Rain Rain Go Away 04

The hand fell on his head, fingers strong, fingertips rough; the high windows of the church were leaking in the faint and hazy sunlight of the early morning hours, dim and gloomy; he was standing somewhere before the altar, on the cold, polished ground, right under the cross, and behind it, a round rose window also enclosed him in an inescapable radiant light.

On the side of the church, the design colored windows showed a young man interpreting a dream of the Egyptian Pharaoh, who prophesied to him about the seven-year famine in Egypt – he was Joseph, the son of Jacob and Rachel, one of the ancestors of Israel. His father Jacob loved him more than all his sons, and therefore gave him a beautiful colored coat. His brothers were envious of him as a result.

"My child," the man said, with a hint of huskiness in his voice, "I love you more than all the other children."

– Then Herstal awoke with a start.

The room was empty except for him, and Elliot was not there. He lay on the dusty, absolutely uncomfortable mattress, feeling a dry soreness in his throat from his rapid gasps. His hands were still tied behind his back, and needle like-pain began to flood through him as his consciousness returned. It was no exaggeration to say he could barely feel part of his fingers.

Herstal certainly hadn't slept well that night, and although he knew that Elliot couldn't have killed him while he was asleep, he still had woken up many times. This made him have a dizzy spell more severe than any other morning now, accompanied by a hallucination of wanting to retch.

He maintained that curled-up motion and did his best to calm his breathing – so, this was Albarino's revenge on him. Herstal couldn't help but give an ironic sneer at the moldy ceiling.

In the Bob Landon case, the forensic pathologist was held in New Tucker Federal Prison for a total of eight days, from the time the judge magistrate barred Albarino from bail at the preliminary hearing until the CSI recovered enough evidence in Landon's home to prove Albarino's innocence.

Eight days; a lot of people don't know what this number means. Many people think that everything would be fine as long as Albarino was finally cleared of any wrongdoing, but eight days – to exaggerate, it was enough time for God to create the entire world, then to rest for two more days – for a chief forensic pathologist who has handled countless homicides for the Westland Police Department, it was by no means a short time.

Albarino Bacchus was thrown into a jail full of felons, and clearly in order to disguise himself as a law-abiding citizen, he couldn't presumptuously harm anyone in prison.

Herstal knew, of course, that Albarino would not just let this incident go, but he also never expected that revenge would come to him in this way.

It was ironic: serial killers like the Sunday Gardener couldn't empathize with their victims, and in reality, he also couldn't really sympathize with other's experiences. In the end, Albarino, coincidentally, was able to pick the method that Herstal hated the most to take revenge on him, without giving Olga Molozer and her criminal profiling any face. Even Herstal wanted to compliment him on his extraordinary talent.

But all he could do now was to lie here and breathe slowly and deeply, trying to disperse the discomfort of numbness in his limbs and waiting for the symptoms of low blood pressure to pass.

Then he had to find himself a solution to his current troubles, for he would undoubtedly not stay in this place for long. The Westland Pianist, too, would never stay still and resign himself to his fate[1].

[1]坐以待毙, idiom, lit. to sit still and wait for one's death, meaning to await one's doom.

– October 29, the day after "Johnny the Killer" kidnapped his second victim in Westland.

Shortly after they returned from the crime scene yesterday, the various scene reports were handed over to Lavazza Mercader and Officer Hardy. Even though the CSI pulled the entire Rolls-Royce back to the crime lab for testing, no more evidence was found. The only sort of good news was: the DNA test results of the pool of blood on the highway was out. At least that puddle of blood really didn't belong to Herstal Armalight.

However, Johnny the Killer's DNA went through the existing database once, but didn't match anyone. Clearly this killer was someone without any criminal records, endlessly extending the road to catching the culprit.

It was a Saturday on the 26th, and Olga had no classes to teach. As a result, when Hardy walked into the WLPD office area early in the morning, coffee cup in hand, he saw Olga already occupying a corner of his office with a dispirited expression. She was sitting among a circular sea of paper made up of dense piles of autopsy photos and copies of transcripts, just like a pagan god sitting in the middle of a skull altar.

"You're quite scary like this, don't you know?" Hardy asked wearily. Yesterday, the police officers marathoned through all the surveillance video recordings which might have captured the culprit, only to have nothing meaningful captured in that desolate countryside. He absolutely didn't sleep well throughout the night.

"She might know." A voice behind Hardy pointed out lazily, startling him.

"Oh my God!" Hardy finally couldn't help but exclaim. He abruptly turned around to see Albarino Bacchus in another corner of his office, clutching another stack of autopsy reports in his arms, with two spiritless green eyes and gigantic dark circles under them.

Apparently, Hardy's office may have become a lair for rearing some kind of nocturnal animals. He composed himself, observed Albarino's bloodshot eyes, and asked, "Have you two been here all night?"

"Theoretically, none of these documents are allowed out of the police station." Albarino explained, like it was very convincing.

Hardy really, really wanted to sigh a little, but he guessed Olga wasn't even listening to them; her eyes were red and her gaze was scanning very rapidly over the papers in front of her. A moment later she looked up at Hardy as if she had just noticed him standing there.

"Hi, Bart," she said in a hoarse voice, "when is Mercader planning to do the profiling?"

"This morning, he'll be here in a moment." Officer Hardy replied, bewildered.

"Have him meet me before he holds a meeting with the officers," she stood up, staggering against the wall, looking haggard like she was about to faint right there. "I need to talk to him – or to everyone on the team he's brought with him, either is fine; though in my estimation, there's a good chance we'll still have to quarrel."

Hardy surveyed her for a moment, then asked cautiously, "Have you found anything new?"

Olga shrugged with a poor complexion. "I suspect there was some mistake in that criminal profile earlier."

Accompanied by the sound of something shattering, Elliot rushed into the room.

When he entered, Herstal was kneeling at the foot of the bed – it was a struggle for him to even think of a way to get off from the bed, given that his ankles and wrists were bound tightly. The ropes carved deep into his skin, and the ends of his limbs, tightened by the ropes, were already showing the unpleasant purple color of bruises.

The floor near the folding table was scattered with broken pieces of porcelain; it was a porcelain cup before it was completely shattered. Herstal saw that the other became furious that his eyes were about to pop out of his sockets at that moment; yes, this pathetic person who loved others was overreacting to his chosen prey moving even a little at will. Clearly, for him, his prisoner should just lie quietly in place to receive his care.

Herstal knew it was time for him to show weakness. Elliot's past prisoners might very well have tried to resist, causing him to suddenly go berserk – those attempts of escaping shattered his illusions about his lovers which he had been passionately in love with. The consequences of such were that he nearly cut off those people's heads from their neck.

So Herstal chose to kneel where he was and looked up at Elliot, wondering how much flustered discomfort he could successfully add to his expression. He thought that it was going to be very difficult, because he could never, ever be that child in the past anymore.

"I'm sorry," he said, trying to insert actual regret into his voice as much as possible, "I just wanted to drink some water, but you weren't here, so–"

A calculated pause. Elliot looked down at him.

"I still don't think I can do it. I'm very sorry for breaking the glass." He said, hesitantly and quietly. "But I'm really really thirsty... Could you feed me a sip of water?"

Herstal observed the rise and fall of Elliot's chest and the curve of Adam's apple swallowing as he took a deep breath. Meanwhile, in another corner of the bottom of his heart, Albarino Bacchus was smiling at the scene: his smile was always very bright, yet very few people could see through it to see that it was just a glaze on top of an unfeeling mask.

– But no matter what, this might have worked.

"Oh, Herstal." Elliot said lowly. The vibration in his voice sounded so sincere. "Herstal."

The other came over and half-carried him back to the bed. His bare toes brushed over the cold ground, his ankles aching under the bindings of rope. The pain was very dull, but it was nothing compared to other types of pains.

Elliot quickly brought him a glass of water, kneeling on the bed just like yesterday and slowly feeding it to him. The young man's eyes were glowing dreadfully bright, a moist red color forming a ring around his eye sockets. If he were out on the streets, nearly all people would think of him as a high drug addict.

Herstal's lips approached the mouth of the glass, and the slightly cool liquid burned down his throat. Soundlessly, between his fingers bound tightly behind him, he was firmly holding a sharp piece of porcelain in the palm of his hand.

When Lavazza Mercader entered Officer Hardy's office, Olga was sitting on a sofa bed in one corner of the office, desperately trying to freshen up with a cup of coffee. She held a bright red mug bearing the Tudor crown, where it was written in large white words: Keep Calm and Love Colin Firth.

It was hard to say whether Olga had kept her cool or not; perhaps a truly calm person would not look as miserable as if she hadn't slept since the 1960s. Mercader surveyed her tired face detailedly, then asked, "What's wrong?"

"I've seen all the criminal profiling the BAU did on Johnny the Killer earlier." Olga nodded toward the stack of documents in Hardy's office. "The killer was abnormally careful when he laid out the body. Moreover, he tended to wipe all the blood off the body's skin except for the ones on the victim's clothes that couldn't be cleaned up – the BAU thought that was a sign of guilt. "

"Isn't it?" Mercader asked in reply.

"I'll admit, in quite a few cases it is," Olga took another sip from her coffee cup and spat out her tongue at the unpleasant taste. "In most scenarios, it's like this: the killer satisfies his desire by kidnapping the same type of victim over and over again. In his eyes, these same types of victims are all shadows of someone he once loved; when he brutally kills them, then he will feel guilty. Not for the dead, but for the fact that he killed an illusion of someone in his mind – So, when Johnny the Killer had committed crimes in other states, the local police used to heavily screen for suspects the same age as the deceased, right? Because if the killer used the victims as a replacement for his past lovers, chances are that they are similar in age?"

"Yes. But you also know that in the end we ended up empty-handed." Mercader's face was taut. "He roamed between many states and would stay for a while in each new city. He probably worked odd jobs in each of them – this kind of person who is aged around thirty-five to forty-five years old, had a former failed relationship, maybe having violent tendencies? No, we ran through all possible suspects and ended up finding nothing."

"Many serial killers leave criminal records as their level of violence escalates, but Killer Johnny's DNA confirmed to us that he hasn't had any before." Olga shook her head, lowly snorting. "It's time for us to change our train of thought – Al and I have some new ideas. Al, please?"

Mercader looked at Albarino, who was standing in front of a whiteboard on the wall which had many photographs of the victims taped to it.

"I counted the time from kidnapping to the death of the victims. There doesn't seem to be a pattern – we know that Johnny the Killer kills his victims after it rains, but it isn't necessarily that he absolutely would kill them after the first rain after the victims were kidnapped." Albarino pointed at the whiteboard, on which he had listed a long table with illegible notes. "This is a tally of when the victims were abducted and the amount of precipitation locally – as you can see, Agent Mercader, four of the victims here were killed after the first rain, one died after two, two lasted for three rains. One died after six whole rounds of rain."

"The more reasonable idea is that it takes time for Johnny the Killer to get tired of the victims. When he does, after that he disposes of the body following the next rain." Olga continued, "Or there is another possibility: the killer himself does not realize whether he is tired of the dead. However, when it starts raining, the scene at the time will then evoke some kind of dark imagination inside him, rendering him unable to control his actions. Then, he uncontrollably kills the victim."

Mercader's voice was a bit irritated: "We realized this. The frequency of the killer murdering the victims isn't gradually increasing, so that means that how long he is willing to let the other live only depends on his emotions towards the victim – but we don't know what it is that influences his feelings. These victims look completely identical."

This was not an exaggeration: the photos of the victims stuck on the whiteboard were all similarly handsome. All of them were light-skinned with blond hair, and they were even similar in height.

"So, that's why the previous profiling wasn't accurate enough." Hardy, who had been listening on the sidelines for quite a while, wearily joined in the conversation.

"The problem lies in that people can't be exactly the same." Albarino said, smirking.

"It's the personality." Olga said.

"Sorry?" Mercader raised an eyebrow.

"Personality – a significant factor in determining how long Johnny the Killer's victims live." Olga shifted so she was more comfortably leaning on the sofa bed, blinking her eyes a few times. "I read through the records of the visits to all the victims' families. That's right, they were all equally blond, tall and handsome, and about the same age. There were no significant differences between them, except for their personalities."

"Although the current examples are probably not accurate enough, they can be roughly used as a reference." Albarino reached out and nodded to the whiteboard, "The victims who died the fastest were generally said to be the type to be unyielding or impulsive – one of them was even a senior management of a company with a strong personality, the kind of person to be respected. The remaining few each occupied two extremes respectively, some were described as 'very reckless' and one was described by his friends as a timid man. As for the one who lived as long as six rounds of rain, nearly almost for two months, according to his colleagues, he was a 'calm and cautious' person."

After listening for quite a while, Hardy's frown deepened more and more, "Wait, I still don't quite understand. Johnny the Killer prefers–"

"It's not that he favors a certain type of personality; that description isn't accurate." Olga shook her head. Mercader stared at her fixatedly, so she knew the other pretty much got it too. "It's the differences between people's personalities that contributed to their attitudes towards the kidnapper: we can imagine that the unyielding personalities might have tried to escape, threaten the other, or try to negotiate. People who are too cowardly in most cases will keep crying and be a pain in the neck... but you should be aware that all of this, for Johnny the Killer, is considered love."

Mercader was silent for a moment, then slowly said, "You're trying to indicate to me that Johnny the Killer killed the victims who resisted too fiercely or were too badly startled. The calmer and the more fakely submissive he acted, the longer he lived."

"That's what I meant." Olga replied simply.

"There's no research to corroborate that." Mercader retorted with a frown, though his tone didn't sound very certain either.

"Oh, so now you think of doing research? I thought you were the one who was the most against me doing research." Olga retorted impatiently, not trying hard to hide her raised eyebrow. "But what else can we do now? You know the scope lined out from the previous profiling wasn't accurate, and relying on that profiling in the previous cases didn't catch anyone anyway."

"Besides, what Olga said is not entirely impossible." Albarino calmly pointed out, "Three of the four men who died right after the first rain had obvious scars from resisting. One of them had his knuckles scraped, another even had his fingernails turned inside out – the wounds were all very fresh, left shortly before they died. Among them, someone must have tried to resist or escape."

Mercader was silent for another very anxious period of time, and then he seemed to make a compromise: "... Okay, Olga. Tell us your point of view."

Olga gave him an unpleasant, almost arrogant, provocative smile before talking. "As previously mentioned, the killer has been moving from state to state and is now likely working short jobs within Westland City. He's a white male, younger than thirty-five years old, probably no taller than 5'8″[2], and his build is definitely not the very strong type. We're looking for someone who drifts at the fringes of the crowd, is bad at socializing, and may even seem to be introverted."

[2] 1.8 meters in metric

"If he works short jobs, he's unlikely to have a lot of savings." Albarino added. "Based on the level of rigor mortis, the forensic pathologist estimated the time the victim from the last was stuffed in a small space. He was probably packed in the trunk for at least three hours after death before being abandoned, so that could be combined with this profile and the traffic conditions in Westland to estimate the area where he lived."

Mercader frowned, obviously deliberating these words. Then, looking at Olga, he said, "I need an explanation."

"I know you definitely need it," Olga snorted. "You know exactly how the rest of it was deduced–"

"The killer took down his target with a stun gun. He had his victim tied from the back for the entire duration of the imprisonment, so he shouldn't have been able to easily overpower a man of his victim's size – so, he is very likely to not be strong or much taller than his victim," Mercader nodded, "I understand that part. But, you think he's young and introverted?"

"Haven't you noticed? His pleasure comes from his desire of exercising control: among the victims, the one most likely to bend to his will has lived the longest, while breaking down crying and fiercely fighting back could very possibly cause him to go mad." Olga's eyes shone, not intending to hide her brimming enthusiasm. It seemed quite frightening. "A twisted mind, backlashing after being badly hurt – all of the deceased were all at least middle class, immaculately dressed, social elites; then, the killer imprisoned and sexually assaulted them. Judging by the restraint wounds on those deceased victim's hands, they were probably tied behind them the entire time. However, the killer didn't starve them, so they had to get food from the hands of Johnny the Killer."

She halted, revealing a smile.

"Isn't it obvious, Mercader? The obedience of his victims who have to ask for things made him happy. When these powerless people who are both older and more outstanding than him had no choice but to rely on him; when they can only open their bodies wide to let him have whatever he pleases, his desire is finally satisfied."

About three hours later, Hardy returned to the office once more. The two people sitting in the office waiting for him were nearly asleep: this was what happens when you stay up all night. Olga dozed off on Albarino's shoulder dazedly, her disheveled hair lying on top of his shoulder in a tangled mess.

Albarino was still barely awake. He looked up tiredly, but a smile was still on his face.

He mouthed out a "what" at Hardy.

"We screened out a bunch of suspects using the new criminal profile," Hardy replied. "Fortunately, the time of death deduced by the forensic pathologist can be used to calculate the length of the drive, so we can at least reduce the range a little."

He handed Albarino a pile of papers, around a dozen. Albarino knew that this was a terrific result: it was too difficult to find people who were living in the city for a short duration, and some guys who worked for a short time couldn't possibly meet the lowest income for paying tax. The suspects that were screened out now were probably found by checking credit card records. It was like finding a needle in a haystack; after all, if you move frequently between several cities, the spending records should have quite the characteristics.

But they still couldn't do anything about people who pay in cash. They might leave out the suspect by mistake; perhaps it was that unfortunate for them.

"We will go and visit these people first. In the absence of a warrant, and we can't test their DNA either, we can only hope that during the inquiring process we can find out some of the bare traces." Hardy said softly, careful not to wake Olga. "For the time being, we don't need both of you here. You can go back and rest–"

At this moment, Albarino, who was looking down at the papers containing the information, suddenly interjected in surprise.

Hardy asked curiously, "What's wrong?"

Albarino took out a photograph from the pile and showed it to Hardy: it was a young man with his head half lowered, his eyes avoiding the camera, pale, cautious, with black hair almost covering half of his face.

"I know this person." Albarino said with a frown.

On the information sheet fastened behind the photograph, this person's name was written: Elliot Evans.

Author's Notes

Keep Calm and Love Colin Firth.

A meme originated from the British World War II war poster "Keep Calm and Carry On".

"The harmonious daily life mini theater for psycho serial killers"

Al: I'm really curious, how did a little genius in criminal profiling like you quit your job?

Olga: Because I'm too good at being on the same wavelength as serial killers. Mercader was scared that I would fall into the abyss of evil.

Al: ...Have you fallen into it yet?

Olga: