself and other humans as the same kind—but at the very least, he had perfectly mastered the skill of blending into a crowd.
—And the person before him clearly couldn’t integrate well into human society.
Just look at where they were now: a dusty apartment, exactly the kind of place someone who had lost all motivation in life would choose for themselves. The young man sitting across from him, feeding him, was handsome, but clearly didn’t pay much attention to his appearance. Hestal also remembered that the Ford sedan he drove was gray and dusty as well.
Hestal had noticed before that Elliot’s hair was very long. Aside from being tied back in a ponytail, there were also many stray strands around his forehead, all now clipped up on top of his head. But Hestal believed that when this person interacted with others, those strands were probably let down.
He could easily picture such an image in his mind: this person wearing inconspicuous clothes, hair let down to cover his face and block others’ scrutinizing gazes. He probably tried to avoid eye contact with others in daily life—solitary, eccentric, wandering at the edges of crowds. But now, he had clipped all the hair on his forehead up neatly.
Because he wanted Hestal to see his face.
How interesting, somewhere deep in Hestal’s heart he was still sneering coldly—this serial killer was actually seeking emotional connection with his victims.
That explained a lot of things: why the killer Johnny took care of his victims as best he could beyond depriving them of their freedom, until he was finally forced to kill them for some reason. Elliot selected his victims according to certain rules—blond, handsome, slightly older than himself. Was that out of his affection?
Hestal swallowed the grains of rice. He had little appetite, but clearly Elliot had no intention of stopping until he had eaten enough. Half to dodge the spoon that was about to come toward him, and half to confirm his guess, Hestal spoke up and asked: “Did you also feed the people who were with you before, Elliot?”
He glossed over the phrasing “kidnapped by you.” He thought that maybe Elliot didn’t even consider those people to have been kidnapped by him. He might not even think that nearly cutting off their heads counted as killing them. There was no limit to what could go on in the mind of a psychopath.
Elliot let out a low, delighted laugh, clearly enjoying the topic: “Are you eating?”
Right. In this serial killer’s eyes, they were obviously supposed to be madly in love. Perhaps those victims were the “lovers” he had chosen according to his own standards; but every single one of them had been killed. Even if Elliot was insane to that degree, in the end he must have realized that those poor bastards only wanted to flee from his side.
“Can’t I?” Halstall retorted without changing expression. When he had defended those gang members, he had said plenty of things far more outrageous than this. It was nothing. “After all, I have nowhere to go now. Shouldn’t I be concerned about a problem like this?”
“Oh!” Elliot whispered. He fumbled to set the fast-food box on the folding table beside him, then quickly lunged forward and threw his arms around Hestal’s shoulders.
Those cracked lips landed enthusiastically on his jaw and neck, bringing with them an unpleasant sensation. Hestal drew a deep breath, knowing that the last thing he should do right now was provoke the other man—just look at what he’d done to those victims’ necks. Slowly, slowly, he tilted his head back, baring his throat, carefully calculating the angle that would convey submission—
“Come, my dear child.” The man spoke, his hair steeped in the blurred, sacred glow of the stained-glass window. “My dear child, I am cleansing you of your sins.”
Hestal’s throat was choked with venomous words and the urge to vomit, but in the end neither leaked out in the slightest. Elliot buried his face in his neck and shoulder, gently biting a small patch of skin, licking it until it was wet.
He demanded fanatically, “Say it again.”
“Which part?” Hestal asked, then he had an epiphany. “Oh.”
Somewhere deep in his heart, he sneered coldly, because he had hit the bullseye and felt a cruel delight. When he spoke, he kept his voice extremely low, as if he hadn’t noticed the other man’s arousal stirring below and his breathing growing heavier.
In a sense, Hestal knew what was bound to happen—after all, the other man was indeed a rapist too; but he had also obtained that key: the key to save his own life and to destroy the other.
How easy it is to take a person’s life.
Hestal obediently repeated, “Now I have nowhere to go.”
He paused, then raised the stakes, saying, “Obviously, I only have you, Elliot.”
The young man let out an ecstatic sob against the hollow of his neck. Hestal could hear the rustle of fabric from the other’s fumbling movements, and the sound of a zipper being pulled down. This was bound to happen sooner or later; he had neither the will nor the strength to stop it.
The young man held him tightly, thrusting his hips clumsily, smearing slick prostate fluid against his leg, his lips brushing the corner of his mouth. Having someone pressed up against him—masturbating against his will—only brought a familiar sense of nausea, and at times like this he would rather let his thoughts sink elsewhere. He thought, this pitiful paranoid, clearly seeing subtle hints in everything; for someone like that, he must surely believe that the blond prey he had chosen were deeply in love with him.
The endings of such stories tended to be very tragic.
“I’m so happy to hear you say that.” Elliot said by his ear, his breath scorching, his voice fractured, a sticky wet sound squeezed out between his fingers. “Just stay here like this, let me take care of you—”
Herstal was briefly stunned. He suddenly realized a problem.
—Eliot’s feelings for his victims were not merely “love”; the way he loved was very strange. When Hestal said to him, “I only have you,” Eliot seemed abnormally excited; the other party’s behavior of eating food from his hand made him excessively happy—that was not a necessary measure to keep his captive alive; he clearly enjoyed the entire process; he said, “Let me take care of you,” didn’t he?
This was not some equal love relationship, even for a delusional patient who firmly believed he had fallen passionately in love with a stranger.
—Obviously, the killer Johnny very much enjoyed putting his victims in a position of weakness and personally caring for them.
And Eliot let out a trembling moan by his ear, and came on his leg.
This was a second of silence. The young man’s fingers trembled as he smeared those sticky fluids across his dress pants, as if trying to spread them over a wider area—like Hephaestus futilely pursuing Athena.
His fingers swirled possessively on Hestal’s leg, rubbing those fluids into the fabric until his prisoner could feel the soaked cloth clinging tightly to his skin—yet Hestal’s thoughts had already drifted far away.
—When Albanino had gone to have dinner with him, he had said: “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.”
It is the intense passion known as love.
Plato’s Phaedrus, of course. But why would Albanino suddenly quote that line? He didn’t actually believe that Albanino truly defined their complicated relationship as “love.” Moreover, Albanino wouldn’t lack the self-awareness to the point of acknowledging his own psychological defects while simultaneously discussing “love”—they both knew that was utterly meaningless.
Furthermore, the love discussed in Phaedrus refers to the love between an older man and a youth in ancient Greece, a relationship that is obviously worlds apart from modern definitions of love. Unless it was a hint—a hint about something Albanino knew full well would happen but Hestal himself was not yet aware of.
In Phaedrus, Plato argues: the lover prefers those weaker than himself.
All the various defects in the beloved’s soul will surely become a fountain of delight for the lover; if these defects are not already inherent traits, he will cultivate them, because to do otherwise would be to deprive himself of his own present pleasure.
Johnny the Killer enjoyed taking care of his victims very, very much. He loved the feeling of the other person being tied up helplessly, able to do nothing but let him do as he pleased; he loved the other person taking food from his hand; he loved that the other person could go nowhere and could only wait for his return.
Elliot murmured a confession in his ear: “I love you so much.”
Hestal furrowed his brow. Of course Elliot did not see the cold emotion gradually accumulating in his eyes—that was the bloodthirsty killing intent of the Westland Pianist.
—The only question was, what role exactly did Albanino Bacchus play in this whole affair?
Note:
[1] The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
— Oscar Wilde, *The Importance of Being Earnest*
[2] Hephaestus once attempted to pursue the virgin goddess Athena and dripped his semen onto Athena’s leg. The furious Athena wiped the semen off with wool and threw it to the ground, which caused the earth mother goddess Gaia to give birth to Erichthonius.