“What do you think?” Sauer asked. “You think we are onto something?”
“Definitely,” Hobbs said. “Perhaps they can find something on the towel and burglar bar.”
Chapter Four
Their office was always stuffy. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that they never opened the windows and that Hobbs smoked like a chimney when stressed. There were files on the table, floors, on top of filing cabinets, and on dusty window sills, even on chairs.
They used to have a spacious office with enough floor space to pack the heaps of case files handed to them. Then, in a nepotistic transfer above them, an African National Congress cadre was appointed. They were forced to move into this over-sized broom closet. Or so Hobbs argued and ranted about, especially when he had a few too many. “How do they expect us to do our work under such circumstances? But they always say there is no money for improvements because all the money has to go for development work. My ass! Developing what? Rich new entrepreneur and family owned trusts and companies. A system in which criminals have more human rights than law abiding citizens, all because they were previously disadvantaged. And does being previously disadvantaged give one the right to become criminal and corrupt?”
Nobody ever bothered to answer or argue with him, for Hobbs was bound to hand out a few punches.
The room was tall—about five meters long, but only about three meters wide. Stuffed in the corner, under the tiny window was a huge, wooden table. The table had two chairs: a stuffed 70’s brown vinyl behind the desk and an upright wooden chair on the opposite side of the table. A pink sofa stood against the wall next to the desk. Shoved in the back corner were two sets of steel cabinets. Sauer sat on the vinyl chair and Hobbs on the hard, wooden one. They took turns sleeping on the sofa when burning the midnight candle.
“Why is this place always such a mess?” Hobbs complained.
“Because my dear,” Sauer mimed, waving his hand like an elderly matron, “there are close to two hundred murders daily in South Africa, of which, eighty per cent go unsolved. We don’t have enough storage space for all the case files dumped on us and, besides, the cleaning service here is really shit. And quite frankly, who gives a shit about most of these petty murders. Who cares if two locals got drunk, fought over a woman and one of the men stabbed the other to death. This is Africa man. An incident like that is considered a fair fight. Let the strongest man win.”
“Perhaps,” Hobbs said, ignoring the tirade, “We should pull the case files of the first three victims and have a serious look at the photographs again.”
“And I suppose that I will be the one who does it as you are the captain and I am just little, old me.”
Hobbs gave him a sweet smile.
Sauer got up and pulled the yellow case files from a steel cabinet. He gave the case file of Leslie Adams, Face Lifter’s second victim, to Hobbs. He then sat down heavily in his chair and opened the case file containing the gruesome details of Rebecca Scott’s murder. She is believed to be Face Lifter’s first victim. Sauer flipped past the mountain of evidence straight to the photographs. Strange, looking at the photos of the mauled corpse did nothing to him. He could even eat his toasted cheese sandwich without the faintest feeling of nausea.
Rebecca Scott was indeed the first victim. She was a thirty-six year old spinster. She lived a serene life, worked as a kindergarten teacher and was very involved at her local church. Yet, her body was discovered the morning after the murder by a male prostitute, Jimmy Love. This was the freshest corpse they had to date, but back then they did not realize they were dealing with a serial sicko.
Love was extensively interviewed, emotionally battered and even had to endure a few backhands from Sauer. In the end, Hobbs and Sauer decided that Love could not have killed Rebecca Scott. He was so thin and brittle. “The only thing he can do is suck cocks, bend for his customers, and talk dirty,” Hobbs remarked later.
“Why did you go to her apartment before six that morning?” Sauer asked Love.
“She liked having it before she went to work,” Love wisecracked.
“Liked having what?” Sauer did not want to miss any details. Everyone knows the Devil is in the details.
“You know…sex…”
“Sex? With you? You have got to be kidding me? Why would any person want to fuck you? Especially a woman, you bloody faggot!”
“That’s what I do…”
“Don’t fucking lie to me. You do nobody. You sell your ass on street corners and they do you!” Sauer slapped Love so hard across the face that blood splattered onto his shirt. Sauer saw the blood and remembered his mother’s stern warning on the acquired immune deficiency syndrome scare. Always wear gloves when you want to hit these creeps!
Love wiped the blood from his mouth using the back of his hand. It looked as if he wanted to cry.
“She would phone me late at night and ask me to come to her in the morning. I would get off duty at about five in the morning, have a shower and then go to her…” Love stammered without breathing. His face turned red as the tears washed the mascara and foundation from his face. Snot and tears mingled freely.
Sauer walked out of the interrogation room angry, and knowing he would kill this person in front of him. He indicated to Hobbs to take over. Hobbs knew the beat. Now they are going to play “bad cop, good cop” with poor Mister Love.
Hobbs walked into the interrogation room and handed his handkerchief to Love. He watched as Love wiped his face and blew his nose.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Hobbs asked sweetly.
“Yes,” Love stammered, “a Coke would be nice.”
Hobbs left the room and returned with two Cokes. He opened the first one and handed it to Love.
“I’m sorry about my partner,” Hobbs said wanting to sound sincere. “He has some issues.”
“It’s okay. I don’t like being slapped around…not that hard anyway.” Love giggled though the tears. He kept dabbing his face with the handkerchief.
Hobbs looked at Love in amazement. Sick fuck!
“Let’s be honest with each other,” Hobbs started. “You have to tell me the truth or my partner will beat it out of you.”
“I really did her. Well, not like I like doing men…” Love stammered, looking Hobbs straight in the eye.
“Tell me everything.”
“Kinky…”
“Do you want me to call my partner?”
“No! No! No! That won’t be necessary.”
“Then tell me everything.”
“I also do fish…”
“Fish?” Hobbs asked.
“We gays refer to women as fish, okay? Want to know why?”
Hobbs got up and started walking out.
I can image why, you sick fuck!
“No! No! Don’t go. I’ll tell you everything.”
Hobbs returned to his chair. He sat down quietly and stared at Love. His patience was finished. He wanted to grab the thin prostitute by his neck and throttle all air out of his body till he struggled for air. Only then would he maybe relax his grip around the man’s neck.
“I started doing older women for extra money. But I don’t do them physically. I like to see how their fat bellies wobble as I do them,” Jimmy Love said, giggling into the handkerchief. “It’s gross. But the money is good. I don’t kiss them. I don’t fondle their boobs. I don’t touch their genitals. I just push the vibrator in and out of them and watch them squeal with pleasure. And for that. they pay me hundreds a month.”
Hobbs said nothing. He just watched Love. “Did you know any of the other victims?”
“The others? There were others?”
“Don’t you read the papers?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Can you read?”
“Fuck you!” Jimmy spat the words at Hobbs. The detective realized he touched a sensitive spot.
“Tell me,” Love said as he leaned forward, “are you married?”
“No,” answered Hobbs
before his could stop himself.
“Why not?” asked Love. “A strappingly handsome man like you…is it maybe because you don’t like women?” Love asked suggestively.
Hobbs got up and started walking out.
“I can do you if you want me too. It won’t cost you a thing. It would be my pleasure,” he spoke after Hobbs.
Hobbs closed the door of the interrogation room behind him. Love sat in silence for a moment then got up and walked to the one-way mirror. He started rolling his hips, licking his lips and stoking his thin chest as he hummed to himself. He knew he was being watched.
Sauer stood behind the mirror watching the freak show. Now what? Hobbs came in and stood next to Sauer. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. Together they watched Love’s freakish dance.
“Let me finish this,” Sauer said.
“Be my guess.”
Sauer strutted back into the interrogation room. Love saw him and immediately walked over to his chair.
“Did you just propose to my partner?” Sauer asked.
“What’s that got to do with you?”
“He is my partner and I must look out for him.”
“I won’t harm him,” Love suggested. “I will only ride him to the peaks of pleasure.”
“What about me,” Sauer asked sarcastically.
“What about you?” Love asked looking Sauer up and down.
“Don’t you want to ride me to the peaks of pleasure?”
“I don’t do fats,” Love answered honestly.
The slap came so fast that Love tasted blood and heard the impact at the same time. He fell off the chair and lay dazed on the floor for a few minutes. With great effort, he struggled up onto one elbow and wiped his mouth with the handkerchief. Slowly he pulled himself onto his chair. “Jeeezzzus! That hurt,” he said more to himself. He finally looked up at Sauer. “No need to be so touchy.”
“Why would any woman pay a queen like you to have sex with her?” Sauer asked.
“I’m the best,” Love cried, “and I am very gentle and of course I aim to please. And I don’t slap people around.” He blew his nose loudly and dabbed the tears streaming from his eyes. The handkerchief was red from all the blood. “I don’t think she has ever had a real man; not for a long time in any way. She loved her vibrators. I think she got hurt in the past. But she was desperate for love and sex…just like the rest of us,” Love cried, snot, tears and blood still streaming down his swollen face.
“Afterwards,” Love stammered “she would ask me to help her with her make-up and hair. Especially when she thought she could maybe impress a single father of one of her pupils. She said the orgasm gave her a mysterious glow.”
“How many times a week did you ‘service’ her?” Sauer asked.
“Two, three times. Sometimes over the weekends as well.”
They let Love go after that, and not because they did not have any more questions for him. The next time they question him, they plan to catch him off guard. Together, they decided that Love just did not have it in him to kill. “He is more the slapping kind, you know,” Sauer said to Hobbs. “Slap you with his handbag and then stab you with his lipstick. If you make him really angry, he might hit you with one of his high heels.” Sauer and Hobbs laughed at the thought. “Maybe we should go back to Scott’s place and have another look around,” Sauer suggested.
Chapter Five
After all the months, her cottage still stood empty. Nobody wanted to move into the rented place after the brutal murder. The rustic, thatched-roofed cottage stood dilapidated under a huge wild fig tree on a small holding not far out of town. The owner of the land recognized the two detectives immediately and walked towards them. “Tell me that you found the guy who killed Rebecca,” he said in broken English to the detectives. The owner was a German immigrant.
“Actually, to be honest, we are clueless—at this stage in any way. Please don’t tell anybody. But we are following all the leads,” Sauer said. “May we please have another look inside the cottage?” Sauer asked.
“Sure, I never have been in there again since the murder. The door is not locked. The locals are too petrified to go in there. They say Rebecca’s ghost walks when the moon is full. Have fun. But you are going to have to excuse me.” He turned around and walked away from the detectives.
Sauer pushed the green, wooden front door open. A stale, musty smell whiffed up his nostrils. He stepped back and Hobbs walked in. The cottage was tiny. It only had three rooms: a kitchen, dining room and living room, the largest room in which he now stood.
A dusty forensic collection bag was on the green floral sofa, long forgotten. The sofa was flanked by two wooden rocking chairs. On each chair was a cushion made from the matching green floral material. A low, dark-stained coffee table stood in the center. A dirty coffee cup still stood on the table. Why was that not taken by the forensic team? And why is this place still untouched as it was after the killing? Almost like a shrine.
Why did her family not come fetch her belongings? Hobbs recalled talking to her aging parents, who lived on a small, countryside farm. Rebecca had been an only child and was born when the mother was in her mid-forties. The two, old people just held each other when they were told the news.
Bookshelves lined the curved walls. She had books on virtually every subject. Despite being a kindergarten teacher, she was well read. Hobbs was greeted with a heavy, musty smell as he walked into the bedroom. The curtains were still closed. Yet enough light filtered in to make the bed visible. Hobbs walked over and pushed the curtains aside. With a strong heave, he pushed the windows open. Fresh air streamed past him into the room. It was as if the house breathed again.
“You can come in now,” he shouted.
Only the base of the bed was there. A black stain indicated that Rebecca’s blood seeped through the mattress onto the base. From there it probably seeped onto the floor. The mattress and bedding were taken for forensic analysis. Sauer walked into the bedroom, looked around and sat on the base next to the night stand.
He pulled the drawer open and there they were –a variety of vibrators, each a different color and size. He looked at it for a moment. I don’t have gloves and I ain’t gonna touch this with my bare hands. Hobbs walked over, pulled the drawer completely from the night stand and emptied the contents on the bed. He sniggered at Sauer.
“Why was this stuff not taken by forensics?” Hobbs asked.
“Because at that stage we did not investigate the murder, and at that stage nobody knew that they were dealing with a serial killer.”
Under the vibrators was a pile of porn compact discs and magazines. “So much for the holier than thou image,” Hobbs said.
Sauer took out the crime scene photographs and looked intensely at them. He looked at the background, rather than at the grotesque remains of Rebecca Scott. The photographs were only of Rebecca’s remains and the bedroom. Her fat, fleshy legs were spread wide. Both legs were severely bruised close to the groin, as was the pelvis, but there was no blood. She was definitely not a virgin. Her pelvic area was clean-shaven.
A thick bush of flaming red hair surrounded the bony remains of her face. There were no photographs of the living room, kitchen or bathroom. The autopsy report revealed that Scott was raped, but no Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Her rapist must have worn a condom, as powdery residue was found on the inside of her vagina.
Her left eye was removed from its socket with a blunt instrument, as was her tongue. Her right eye was mashed. Most of the flesh on her face was also removed with a blunt object. Speculation back then was that she was murdered in a ritual killing and that the flesh that was harvested during the killing was sold off for other ritual purposes. That was the educated assumption of a Captain Ndlovu, formerly from the Limpopo Province, where ritual killings were an almost weekly occurrence.
Chapter Six
Sauer and Hobbs are not easily susceptible to cloak and dagger tales. They phoned around when the case files were handed to the
m only after Leslie Adams, the Face Lifter’s second victim, was killed. They ended with a scary looking professor of anthropology at Wits—the University of the Witwatersrand. Tony Davey was a scrawny, elderly male. His thinning, grey hair was tied up in a low ponytail.
He looked at the detectives over his rose-colored spectacles saying, “Yes, yes,” as they explained the victim to him. His table groaned under books and papers. Piles of papers and manuscripts were stacked on the floor next to the desk. Just like Hobbs’s and Sauer’s office.
Hobbs handed the envelope containing the photographs to the professor and he opened it with shaking hands. “Yes, yes,” the professor said as he looked at the pictures. He hummed and hawed while turning some of the pictures upside down or sideways. At one stage he took a magnifying glass out of his top drawer. “Yes, yes…” Then he rubbed his chin and nodded his head, followed by another, “Yes, yes.”
Finally, he looked at the two detectives on the other side of the desk. “But no, this is not a ritual killing. If it is…then it is new. The local witch doctors would require the whole head. Or a whole limb—not pieces of flesh ripped off like this. Yes, yes,” he said more to himself than to the detectives.
“You have to understand that the witch doctors, sangomas or nyangas don’t often do the killing themselves. There have been cases where they do the killing themselves but that is very rare. Very rare indeed…yes, yes.” He rubbed his chin again.
“They buy the body parts from other people who kill for money or revenge. Normally it would be a trainee nyangas or sangomas who kill on the instruction on the big nyangas. And from my studies through the years, I have never come across a nyanga that would accept pieces of torn flesh. They would want whole limbs, the whole head, a whole torso, an intact scrotum,” he repeated himself.
Cannibal Man Page 3