by Cole McCade
Police churned everywhere, as well as a few suited men and women with the rigidity and tight sense of focus that Seong-Jae recognized as FBI; a few he even recognized vaguely even if names eluded him, from past collaborations on cross-state cases. Forensics teams covered every inch of space, warning agents and officers away from sections that had not yet been canvassed, searching over every micron of the entryway, the waiting area, several of the ancillary hallways that ran to either side of the building. The only space untouched was the multiple layers of secured doors leading deeper into the facility, and the hallways just barely visible beyond.
It would take weeks, Seong-Jae knew—weeks to cover every single detail in the entire facility, hoping to find that one little clue that would make all of this make sense. That even after almost two days, they were just getting started.
He also knew it would be hopeless.
Entirely.
He spoke to Aanga from the corner of his mouth while he watched clusters of people converge in the operational areas that had been staged in the front entry hall. “Facility capacity?”
“Two hundred and twenty-five prisoners, current complement one hundred and eighty-two, including the deceased and escaped,” Aanga answered. “Twenty-two to twenty-six staff on site at all times, total staff complement of one hundred and forty-one on rotating shifts.”
“So what you’re saying,” Malcolm interjected grimly, “is that this entire circus is for nothing.”
“Like trying to find one hair on a whole damned horse,” Aanga bit off bitterly. “Forensics has its uses, but this is a waste of resources.”
“Due diligence,” Seong-Jae said. “Simply so there can be no question of the paperwork later. Please revisit what you said about escapees.” He arched a brow. “You moved past that far too quickly.”
“There are nearly three dozen prisoners unaccounted for.” With a sharp sound in the back of his throat, Aanga looked away. “We just aren’t sure which of them are among the dead yet, but the count doesn’t add up to the number of bodies just yet when you take into account some of the dead are prison guards.” He tossed his head toward the access-controlled gated entryways. “Main crime scene’s in the warden’s office, from what I’ve been told, though there are several smaller incidental scenes. Let’s go find the county Sheriff. She’s our primary point of contact on this.”
Seong-Jae exchanged a troubled look with Malcolm, but nodded and simply held his tongue as they trailed through the crowd and after Aanga.
A set of three coded doors barred them from proceeding down the main hallway—a place that might look sterile and institutional with its once-white walls if it was not so grimy, so old. Paint had darkened from off-white to a yellowish gray, flaking away to reveal concrete underneath, and even the steel framing on the doors had turned a color closer to a deep, gnarled iron, flecked at the edges with rust. The coppery red-brown of the rust seemed the only color in the dim-lit stretch of hallway.
If not for the long streaks of blood down one wall.
Four, sometimes five.
Fingertips, with a thumb dipping in and out like it was playing on a carousel.
“Fuck,” Malcolm whispered, his face fixed and rigid, staring through the glass panels to either side of the doors while Aanga spoke low to the group of security guards flanking the first.
“Precisely,” Seong-Jae said, before one of the guards tapped in a code on the keypad, swiped his security card, and stepped aside to let them pass.
As the lock released with an ear-splitting buzz, however, and they stepped through…
Seong-Jae looked up, caught by the red light over the door.
The security camera.
Just what stories will you tell me, then?
Two more doors, buzzing them through, the two security guards—tall, thick men who moved like ushers at a funeral, with that same quiet solemnity—escorting them into the hall. The moment the last door lock released and opened, the smell of blood hit Seong-Jae as if he’d just stepped into a hospital, releasing the seal on the abattoir and nearly choking him with the thick, cloying scent of it.
It was so heavy it filled the hallway like a substance in and of itself, far more than the thin streaks on the walls allowed for. Seong-Jae held his breath, trying not to let that stink drown him, trying not to let the dread building up inside him become a rising tide that would pull him under and choke off all his air.
Instead he focused on the blood streaks.
Dark dried red, up and down, following a wave pattern, and Seong-Jae did not need to see the security footage to know who had left it.
It could be no one other than him.
And in that pattern Seong-Jae could see his ghost moving down the hallway.
Skipping.
Skipping on high, jaunty, almost leaping steps that made him bounce, made the path of his fingers rise and fall as he merrily made his way toward the doors with that rabbit mask bobbing and swaying.
That was how Seong-Jae saw crime scenes, in the end.
As if he were watching hauntings of ghosts, recreating the last actions of their lives over and over and over again, trapped in that moment and showing him how the things they had left behind came to be.
Malcolm glanced at him, stepping closer, walking until their arms brushed. “You’ve got that look,” he murmured, canting his head toward Seong-Jae, keeping it low between them. “What are you seeing?”
“Pleasure,” Seong-Jae whispered back. “Someone who is utterly delighted in his work, and not afraid to show it.”
A soft, thoughtful grunt escaped Malcolm’s lips, tinged with disgust. “If he’s been locked up for a while, he’d be pent up. This was probably an explosion of release for him. Anticipation and denial must have been killing him.”
“Just so,” Seong-Jae agreed. “Just so.” Then he pitched his voice toward Aanga’s tense, stiff back. “Have forensics teams been allowed beyond this point?”
“I specifically asked them not to just yet, except to capture photographs while it was fresh,” Aanga threw over his shoulder. “No one knows what to do with this, anyway. Where to even begin. Though I think they’ve started on the ancillary scenes. But what we’re about to see…that’s untouched.”
“Small blessings,” Malcolm muttered. “I really don’t like going into this with a blank slate, even if I get the reasons why.”
“Personally,” Seong-Jae said, “I would rather put off seeing thirty-three dismembered bodies for as long as I can.”
“Too bad, then,” floated back from Aanga. “Because it’s about to happen.”
Several yards down the hall, a woman’s lightly accented voice drifted out from an open doorway. “Joshi? That you?”
Aanga sighed. “She never uses my title,” he said, right before a woman leaned out of the door, her glossy black hair swept back from a high-cheekboned, golden-brown face with starkly angled brown eyes as hard and sharp-edged as finely cut tigerseye.
“You’re late,” the woman said, stepping out into the hallway, her compact frame moving alertly inside the crisp brown and tan of her Sheriff’s uniform. The paper air filtration mask over her face muffled her voice, hiding the movement of her lips.
“Had to pick up my backup.” Aanga jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “BPD helping as part of an inter-agency partnership. Detectives Yoon and Khalaji, meet Maricopa County Sheriff Angelina Garza.”
A razor-edged look pinned Seong-Jae, before moving to Malcolm. “What do we need cops in from Baltimore for?”
“Yoon’s ex-BAU,” Aanga said, “and the one who cracked the pattern on old cases linked to this. Khalaji’s his partner. It was buy one, get one free.”
Malcolm exhaled an irritated sound, muttering under his breath where only Seong-Jae could hear. “Now I’m the bargain-bin detective. Nice.”
Seong-Jae brushed his hand subtly with his own. “He tests people’s composure in situations of conflict by needling them. Do not let him get under your skin.”
/> “Good to know.”
Garza rested her hands on her hips, just looking at them for long, critical moments, then canted her head at Aanga. “So now I know why they pulled a unit from L.A. when the letter patrol got involved. This is your mess on my turf.”
“Unfortunately.” Aanga stepped closer and offered his hand. “Were you not briefed on our involvement?”
“Listen, the second your local friends stepped in and shut things down, everybody stopped talking sense—or talking at all.” But after a few grudging moments, Garza took Aanga’s hand and shook it briefly. “I’d be grateful if you could make heads or tails of this, honestly, because I don’t like it. And I don’t like having it in my back yard. This is the most fucked up shit I’ve ever seen, and I don’t want it cropping up again.”
“Let us do our work, and we’ll figure out where to go from here,” Aanga said.
“Sure.” Garza paused, though, then shook her head. “Wait here.”
She disappeared back through the doorway. A hint of murmured conversation, before she emerged with three more paper masks nested together in her palm, their elastic cords dangling. Behind her, a man in a full head-to-toe protective suit and mask stepped from the room, FORENSICS stamped on the back of his suit, a digital camera hanging from a strap around his neck; he gave them all a long look through his goggles as if to say good luck, before shaking his head and elbowing past Garza to disappear down the hall.
She ignored him. “You’re going to want these,” she said, gaze sharpening. “Fuck, you’re gonna need them.”
Seong-Jae was grateful, when already the smell was making him light-headed from holding his breath. Aanga took the masks, passing two back to Seong-Jae and Malcolm, and Seong-Jae offered Garza a nod of thanks as he pulled the mask over his head and snapped the elastic band below the hairline at his nape—and immediately took his first deep breath in long minutes, easing the tightness in his lungs as he swallowed filtered air that only tasted marginally rather than overwhelmingly of dead blood.
Dead blood.
That was the thing, was it not?
Dead blood always had a different smell from the living.
Malcolm struggled a bit more, getting the mask over his face and nestled in his beard, but fingers playing trickily with the elastic to try to avoid the several loose strands of iron and silver falling out of the messy knot of his hair. Seong-Jae sighed, stepping behind him and brushing his hands aside to catch the elastic bands in his fingertips and hold them back from Malcolm’s neck.
“Here,” he said, carefully teasing the loose strands free so the elastic would lay against Malcolm’s neck without getting tangled. “Be still. You are hopeless.”
“Usually am,” Malcolm said dryly. “Thanks.”
Garza arched a brow at Aanga. “Fucking?”
“Unfortunately,” Aanga retorted flatly as he pulled his own mask on, but not without a glint of amusement in his eye. “The other reason the package deal was non-negotiable.”
“So the old man’s arm candy. Good to know.” She snorted, giving Malcolm a penetrating once-over. “Try to be useful, would you?”
Completely unruffled, Malcolm only pulled gently free from Seong-Jae and swept a sardonic bow. “I’ll do my best.”
Seong-Jae caught Aanga’s eye, glowering.
Stop that, he mouthed, and Aanga tilted his head to one side, tapping the mask over his face.
Ah.
Yes.
Exceedingly difficult to read lips when lips were not visible.
That did not stop Seong-Jae from glaring at Aanga with very firm intent, and hoping the absolutely annoying man got the message.
A curt gesture from Garza, however, diverted his focus back where it belonged. Back where he was trying to avoid, as if his brain had already entered a state of denial and had completely changed course out of absolute dread. Garza’s jaw tightened, as she took a step back through the doorway.
“Come on,” she said. “Brace yourselves.”
Seong-Jae started to step forward—only to stop as Malcolm caught and clasped his hand tight, anchoring him with the touch of weathered skin, his warmth, the strength of his grip.
“Hey,” Malcolm murmured, slate blue eyes watching him discerningly over the mask. “Breathe. It’ll be okay. I’m here.”
“It is not myself I am worried about,” Seong-Jae said. “It is you.”
“I know what I’m getting into.” Malcolm shrugged, but it was jerky, tense. “I’m ready for it.”
“No,” Seong-Jae said. “You are not.”
But he squeezed Malcolm’s hand tight one more time, before pulling away and making himself follow Aanga those last few feet across grubby white tile floors that felt far too ordinary for the sense of sick, anticipatory dread that gripped him like a slimy, hot-clammy hand with an iron palm.
He caught the flash of a bronze plate on the heavy, dark-glossed oak door—WARDEN’S OFFICE, with the name SPENCER A. MUNCHAUSEN on a much less illustrious black and white plastic printed label beneath.
Before he lost all sight of anything but blood, and the particular pinkish-red shade of meaty exposed flesh framed by rubbery, terrible layers of flayed human skin.
Most people did not understand that human skin was actually quite thick, comparatively.
They thought of it only as the thin surface of the outer epidermal layer, as fine and fragile as tissue paper, the slightest parting releasing blood from beneath the surface to well into a wound.
Yet human skin could actually be anywhere from one to four millimeters thick, depending on the area of the body. When combining the total seven layers that made up the human sheath, skin became less fragile paper and more a sort of rubbery suit shrink-wrapped to the vagaries of organs and flesh.
Which meant that it held together surprisingly well in a sort of pliable, putty-like sheet when it was pulled away from meat and bone.
Pulled away from meat and bone, and cut into whimsical shapes, stretched across the interior of the completely desecrated, defiled warden’s office like party streamers.
That was the first thing that jumped out at Seong-Jae.
Among the carnage of flesh—dozens of bodies on the floor in various states of dismemberment, others cut apart and stitched back together and suspended from the ceiling by electrical cords in the appropriate modus operandum, still others beaten to a pulp, blood spraying everywhere, yet others just red raw meat meat meat, too much to take in, too much to even process—that was what stood out.
When he did not know where to look…
He could stare at the banners of human skin peeled from bone, cut apart into whimsical little dolls with their hands joined, and pinned up so that they arced in jaunty hanging decorations from one side of the room to the next.
The only sound in the office was his breaths. Malcolm’s.
And the slow, steady plip-plip-plip of blood, still dripping persistently from the skin cutouts and the hanging bodies even after so many hours.
When he had been younger, when Seong-Ja had been a little girl, he had sat down with his younger sister and showed her how to fold a piece of paper and then cut out half a person so that, when you unfolded the paper, it created a chain of little person-shaped silhouettes, all holding hand in hand.
That was what had been done, here.
Precise sharp edges, cut out of human skin.
Seong-Jae could not move.
Could not process this.
He was blocking the doorway, but he did not care. Malcolm, Aanga…
Both receded into nothing, even if he was vaguely aware of Malcolm’s voice, soft words in Farsi, shocked and harsh and hurting.
They would not, could not make sense to Seong-Jae.
He had seen things like this in his nightmares, during the darkest hours when the heroin had submerged him in the deepest pits of withdrawals.
Only in his nightmares…
It had been his hand carving the bodies to pieces.
His hand
peeling skin from flesh, and playing with it like a waving banner of meat and rubbery peach and gold hide.
The smell was overwhelming.
Even through the mask, the smell was overwhelming, a thick cloying wave of meaty, heavy red. If scent could have color…
This was so very red.
Then white.
White around the edges; white across his vision; white flooding clean and clear and shallow up his nostrils because somehow he had stopped breathing and everything was far away, growing small, growing strange.
He did not realize he was passing out until it was already happening.
And he barely managed a thready, choking whisper of “Malcolm” before there was pain against the back of his skull, a slow-motion bounce of his head to tile, and then…
Nothing.
All pain, all horror…
Blessedly, numbly gone.
C
REALITY SMASHED BACK INTO MALCOLM with that small, helpless call of his name.
He’d never heard Seong-Jae sound that way. Not even in the dark of night, when he was shaking and sweating and trembling himself down to bones turned hollow with cravings.
Small. Childlike.
Almost more wrong than the tableau of horror spread out before him.
He wrenched his gaze away just in time to see Seong-Jae go down. His partner crumpled just inside the doorway, and Malcolm dove for him—but he was too late, only managing to fall to his knees at Seong-Jae’s side, reaching for him.
Only to find Joshi kneeling at Seong-Jae’s opposite side, hands outstretched.
They both froze, just looking at each other over their masks.
Before with a subtle nod Joshi drew back, while Malcolm slid his arms under Seong-Jae’s back and lifted him up, shifting on his knees to edge further out into the hallway.
“I’ve got him,” he said, but Joshi followed, gripping Seong-Jae’s other arm and helping to move his limp body upright.
“Let me help,” Joshi said, his voice breaking before smoothing. “I…need a minute myself.”
“…yeah.”
Together they settled Seong-Jae in the hall outside, sitting upright and leaning against the wall with his head lolling to one side. Malcolm lifted his eyelids; his pupils weren’t dilated, and when Malcolm checked the back of Seong-Jae’s head…no blood.