Tell me the body is not that of Jimmy Love. Right now he is our only clue, Sauer thought.
Together, they walked down to where the body lay.
* * * *
Jimmy Love’s throat was cut from ear to ear. His head hung backwards at a strange angle. Both his eyes were bloodied and bruised. He could have been dead for a few hours already. Dressed only in a T-shirt, his naked body was sprawled in an open sewer pipe. Slow flowing sewer washed the blood away. The smell of the blood and the sewerage was unbearable. Sauer gave the scene one look, turned around and walked away. He had a difficult time controlling his retching.
Hobbs stood at the top of the sewer and looked down as if desperately seeking clues. He was not in a mood to climb down into the filth. Then again, that was part of his job description.
“Can you help me down there please?” a young female voice spoke next to him.
Hobbs looked at the tiny girl standing next to him. Her dark hair was tied in a ponytail. Her big eyes were almost as dark as her hair.
“And you are?” he asked, knowing full well that she was also at Zeller’s scene taking photos.
“Jeanine, I am with the forensics.” Hobbs did not bother to introduce himself.
Must I climb down into that sewer? Then Hobbs remembered he was wearing his standard issued Caterpillar boots. He jumped into the sewer and felt it splash up against his pants. He turned around and held his hand out to Jeanine.
She took it, jumped the half-meter down into the sewer and walked ahead of Hobbs to the body. She slung her backpack over her right shoulder.
So much for saying ‘thank you’.
From a distance, Hobbs could tell the corpse was unmistakably that of Jimmy Love’s. The shirt was red with blood, no pants, shoes or socks. His platinum blond hair waved in the flow of the sewerage. His mouth was slightly open, as if wanting to speak one last time.
Jeanine took a penlight from her backpack and shone the light into the gaping wound that almost severed Jimmy’s head from his body. If the smell bothered her, she did not let on. Hobbs looked at the tiny woman. She wore dark blue overalls, purple gloves on her hands and safety glasses. The trouser legs were tucked into white Wellington boots.
She straightened up and started fumbling through her pockets. She noticed Hobbs next to her and asked, “Have you got a pen for me please?”
“Sure,” he said and handed her a pen from his breast pocket.
Their fingers touched briefly. Hobbs ignored the tingle that went up his spine. He watched as she carefully lifted Jimmy Love’s top lip with the back of the pen and shone the light in. She gazed inside Jimmy’s mouth. Hobbs knew what she was looking for.
“Is it there?” he asked.
“No.” No tongue.
She then flicked Jimmy’s blond hair from his face and looked into his left eye. Nothing. She looked back at Hobbs shaking her head. He understood. The left eye was missing. She scanned the body closely for more clues. She took her time looking at the various, huge bruises on the torso and stomach. Eventually, she picked up his limp penis with the pen. “Come look here,” she called Hobbs.
Reluctantly, he bent down closer to the body and the stench. He sat on his haunches next to her.
“Look,” she continued softly, as if only for his ears as he bent over her, “his scrotum was cut off.”
She scanned the body downwards towards his toes, pushing the pen between them. All the while, Hobbs looked down at her as she worked. She then examined his arms and hands. “You better seal these hands. I think you might find genetic material under his fingernails,” Hobbs commented.
“Will do. Let’s just hope that not all it went down the drain. Literally.” Jeanie took several swabs from the tips of Jimmy’s fingers. Each time she handed Hobbs a small plastic bag to hold for her. After she swabbed, the ear bud would be deposited into the plastic bag. She did not once look at him. She would merely voice commands such as, “Hold this quickly, please.” Or she would say, “Pass me another swab please.” This continued until it was dark. Already, two rookies climbed into the sewer and lit the area for them with flashlights.
“It is getting too dark to continue out here,” she said flatly. Then she was finished. She smiled at Hobbs and said, “Help me out of here. We’ll talk at the top.”
Hobbs pulled himself out of the sewer and took her hand. He pulled her up and immediately started walking away from her. Too many tingles down the spine. She can’t possibly weigh more than fifty kilograms. Jeanie followed Hobbs as he walked to Sauer who sat in the driver’s seat of the Turtle, his feet dangling outside the car, pale and unfriendly.
Jeanine gave Sauer one look, fished in her handbag for a purple bottle and gave it to Sauer: “Here, take a mouthful. You’ll feel better then.” Sauer looked at her rudely but nevertheless took the bottle and took a huge swig. The sickly sweet syrup slithered down his throat. For a second, it felt like he was going to vomit again, but as soon as the liquid hit his stomach, a strange calmness smoothed his insides.
“What’s in this?” he asked Jeanine.
“It’s the stuff they gave us at varsity to keep us from going anorexic when we were cutting up corpses eight hours of the day.”
“Can you get some more?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll ask my aunt to prescribe some for you.”
“Your aunt?”
“Yes, she is a doctor.”
Hobbs looked at the two of them talking as if they have known each other their whole lives. Why can’t I be at ease with women like Sauer is?
“So, don’t you want to know what we have seen,” Hobbs interrupted their friendly conversation.
“Give it to me baby…” Sauer was his old self.
“It was Jimmy all right. His throat was cut from ear to ear. His tongue was missing and so was his left eye.” Hobbs took a deep breath, “And,” he continued, “the killer opted to take Jimmy’s balls as well.”
“Ouch.” Sauer wanted to impress the young brunette.
“Your killer is a very angry and disturbed man,” Jeanine interrupted.
Sauer and Hobbs looked at her in surprise. And? What did she think? Did she think we work with people who steal compact discs?
“He hates gay guys. The entire body is full of bite marks. The blue marks you saw on the body wasn’t bruises. It was bite marks. Sickos often want to eat their victims. It is as if they want to consume them. It is a very primitive instinct. My guess would be that our killer was sexually abused from a very young age. That is probably also why he removed his victim’s scrotum, as if the killer wanted to prevent the victim from having sexual intercourse again. Not that he ever would,” she laughed. “Again that points to the fact that he has serious sexual hang-ups.”
“What about the missing tongue?” Hobbs asked.
“Because the killer’s instincts are so extremely basic and severely suppressed, my guest would be that he felt unable to talk about his abuse as a child. Either he didn’t want to talk about it, or nobody listened to him. Hence the anger.” Sauer and Hobbs stared at her in surprise. “Tell me more,” Sauer said.
“Well for one, he is white and extremely strong…”
“Why white?” Hobbs asked.
“Because of the way he killed. Black men kill differently, because of the vast cultural differences and upbringing. A black man would kill more primitively. They would use a stone or something similar to club a person to death. The man who killed here tonight is probably a psychopath and he might be highly intelligent, as most psychopaths are. And he is fairly young—maybe in his mid-twenties. Also, he is a serious churchgoer—or pretends to the outside world to be a Christian. He must be very convincing. My guess is that he is either a young entrepreneur or a spoiled, rich brat. Either way, he has money.”
“How on Earth do you know that?” the detectives asked simultaneously.
“The victim wore a very expensive crucifixion made from silver and studded with tiny diamonds. In an ordinary robbery t
hat goes wrong, the attacker would have gone for the jewelry. But it was lying in the sewer next to the victim’s body.”
“Where’s it now?”
“Sealed in one of my forensic bags. I want to check it for genetics and so on.” She took a small, plastic bag from her backpack and showed it to the detectives.
“That’s Jimmy’s crucifix,” Sauer said. “We have seen him wear it.”
Hobbs shrugged his shoulders. He did not see the crucifix.
“It was there almost hidden underneath his left hip,” Jeanine said.
Hobbs walked back to the scene. He watched as the photographers were busy with the body. Two policemen dressed in mortuary overalls climbed down into the sewer. One carried a body bag and the other one a thin, wooden stretcher.
“Be careful not to disturb the plastic bags around his hands,” Hobbs called from the top. The guys from the mortuary were preparing to remove Love’s body from the sewer.
Back at the Turtle, Sauer was sipping on a Coke. “Where’s your little admirer?” Hobbs asked.
“She had to leave. She also has to be home for supper. Looks like we all have a date tonight.” Sauer started the Turtle’s engine as Hobbs climbed in.
“Let the rest do their thing. We both have places to be,” Sauer said as he turned the corner.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Wills was arrested late one night, a few years later, for sodomizing young boys at church. The police first knocked on the door, and Mother wanted to know who it was. They told her they were from the Child Protection Unit and wanted to speak to Wills but Mother refused to open. She said that she was already in bed and was not going to get dressed now and switched off the lights. The police threatened to kick the door down. Mother screamed back at them and said that Wills was not there. Henry got up from his bed in the loft, climbed down his secret passage, switched on the lights and opened the door. Mother attacked him from behind, trying to prevent him from opening the door. She weighed very little, so it was easy to shrug her off. The police shouted at him, screaming that they wanted Wills.
“He is hiding under Mother’s bed,” he answered them flatly and led them to Mother’s bedroom.
Mother had run into the bedroom and bolted the door from the inside. She screamed at them to go away.
The police threatened her again, “Open the fucking door…or we will kick it down!”
They then started kicking the solid door out of its hinges. Eventually, the police managed to kick the door off its hinges.
The policeman, who went in first, was attacked by Mother. She threw her thin body onto the man with such force that it knocked him off his feet.
More policemen stormed into the room. Henry counted six. Two more were standing in the hallway. They were all heavily armed. Mother was now on top of the policeman on the floor, hammering at him with a hair brush. One of the policemen picked Mother off and brutally shoved her out of the room. The two policemen in the hallway restrained her and cuffed her. Mother screamed her head off. She flung verbal abuses at them, swearing and frothing at the mouth.
The room was now filled with police. She kicked at the policemen. Henry had never seen Mother that livid. Her dead eye bopped up and down in its socket as she screamed. Two policemen dragged a squealing Wills from under the bed by his legs. He tried to dig his nails into the tiled floor to stop them. “I did not do it, I did not do it…” screamed Wills.
A police woman came to Henry, speaking softly. “You’re the adopted boy, aren’t you?” she asked. He stared at her, not knowing what she was talking about. He never knew he was adopted. That subject was never broached. Even if he wanted her too, Mother would not have told him. Now it all made sense. He did not look like Mother or Wills. Neither was he as stupid like he considered them to be. He did well at school and excelled in sport. He was very tall, had a mop of black hair and blue eyes. Wills and Mother looked like they were inbred with mice. Both had small features and very pointed, small noses.
That same night he was taken by the police woman to someone else’s house. She told him that he was now in foster care. He was to stay there for a while. Finally, he would be able to sleep soundly at night. He would not have to climb into the loft for his own safety any more. He was fourteen then.
His foster home was very new to him. Besides the fact that there were no pigs to be fed, he could go and bath when he wanted and he did not have to wash his own school clothing. These people also read from the Bible a lot. Although, not always about the sins of the flesh. The old man was a pastor at some charismatic church and his wife a housewife. She clucked over him in the beginning, but soon realized that he liked being on his own.
One thing was different though. They also had an adopted child, a girl. She was six years older than Henry, but not bright at all. She worked at a day care center nearby. Later, he learned that she never made it far at school. Besides that, life was pretty much the same to him. He got up, went to school, went to sport practice, and then went home to do homework. But he did miss Heidi terribly. At night he would touch himself thinking of her. He was always careful not to mess on the sheets.
About a month after he moved in with them, they sat at the table eating breakfast. The girl touched him under the table while the old man prayed. He opened his eyes and saw the raw sexual need in her eyes. He winked at her as the old man said ‘Amen’. They ate in silence. On the table was food he never tasted before. Also, a huge bowl of fruit.
“May I please have an apple,” he asked the lady politely.
“What good manners,” the lady of the house said to her husband. Then to him she said, “Of course my dear. Make yourself at home. Take whatever you need.”
That night he took the daughter for the first time. He sneaked into her bedroom after the old people closed their bedroom door behind them. She was as adventurous as he was. And despite being told that she led a moral life, she was not a virgin. She encouraged him to slap her. She loved it. By the end of the week, they were having sex all the time, getting quite daring. They would do it on the front porch standing up, while the old people were inside watching television, only a few meters away.
He would finger her under the table when the old man prayed. She would suck him off in the shower.
Till one day. The old lady walked in as he was busy ramming his penis into the daughter from behind. They were in the dining room and the old lady was supposed to be at a Bible study group.
That same afternoon he was taken back to Mother. He was dumped unceremoniously in the driveway. He just shrugged as the old people drove off, the dumb girl crying hysterically in the back. He picked his bags up, walked into the house and dumped the bags on his old bed. Mother looked up as he entered the kitchen. She just sat there, staring at nothing in particular, pathetic and lonely. Eventually she said, “Well that did not take long.” She was wrong, it was two years later.
He walked outside and found the sties empty, except for one.
“Where’s the pigs?” he later asked Mother.
“Dead.” She did not even look at him. She was busy scribbling notes on pieces of paper. They were letters to Wills.
Later that evening he looked for food. Most of the cupboards were bare. Some had a few cans of food in them. In the corner of one of the cupboards he discovered a pile of newspaper clippings all about Wills’ court case. He knew about the trial, but was never told in detail what happened. The old people kept him from that. He read it in the fading sunlight. Will was sentenced to fifteen years for sodomizing two young boys on the church grounds. Old habits die hard. The clipping described in detail how Wills would isolate a boy from his friends, and under the pretense of showing him baby chicks in a nest, lead the boy into the bushes surrounding the church.
He was still busy reading when there was a knock at the door. Mother remained still, not saying or doing anything. So he walked over and opened the door. There was Heidi, now a fully-grown woman with huge breasts. She had a dish in her hands. She nearly droppe
d it when she saw Henry.
“What you doing here?” she stammered.
“I’m back,” he said.
She pushed the dish towards him. “Here is food for your mother.”
“She is not my mother.”
“I know,” Heidi said softly. “I missed you more than you will ever know.” She put the dish down on the table in front of Mother and hugged Henry hard. He smelled the sunlight in her hair.
They became lovers immediately again. Henry pulled her close to him and walked her to the bedroom. They only emerged long after dark. He walked her home. Mother was still sitting at the table when he came back. She had not touched the food. He dished some up for himself and ate in silence. Then he washed his plate and went to bed.
After school, Henry and Heidi would sit for hours next to the river and she would tell him about what had happened in the time he was gone.
Mother stopped feeding the pigs the day Wills was arrested. Some of the pigs starved before the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals organization came and took the rest away. Heidi told him that Mother never bathed or ate. She just sat at the kitchen table, either reading the Bible or writing to Wills.
“I found her like that a week after Wills was arrested. I tried to feed her water, but she kept slapping my hand away. Eventually I lied to her. I told her that she must eat, as Wills will be coming home in two days’ time. That seemed to motivate her. I feed her twice a day now and bathe her every second day. On Saturdays, I sweep the house and wash her clothes.”
“Why do you do all this?” he asked her.
“Because it is better than sitting around my house with that drunken monster.”
Another two years later he finished school. By then, Heidi had started her nursing training and lived with them. She would bring food home every night that she managed to scavenge from the hospital kitchen and attempted to feed Mother. Slowly, Mother improved under Heidi’s guidance. Soon, she wanted to bathe herself, and slowly but surely, started taking interest around her. She started calling him Wills. He let her. He just tolerated her. His time with her was almost up.
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