TWO
WHERE DEATH DELIGHTS TO HELP THE LIVING
When Joann went work the next morning, Donovan returned to his apartment on West 48th Street to do Father Carroll’s research. It was difficult to maintain his focus; the idea of proposing marriage was so big he found himself daydreaming about their life together. He liked what he saw. The books remained untouched until, with some reluctance, he put the idyllic images away and got to work.
The priest had offered no guidelines regarding pantheon or creed, asking only for information on the religious and mythological significance of scorpions. Donovan worked through the morning into mid-afternoon, and around three he paused to run out to a local cheesesteak place. He was satisfied with the amount of information he’d accumulated—scorpions and their images exist in nearly every major culture in history—but troubled he had no idea how to present his data to the police.
As he ate, he debated how to approach the problem. Should he focus on Egypt, on Isis and Selket? The Scorpion Man of the Gilgamesh epic? Maybe he ought to explore the alchemical process of evolution, lowest to highest, scorpion to eagle via the serpens mercurialis? Or examine Sadrafa, the half-scorpion, half-serpent god who predated Mithras in ancient Iran? Dorje Drollo of Tibetan Buddhism? The way scorpions represented the treachery of Jews to medieval Christians? All of it? Unlike any paper he’d written for school, this “assignment” had no context that might help draw conclusions. He wanted to do Father Carroll proud, which meant figuring out what the police wanted and giving it to them.
But how?
Wadding up his cheesesteak wrapper, he went to the loft kitchen above his living room. A bundle of NY Posts sat next to the garbage can, and he went through them until he found:
BUGGED!
MAN STUNG TO DEATH
A close-up of a scorpion, alien and threatening, dominated the page. He skimmed the story and saw it was pretty much as he’d remembered: a man had been found dead in a midtown hotel bathroom, victim of scorpion stings. In an incredible sequence of events, the woman in the room next to him had just flown in from Nevada, and the scorpions had apparently come along in her luggage, gotten free, and caught him unaware.
Or not.
If this was just a bizarre accident, the cops probably wouldn’t be asking about religious and magical significance of scorpions.
In the story was a quote from an NYPD detective sergeant named Fullam. If this was the case that needed the research, he would have been the one who contacted Father Carroll.
I wonder if his name will open any doors?
***
“Mister Denschler was extremely unlucky to have been in such the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Doctor Pommeru. “Of the thirty species of scorpions native to the United States, only the Arizona bark scorpion is capable of causing a lethal reaction in humans. Those are what killed him.”
Fullam’s name had opened the door to an appointment with Doctor Shad Pommeru, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy. He was a thin, frail man with a habit of nodding his head, birdlike, every few seconds. He and Donovan were on a small elevator, descending from the main floor of the medical examiner’s building to the morgue in the basement.
The doors opened, and they stepped out into a small, well-lit area with offices opposite and to their left. A faint odor of spoiled meat permeated everything. Double doors to their left led to the street-access ramp. A water-stained wedge of wood propped one open to let in a spring breeze. It didn’t help. A pair of men in security guard uniforms nodded to them. Silence cocooned the scene.
“The freezer is around this way,” Pommeru said, taking the lead. “I prepared the body after I spoke to Sergeant Fullam. He asked me to give you my complete cooperation, and so I shall.”
“Thank you.” He did? “I don’t think this will take too long.”
Pommeru nodded and pulled the stainless steel door open. A fresh gust of spoiled meat wafted out. Donovan stepped to one side, trying not to think about the cheesesteak he’d eaten as the doctor wheeled out a sheet-covered gurney.
“Arizona bark scorpions do not deliver all of their venom in one sting,” Pommeru said, “The envenomation creates pain and swelling, like a bee sting, but would not normally be fatal. An amount of poison this large, however, left him no chance of survival.” He paused before lifting the sheet. “Did Sergeant Fullam explain entirely the condition of the body?” Donovan shook his head. “Ah. Well. Be prepared.”
Donovan hadn’t given much thought to whether he’d be able to deal; in truth, he’d never seen a body that hadn’t been embalmed and lovingly prepared for a funeral. “Okay.”
Pommeru pulled the sheet aside.
The corpse looked lumpy, misshapen, like a human-shaped bag filled with water balloons. Tiny stab wounds pocked Denschler’s skin, each a dark entry point atop a bump. The bumps had swollen to different sizes, turning his body into a topographical map on which the scorpions had climbed. Lines in his face suggested an expression of abject terror even two weeks after the event. “Oh.” Donovan breathed slowly. “I see.” Most startling was a gaping burgundy gash between his legs. His genitals were missing, and the wound had crusted over like dry aged meat. Donovan looked away.
“What happened to his—?”
“The Arizona bark scorpion is carnivorous.” The doctor consulted some papers on a clipboard. “Official cause of death is a combination of cardiac arrest and respiratory failure, induced by the introduction of thirty-four separate doses of scorpion venom. Tissue analysis indicates he was still alive while the genitals were, ah, consumed.” He offered the clipboard. “Is there anything else in particular you need to know?”
Jesus. Donovan stared at the body, trying to store the image even as his natural revulsion resisted. With a sense of relief, he accepted and scanned the clipboard. There was a lot of jargon he didn’t quite understand. “I can’t think of anything right off. Could I have a copy of this?”
“Take that; I have the original.”
“Thank you.” He watched Pommeru cover the body, and suddenly felt a coward for his squeamishness. “Let me give you a hand.”
Pommeru nodded, hauled open the door and grabbed the gurney’s front. He led Donovan to the freezer’s left rear wall. The smell of spoilage in here was much stronger. He bumped another gurney as he adjusted his end, and a movement startled him. The body on that gurney was covered by a sheet up to its chin, with a wooden shaft sticking out of one eye socket. When Donovan jostled the gurney, the shaft had wiggled. He continued to not think about the cheesesteak as he stepped back out and suppressed a shudder.
“If you have any other questions,” the doctor handed Donovan a business card. “If I am not here, you may call my cell phone.” He gestured back towards the way they’d come. “Please excuse me if I don’t see you out, but I have some work to do.”
“No problem. Thank you again for your time.”
Donovan rode the elevator back up to the building lobby and collected his motorcycle helmet from the security guard at the lobby front desk. On the wall behind the desk was the motto of the Office of the Medical Examiner:
Taceant Colloquia Effugiat Risus Hic Locus Est Ubi
Mors Gaudet Succurrere Vitae
The guard had already provided him with the translation:
“Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where
death delights to help the living.”
Donovan pushed the lobby doors open and went out to First Avenue, eager to clear the smell of the morgue from his nostrils.
Ate his balls; Jesus!
His mind churned as he walked slowly towards the Vulcan.
If this all happened the way the paper said, involving Father Carroll doesn’t make sense. So the cops must think the scorpions were used as a weapon to murder this guy Denschler. By whom? And why? And did the scorpions really eat his balls—gah!—or did something else happen? Did someone take them for some reason? Maybe that’s what Fullam wants to find out. Maybe a sexual angle is where I should approach from. Scorpions? Gelding the victim? There can’t not be a connection.
He swung his leg over the motorcycle and sat. Donovan’s current bike was a Kawasaki 900 Vulcan, midnight-metallic blue with gray and white trim around the gas tank and side panels. Chopper-style without any exaggerated features, it had a curved black leather seat, slightly elevated handlebars and a profile lean enough to allow him to ride between traffic.
The image of the wound, dried out and blood-crusted, made him cringe. Pommeru said he was alive when it happened. And he could see it, too, unlike that guy with the arrow in his eye—
He sat upright on the bike.
Arrow. Scorpion. Genitals…
A pattern started to appear. He frowned, considering it for a moment, then slipped his helmet on and started the Vulcan. Rather than head back uptown, though, he circled the block and parked at the top of the morgue’s street ramp.
He left his helmet on the bike and went back down the ramp and through the swinging doors. The guard office was empty. “Doctor Pommeru? It’s Donovan Graham.” He jogged down the hall and around to the freezer door. “I wanted to take a look—”
The freezer door slammed open. Donovan saw a flash of white—the doctor’s coat—as the little man flew out at him. They collided and bounced into the opposite wall. Donovan’s head cracked into the tile. He saw stars. Pommeru looked past Donovan’s shoulder, eyes widening. Donovan started to turn. A gurney shot like a cannonball from the freezer, crashing into the wall. The body on it flopped off, landing on top of Donovan. Donovan gasped and thrust it away. Someone big—someone huge—stormed out. Dressed in a ragged black suit, he was roaring and violent and Donovan only caught a glimpse of his face before the giant snatched two handfuls of his leather jacket. With no effort he raised Donovan’s body off the ground. Donovan kicked his steel-toed boot at the giant’s kneecap. The giant grunted and dropped him. Donovan launched himself at the enormous midsection. He plowed his shoulder into the giant’s stomach, drawing a “whoosh” of breath fouler than the smell of corpses, and followed it with two hard punches. The giant stumbled, then swung clumsily. Donovan ducked under the blow and charged again, bulling the giant back towards the open freezer. The giant pounded an arm down on his back. It felt like a telephone pole hitting him, and Donovan dropped like he’d been shot. He rolled over and shoved the gurney. The metal table clanged into the giant. Donovan seized Pommeru’s coat and dragged him away.
“Come on! Come on!”
The giant loomed behind them, eclipsing the fluorescent light with impossibly broad shoulders. Donovan scrambled to his feet and shoved Pommeru up the corridor. “Run!”
They made it out the swinging doors, and Pommeru kept going. Just outside the door was a fire axe. Donovan smashed the glass and snatched it free. He gripped the axe in both hands, waiting to defend himself.
The giant didn’t follow them out.
Donovan remained standing guard, but as seconds ticked by, he felt less and less threatened. After two minutes he crept to the swinging door. What he could see through the tiny window looked normal. A few blocks away, a siren approached. Feeling a bit more confident, he nudged the door open with his shoulder and slipped inside. Still nothing. He worked his way back. The freezer door stood wide open, but no one living was inside. The gurney remained where the giant had knocked it aside, dented and crimped. The body lay in a heap, the arrow in the eye socket propping the head up at an odd angle.
The giant was gone.
***
Donovan sat alone at the table in the medical examiner observation room, where grieving relatives can view remains behind glass. He was drinking a can of soda, thinking about mutilated bodies, when a sharply dressed man a few years older than him entered. The man was clean-shaven with razor-cut hair. His intensity projected a force field ahead of him.
“Maurice said you have a ‘unique approach to problem solving.’” He looked Donovan over. When he spoke it was neither accusatory nor challenging, but leaving no doubt who had to prove himself to whom. “I hear you can take care of yourself, too. Nice to know you’re working for me.”
“You’re Sergeant Fullam?”
“You’re Donovan Graham.” Fullam sat at the table with Donovan. “Maurice called me yesterday, said you could give me the information I needed. I didn’t expect this, but okay. I understand following your gut. In the future, though, save that ‘better to ask forgiveness than permission’ bullshit for your professors, okay? You want to do something like this, you call me first.”
“No problem.”
“What have you got?”
“I don’t think this was a one-in-a-million accident, and I don’t think you think so either.”
Fullam took out a notepad and pen. “Whatever I think, I won’t open my mouth until I have facts. I asked about scorpions. Tell me about scorpions.”
“That’s my point—it’s not just scorpions or a guy missing his balls. The body with the arrow in its eye was missing its legs, or, more accurately, its thighs. In Western astrology, each sign of the zodiac has a corresponding body part: Scorpio is the genitals, Sagittarius is the thighs.”
“You think people are being murdered according to the zodiac?”
“I think that describes the two bodies you have.”
Fullam looked at him for a moment. “You came up with this after seeing the bodies for five minutes?”
Donovan didn’t back down. “Not saying I’m right, but it fits.”
“And the missing body parts?”
“Sounds like a ritual.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sacrifice and ritual killing are like murder and serial killing; one is an end to itself, one has a larger purpose. Anton LaVey said, ‘A sacrifice is used to sustain, a ritual to attain.’ You track a sacrifice by figuring out to whom it’s made. Ritual killings, you figure out what the ritual is designed to do.”
Fullam made some notes. “Any thoughts on that?”
Donovan shrugged. “Sorry. No idea.”
“Doctor Pommeru says that when the body with the arrow was brought in a few days ago, it had all its parts. After you left, he went to work in the freezer and saw the giant in there, cutting the thighs off. Says it wasn’t for you, he’d be dead.”
Donovan considered this. “I’ve never saved anybody’s life before.”
“Welcome to the club.” Fullam snapped his notepad closed and stood. “‘Ritualistic zodiac murders’; it’s an interesting theory. I’ll give it some thought. Quick question, though—how did you figure out his balls were taken and not eaten? I specifically asked Doctor Pommeru not to give you that information.”
“If the scorpions had really eaten them, the wound probably would have been more ragged. The knife strokes in the wound could have been from the autopsy, but the scorpion-genital connection is basic astrology.” Donovan stood. “Can I go?”
The sergeant nodded. “Unless you want to help clean up downstairs.”
***
“Frank Fullam?” Joann asked.
“Do you know him?”
She sipped some orange juice. “Only by reputation.”
Even with the delay at the morgue they’d made it to the bed and breakfast outside of New Paltz the previous evening. After an energetic celebration of Donovan’s graduation, they’d awoken to a private breakfast in their room.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“He’s got a little history. A bit of a reputation as a loose cannon.”
“Really? He came across as the opposite to me. Very buttoned-down.”
“Not always, from what I’ve heard.” She held her juice glass between her palms. “He used to work Vice in Brooklyn. He had trouble with the old boys’ network and got transferred to Manhattan because of it. He got a promotion, but he has to be very careful now. There are people who wouldn’t mind seeing him gone. In fact, that’s probably why he asked Father Carroll for help instead of NYPD Intelligence. Outside the politics.”
“I thought that was a little odd. The NYPD has at least a half-dozen ‘cult cops’ versed in the paranormal. I met one in class one time. Fullam could have gone to them.”
“But he didn’t. He asked you.” She toasted him. “And now he has a lead.”
“And I have a sore back.” He winced, then smiled. “Giants and zodiac murders; pretty weird start to a career.”
“A career?”
“I don’t want to tend bar my whole life. Helping the cops could open some doors.”
“Those doors are a little more dangerous than teaching.” She shook her head. “You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt badly enough to miss any shifts at the restaurant.”
Donovan only half-heard her as he tried to remember every detail. “He wasn’t a really skilled fighter, but I guess with his size he doesn’t need to be. He was huge. I don’t know how he got away, but the cops figure he escaped into the sewer outside the autopsy room. I’m sure the alligators will give him a wide berth.” She laughed, and he felt absurdly pleased with himself. “By the way; speaking of weird things, I’m sorry I didn’t ask. Was there anything on the camera DeFelice found at the Dinkins Shelter?”
Her eyes lit. “There was, actually. Each of the cameras had a back-up disc, digital images that stayed for forty-eight hours before they were recorded over. We’re still cleaning up what we found, but we may have a picture of Charming Man.”
“‘Charming Man’; hah. Charming up until the point he got everyone to start killing each other. What a waste of talent,” Donovan said. “I try to use mine only in the service of good.”
“It’s worked on me so far.”
He gazed into her face. His heart pounded. Propose now! Instead, he took her hand and stood. “Want to test it again?”