Chapter 4: The Mark of Cain 03
By the time Albanino and Olga arrived at the Westland City Police Department, the milky white sunlight was once again streaming onto the streets. The police station was filled with a mixture of instant food, bad coffee, and exhaustion overflowing from human bodies. Walking into this office building, one could taste the physical entity of the word “despair” on the tip of their tongue.
The two of them had come to deliver the autopsy report to Officer Hardy. The corpse, covered in all manner of wounds, had taken Albanino five hours. Bates had already taken a dozen evidence bags back to the CSI lab. They wouldn’t be seeing him for a while, unless he actually managed to find fingerprints of evidentiary value on those fabric scraps.
Now, the entire police station was clearly packed with officers who hadn’t slept all night because of the Pianist’s new case. On the way over, Albanino and Olga had each bought a vending machine sandwich to stave off hunger, and now that cold bread crust and tasteless peanut butter seemed to still be stuck firmly to the roof of his mouth.
He had to admit that even at his age, standing under the surgical light all night on so little sleep had left him a bit lightheaded, and Officer Hardy, striding quickly toward him, looked even worse—his eyes were shot through with blood vessels, and the shadows beneath his eyes spread as menacingly as a pool of blood at a crime scene.
“Al,” he said with a resonant, vigorous tone, brimming with energy, “what have you found?”
“The killer removed the victim’s heart, then stuffed an apple between his ribs and scattered a handful of wheat into his abdominal cavity.” Albanino said as he shoved the report in his hand into Officer Hardy’s hands; the photos would be sent to the station later by Bates. The poor bastard had even taken the blood-soaked wheat grains with him—here’s hoping he still has a hearty appetite today.
Olga picked up his thread with ease: “The props he chose are quite interesting, though I haven’t yet figured out why he picked these things… Perhaps it’s simply a straightforward statement about a scarecrow? Guarding orchards and wheat fields?—Though the specific meaning of these items remains unclear, yes, this does look like the Pianist’s work.”
No, Albanino pointed out inwardly, his choice of apples and wheat was metaphorical in nature, intended to illustrate one of the Pianist’s points—though it was still uncertain, it was possibly a judgment upon the crimes the victim had committed.
This seemed like a cold arrogance, placing oneself in the position of a god with the power of judgment—which actually fit the profile the profiler had constructed for the killer quite well.
But he didn’t voice his thoughts. He wasn’t insane enough to announce his conclusions before the actual criminal psychologists did—otherwise, how would he face the questioning? “Hey Al, can you tell us how you deduced the killer’s inner thoughts?” “It’s not that difficult, because I can see things from the perspective of a deranged serial killer.”
Forget it. He laughed mockingly in his heart. Watching others misinterpret another serial killer’s work really did bring a kind of contemptible pleasure.
“I wouldn’t exactly call this ‘interesting.'” Officer Hardy looked at Olga with considerable disapproval. If Olga had been his subordinate, he probably would have already started apologizing involuntarily.
“That’s because you and I don’t look at things from the same angle.” Olga replied with a smile.
Albanino didn’t want to get trapped in a pointless discussion with them about moral standards. If nothing else interesting came up today, he would rather go home and catch up on sleep after delivering the autopsy report. Because of tonight’s affair, he’d had to swap his morning shift with someone else.
“Do you have any new developments on your end, Bart?” he asked, trying his best to sound casual.
“We’re reconstructing Norman’s movements before he was killed, and we’ve contacted some people who had contact with Norman before his death, hoping they can provide us with some leads.” Officer Hardy nodded—this was probably the main reason he looked so exhausted. “They’re taking statements right now. Would you two like to come listen?”
Every officer in the entire police department handling the Westland Pianist case looked exhausted, and for good reason: after all, Big Norman—after Albanino called him by that made-up nickname right in front of Officer Hardy, Hardy grimaced and reminded him that the man’s name was Richard Norman—was, from any angle, a mob boss who had been throwing his weight around in Westland City.
This meant that basically everyone he had contact with before his murder was a gang member. Persuading these people to come to the police station to give a statement was no easy task. When Albanino followed Officer Hardy to the interrogation room, he saw those witnesses who looked like trouble waiting one by one to be questioned.
Most of them were tall men with tattooed arms. The Norman brothers’ gang was a Latino gang, so many of them had foreign faces. Squeezed in among these obvious gang enforcers were also two unruly dark-skinned girls, and… a man in a suit dressed impeccably?
The contrast was a bit too obvious—like a bloody human skull mixed in with a pile of coconuts. Forgive his crude analogy. In any case, Albanino personally witnessed that man, wearing what was probably handmade custom-tailored clothing and other high-end garments, standing calmly among a group of people muttering curses at the cops, only occasionally glancing down at his watch, appearing somewhat impatient.
He was a rather handsome middle-aged man, with neatly groomed blond hair mixed with some silver strands. He somehow—looked sharp-featured, perhaps because of his thin lips, and the illusion created by the combination of his pale complexion, irises, and hair.
“That gentleman over there really stands out, doesn’t he?” Olga followed Albanino’s gaze and commented with great leisure, “Based on all those multiple-choice answers I guessed my way through during my training at Quantico, I pick him as the killer.”
“Olga!” Officer Hardy rebuked disapprovingly.
Olga laughed without a care and quickly caught up with the other two. Albanino felt a little like laughing too, but if he did, Hardy would surely fly into a rage, so he tried hard to hold it in.
And the interrogation process was exactly as Albanino had expected—extremely boring. The witnesses brought in this time were all people who had had contact with Norman within the twenty-four hours before his death, and they were basically all Big Norman’s loyal underlings.
Most people scoffed at the question, “Did he have any enemies?”—because obviously, as a mob boss, Big Norman had enemies all over the world. Hardy himself didn’t expect this question to yield any results either; it was just a necessary procedure. He had already concluded that the killer must be the Pianist, so asking about Big Norman’s enemies seemed pointless. He clearly didn’t believe the killer was one of these witnesses, nor did he believe the killer was an enemy of the deceased.
They still had no idea what logic the Westland Pianist used to select these “sinners” as his prey.
But during the interrogation, one person received especially careful attention from Officer Hardy—that person was Big Norman’s younger brother, another leader of the gang, Thomas Norman.
“Mr. Norman,” Officer Hardy asked cautiously, pressing both hands on the table and folding them steadily into a tower shape. “Where were you between eight and twelve last night?”
“With my girlfriend, waiting outside for questioning—the one with black hair and really big breasts.” Thomas Norman said with a grin, making a flippant gesture. “What’s the matter, Officer? Do you suspect I killed my brother?”
Officer Hardy stared at him. “You don’t seem particularly grieved by your brother’s unfortunate death.”
Thomas Norman’s mouth twisted, and he flashed Hardy a ferocious smile. “Not surprising, right? I know how you cops handle your investigations, and I know what you’re going to ask. So let me just be blunt: yes, my brother had plenty of enemies. However many businesses we have under our control, that’s how many enemies he had. But some people will tell you that his biggest enemy was me.”
“You’re admitting to me that your relationship with your brother wasn’t harmonious?” Hardy raised an eyebrow.
“Anyway, if you ask anyone else, they’d tell you the same thing.” Thomas Norman shrugged nonchalantly. “My brother’s a coward, Officer. You know we’ve had some… disagreements with certain people recently.”
Officer Hardy snorted. He knew the kind of disagreement that led to a gang shootout involving over fifty people three weeks ago—those bastards had fired hundreds of rounds in broad daylight on the streets.
“Are you saying you’re taking responsibility for the shooting three weeks ago?” Hardy raised his voice.
“No! I’m not.” Thomas Norman burst out laughing. “I’m saying we had some disagreements with our ‘business partners,’ and my brother—his way of handling things is reckless and weak. He’s going to destroy our entire operation—so if you ask the ‘rivals,’ some people will definitely tell you that the relationship between us brothers has deteriorated to the point of being irreconcilable. They’ll tell you that the two of us argue, throw things at each other, and have even threatened to kill one another.”
Hardy looked at him quietly. “But?”
“But I didn’t kill my brother.” Thomas Norman stood up theatrically and adjusted his cuffs. “Of course, I’m quite happy that dear Rick is dead. Isn’t the most self-aware thing a person can do is die at the right time?—Now, if I’m not being detained, I have to go. Some… you know, business matters to deal with. If you have more questions, our family lawyer happens to be on your witness list. You can just talk to him directly.”
The fellow winked one eye at Hardy and strutted out.
“Arrogant bastard.”
—Outside the one-way mirror glass of the interrogation room, Albanino was watching the questioning scene inside, and he commented in a low voice.
“He’s not the killer.” Olga shrugged and said quietly, “Look at that smug look on his face—at most he’s a self-centered egomaniac; he’s certainly not a good person, but he’s not a twisted killer like the Westland Pianist either. Of course, if the victim hadn’t died at the Pianist’s hands, I’d be the first to suspect that his brother had someone kill him.”
Albanino nodded in considerable agreement. He pressed his fingertips against the cold glass, watching an already exceedingly exhausted Hardy call in the last person. They had questioned everyone in a circle and come up with almost nothing—not a single person had noticed where Richard Norman’s last stop before his disappearance had been, or who he had been with, and no one had spotted any suspicious figure appearing around Norman.
Hardy’s exhaustion showed in the slightly hunched posture of his spine, but when the last person came in, he quickly sat up straight.
The last one to come in was the man meticulously dressed in a suit, and now Albanino knew why he looked so mean: because he looked exactly like one of those bastard elite lawyers who dragged down law enforcement agencies, the kind that walked straight out of a TV screen—a bastard elite lawyer who perfectly fit the stereotype.
Look at the facts now—his taste in choosing clients for himself is really not that great.
This seemingly polite fellow sat across from Hardy, looking like a large, gleaming blemish in the simply furnished interrogation room. Hardy’s gaze skimmed over the file in front of him as he asked, “Mr. Armalite, how long have you been the Norman brothers’ lawyer?”
“It’s been about five or six years, ever since my law firm opened.” The lawyer answered, leaning back slightly, sitting in his chair with calm composure, with enough leisure even to hang a polite yet cold smile on his face.
“Oh,” Olga said in a low voice.
“What is it?” Albanino couldn’t help but ask.
“I remember who this person is now. His name is Hestal Amalite. I saw him several times when I testified in court before.” Olga frowned, her voice sounding merely pensive. “Bart definitely won’t like this person. The cops will say he’s a pretty annoying guy—the type who sells his conscience for money, if he even has a conscience at all. His clients are always defendants standing in the dock, most of them gang members; and the selling point of his law firm is that he’ll stop at nothing to get his clients acquitted.”
A gang lawyer. Albanino let out a soft hum. This industry was quite prosperous in Westland—after all, the number of gangs in this city was large enough to rank among the top in the entire country. Countless lawyers risked being stabbed in the back by rival gangs, being assassinated, or being kicked while they were down, all to use their silver tongues as weapons and rescue their clients from prison. Although many people with a sense of justice found this line of work despicable, it did indeed earn a great deal of money.
Albanino didn’t have much of a sense of justice—if he did, his choice of hobby would certainly have been different—he had no moral qualms about the profession of a mob lawyer, he just felt that the other party really had no taste when it came to choosing clients.
After all, not all gangsters were as refined as those in *The Godfather* movies. A large portion of gangsters made their living through dirty industries like drugs and prostitution. Some gangsters had risen from places like prisons, which were full of violence and sodomy, and some gangsters—needless to say, just look at Thomas Norman’s demeanor, dealing with him was bound to be extremely troublesome.
But other than that…
Now, that lawyer was saying: “The appointment I scheduled with him was around three o’clock in the afternoon… No, I can’t tell you what exactly we were discussing, that’s the principle of client confidentiality. Unless you can bring a search warrant to my office—”
Besides that, the lawyer’s voice was, to be honest, quite deep and pleasant, resonating faintly like the strings of a musical instrument. Albanino’s fingers unconsciously brushed against the glass that was so clean it seemed not to exist, resting right at the position of the other’s cheek.
It must have been years of legal work that had added this cold, sharp quality to the other’s face—a coldness that had long curled up in the fine lines at the corners of his eyes and between his brows, stationed on his lips that never smiled. Albanino had a sensitive appreciation for the word “beauty,” so he had to say: this lawyer himself had a handsome face, but the tough aura radiating from him inside and out buried that handsomeness, just as a sperm whale devours plankton in the sea.
The consequence was that, perhaps Attorney Amaretto did indeed look imposing, but it also made others completely overlook his appearance; the moment he drew near, they couldn’t help but be on high alert, afraid that this person would use them as a sacrifice in his ruthless games.
This lawyer might also be troubled by such things, or at least this trait of his has affected his life: there was no wedding ring on his finger, and presumably his life consisted of nothing but a bunch of scheming work associates, unable to open his heart to anyone. For someone with his personal qualities and wealth, that seemed like a bit of a waste.
—His eyes, however, were a rather bright azure blue, so blue it almost seemed like a kind of irony.
Albanino thought… perhaps only when this kind of person closes his eyes, when his soul flies away from its shell, can people finally overlook that aura emanating from his very nature. When the flame and the life are utterly extinguished in the most terrible, most irresistible way, only then can the audience, through all those meaningless moral judgments and the tedious instinct of seeking advantage and avoiding harm, truly look at his face.
To ignore beauty is absolutely a crime, and Albanino Bax never minded helping people open their eyes.
“Richard happened to mention to me that he had no additional plans for that evening. In that case, he should be staying at his own private villa…”
This Mr. Amaretto’s blond hair was mixed with a considerable number of silver strands, gleaming under the bright lights of the interrogation room—clearly the kind of striking representative of a “mature man” that most girls would fancy. Albanino stood in the unlit corridor, musing that the color of those strands would pair well against a backdrop of white-veined plants.
Heartleaf brunnera and white lobelia, Euphorbia “Smoke Diamond” and white summer snapdragons; that heartless body, in the hollow where a heart should have been, ought to have a bouquet of lilies placed as irony, or perhaps daffodils: a Narcissus-like metaphor; the corpse fading to a ghastly white, its skin adorned with the twining branches and leaves of silver-spotted euonymus, serving as his coffin and his bed of repose.
—Beneath the moonlight, all of this would be draped in a frost-like white within the darkness of night, appearing as though it were a shimmering moonlit garden.
He stared at the other person’s face for a moment, then decided that this sudden flash of inspiration was actually quite good. The other person’s lips were opening and closing, and Officer Hardy’s pen had recorded quite a few lines of notes in his notebook—clearly, Albanino hadn’t heard a single word.
Of course Albanino would want to kill this lawyer whom he had only met once. For someone like him, this wasn’t anything unusual. In fact, that was exactly the kind of person he was—if he wanted to do something, he did it. Whether it was freely switching between different bed partners, driving a car too flashy for a forensic pathologist to the crime scene, or even saving lives or taking them—it was all the same to him.
But no—he was good at handling the sudden visits of the god of inspiration. At times like this, a person always had a surging desire to express themselves, but no. The matter of the Westland Pianist killing Richard Norman wasn’t over yet. He had to teach that arrogant maniac a lesson first, and only then could he begin carefully conceiving his new work.
Waiting was also a virtue. If you rushed to begin your work, things would always end in misfortune.
Albanino silently noted this Herstal Amarette in the little notebook in his mind, right at number two on his to-do list.
As for the Westland Pianist—he had a plan in mind.
Note:
[1] Hello everyone, this is the “delightfully witty warning to little readers who circulate pirated copies” segment.
First, praise every reader who is reading this through official channels, then spread the word that everyone should not circulate pirated copies without the author’s permission (like what’s happening right now). Finally, a warning to the little readers of pirated content—please believe in science, stay away from feudal superstition—let’s begin:
“If you are reading a pirated copy, please delete the document immediately, or you will suddenly wake from a dream at 2:35 AM tomorrow, and find yourself inexplicably in an ancient dry well, with smelly water dripping down the walls, and fingernails of those who once tried to climb out embedded in the cracks of the stone. At this moment, you notice that your feet seem to be stepping on something slippery, sticky, and soft…”
[2] Quantico: In this article, it refers to the FBI National Academy located at the United States Marine Corps Base in Quantico, Virginia, where FBI agents receive their training.
In addition, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) is also located in Quantico.