57

  After bundling Timmy and Wally into a waiting cab with strict instructions to get into the hospital as quickly as possible, Nairo and Ridley jumped in a cab and made breakneck speed back to the coroner's office. Fortunately, at this late hour and with the drizzle and fog, the streets were clear and empty, and they were back at the coroner's within twenty minutes. After a brief argument with the night clerk, they made their way down into the basement lab. Drake was still on shift. He looked exhausted and paler than usual with dark circles rimming his red eyes, yet he was still happy to see them.

  “Oh hi Sally, what are you doing here at this time of night?” Drake asked, sitting up from the paperwork he had been poring over. “I’m afraid I’m still waiting to hear back from some colleagues in Mahsh about possible toxins.”

  “Don't worry, we already know what it is,” Ridley said brusquely.

  “You do?” Drake asked, his elegant eyebrows rising dramatically.

  “It’s called Blood Moon,” Nairo explained. “It's used by pregnant women to…”

  “Oh dear, I've heard about Blood Moon,” Drake said.

  “I bet you have,” Ridley said.

  “What does that mean?” Drake said.

  “Ignore him,” Nairo said, shooting Ridley a cutting look. “You know about Blood Moon?”

  “Oh yes of course, it's one of the poisons that we had to study when I was doing my undergraduate degree, horrible stuff. You're saying this is what has been killing these people?”

  “We think so,” Nairo said. “There’s not enough time to explain right now, but these killings aren’t what they seem. We think some, if not all, of these murders were accidental. They were trying to get rid of the babies and accidentally killed the mothers.”

  “Oh my!” Drake gasped, his eyes widening in horror.

  “I promise we will explain everything Drake, but we are really short on time. Do you have any vagrants who overdosed in the last 48 hours? Probably found in the RatHoles?”

  “Yes, we do.” Drake replied nonplussed.

  “We need you to check them and see if they have the same mouth rot as those women, and in fact, if you have any overdoses from the last week or two, if you could check them as well,” Nairo said.

  “But why Sally? You don't think your killer has also killed all of these vagrants? That's nearly two dozen people. In just the last two weeks!”

  “I hope we are wrong, but I don't think we are,” Nairo said, her voice steely.

  “Oh gosh,” Drake whimpered.

  He pushed himself away from his chair, flung his apron back on, and pulled on his gloves. He bustled away with Nairo and Ridley trailing behind him. They made their way through to the freezer where the bodies were being kept on ice. Drake checked the labels on covered bodies and cleaned frozen mist from the front of drawers until he found the ones he was looking for.

  “Some of these bodies have already been transported to the crematorium,” he said to them, his words turning to a cloud of fog in front of him. “I'm afraid vagrants don't really tend to be kept for very long since we know no one will come looking for them. However, these have just come in, and there are still some from perhaps a week ago waiting for transportation.”

  He pulled back a ragged blanket from one of the bodies. Using a pair of forceps and not an inconsiderable amount of force, he managed to open the cadaver's jaw. He tapped the Glowstone torch strapped to his forehead to life and peered inside the mouth. Ridley did the same and blocked the light until Nairo elbowed him out of the way. With a long pair of metal instruments, Drake peeled back the cadaver’s cheeks, moved the tongue aside, and peered into the back of the throat.

  “Oh no,” Drake whispered.

  “What is it?” Nairo asked.

  “Rot,” Drake said, his breath condensing in a cloud in front of him.

  Nairo felt the bottom of her stomach drop as shards of ice stabbed her in the chest. Even though she knew she had been right, the harsh reality of this evil made her feel sick.

  Drake quickly went to the next body, and the next body, and the next body, and the next body. All of them had the same mouth rot.

  “That’s eight people,” Drake muttered aghast. “Eight people have been killed by this person. Why?”

  “We don't know,” Nairo said, sweating even in the freezing conditions.

  “He’s a sick, evil bastard, and he needs putting down,” Ridley growled. “I don't know what the game is here or what the hell this case even means anymore.” Ridley turned to Nairo. “I don't know why these women have been murdered, and I sure as hell don't know why these vagrants have been killed, or why Quinn got in the way and had to be gotten rid of, and to be honest with you Sarge, I don't care anymore. We need to find this bastard, and we need to put him down like the mad dog that he is, and when we catch up to Schumacker, he's going in the ground as well.”

  Ridley spun on his heels and swept out of the freezer.

  Nairo looked at Drake, frozen tears stinging her eyes as she looked at vagrants’ bodies. How could anybody do this? How could anybody murder this many people, let alone this many people they didn't even know, just to cover up other crimes? It was so cold, so callous, so calculated… she shuddered to think that such creatures like this lived amongst normal people.

  “Thank you Drake,” she croaked mechanically, her eyes glistening.

  Drake barely acknowledged her thanks. She knew he was feeling the same thing she was, and Drake was softer than her. It was the reason he had become a coroner rather than a doctor because he didn't like to cut into living things. He didn’t like hurting anyone, and the dead couldn't be hurt anymore; life was only painful for the living.

  Nairo turned and followed Ridley out, scrubbing the back of her clenched fist across her cheek, wiping away her tears. She found Ridley outside lighting a smoke and hopping back into their cab.

  “Where are we going?” Nairo asked

  “We're going to find out if Hubert Hess is alive,” Ridley growled.

  “And how are we going to do that?” Nairo asked.

  “By paying his old man a visit, and if that old treacherous fuck has anything to do with this, I’ll break him.”

  *

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Their cab trundled up to the Schumacher estate just as dawn began to break. The sun glowed weakly behind another dense covering of fog. Ridley jumped out of the cab and tersely told the cabbie to wait. Their poor driver had been driving non-stop for almost an hour in near darkness. He looked exhausted and miserable, but the jingle of Ridley's coin purse kept him awake and alert enough to nod his head.

  Ridley charged through the dilapidated gates of the rundown Hess estate, picking his way through the long grass using the weak light of the sun and the fury of his temper to guide him down towards the foggy shores of the lake.

  “Ridley, he's an old man, we can't just barge in at this time of the morning,” Nairo said.

  “He might be an accomplice to one of the longest and darkest serial killings that Valderia has ever seen,” Ridley snarled over his shoulder. “His son might have killed my friend. I couldn't give a shit if he pisses his pants and has a heart attack as long as he tells me what I need to know.”

  Nairo sighed. She knew there was no point in arguing with Ridley; she just had to try and mitigate the damage that he might do. The grass crunched under their feet, the morning dew making them slip in the mud as they went down the hill towards the log cabin. It was barely visible under the dense fog rolling off of the lake. The shoreline was silent. Everything was still and ominously vacant. Ridley got to the door and raised his foot. Nairo grabbed hold of his coat and pulled him back.

  “We’re not kicking in an old man's door in the middle of the night,” Nairo said to him firmly.

  “Why not?” Ridley snarled.

  “Because you're liable to give him a heart attack, and then he won't be able to tell us anything, will he?” Nairo said calmly.

  “Fine, you can knock. You can even tell him you're the police if you want, Ridley said sarcastically. He jammed his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders over.

  Nairo knocked once on the door and waited. There was no response. She knocked again.

  “Mr. Hess? Mr. Hess, are you awake? It's me, Sally Nairo. We spoke a few days ago about your son. I'm afraid we need to ask you some more questions.”

  There was a sound from within the cabin, the unmistakable roll of a wheel and the squeak of a chair that had been long rusted.

  Ridley heard the noise, and that was all he needed. He stepped past Nairo and kicked the swollen door. It gave way immediately. Inside the barely lit cabin, Hess senior looked up aghast. He had been writing by candlelight at his little desk that looked over the lake, a blanket wrapped around his frail legs. He visibly shook as Ridley stomped into the cabin.

  “What do you want?” The old man cried out in fear. “I don't have any money! Just take whatever you want to leave me alone!”

  “I'm not here to rob you, you old git.” Ridley grabbed his chair and spun the old man around to face him. “Where’s your fucking son?”

  “My son? Who?” The old man tried to feign ignorance, but he had neither the mental capacity nor the control of his face to be able to lie convincingly.

  “Hubert, your monstrous little offspring, where is he?” Ridley spat in his face.

  “I don't know!” cried the old man, covering his face in fear. “He’s dead!”

  “Don’t fucking lie to me!” Ridley roared, snatching the the old man up by his crumpled shirt collars.

  Nairo grabbed hold of Ridley and hauled him away from Mr. Hess.

  “Ridley! Enough! He is a helpless old man, and you are not going to hurt him!”

  “Why not?” Ridley shouted, nose to nose with Nairo. “After the amount of people his son has hurt? Why not get a little payback on the one who spat that little demon spawn onto this earth?”

  “It's not my fault!” Mr. Hess cried out, his voice quaking. “We treated Hubert well, we raised him well. I don't know why he became what he did, but I promise you if I could do anything to change it, I would have! If I had known what he would become, I would have drowned the little bastard in the tub when he was small enough for me to wrap my hands around his damned throat!” Tears rolled out of Hess's crinkled eyes and down his leathery cheeks. “When I heard what he had done to those poor women… what he'd been doing… I couldn't bring myself to accept it..."

  “But it didn't stop you from getting him out of trouble, did it? Using all of your connections to keep your psycho son out of jail where he belonged!” Ridley yelled. “Think of how many lives you’ve ruined because you Owners think the law doesn’t apply to you!”

  “You think I don't know that?” Mr. Hess shouted back at him, his voice rasping and breaking with the effort. “You think I don't feel that deep in my stomach? The sickness of what I unleashed back into the world! If I could do it over again, I would have let him rot in that jail cell like the animal that he is!”

  “Is?” Ridley repeated. “Don’t you mean was? After all, he is dead, right?”

  Hess's eyes widened and his mouth flapped like a fish on land.

  “Mr. Hess, you're not in any trouble, but I need you to tell us the truth," Nairo said gently, crouching down next to his chair and trying to make eye contact with the old man. “Is Hubert alive?”

  Mr. Hess looked away from her and closed his eyes.

  “Mr. Hess, Hubert is hurting people again,” Nairo said to him. “He's killed at least thirteen people that we know of. One of those was a pregnant woman. He killed her and the baby.”

  Mr. Hess made a noise somewhere between a gasp, a cry, and a croak of agony. He raised his gnarled hand to his mouth but couldn't stifle the tears. He sobbed pitifully, the physical exertion of it racking his frail body.

  “Is Hubert alive?” Nairo asked again.

  “May his soul be damned and his eyes burn,” Mr. Hess whimpered. "Yes, he is. The monster is alive.”

  Nairo felt a shiver run through her body like someone had just walked across her grave. She looked up at Ridley, and she knew he had felt it: like evil had touched their spirits.

  “He came to me a few years back,” Mr. Hess whispered, staring into the fog out of his window. “I thought he was dead just like everyone else. I had no idea he had faked it. He turned up and announced himself as proud as anyone could be. He told me about how he had plans to get back all that we had lost and how he would restore the Hess name and how those who had taken from us would be punished by his hand. I didn't want to believe him at first. I didn't want to believe he was still alive, but it was him! I told him to go and to never return. I told him my son died decades ago when he was still a little boy and that the monster standing before me was nothing but an aberration. Hubert just stood there and laughed. Told me how pathetic I was and how the luckiest person in our family was his mother because she didn't have to spend another second with me. A failure of a husband, failure of a lawyer, failure of a father… a failure of a man.” Fresh tears broke through and wracked the old man's body.

  “Did he say anything specific about his plans? What he was doing or where he was?” Nairo asked.

  Mr. Hess shook his head.

  “I didn't ask, and Hubert didn't tell me.”

  “And that was the last time you spoke to him?” Ridley said.

  “Yes, but a year or two ago he sent me a bank order for some gold. I think it was a cruel joke. It was seven gold pieces, enough for me to buy a headstone, the letter said.”

  “Letter?” Nairo asked.

  “Yes, he sent it with the gold,” Mr. Hess said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hands.

  “Do you still have this letter?” Ridley asked him.

  “I do. I don't know why I kept it. I tried to burn it, but something stopped me. Perhaps because the last thing I have of my wife is Hubert, and that letter is the last thing I have of Hubert. I'm such a silly old fool.”

  “Where is this letter?” Nairo said.

  “Over in my chest, buried at the bottom. It's in a golden envelope with white trim.” Mr. Hess pointed a crooked finger towards the chest in the corner of the room.

  Ridley covered the distance in a few steps. He threw open the metal locker and then burrowed his way through Mr. Hess's entire life, all the way to the bottom until he found the envelope. He pulled it out, opened it, and withdrew the letter. Seven gold pieces fell to the cabin floor, jangling obnoxiously in the silence. He brought the letter over to the desk where the single candle flickered weakly. Ridley read the mocking letter aloud:

  Dear Father,

  Seven gold pieces should be enough to get you a box and a headstone. Rest easy knowing I will stand on your grave one day, old man.

  HH

  “It's the same handwriting,” Ridley muttered.

  “As what?" Nairo said.

  “It's the same writing as the note left one Emily's dinner table," Ridley said.

  “It is him,” Nairo hissed. “It's been Hubert Hess all along! Quinn must have found out he was still alive! He must have been on his trail, and that's why he killed him!”

  “O my soul! Who has he hurt now?” Mr. Hess whimpered.

  Nairo looked over at the defeated old man, crumpled in his chair as he was. She felt sickened by how they had come in here.

  “Mr. Hess I'm so sorry for coming here like this and for upsetting you. But we need to stop your son before he hurts anyone else.”

  “Where can we find him?” Ridley demanded.

  “I don't know! I have no idea where he is or what he has been doing, and I don't want to know! Please just leave me alone and leave me out of this! I want nothing to do with that monster anymore.” Mr. Hess held his hands up to them. “Just promise me that this time there will be no trials, no fake bodies, please just get rid of Hubert for good this time!”

  Ridley looked at the old man and then nodded his head slowly, murder in his eyes.