Just a little flash fiction

AN ASSYRIAN LEGACY – BY S.G. MULHOLLAND.

Kyle Nelson stood over under the canopy the forensic team had hosted over the body he and his partner had been called out to investigate. The summer rains had been particularly hard this year, almost torrential, so extra precautions had been taken to preserve the integrity of the crime scene. The yellow sheet that covered the body to protect the victim’s dignity was pinned down by a house brick in each corner. Flapping loudly in the wind, it had a certain rhythm to its motion, almost like the dying embers of the corpse’s spiritual heartbeat.

As much as he would never admit it, Nelson really hated working homicide. It was not the deaths, or the rapes or the blood that he hated (he had come to terms with that a long time ago after more than one stint in rehab), no it was the loss of his weekends and evenings.

“Is it the same?” asked his partner looking over his shoulder, down at the blood seeping out from under the sheet.

“Yup, same as the last one” Kyle said almost bored. He gave his partner a sideways look before pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. “You fancy taking a look Ventan?”

“You know I hate it when you call me by my first name” he replied. Ventan Heck had never been one of the brightest or the best men on the force. His fitness had always been average and his body of work was always solid but not ground breaking, yet he possessed one unique talent, popularity. It was a strange matter, that such an odd and indeed unattractive fellow should be so well thought of, yet it was not by design. Heck had a way of saying funny things without ever intending to; he could have people in fits of laughter with only a few words and as a result everyone loved him for it.

Taking a sneak peek at what lay underneath; Ventan immediately recoiled in disgust and let the sheet fall. He held his hand over his mouth, stifling a gag before swallowing the bitter taste of bile and vomit that threatened to emerge.

“Anything else?” he asked as he regained his composure. Kyle took a deep drag on his cigarette before passing the note he had been mulling over for the past twenty minutes to his partner. Ventan took it; skim read it and folded it back.

“What do you think of the stripper I stripped” he quoted, “love, RBC Junior.”

“Stripped, that’s a fucking understatement” Kyle said dropping his smoke and crushing it underfoot. He noticed out of the corner of his eye, a foot, flayed almost to the bone, peeking out from underneath the sheet. “Cover that up will you Ventan.”

“Shit” Ventan said before quickly pulling the sheet over the foot and securing it in place with a brick once more.

“That makes five” Kyle said rubbing at his five o’clock shadow. Ventan pulled out a cellophane bag from his pocket, opened it and inserted the note. Kyle rolled his eyes and checked his cell phone for messages. “There won’t be any prints, just like the last four.”

“I know” Ventan said tucking the note in his coat pocket.

“Then why bother?”

“Habit, I suppose” Ventan said with a shrug. “Where do we go from here?”

Kyle looked back at the police line, at the crowd of blood obsessed onlookers barely restrained by his fellow police officers and at the press corps, hungry for the latest news on RBC Junior. He felt a shiver run up his spine as something lost deep in his memory began to peel its way to forefront of his brain.

“Is Melanie expecting you home anytime soon?” Kyle asked as he stared at the sheet. Ventan laughed as he scratched his eyebrow before looking at his partner.

“I was late for dinner two hours ago” he replied, “If you need me then I’m here.”

Kyle turned and walked out into the rain, the warm summer rain drenching him from head to foot as he made his over to his Ford Torino and climbed into the passenger seat. The day had been too long, having started early and not finishing at all; Kyle was tired and irritable and for once did not relish the idea of driving.

“Where are we headed?” Ventan asked as he climbed in the driver’s seat.

“Riastrad Asylum.”

* * *

Kyle lit what had to be his third cigarette in ten minutes as they waited in anticipation for the man they had come to see. Riastrad, at least on the outside, was a depressing building with no discernible features. The brick was as white and as plain as an artist’s untouched canvas. Boring and plain, it shouted mediocre from the rooftops and even in the dark of the summer rains the bright light of its walls could be seen for miles around.

Its interiors were no different; bright walls in rainbow colours with plain brown flooring so as to reiterate the need to conform to the ordinary.

Even if anyone but ordinary people resided as Riastrad.

“Why are we here?” Ventan asked as he rocked his chair on its rear legs and staring up at the ceiling light. The diminutive room was claustrophobic and had a stale clean smell to it, bright white walls that turned cream in the fading light from the bulb reflected the dullness of Riastrad’s exterior.

“Professor Garrett could have an interesting insight on this” Kyle said as he leafed through the larger of the two files on the table in front of them. It told a gruesome tale of women being kidnapped and skinned alive, sometimes for hours, days even, before they were strangely given the mercy of a serene death via lethal dose of arsenic. Their bodies were always found displayed in a public setting and always at sunset. The killer earned the nickname Razor Blade Charlie for his habit of carving a smile through the muscle in their faces.

To Kyle Nelson and Ventan Heck, he would always be Professor Cornelius Garret.

“He’s just going to sit here, give us the run around, and send us on a wild goose chase” Ventan said irritably. “If I’d known we were going to be seeing this nut case I’d gone home to the cold chicken in the fridge and the frosty reception from Melanie.”

“Just bear with it, you’ll be eating that cold chicken in no time”

The heavy metal door was unbolted with a loud thud that echoed through the corridor outside and Professor Cornelius Garret was led in. Considering his reputation, the professor was certainly not an imposing man. Standing at five foot four and as gaunt as a heroin addict, Garret looked every inch the intellectual one would have expected him to. Long hair that just brushed his shoulders was slicked back in a cascading grey waterfall down the back of his head, matched of course by his widows peak. A long van dyke goatee brushed the buttons of his pale blue asylum issued clothing. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of circular sunglasses that masked his expression completely.

“Good evening gentlemen” the Professor said as the orderly pulled out the chair for him.

“Professor” Kyle acknowledged politely, while Ventan ignored him completely.

“I’m going to assume that you brought me here in the middle of the night because you’re stuck with what to do about Junior?”

Kyle pushed the thinner of the two files towards the Professor who opened it gently and began to read. Minutes passed slowly as Garret read one page after another, turning them over with precision and delicacy. Ventan’s chair squeaked as he rocked back and forth, irritating the Professor’s trail of thought as he tried to grasp as much information as he could.

“I assume you think I had something to do with this?” Garret asked still reading.

“He leaves one of these at the scene of every crime” Ventan said placing the bag with the note on the table. Garret read it and snarled as though insulted.

“The sheer pomposity of this young gentleman” he said handing the note back. “Have you seen his work, its abhorrent?”

“What do you expect, he’s skinning people?” Kyle asked. Garret presented a black and white picture of the third victim, a young student called Gail Matheson. The picture was gruesome, chunks of flesh and muscle lay on the concrete next to the corpse, the face looked like some taken a chainsaw to it, all mashed and pulped like the inside of a tomato.

“Flaying dear boy, and it’s fast and sloppy work, Junior did this in a rush” Garret’s accent was a curious mix of middle class English and Australian yet there was no doubting the eloquence with which he spoke. Kyle noted, with interest, the level of contempt the Professor held Junior in; back in his old life, Garret had been a world class history professor, a true student of the Assyrian Empire and the culture of its people. Somewhere along the way, his fascination with the Assyrian form of capital punishment turned into obsession and it overrode his better sense of judgement.

“There’s no sense of study, of education or indeed care for the subject” Garret surmised. “He’s a brute, trying his best to emulate a true practitioner.”

“The idea that you ever took care of your victims is a fucking joke Garret” Ventan said with disgust. Garret looked over his glasses and for the first time since he was convicted, they saw his pale almost white eyes.

“Go and sit at the children’s table detective, the grown-ups are talking.” It was no secret that the Professor had nothing but contempt for Ventan; to the elderly scholar, Ventan represented the clearest form of ignorance in human society, a refusal to question anything laid before him, only accepting facts as they were fed him. Something the professor despised in most people.

“So is he simply acting out violently or from some desire to emulate what he knows of your technique?” Kyle asked before reaching for a cigarette.

“I wouldn’t know; my area of expertise is Assyrian history. If you want a psychologist then Doctor Lecter is down the hallway” Garret replied. The two detectives eyed each other as they shared a similar thought. Kyle began to tuck the file notes and photographs back into the folder as Ventan stood, brushed past the orderly and headed out the door.

“You said Junior was a brute, what do you mean by this?” Kyle asked. The professor gave a sideways smirk and pointed at the larger of the two files.

“I assume that’s my file?” he asked. Kyle nodded but made no move to hand the file over to him. “I would advise that you compare the work I did on Annabelle Maclay to what Junior did on Miss Matheson there. There are similarities as well as glaring differences.”

“What differences?”

“The angle and cleanliness of the cut, Junior likes to work deep into the muscle. The art of flaying is to keep the victim alive for as long as possible, he doesn’t seem to grasp that concept.”

“Is that why you always finished your victims by poisoning?” The professor gave a slow deliberate nod with a proud smile to match. Kyle grabbed the folders and stood to leave but was stopped by Garret grabbing his arm and looking up at him over his glasses.

“If Junior truly wanted emulate me then run a toxicology screen, there will be arsenic in the blood but he got impatient and decided to finish the job himself.” Letting him go, Garret leant forward and began to stroke his beard as if Kyle was not even there.

As he exited the interview room, he came face to face with partner who looked incredibly irritated.

“You were quick, what did Doctor Lecter have to say?” Kyle asked.

“Nothing, he was already being interviewed by another set of Detectives, those two Louisiana guys chasing the ghost of some killer who doesn’t exist.”

“Well did he say he would see us at all?” Kyle asked.

“All said was some quip about needing a secretary and that we’re most welcome to come and see him after his appointment with some woman from the FBI tomorrow.”