Elements of Kill

by Christopher Lane

  “Valentine’s Day! No kiddin’?” His voiced seemed to boom across the room. Heads turned, eyes focusing on Ray.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ain’t that sweet. Marryin’ yer sweetheart on Valentine’s Day!”

  “Ain’t it. Tell me about Texas.”

  “Texas …” Billy Bob said dreamily. He began to gleam, pride exuding from every pore. “I miss her. ‘Specially now. I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this.” He shook his head and gestured toward the window. “It’s night all the time. And colder than a witch’s heart. How do you ever get used to that?”

  “You just do.”

  “Does the sun ever come up out here?”

  “It will along about … the end of February. Until then, well, in between storms, it’ll get light for a few hours. That’s about it, though. No sunshine.”

  “And I hear tell it’s light all the time in the summer.”

  “Pretty much. For a couple of months—June/July—the sun never sets. It just runs around the horizon, kind of like a basketball caught in the rim.”

  “A toilet ringer. That’s what we call that down south.”

  Ray finished off his pancake and wiped his lips. “Good food.”

  “Darn good! I was about to die I was so hungry.” He stopped and gave Ray a quizzical look. “What sort of food do you eat where you come from?”

  “Where I come from?”

  “Back in the village, in yer igloo.”

  Ray stared at him. Surely he wasn’t serious.

  “You know, yer ice house.”

  “First of all,” Ray began, struggling to mask his irritation, “most igloos aren’t made of ice.”

  “They ain’t?” Billy Bob’s eyes grew wide, as if this were a startling revelation.

  “They’re sod. Second of all, I don’t live in a village anymore. I live in Barrow. It’s a town with thousands of people. That’s why we need a police department.”

  “Huh …” He nodded before stuffing half of a muffin in his mouth.

  “As for what I eat, it’s pretty much the same thing you eat. When I was a boy, I lived with my grandfather. We’d hunt caribou, go whaling, do a lot of fishing. Those were our main meats. We had seal and walrus sometimes too. Many of our people still live by subsistence off the land, but in the bigger villages and towns, they get a lot of their food just like the folks in Texas do: by going to the grocery store.”

  “Is that right? Ezkeemos shop at Piggly Wiggly?”

  Ray was still marveling at the deputy’s ignorance when Simpson appeared with a short, dark-haired man in tow.

  “Officers,” Simpson said, “this here’s Jorge.”

  The man rubbed an oily hand on his coveralls, then extended it toward them. “Jorge Rodriguez at your service. Hear you fellas have a body for me.”

  SIX

  ABANDONING THEIR TRAYS, they led Jorge to the storage room.

  “He’s in here,” Ray said, reaching for the door. He twisted the knob, pushed it open … swore.

  “Geez!” Billy Bob exclaimed.

  Jorge agreed with the assessment, muttering a curse in Spanish.

  In the warm air of the storage room the body had uncurled and slipped from its perch on the table, taking one of the garbage sacks with it. Limp arms and legs were splayed on the tile floor, as if the corpse was trying to swim away in the shallow pool of pink ice water. The sight was overwhelming.

  Ray covered his mouth with one hand and surveyed the shelves with the other. He found a box of painting masks and a container of cleaning gloves and handed Billy Bob and Jorge a set. When their faces were safely hidden behind the white filters, their hands covered in yellow plastic, Ray sighed. “Let’s get him back on the table.”

  The three of them waded into the shallow lake. Ray concentrated on his breathing, fighting off a wave of nausea. Next to him Billy Bob’s thin frame was slipping and sliding in the pale red pond, arms waving in an effort to maintain his balance. Even with the mask, it was clear that the deputy found this chore repulsive.

  Jorge didn’t seem to mind. He stepped forward, bent, took hold of a blood-soaked mitten, a wet Sorrel. “Okay, on my count … One, two, three …”

  The body was more difficult to handle in its thawed form. It was heavier, the clothing soaked to many times its normal weight. And the limbs were rubbery, the torso flexing and twisting like putty. The head lolled back, to the side, then forward.

  “Down,” Jorge directed. The soggy corpse thumped onto the table, face-up, an arm flopping off the side.

  Ray repositioned the stray arm, then noticed the front of his pants. They were stained with red blotches, as if they had been splatter painted.

  “Hope this stuff washes out,” Billy Bob was saying, brushing at his western shirt.

  “I hope we don’t get AIDS,” Ray lamented.

  Jorge ignored them. Slipping smoothly into the role of medical expert, the stubby oil worker examined the body with rapt concentration. He stared at the head, studied the torso, the legs. Finally, he examined the boots.

  “What do you think?” Ray asked, feeling helpless. “Guy froze to death, right?”

  Jorge shrugged. “Lot of blood. Help me roll him over.” They did, the corpse slogging to its side, then face-down. The back of the parka was saturated. Just above waist level there was a tear in the fabric. Jorge pulled up the coat and underclothing to expose the skin of the back. The flesh was scarred by a jagged, inch-wide hole.

  Jorge used a yellow finger to circle the cavity. “Puncture wound, lower lumbar region, just lateral to the spine.”

  “You sound like an ME,” Ray noted.

  “I almost was.” He peered into the hole.

  “Is that from a gunshot?” Billy Bob asked stupidly.

  Jorge shook his head. “Jabbed with something. Might have struck an organ. Didn’t kill him though. Not enough blood. I’d have to do tests, to conduct a real autopsy, but, well, I’d have to say this guy was already dead when this was made.”

  Ray blinked at this. “So he froze to death.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said he didn’t die from this wound. Can’t imagine how he got it though. Somebody must have—”

  “The rebar!” Billy Bob nearly shouted.

  “What rebar?” Jorge wanted to know.

  “Fellas who found him,” Billy Bob explained, “they poked him with a piece a rebar. They was trying to unclog a pipe. Thought it was full of mud.”

  Jorge stared at the hole, obviously trying to picture this in his mind. Satisfied, he said, “Okay, roll him back over.” He returned to the head, rolling it back and forth on the flimsy, lifeless neck before pulling back the hood and zipping down the parka.

  “Uh …” Ray groaned, swearing loudly. Beside him, Billy Bob retched.

  The face was purple, withered from frostbite. Not a pretty sight, but nothing to bring up your breakfast. The neck, however, was a different story. It had been cut from ear to ear, brittle gray skin curling back to reveal a deep channel of muscles and tendons.

  “Subject’s neck is lacerated,” Jorge observed calmly. He began to investigate the trench with a steady hand. “Skin, infrahyoid muscles, larynx … all severed.”

  “Somebody slit his neck,” Ray muttered, still grimacing.

  “No,” Jorge disagreed, gloved fingers pulling at the opening. “Somebody tried to chop his head off. Or rather, slice it off.”

  It was Ray’s turn to retch. Thankfully, the contents of his breakfast stayed put.

  Jorge pointed to the edges of the cut. “See how smooth the entry marks are. The blade was sharp. Except”—he squinted at the neck—“they didn’t use a regular knife.”

  “What did they use?” Ray asked, trying to swallow.

  “Something curved. Kind of like a scimitar … but shorter.”

  Breathing deeply, Ray returned his gaze to the corpse.

  “But this didn’t kill him either,” Jorge continued. He seemed to be enjoying this.

  “You’re kiddin
g,” Ray muttered.

  “Same problem as the puncture wound. Not enough blood.”

  “If cutting off his head off didn’t do it, what did?”

  “Good question.” Jorge zipped the parka the rest of the way open and folded it back. Tracing the jacket with his hand, he stuck a yellow pinkie finger through a tiny hole. “Voila!”

  “Bullet?”

  Jorge nodded. “Pierced his jacket, went through the rest of the clothes …” He pulled up the sweater, unbuttoned a dress shirt—presumably bleach white in its original state but now dark red—and pushed the insulated underwear into a wad. “Entered the subject’s thorax, struck the heart.”

  “What about an exit wound?” Ray wondered. “The bullet should have come out the guy’s back.”

  “We may have missed it,” Jorge said.

  “Or maybe it was one a them Black Talons,” Billy Bob threw in.

  Ray nodded. Black Talons were slugs that expanded on entry and often didn’t make it out. They caused such internal devastation that they had been outlawed shortly after their debut.

  “Those babies bounce around like rodeo bulls,” the deputy continued. “Make a real mess of yer insides.”

  “Get his clothes off,” Jorge ordered. They slid off the wet, pungent parka, the drenched sweater, the shirts. With each piece, the sightless head rocked, its open neck emitting a silent scream.

  “Now his boots and pants.”

  When the corpse was naked, they rolled it to its side. “Nope,” Jorge said. “No exit. Must of hit a bone or something.”

  “Any idea what kind of gun?”

  Jorge frowned at this. “I’m not much on ballistics.” The frown intensified. “Small caliber rifle.”

  “Twenty-two?”

  “Bigger than that. But nothing like a thirty-thirty or anything.”

  Ray looked down at the broken, mutilated form. “So that’s what killed him?” He pointed to the gunshot wound.

  “Yep. His heart was violated by a chunk of lead.” Jorge continued his examination, lifting the arms, checking the hands, flexing the knees. Five minutes later he was back at the head. Pulling the lids up, he glanced at each eye, into the ears, ran a glove through the tangled, matted hair. He gazed into the nostrils, pulled open the jaw, stuck a finger in and wiggled the teeth. Then he took hold of the tongue.

  “That’s interesting.”

  Ray leaned in for a better look. Billy Bob kept his distance, eyes on the wall.

  Jorge was actually smiling now, savoring his work. “How odd.”

  “What?”

  “See here?” He stepped back and a gloved hand raised the stiff, pink lump of flesh. “The muscle from the underside of the tongue is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Cut out. With a sharp, curved blade.”

  A shiver ran up and down Ray’s spine. “Nigiluq.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what it’s called.”

  “That’s what what’s called?” Jorge asked.

  Ray sighed. “When I was a kid, my grandfather used to take me down into the Range, hunting for aklaq, for grizzly. If we got one, he would always make me remove the worm, the cartilage under the tongue, and chop off the head.” Ray took a slow step back from the table before cursing at the mental image. “According to tradition, you’re supposed to leave the worm and head in the field, bury them or impale them on a tree, to insure that the bear’s kila, his spirit, won’t haunt you but will go on to be reincarnated. The ritual is called nigiluq.”

  The room was silent as the trio considered this.

  “When we brought a bear home,” Ray added, “Grandmother would prepare the meat with an ulu.”

  After another minute, Billy Bob asked, “What’s an ooloo?”

  “A small knife with a curved blade. Usually a bone or wood handle. Native women use them for just about everything, including cleaning a catch.”

  “You think this here man was mistaken for a bear?” Billy Bob wondered, a twisted expression on his face.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Ray said. “It’s … it’s …”

  “Creepy,” Jorge said glibly. He paused, gingerly tugging at his sleeve in an attempt to avoid soiling his shirt as he looked at his watch. “Listen guys, if that’s all, I need to get some dinner and hit the sack. I’m on again in eight.”

  “Uh … yeah … thanks. I guess that’s it for now.” Ray wondered how the guy could even think about food after conducting a guided tour through a fresh cadaver.

  Jorge slid off his gloves, snapped the mask back, and splashed his way toward the door.

  “We can’t leave this guy here,” Ray noted. “Any suggestions?”

  Jorgé paused and shrugged at this. “I’d cover him back up and put him out in the yard. Once he freezes, he won’t stink as much. Easier to transport too.” With that, he left, his slick boots squeaking away down the hall.

  “I thought I’d seen ever-thang,” Billy Bob said, frowning at the shelves. He was being careful to keep his eyes away from the body. “Why in heaven’s name would somebody do somethin’ like this?”

  “No idea.” Ray looked to the face for an answer, studying the features above the unconscionable damage.

  “I tell you why. Cause they’re depraved, wicked … downright evil. Immoral … Sinful …”

  Ray was suddenly reminded of the evangelists he had seen shouting and sweating through sermons on television.

  “Whoever it was, they should be strung up.”

  Ray tended to agree but decided not to say so. “Maybe somebody can ID him now.”

  Billy Bob glanced at the corpse. “Maybe.” He swallowed hard, his breathing uneven. Turning his back on the horrific sight, he asked, “You ever investigate a murder before, Officer Attla?”

  Ray nodded. “A few.” But nothing like this, he failed to add. Murders in Barrow were rare, and when they did occur, they involved three major components: women, booze, and firearms. Usually in that order. Despite the fact that Barrow had been dry since ‘94, the scenario went something like this: guy sees his lady with another man, gets plastered on contraband liquor, goes home, loads his rifle, goes looking for trouble. Deciding who did the shooting was never much of a feat. You looked for the hotheaded drunk with the smoking gun. And there were always witnesses ready to fill you in on what happened. The crimes were not well planned, seldom premeditated, and never went unsolved for more than a few hours.

  “What about you?” Ray asked.

  Billy Bob scoffed at this. “Naw. Soon as I got out of the police academy, I come up here. Ain’t never even stood this close to a dead person. Good thing you’re takin’ the ball on this one, Officer Attla.”

  “Yeah, well … I’m not exactly a homicide detective.” He shook his head at the body. “And call me Ray. Looks like we’ll be spending some quality time together.”

  SEVEN

  “NO, I’M SURE … Positive … Captain … Captain, listen … No, it was not an accident, believe me …”

  Ray was standing in the hall, Simpson’s cellular stuck to his ear, watching through the doorway as two janitors traded curses and sprayed down the empty table in the storage room with disinfectant. He and Billy Bob had taken Jorge’s advice and put the body back out in the snow. It would freeze solid in no time.

  “Captain, the guy took a bullet to the chest—the heart—and an ulu to the neck … Yeah, an ulu … That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Whoever did this was … demented.”

  One of the janitors was using a sponge to wipe down the table legs. The other was pushing thin, watery blood with a mop, herding it in the general direction of the floor drain.

  “Leads? Are you kidding? We haven’t even IDed the body … No … Because I didn’t bring a camera … Well, I sketched the face, but … I’m no Rembrandt.” He glanced at the pad in his hand. Two sorrowful eyes stared up at him from the arrangement of pencil scratches: lumpy cheeks, oversized ears, narrow nose … “Looks a little like him … sort of. Anyw
ay, I’m gonna show it around, see what I can turn up … Yeah … Yeah … Okay. Any word on the Anchorage Police? …” His frown intensified. “I really need to get back to Barrow by … Yeah, I know … Right … I’ll call in this afternoon.”

  He hung up the phone and watched as the janitors dabbed at the last blotches of what looked like wet, red clay.

  “They about got that mess cleaned up?”

  Ray glanced up the hallway and saw Simpson and Billy Bob approaching. He handed the phone to Simpson. “Just about.”

  “What’s next?” Simpson asked. “You fellas done? Ready to head on out of here now?” He was clearly anxious to be rid of them.

  “Not quite,” Ray sighed. “We need to ask a few more questions, talk to the guys who found the body.”

  Simpson nodded knowingly, then examined his watch. “They’re all off-shift, either sleeping or eating.” He gestured toward Ray’s pad. “What’s that?”

  “Sketch of the victim,” Ray answered. He presented it to Simpson. “Look familiar?”

  A hand stroked his fuzzy flattop. “No … Don’t think so. But it’s a good drawing. You an artist or something?”

  Ray smirked in response. “Wanna introduce us to the roustabouts?”

  “Follow me.”

  Simpson led them back to the cafeteria. When they arrived, he paused and surveyed the tables. “Maybe they’re sacked out … Hold on, there’s Jim over on the end there.” He pointed to a thin figure bent over a tray. The man’s hair was long and wild, black locks twisting away in every direction.

  Marching to the table, Simpson said, “Jim, these policemen want to have a talk with you.”

  Jim’s head tilted up from his plate and two dark eyes examined them suspiciously.

  Simpson’s phone chimed. He answered it, then covered the receiver with a beefy hand. “You boys do what you need to do. I’ll be in the office.” With that he hurried away, jabbering into the cellular.

  Billy Bob and Ray slid into seats directly across the table from Jim.

  “Ray Attla, Barrow PD.” He offered a badge. “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”