Chapter 5: The Mark of Cain 04
“So, what is the relationship between your two employers?” Officer Hardy asked.
Hestal Amalite sat with his fingers interlaced, resting quietly on the table, looking far calmer than most people who sat in this seat.
That said, this situation was still quite new to him—his usual job was to storm into interrogation rooms like this one and tell his clients, handcuffed to the table, what they should and shouldn’t say. Being on the receiving end of scrutinizing stares like this was rare indeed.
During his silence, Officer Hardy asked, “Can’t you talk about this aspect either?”
“…That’s not it, I’m just thinking about what words would most accurately describe the relationship between the two of them.” The lawyer pondered for a moment, then said, “You’ve already questioned quite a few potential witnesses, so you should have heard that the Norman brothers’ relationship is actually not harmonious.”
Officer Hardy nodded.
“His subordinates won’t go into detail with you, but in reality, the main reason for this disharmony is—the huge gap in their abilities. Richard wants to be the leader of the family business because he feels he’s the older brother, but in truth, the younger brother is more outstanding…” Hestal said thoughtfully. “This is something neither of them is willing to admit: the younger brother thinks the older brother isn’t qualified enough, and the older brother… though he won’t say it, I believe he’s jealous of Thomas.”
“You’re remarkably candid about your employer,” Officer Hardy said cautiously.
“There’s been a long-standing grudge between the two of them, and I want to be as honest with you as possible,” Hestal said calmly. “Besides, although you seem very interested in their brotherhood, you don’t actually believe Thomas is the killer, do you?—You suspect the killer is the Westland Pianist.”
“I never said that.” Officer Hardy raised an eyebrow slightly. After all, they hadn’t held a press conference yet.
“My client died in the middle of nowhere, impaled on a stick in a sick display of humor.” Hestal reached out and tapped the crime scene photos placed on the table near Officer Hardy’s side. Even in the wide shots, the corpse looked particularly gruesome. “This isn’t the kind of thing Thomas would do. Even if he really wanted to kill his brother, he’d choose a simple method like a bullet to the head. But the Pianist would do something like this.”
Officer Hardy was somewhat angered by the other party’s matter-of-fact, indifferent tone; moreover, there was a trace of well-disguised contempt in Herstal’s voice—Hardy was familiar with that expression, the kind that said, “Because you people failed to do your job and didn’t catch the killer, another person is dead and it’s all your fault.”
When he spoke again, his voice was colder and sterner. Gang lawyers are all bastards, Hardy couldn’t help but think. He frowned and said, “Mr. Armalite, you also know how the Pianist chooses his victims. Are you trying to imply that your client is guilty?”
“As long as the court hasn’t found him guilty, he is an innocent man. The Pianist’s personal opinion doesn’t count for much.” Herstal’s mouth pulled into a slight smile. “As for what Richard actually did, if you can bring a search warrant to my office, I will tell you everything, point by point.”
Of course he knew that Officer Hardy couldn’t—with all the current signs indicating that the killer was the Pianist, if he couldn’t prove a direct connection between the Pianist and the Norman brothers’ business, Hardy would never in his life be able to persuade a judge to issue a search warrant.
Hardy looked at the messy notes in his hand with irritation. So far, there had truly been no new gains: Richard Norman had a long list of enemies and preferred to keep to himself. The day before he died, he had a brief meeting with Halstall, then went to meet one of his lovers, and after that vanished from everyone’s sight—it had only been a little past six in the evening then. If he was killed at ten, no one knew where he had been during those three hours in between.
Perhaps Officer Hardy once again had to admit that the trail they were pursuing had gone cold—just like in the countless investigations into the Westland Pianist and the Sunday Gardener, a scene so familiar it was infuriating. Halstall clearly decided to pour oil on the fire at this moment. The man gave a brief nod and said, “So, Officer Hardy, if no one among us is formally arrested, then I’ll have to leave—given what has happened, the various agreements I signed with the Norman brothers may need to undergo some… changes.”
He made a vague gesture. Hardy did not bother to ask in detail. In any case, there was bound to be a major upheaval within the Norman brothers’ organization soon. Thomas would certainly find a way to eliminate his brother’s influence, not to mention the other gangs eyeing them covetously… The Westland City Police Department was going to be busy for a while.
Hardy just sat there, watching this lawyer—calm to the point of almost expressionless—walk out of the interrogation room, unconsciously straightening his cufflinks as he went, almost compulsively. An environment like a police station was probably extremely hard for someone like him to endure.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Hestal had just stepped out of the interrogation room when someone else intercepted him head-on.
The person who stopped him was a young man who appeared to be in his thirties, with a head of handsome chestnut-colored sideburns and a likable face, wearing that kind of lazy smile among these exhausted police officers, as if he couldn’t care less about the atmosphere around him. The man spoke in a light tone and extended a hand toward him: “Mr. Armalite?”
“And you are?” Hestal asked cautiously, not taking the hand extended to him.
The other party didn’t seem to mind much, merely withdrawing his hand with a smile: “I’m Dr. Albanino Bax from the Forensics Bureau, in charge of the autopsy work for this case. You should be aware that after a murder case like this occurs, the victim’s family needs to go to the Forensics Bureau to sign some informed consent forms and authorization documents—”
He paused, making a helpless gesture. Although Hestal had a strange intuition that he was only doing this to make himself seem more approachable, rather than genuinely feeling helpless about the matter.
“I asked little Nuo earlier—ah, Thomas Norman—when he came out,” Dr. Bax’s smile remained utterly unchanged, “He said you can sign those documents on his behalf with full authority.”
“I believe my employer simply doesn’t want to waste time on these matters. The agreement we signed earlier granted me the power to handle certain properties on his behalf under his authorization.” Hestal said calmly, clearly not surprised by the choice Thomas Norman had made.
—Though judging by that smug attitude Thomas had when he left, he was most likely going back to celebrate his cowardly brother’s death with his good-for-nothing friends.
The smile on Dr. Bax’s face seemed to widen a little: “If by ‘wasting time’ you mean handling matters related to the death of Mr. Norman’s only older brother, and by ‘property’ you mean the remains of Mr. Richard Norman, then I’m afraid that is indeed what it means.”
“There is a world of difference between a corpse and a living person. Clearly, to my employer, his brother alive and his brother dead are not worth the same treatment.” Hestal spoke in a rather formal tone. “Mr. Bax, let us go, then.”
“Don’t—call me Albanino, please.” As the two of them walked quickly away from the building, the forensic pathologist added, “Or Al, if you’d prefer.”
“Albanino,” Hestal said, following along agreeably, clearly either intentionally or unintentionally ignoring the latter half of Albanino’s request. This was not at all unexpected—he did not seem like the sort of fellow who would address others by nicknames. “Given the media’s fanatical attitude toward the Pianist, the moment we step outside we’ll run into a swarm of reporters waiting to interview those involved in solving the case—especially someone like the chief forensic examiner of the Forensics Bureau.”
Albanino glanced at him, a flicker of pleasant brightness shimmering in his green eyes: “Ha.”
“I certainly know you,” Hestal replied calmly. “I have sat in on quite a few murder trials. The brilliant testimony you gave when you took the stand left a deep impression on me.”
Albanino’s mouth corner lifted slightly: as far as he knew, a whole group of defense lawyers for the defendants hated him with a passion. In any case, whenever he answered the defense counsel’s questions, there were always some who felt they had been mocked by him.
By this time, they had already walked into the front hall of the police station. Through the glass doors, the crowd of reporters and photographers outside was visible, countless camera flashes flickering like stars. Clearly, a case like “the Pianist massacring the guilty” was enough to excite them.
“Perhaps they really do want to hear something from the forensic examiner in charge of this case,” Albanino smiled faintly. “In any case, a forensic examiner only needs to know how to say ‘no comment.’ As for you, Mr. Armalite, you’d best watch what you say: your presence here will certainly make people suspect this case has something to do with the Norman family’s fratricidal feud.”
Hestal turned his head slightly in Albanino’s direction, just in time to catch that strange smile hanging at the corner of the other’s mouth—a blend of mockery and amusement. Hestal clicked his tongue softly.
Then they pushed open the door and stepped into a sea of flickering lights, as reporters swarmed toward them from every direction.
The morgue at the Forensics Bureau didn’t have any particularly overpowering stench. Although some bodies had indeed been in an advanced state of decomposition by the time they were wheeled in, the constantly running exhaust fans quickly dispersed the odors. And as for the things already stored in the cold chambers—frankly, once they lost their souls, they were just meat.
Albanino pulled open the door of one of the mortuary cabinets and dragged the body inside out. Richard Norman lay there, his face appearing even more grotesque now that the stitches on his lips and eyes had been removed. Procedure always required that whoever came to the Forensics Bureau to sign these documents confirm the body in person. Procedure was procedure, even if it was always unkind to the victims’ families.
Hestal Amalight was one of the rare few who, upon entering this morgue, still appeared utterly indifferent. He stared impassively at the corpse’s ashen face, said “That’s him,” and then briskly signed the authorization documents on the clipboard that Albanino had handed him, which he’d been holding in his left hand all along.
Albanino took the documents and the pen the other man handed over, musing to himself that this person had probably always been like this: maintaining this kind of cold, professional relationship with his clients, working late into the night before returning to his empty luxury apartment.
With one hand he pushed the morgue drawer shut, while the other held the pen and clipboard. Then, unexpectedly, he heard Hestal ask, “How did he die? I can see he has many wounds on his body.”
Albanino looked at him with a half-smile, not having expected Hestal to be interested in this.
“Just in case Mr. Thomas Norman wants to ask when I go to see him later.” Hestal answered calmly.
“I doubt that. Your employer seems interested only in the fact that his brother is dead.” Albarino finally truly laughed. He shrugged, confirming that the mortuary cabinet was indeed locked—no corpse was going to sit up and crawl out of it, but there had genuinely been cases before where interns messed with bodies and contaminated evidence—then placed the documents and clipboard in his hand on the only table in the morgue. “But I’m happy to satisfy your curiosity. Besides, the part I can tell you will be covered by Officer Hardy at the press conference later anyway—and you’ll find that I’m almost always accommodating to anyone who doesn’t cry or throw up in this place.”
The forensic pathologist was still smiling, moving briskly around Hestal in a half-circle like a cheetah, approaching him almost silently from behind.
“That killer approached your employer from behind.” Albarino said. He suddenly reached out a hand, from behind Hestal, his right hand hovered at his throat, fingers brushing his neck’s skin light as a dragonfly. He could feel the lawyer stiffen hard in that instant, then force himself to relax with an almost inhuman willpower. “Grabbed his neck from behind to restrict his movement. Besides the strangulation marks, Mr. Norman has some restraint injuries on his neck, which is enough to prove it.”
Albanino held the pen in his left hand and lightly poked Hestal’s left arm with it: “Then, the killer knocked him out with a single injection and brought him to the crime scene.”
Hestal swallowed quietly. Whether it was from nervousness or something else, Albanino could feel the moment his Adam’s apple moved up and down against his palm.
“Your employer may have lost most of his ability to resist due to the effects of the drug, but at this point he was still alive.” Albanino continued, “As you can see, the killer sewed his eyes and lips shut—”
His voice paused subtly for a moment, which made Hestal suspect that this guy would reach out and touch his eyelids and lips, but Albanino did not. He paused, then moved his fingers downward, stopping just above Hestal’s abdomen.
“Then he impaled your employer on a wooden stake. The sharpened stake went in through his back, nicked his spine, passed through part of his stomach, and came out here.” His hand applied a slight pressure, his fingers pressing against fabric that was certainly very expensive. “Your employer was still conscious. Blood from the wound flowed into his stomach and abdominal cavity. Some of the stomach acid began corroding the flesh around the wound. During the entire time before he died, he could feel the blood rising back up along his esophagus—but he couldn’t throw up, could he? His mouth was sewn shut.”
The lawyer’s breathing sounded heavier now, but since he hadn’t struggled free, Albanino saw no reason to remove his hand. Many people had condemned his nature—like a hunter toying with his prey—but he had never cared. Then again, the man before him, Herstal Amarette, was quite literally the prey he had chosen. It was just that the hunt hadn’t begun yet.
“Then the killer disemboweled him with a sharp blade, stabbing in from the chest and dragging it forcefully downward, all the way to the abdomen.” Albanino’s voice was low and soft. He extended his other hand—the left hand, the one the Westland Pianist used to hold the knife—and using the pen in his grip as a blade, drew a gentle straight line down from Herstal’s chest.
It was a fountain pen. Beneath the cold metal cap was a sharp nib. Herstal was almost entirely backed against him, enclosed between his arms. If he wished, he could drive this pen into the other man’s throat—how easy it was to take a life.
Simple, easy, and utterly meaningless—it was nothing more than flesh.
It was the other things born from this decaying shell that were beautiful.
“Why did he cut open the victim’s abdomen?” Hestal asked, his voice still sounding unhurried under the circumstances, though it seemed to have dropped a little lower.
“Because of the pain, the cruelty—he derives supreme pleasure from such acts; in those moments he feels a sense of control, and that makes him feel safe.” Albanino easily divulged the truth, his fingers once again drifting back to Hestal’s neck. The muscles in the other’s shoulders tensed uncontrollably as his fingers approached that skin, the pulse beating vividly beneath his fingertips. “He invested his story’s theme into this action, wrapping his metaphorical gift in a beautiful, blood-smeared outer layer—I can understand it, though I can’t say I particularly appreciate it.”
He let his fingers linger on the other man’s neck for a few seconds, enriching in his mind the fantasy of just strangling him to death right there. The urge to create made his fingers itch, but now was not the time.
“He strangled the victim with piano wire, just as he always does; then he buried his hands into your client’s still-warm chest and tore out his heart.” That was how Albanino ended the story.
But Hestal turned with nimble grace, slipping out from between his arms. The man’s expression was calm, as though he had been neither frightened nor offended. But when he raised his head to look at Albanino, Albanino saw a flash of extremely bright light pass through his blue eyes.
“Truly an impressive narration.” He said this dryly, once again adjusting his shirt cufflinks, even though his shirt was completely buried beneath his coat and suit—not even a corner of fabric was visible. “Actually, it was too detailed. Didn’t you say a forensic pathologist only needs to know how to say ‘no comment’?”
” But you wouldn’t sell that kind of information to a reporter, would you?” Albanino replied cheerfully, those wolf-sharp green eyes locked tightly on him. “That doesn’t sound very professional. Besides, if you really did leak that information to a reporter—I would know.”
There seemed to be something meaningful in those last few words he said. Hestal feigned surprise and raised an eyebrow. “I hope that wasn’t a threat.”
“But you don’t look worried either.” Albanino shrugged easily. “In fact, for someone who just finished looking at a corpse made by a deranged serial killer, you look far too calm.”
“As I said before, the living and the dead don’t mean the same thing. This one here—means nothing to me.” Hestal nodded calmly, seemingly unconcerned about how improper his words sounded by ordinary moral standards.
After saying this, perhaps because he still felt the distance between himself and Albanino was too close, he fluidly took a step back, further widening the gap between them, and pointed out: “Has no one ever told you that your sense of personal space when interacting with others seems somewhat problematic?”
“Most people don’t care.” Albanino answered with a smile, blinking pleasantly and with considerable insinuation, “Honestly, they wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Hestal finally furrowed his brow, an expression that looked truly delightful: “Are you flirting with me?”
“I’m doing something as indispensable to me as salt and bread,” Albanino maintained his smile, hiding the bloodthirsty mask beneath it, still seamless. “As for flirting—at least not today, and preferably not here. The morgue doesn’t exactly smell pleasant.”