Copyright © 2011 Patricia Pinianski
HOT CORPSE was previously published
in SIN by Avendia Publishing
HOT CORPSE
WHAT WAS LEFT OF THE CORPSE shimmered in the morning mist, making the jagged bloody flesh still clinging to the bones look warm. I got a chill, though, despite the soaring mid-summer temperature, as one of the crime scene guys knelt on the rain-damp pavement next to the remains.
I looked around for anything out of place. Garbage containers spilled refuse onto the alley – rotting food, paper products, even a scattering of dark feathers that made me wonder if a dead pet had been thrown away, or if it was what was left of some mumbo-jumbo sacrifice. The spray-painted gang signs on the back of the garages might be more telling. Something to investigate.
“Coitus interruptus,” muttered Detective Mike Norelli.
“What?” My gaze skipped up his mustard-stained tie to his jowly face.
“C’mon, Caldwell." Glittering brown eyes under knitted dark brows taunted me. "The bastard must get his rocks off eating the evidence. Only this time, he got interrupted before he finished doing either.”
I was trying to keep my stomach from heaving, and my long-time nemesis and reluctant partner on the Flesh Eater Case making with the funny didn’t amuse me. I knew he figured the comment would make a woman squirm. Instead, I gave him my best you've got to be kidding look and shook my head in disgust. A wide bulldog of a man, Norelli stood taller and tugged on the lapels of his blue suit that didn't quite button any more.
This was the third such incident in the last few weeks in this blue collar South Side Chicago neighborhood. The remains of the last two victims could have been donated to a medical school – their skeletons had been picked clean, as if vultures had at them. Furthermore, nothing had been left behind to identify them. No clothes, no shoes, no nothing.
“Is this a new way for the Outfit to get rid of its loose marbles?” Norelli mused. “Or do we have an honest-to-God serial killer to hunt down?”
“I don’t care if the mayor is touting the mob warfare idea, I don’t believe it,” I said. “We would’ve gotten word if T.J. Ferris and Jesse Martin were recruited by the Outfit.”
Ferris and Martin being a couple of neighborhood violent offenders who’d gone missing. No dental records that we could scare up, but DNA tests were being run to see if the men matched the first two skeletons.
Norelli nodded. “I could’ve taken Ferris down myself after he beat his own grandma with a baseball bat and left her there on the kitchen floor to bleed out while he went whoring with the money he stole from her.”
“Luckily her neighbor found her and she survived, but she wouldn’t press charges.” So Ferris had gotten away with yet another violent crime.
Just then, the crime scene investigator signaled the guys with the body bag. Only when the corpse was lifted and taken away did I see something that looked like a playing card flutter from under the body. I slipped on a glove and picked it up – a holy card from St. Augustine’s Church, which stood barely a block from this alley.
Flipping over the card, I read from the back. “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins...” I stopped halfway through. “Hey, Norelli, this is the Catholic Act of Contrition.” So who had been to the confessional? The victim or the killer? I mulled it over for a moment. “All three victims were found within a block or two of the church.”
“Maybe the killer likes doing his thing close to a confessional,” Norelli said. “You know, so he can ease his conscience afterward.”
Norelli’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on me. But I wondered if he didn’t have a point, twisted as it sounded.
“I’ll look into it.” I bagged the holy card, and though I wanted to slip it into the pocket of my khakis, I went by the book and handed it to one of the crime scene guys. “I’ll swing by St. Augustine’s.”
“You do that. Get me some absolution while you’re at it, would’ya?”
I couldn’t resist. “How many times have you had licentious thoughts since your last confession?”
“Not enough. Working with you makes my head hurt. No room for more pleasurable pursuits.”
“Good. Then I’ve done my job—women on the streets of Chicago are safe for the foreseeable future. What’s your next move?”
“Starting the door-to-door and seeing if another neighborhood wise guy has done a disappearing act.”
A last glance at what was left of the corpse had me muttering, “What kind of a monster does this?”
As if I’d broadcast my revulsion, I picked up a mental response from my sister, Silke.
Shell, what’s going on?
I was slipping again, leaving myself wide-open to that identical twin mind-meld thing that drove me nuts. Silke reveled in our psychic connection while I did my best to ignore it. We might look alike – well, if Silke didn’t dye her auburn hair purple and draw racoon rings around her green eyes – but two sisters couldn’t be more different. Silke was a wannabe actress who lived her art and currently was “into” magic.
I’m working, I silently replied. Another murder. But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t just another murder.
Apparently so did Silke. What could have done something like that, Shell?
Had she seen what I had? I wondered. Or was she merely reading me?
Later, Silke. Station SHELL signed off until further notice.
And then her thought struck me...
What, not who...
Right now I needed my full attention on the case, but as I passed the corner bar – a hangout for local hoods – I automatically glanced through the front window. The place wasn’t open for business, but I saw a couple of guys hunched in a back booth and wondered what criminal activity they might be mulling over now.
As I approached the front steps of St. Augustine’s, a church that appeared as worn as did the neighborhood, a man with a pushcart called out, “Lemonade...water...aguas frescas!”
I shook my head and took the steps two at a time, still wondering about what could strip a skeleton like a vulture.
A monster that wasn’t human?
I quickly shook the thought away.
Inside the church, a priest was kneeling in the front pew, his rosary beads in hand. I wondered what sins he was trying to erase. I slid into the row and sat next to him, intending to wait until he finished, but apparently my presence distracted him.
“Can I help you, my child?” he asked in a low voice.
Odd how someone maybe ten years my senior considered himself my spiritual parent. He was around forty, though the amount of gray sprinkled through his dark hair told me he must feel older, as if the weight of the world was making his narrow shoulders hunch. Probably all those sins his parishioners heaped on his head, I thought.
“I’m hoping you can help me, Father. Detective Shelley Caldwell.” I flipped open my I.D. and showed him my star. “Official business.”
“Perhaps it’s better if we go into my office to talk.”
With the itchy feeling that the alabaster figures of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints placed in niches around the church were watching me, I was glad to get out of there. I followed him across the edge of the sanctuary and down a hallway to the rectory. His office was wood-paneled with built-in book shelves around a massive, carved desk. On top of the desk sat a nameplate: Father Joseph Gannon.
Looking as if he felt very much in charge of his domain as he sat behind the desk, Father Gannon asked, “What’s going on, Detective?”
“I’m investigating a series of related homicides.” I took the chair opposite so we would be on an even level. “We found the third victim this morning."
“And how does St. Augustine’s fit in?”
“All three murders were within two blocks of the church. And I found a holy card from St. Augustine under the latest victim. The Act of Contrition. Any suspect confessions lately, Father?”
Gannon lea
ned back in his chair. “The seal of the confessional, Detective. I act as a pipeline to God. You know I can’t reveal anything a penitent tells me, even if it involves a capital crime.”
He wasn’t telling me anything new, but it never hurt to test the waters anyway. “Okay, let’s turn it around. What if your penitents are the victims? We don’t have the DNA reports yet, but we suspect the first two were T.J. Ferris and Jesse Martin. Both dropped out of sight around the time of the first two homicides. You can tell me if they were members of your parish, right?”
“Marginally. I don't see much of them.”
“Anything you can tell me? Did they make their last confessions before dying?” When the priest simply looked at me without answering, I muttered, “Right, seal of the confessional. Who cares if three men were murdered?”
“T.J. and Jesse were violent young men. Everyone knew how Jesse raped one of my parishioners – a girl who wouldn’t go out with him – and then told everyone she offered herself to him!” Color flushed his face and it took him a moment to calm himself. “I find it hard to believe you have such concern over their deaths.”
“I’m surprised you don’t.” Considering he was supposed to be a man of God and all.
“I’m concerned about all my parishioners, of course, but in these cases...I hear about more atrocities in the confessional than I ever thought possible. The news is full of stories of unresolved violent crimes," Gannon said, his hands shaking. He locked them together and pressed them to the desk. "Maybe your victims finally paid up."
“No one has the right to take matters into his own hands,” I said. “That would make the vigilante a murderer, as well, and the justice system wouldn’t go easy on him, even if he thought he was doing society a favor.” I hesitated only a moment before adding, “Trust me, Father, I’ll make sure whoever did this pays this time.”
I tried a couple of avenues to secure Gannon’s confidence, but he shut down on me. Realizing I would get nothing further from this interrogation, I took my leave.
BACK AT THE OFFICE, Norelli grunted at me when I came in. “We got us a missing person. Harry Enloe. His mother called it in when he didn’t come down for breakfast. Enloe was an associate of the other two...”
“...and a person of interest in a recent convenient store robbery that resulted in the wounding of several customers and the death of the owner,” I added. “I’m getting goose bumps.” I really was. “Ferris and Martin were members of the St. Augustine parish. I wonder if Enloe was, as well. If so, they’re tied together by their crimes and by their religion.”
“So what does that give us?” Norelli seemed thoughtful. “A grudge? Someone ticked off because they ran a job the Outfit had targeted? A gang advertising why it’s not in anyone’s best interests to remain independent contractors in its territory? The biggest question – how the hell did they do it, clean the flesh right off the bone? That's the real puzzler.”
Hopefully the hot corpse in the morgue would give the medical examiner some answers.
Norelli’s questions were all good, but my mind was spinning in another direction. I couldn’t forget the conversation with a priest who suggested the victims might be paying for their crimes.
Good thing computers are my friends. As soon as Norelli went back to his desk to make a phone call, I googled “Father Joseph Gannon” and came up with a startling result.
“He worked for the exorcist!” I muttered aloud.
A few years back, the Archdiocese of Chicago had appointed a full time exorcist. According to the article, the exorcist called up demons and demanded they “take their leave and stop injuring people.”
But what if someone could call up those demons and command the reverse?
"Maybe your victims finally paid for their crimes.”
Father Gannon’s words haunted me, and my mind was turning to demons when I should be hunting down a warped human killer.
Then again, I knew about things that I'd never shared with anyone in the department – like a case I'd worked on recently in which the killer had turned out to be a vampire. I hadn't believed in anything woo-woo before then, until with my own eyes I'd seen the impossible happen.
So I couldn't help myself – I googled “flesh eating demon,” hoping against hope that I wouldn't find anything.
Only I did.
His name was Eurynomos, the demon of corpses, who stripped the flesh from the bones of the dead. He was represented as being big and blue and wearing a cloak of black feathers. My stomach knotted as I hit Print and then went to fetch the result from the printer shared by several computers.
Norelli beat me to it.
“What’s this?” He looked at the picture of the demon and snorted. “The new boyfriend?”
“Research for Silke,” I muttered, practically ripping it from his hand.
“That sister of yours is whack job.”
Clenching my jaw, I said nothing. Thankfully, he let it go at that or I might have had to hurt him.
I was drawing a conclusion that I couldn’t share with Norelli, but I needed to share it with someone.
A visit to my sister was in order.
THE MOMENT I ENTERED Silke's apartment, I stuck the print-out in my twin’s face. “Do you know anything about this guy?”
“Well, hi to you, too.” Silke’s frown faded as she took a closer look. “Eurynomos...a blue demon who wears the black-feathered cloak of a vulture.” She sounded thrilled at imagining such an unusual creature.
And why wouldn’t a woman wearing magenta pants with a teal crop top be excited? I love my twin, but Norelli wasn’t that far off. Her taste ran to anything unusual and even outrageous. That included people as well as her personal style.
“Yeah, your kinda guy,” I muttered.
“Hey! I just think he looks cool. I don’t want to hook up with him.”
"But do you think he's for real?"
Silke looked me straight in the eyes. "I think a lot of things are real – more than you'll admit to. Considering the description of this demon, maybe you'd better open your mind. Stripping the flesh off bones seems to be his specialty."
It seemed like I'd fallen straight into another woo-woo case. I didn't dare share with Norelli if I didn't want to be put on psych evaluation. It was up to me to end this reign of terror and fast.
"Silke, do you know how to send him back to Hades? Permanently?”
“Hmm...there’s a pretty powerful banishing spell in one of my grimoires. But we need to have something he’s touched.”
The thought of sneaking into the morgue and stealing a chunk of flesh off the skeleton turned my stomach. The holy card with the Act of Contrition had no doubt belonged to the victim, who’d confessed his sins before being ravaged, but my checking out evidence would raise all kinds of flags.
What else?
Then it came to me. “A cloak from a vulture...I saw some black feathers at the crime scene.”
The irony of the demon’s feeding habits matching that of the bird whose skin he wore did not escape me. I wondered if his victims were actually dead before he began picking at their bones. My stomach knotted at the thought of being eaten alive.
“Something that actually belonged to him...even more powerful,” Silke said.
“Can you start on the potion?” I asked her.
“Potions, plural,” she clarified. “Summoning...binding...banishing. I’m prepared for anything. Cloves...garlic...basil mixed with oil...”
Things you’d never find in my kitchen since my idea of cooking is to open a package and insert in a microwave.
“Good. I’ll go back to the crime scene. Hopefully the feathers are still there. Bring the potions and whatever else you need to cast your spells to the alley behind St. Augustine’s as soon as possible."
I climbed into my second-hand red Camaro and took off across town. The top was down and the wind ruffled my hair and cleared my head. I wondered how many other supernatural beings walked my streets. I had the distinct feel
ing that eventually, no matter how I tried to avoid knowing, I was doomed to find out. Thinking about the upcoming mortal-to-demon confrontation, I was a little afraid...not that I’d ever show it. But putting myself out there as some demon’s tasty treat wasn’t on my had-to-do list.
I pulled the Camaro into the alley. Everyone who’d been investigating the crime scene had cleared out. I left the car and walked directly to where I’d seen the feathers.
“Damn! They’re gone!”
The wind had probably blown them away.
I searched around and around but found nothing. I even kicked some of the garbage to see if a feather had been caught under an empty carton or can. Not.
Just when I getting desperate and thinking of heading for the crime lab to steal a chunk of flesh, I spotted something dark caught between the automatic door and frame of a nearby garage. Relieved, I pulled free a near-perfect black feather.
“This should do nicely.”
By the time Silke and I met behind St. Augustine's, the sun was setting and shadows were growing deep. A few people began entering the church.
“Evening Mass?” Silke said.
I nodded. “And confessions are heard the half hour before.”
Not that I could predict when the next criminal was going to make an appearance...but the timing did seem auspicious.
While Silke set up her small traveling altar, I did as she told me and drew a chalked circle with about a six foot diameter around us, and a like one several yards away in the shadow of the church itself. Then within the circle, I drew a five-pointed star, completing a pentagram.
If anyone saw us out there, our presence would probably be ignored. This was the inner city, after all. A lot of weird things went on this neighborhood, so I expected either no one would notice us or no one would want to get involved. Still, I was comforted by the fact that it was growing dark, making it difficult for anyone to get an accurate description of us.
Just in case.
I didn’t need a stint as a rubber gun officer because no one would believe me if I told the truth. The last thing I wanted was Norelli – or Mom – to hear about my brush with a demon.
DANGEROUS, Collection #1 Page 41