Burt shook eagerly her hand, showing a vague smile under his moustache. His felt hat protected his hair from the rain, but the raindrops kept falling upon his shoulders.
“Mulder and Scully” Burt murmured, lowering his head and looking at the muddy ground, which was covered with leaves and water.
“What?” Ethan asked, raising his head. He had to close his eyes momentarily because it was pouring with rain and the raindrops were running down through his forehead to his eyes.
“Nothing” Burt answered, spitting again. The loogie dissolved in the water.
Charlotte put her hand up to cover her mouth, as if she was about to throw up, and Burt grinned from ear to ear. It was still pouring with rain. Kaylee was face up, her eyes open. A nipple had slipped outside the thermal blanket that covered the dead body, and the yellow side of the blanket was glowing under the lightning.
“Did I say something wrong?” Burt inquired quizzically.
Ethan shook his head meaning no, and he took a step back.
Then Burt raised one finger from his left hand and Jack and Lloyd responded to his particular call, looking briefly at the FBI agents while they walked past them. Hodge even showed the tip of his tongue a little bit, hiding it under a smirk.
The three of them approached the dead girl’s body. She was a student at News Academy High School and all of them knew her.
7
“If I were you I would get rid of that shell of yours and I would get out of Dodge in search of the sheriff and offer him your help. It seems that Jack Feather Feet has come back, and he is not kidding. Don’t be stubborn, Peter. You cannot go on like this for the rest of your life. You have already written a best-seller, and Denny, your love’s brother comes to visit you every week.” John opened his hands in the air “You will soon get closer to her. And if that doesn’t happen, just leave her alone. Fate is already written, like those poor girls’ destiny.”
Peter looked at him sadly.
8
“Some son of a bitch must have read Peter Bray’s book and now he is repeating what that bloody Reverend Larry did.” Burt looked at Lloyd and Jack as he stooped down in front of the corpse and he said: “Or maybe should I call the motherfucker Larry? Or better yet, should I leave him without a name?”
Lloyd cracked a smile, but Burt’s serious expression made him wipe the smile off his face. Jack Hodge was standing there; his protruding belly wouldn’t let him stoop without breaking wind. He was not in the mood for making jokes. It was cold, he was soaking wet, which particularly exasperated him.
Kaylee’s eyes shined when a thunderbolt came from the sky. They were glassy, as if focused somewhere in the air. Burt kept telling him that maybe she still kept her last memory of the rapist and killer who was trying to imitate Jack Feather Feet’s murders, carrying out his own murders such as Peter Bray had written in his book, which was based in real-life events. The murderer’s name was Jack Feather Feet, although finally he had turned into Jack Heavy Feet.
The deafening sound of thunder made the ground tremble, right when Burt’s mobile telephone started ringing. He had not heard the ring tone, but he felt something vibrating inside his pocket, under the raincoat. He put his hand in his right pocket and he checked that it was his mobile phone what was doing so.
He picked up the phone with a wet hand, putting it to his hear without looking at the screen. His grave voice echoed in the forest.
“Burt Duchamp speaking”
It was Peter Bray.
9
“Burt?”
“Yes, that’s me, and I’m wet like a fish. Who is it?
“It’s me.”
There was a moment of silence because Burt was not sure about who was calling, but he showed a great smile an instant later.
“Oh, fuck, man, Peter! I didn’t recognize your voice!” He exclaimed in such a loud tone that all his men could hear him. They stared at Burt, trying to figure out who Burt was talking to.
“Who is it?” Ethan asked Richard, who was standing next to the patrol car.
Richard made a face.
“Bah! Just a friend...”
“Is this how you do your job?” Ethan asked angrily.
“No, of course not” Richard answered as if he was chewing gum and he was moving it back and forth inside his mouth.
“I think that Peter is the man who found the murderer” Charlotte intervened, her dark hair becoming more and more curly. “He wrote the book, sir. It is him.”
Ethan shrugged and nodded.
“I’m aware of that curious story that no one could really believe, but...”
“It is true” Richard cut him off. “What the lady is saying is true.”
Ethan gazed covertly at him.
“Why is he calling? Does he want to lay out Tarot cards?” Ethan cracked a smile for the first time. Richard became serious and he stopped pretending he was chewing gum, which was nothing but his own tongue.
The sky looked like a cracked glass when several white lines crossed it. The roll of thunder came after a few seconds.
Then Burt hung up the phone pressing the red circle with his wet thumb, and he kept it in his pocket. He broke the silence letting a high pitched whistle go out from his lips.
“Jack, it falls to you. You have to go and pick Peter up.”
“Yes, sir” Jack answered cheerfully, looking at Ethan coldly.
He sat down behind the wheel and the engine started grumbling. A dense cloud of blue fume came out of the tailpipe, which was swept by a gust of wind.
He put the car in first gear and hit the gas. The front wheels slid spitting out a lot of mud backwards. Finally, he performed a short maneuver and the car made a U-turn, heading for darkness, piercing the night with its lights. Burt stood there watching the car until the rear lights turned into two small red spots in the distance.
10
He heard the honk first, then the car door slam and finally the bell rung. Peter was ready to go; he was wearing his military boots and his long black trench coat, which was nine months older.
The door opened mournfully and the hall filled with rain water, forming a prominent and crystalline puddle. There were two brown leaves, crushed and flat, floating in the pool.
“Peter!” Jack Hodge reached out to shake hands as soon as he saw him, his eyes sparkling with joy. His hand was wet and open.
Peter extended his hand for a handshake, with his long fingers open, and greeted him.
He saw nothing.
There was no darkness, at least not at that time.
“Hi, Jack” Peter said, touching his glasses to adjust them properly. “You look thinner.” He complimented.
Hodge grinned ear to ear.
“Come on, lad, sheriff Burt is waiting for you” He said, letting go off his hand. “A maniac is out there imitating Reverend Larry.” He turned around and walked to his car. Its headlights were pointing at the door, so when he started walking with his yellow raincoat towards the car he looked like a wasp in the middle of the night.
“I have seen the local channel news” Peter said, feeling his hair getting more and more soaked. He started walking faster to get into the vehicle, and he added between gasps: “I have just talked to Burt. He did not explain much, but I feel I have to help you.”
Jack settled behind the steering wheel.
Peter saw his father’s figure leaning against the door, but by the time the car was put into reverse the door was closed.
11
The headlamps devoured the crime scene lightening the area to and fro while approaching and later on when they parked in one side of the road. The sound of the wheels on water was dull, but the constant raindrops and the windshield wipers were a background humming.
The engine ceased rumbling when Jack’s chubby fingers turned the key. The engine stopped with a jolt, like a fit of coughing. The emergency lights and the headlights remained switched on. The FBI agents stood there watching the car wrinkling their foreheads. Their lips w
ere sealed like a thin line drawn with a pink chalk. Burt was beside the plastic blanket, looking at them the way he used to, with a sharp, sad and furious gaze. But he was not a bad guy; he was just an alcoholic who had lost his family. Although now he was sober, as he was always when needed.
Peter’s boot sank in the puddle of water where several leaves were floating. The car door had been already opened, and as soon as he poked his greasy head out his face filled with water, and his trench coat rubbed the wet ground.
Ethan pointed to him with a contrite attitude and Charlotte furrowed her brow. Her blue eyes sparkled with the blinding light of a new thunderbolt.
Burt complained: “Damn it! What a stormy night!”
When Peter Bray walked past them without even looking at them, the FBI agents watched him from head to toe. Ethan was wrong about Peter and he knew it as soon as he saw him. Although he would burst out laughing if he heard something weird, that was for sure.
“Burt! You are always nagging” Peter said with his deep voice. He had just turned thirty three. It had been nine months since that cold winter, since the last time he had seen Burt Duchamp.
“Peter!” Burt exclaimed, smiling. “Peter Bray, nine months later.” He opened his arms as if he was about to hug him, but Peter raised his hand.
“I am not going to read your mind” Peter joked, extending his hand. He was already next to him, and every step was like a continuous splash. His glasses were water-soaked.
Burt dropped his arms and extended his right hand with open fingers.
They shook hands with considerable intensity. It was weird to see their pleased faces right next to a dead body.
The FBI couple exchanged a sly glance. But they would change their minds soon.
“I can see that you have not drunk any beer tonight” Peter joked. Burt smiled. Lloyd shook hands with him too. Peter shook his hand with a sort of squawk.
“I want you to see this, Peter” Burt said, bending down towards Kaylee’s body.
Peter stooped down too. His trench coat was filled with water and his back was humid and cold.
Burt uncovered her and the raindrops covered her naked body, caressing her wrinkled and whitish skin. She wasn’t still purple.
“I think this has occurred recently. The blood is still leaving her body through her private parts.” He looked at Peter, who made a grimace and then he continued speaking. “The FBI says this murder could be related to another one that took place a few days ago in another town, not far from here. I can’t remember the name now. They believe it is the work of a copycat of Jack Feather Feet. Unfortunately, I think so, too. I agree with those two TV characters for once.” He turned his head towards them and he dedicated them a smile.
Ethan and Charlotte were approaching them, with grave faces and soaked suits.
“The poor girl’s name is...”
“Kaylee Collins” He interrupted Lloyd, who had wanted to say her name.
Then, Burt continued speaking:
“As you can see, the new murderer uses the same method as Reverend Larry. It is an exact copy. This poor girl has been slit from her anus to her belly. Probably most of her internal organs must be destroyed. The water was tinged with red and it flowed like a stream downhill.
“It is the same Modus Operandi as the previous murders’” Ethan intervened, startling Burt, who turned around and looked at him with a grave face. “Maya Grey showed the same injuries and damage in womb and anus. She was penetrated by a big object. We already know that Reverend Larry used a large cross, and we are very much afraid that this new murderer is following the same pattern. Everything is identical.” He made a pause and then he added: “I have read your book, Mr. Peter. We can use it as a database for this new investigation.”
“Will you carry out the investigation?” Burt’s voice increased its volume, like a siren. “No way, this is my territory!”
“We can intervene everywhere” Charlotte said with her sensual lips wet.
Burt looked at them briefly, and then he turned towards Kaylee’s body.
“At any rate, we will share our work with you. I know that Boad Hill is not too big and we cannot make autopsies here, but...”
“That is why we are here” Ethan interrupted him with a stupid smile on his face. Jack turned his head and looked away so as to be able to laugh without being seen. His chuckle was muffled by a thunder.
But Burt could hear it. He knew his men.
12
John left the couch with both hands on his underbelly. His movements were slow, and his thin body looked now like the body of a rachitic old man. His son had hardly noticed it. Probably the age was the one to blame. When a person is over certain age, ageing accelerated and knowledge goes down the toilet.
He went towards the stairs dragging his feet, as the toilet was upstairs, where the bedrooms were. He felt a stabbing pain going through his pelvis when he lifted his foot, and he wrinkled up his face like a dirty rag. He tried to put his right foot on the first step with his hand against the wall. He only had ten more left, he thought with a smile on his lips, and then he wondered if he would be able to get upstairs this time.
Every time his heavy feet reached a new step, he wondered what the people of Boad Hill would think about this new murder. The last thing they needed was to go through all that again. And surely most parents would be afraid for their daughters, especially those parents whose daughters went to high school. Because all of them had heard Christie’s jibber-jabber on the news; she had been there, with her big boobs, telling them that the victim was very young and she was going to New Academy.
He had heard somewhere else that there had been no previous missing person report, as the crime had been very recent. Christie even got to say to her viewers that the body was still warm.
John was sure that nobody from Channel Four was at the crime scene. He went up another step and yelled in pain, but he still thought about the parents of those poor creatures that Reverend Larry had killed, destroying their lives when he took their daughters to an uncertain heaven. He had left them filled with pain. He was filled with pain too. And he thought about Peter, about the chance he had to stop all this dark insanity.
Finally he reached the corridor upstairs and he dragged his feet along the linoleum while he was panting. He slammed the bathroom door open and it hit the wall, because there was no stop to halt it. John put off his pajamas and he pulled out his penis above the toilet. The pain went up to his temples and it was unbearable, but he pushed with all his might anyway. He thought that maybe that poor girls felt the same pain when they were being penetrated by an eight-inch-diameter cross. And he wrinkled his lips when a drop of urine started going out through the tiny hole in his penis, then another drop went out, and he felt relieved when he finally urinated.
He looked at the bottom of the toilet and he could see some blood, but he thought again that it had been worse for those poor girls, and the horror among the people living at Boad Hill wouldn’t be better.
The wolf was back.
13
“Isn’t there a place where we can shelter?” Ethan asked; he was soaking wet.
“Yes, there is, we can shelter under this bloody storm.” Burt blurted getting up from the floor.
Jack, who was standing next to them, turned around with a smile on his lips. Lloyd noticed it.
“It has been stupid to come here with a suit” Richard said.
Ethan filled with rage.
“I need explanations. I need to compare data. I need to do my job properly. You are giving me a hard time.”
“Are we?” Burt’s voice could be heard a second before a deafening thunder swept the tree tops like a shock wave. They waved and it started pouring down with rain more forcefully.
“Well, he didn’t really mean that” Charlotte intervened, placing her hand on his partner’s chest. “What we need is to cross-check data to see if we can do a profile of the killer. It would be like being one step ahead of him.”
“And talking about this and that, could you explain to us the case of the other girl before this one? If you wish, of course,” Burt had mixed up the words. He did not know how to ask about it. He didn’t even remember the name of the town were the first victim had appeared. The first victim for Burt was Kaylee.
“Do you mean the girl we found at Place Land a few days ago?” Ethan was back to normal, but his hair, flattened by the rain, made him look paler than usual.
“Yes, of course.”
“Her name is Maya Grey. Her father is a successful lawyer but he works in New York.”
“He goes a bit far from here, doesn’t he?” Burt’s eyes opened wide.
“Well, that’s true. That is why it took us longer to trace him.” Ethan made a pause cracking a smile and added: “But he was here on time to identify his daughter.”
“What about his wife?”
“He is divorced. But what the fuck is this?”
“I was just asking. I want some information too, like you.”
Jack spit on the ground before them. Charlotte looked away while the sky lit up once again. Martin fixed his gaze on the sky. No cars could be seen in that bloody road.
Peter was still kneeling down in front of the body. He was watching it; contemplating it. He was feeling something inside, a sort of tingling and a vacuum that could not be explained.
“Maya was a young girl, the same age that this poor girl.” Charlotte explained, and the officers’ faces turned towards her. “When we found her, she was covered with leaves, many leaves. When we uncovered her, we found out that she was naked. There were no clothes around. We found later her panties, 300 meters from the hotel. A dog had taken them and had them in its mouth. That was the only lead they had. But there were no hair, fingerprints or semen in those panties. Thus, we realized the killer had not left any print at all, not even in Maya’s body, who had her vagina and anus ripped. The autopsy showed that her fallopian tubes had been displaced from its location, her utero was torn, and so was her bladder. The killer had used some sort of bar, removing all her entrails violently. We had never seen anything like this before.”
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