Titus turned right onto Jackson Street and pulled into the parking lot of the state medical examiner’s office. A tall, nondescript concrete building across from the crumbling Richmond Coliseum, the medical examiner’s office held generational horrors and gut-churning terrors that were all detailed and collated with a cool, practiced detachment that Titus could not seem to master.
Titus parked the SUV and entered the building through the front entrance instead of the large metal roll-up door that accepted bodies of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities. In the former capital of the Confederacy, equality’s surest foothold was found on the autopsy table.
Titus was waved through the lobby and took the elevator up to the morgue. The pungent scent of antiseptic slapped him in the face the moment he stepped out of the elevator. It forced its way into his nostrils and stung the back of his throat. It was like a portent that warned you that you were crossing over into the land of the dead.
“‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here,’” Titus whispered.
Titus pushed the speak button on the intercom to the right of a massive set of stainless-steel doors that were eerily similar to the doors of the elevator. A voice crackled up from the intercom.
“Yes, may I help you?”
“Sheriff Titus Crown from Charon County. We sent some bodies up here yesterday. Was wondering if I could talk to someone about the preliminary findings,” Titus said. The intercom was silent. He knew they were probably not even halfway through their examinations, but he needed—no, he wanted—to jump on this as soon as possible. He needed something, anything, any type of clue, to jump-start his investigation. Those seven dead children and their families demanded it of him. It was a new millstone he willingly wore. Sadly, the best clues would probably be found on their poor broken and twisted bodies.
Titus didn’t want to look at them again, but he would. It was the job. It was his penance.
“Come on in,” the voice crackled.
The doors whooshed open and Titus stepped into the land of the dead.
He stood in the small anteroom that separated the morgue proper from the ME’s actual office. A young Asian woman came to the door wearing a blue surgical gown and cap. She took both off and disposed of them in a plastic biohazard container before swiping her badge in front of the door and stepping into the anteroom.
“Sheriff, I’m Dr. Julie Kim.”
“Nice to meet you,” Titus said. Dr. Kim nodded. She had long black hair that was tied into a tight bun that resembled the one Carla wore. She gestured toward the office. Titus followed her as she sat behind a huge oak desk. He took off his hat and shades and sat in one of two leather office chairs on the other side of the desk.
“Sheriff, I have to be honest, we’ve only examined two of the seven bodies you brought to us. We are a little short-staffed these days.”
“Not a huge interest in pathology nowadays?” Titus asked.
Kim smiled. “No, more like there’s a big interest in the American Aquarium concert tonight at the National. Some members of our staff seem to have come down with playing hookyitis,” Dr. Kim said.
“Yeah, I see cases of that around the first day of hunting season. But I’m not here to press you, Dr. Kim. I just want to hear some of your preliminary findings, whatever they may be,” Titus said.
“I was going to say I could have emailed them to you, but I get the feeling you are a hands-on individual,” Dr. Kim said. She smiled and Titus found himself smiling back. Then he thought of the seven Black boys and girls currently stretched out on metal tables with Y incisions in their chests, and the smile died on the vine.
“I’m having a press conference later today. Charon County is a small town, Doctor. There’re already wild rumors making their way across the county and on social media. We had a school shooting day before yesterday and then we found these bodies. My county is reeling. If you can give me something to hang my hat on, then I can at least tell my folks we are doing our best,” Titus said.
Dr. Kim flexed her fingers. She pressed a button on the telephone sitting on her desk.
“Peter, can you bring me the Charon file?” Dr. Kim said.
“Yes, Doctor.”
A few seconds later, a young white man came in and handed Dr. Kim a thick manila folder. He left so quickly he might have been a figment of Titus’s imagination.
“Here you go, but I’ll give you the highlights. Or the lowlights, as it were,” Dr. Kim said as she handed Titus the file. He opened it, and the first thing he saw was a body flayed open on the autopsy table. The leathery skin was pulled back and the rib cage had been bisected with a bone saw. Titus flipped that picture over. The next picture was a close-up of the arm of that body.
“Are … are those words?” Titus asked.
“Yes. The bodies that still have a viable epidermis have words cut into the skin of their arms, their chests, their buttocks. I suspect the rest of them will have similar incisions.”
“Cursed … be … Canaan,” Titus whispered as he read the words.
He flipped the photo.
The next one depicted the desiccated face of one of the victims. The photo had been taken with some kind of black-light or infrared device that gave the face a spectral countenance. Titus couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. The lips had run away from the opening of the mouth, leaving it in a rictus of agony.
Titus squinted and read the words carved into the forehead of the face in the picture.
“Those words are just the tip of the iceberg of what these children went through. These children suffered. A lot,” Dr. Kim said.
Titus felt something wash over him as she spoke. A feeling both familiar and fearful. He’d felt it at the DeCrain compound when bits of the DeCrain boys were embedded in his face.
Righteousness. The kind of righteousness that made you feel above petty things like laws and amendments. The kind of righteousness that came from the barrel of a gun. He knew now it was a false piousness. A lying piety that seduced you into believing the end justified the means.
Titus closed the file. He promised himself he would never heed that siren’s call again. His soul, whatever was left of it, couldn’t bear it.
“Any DNA? Any fiber evidence? Insect or larval markers?” Titus asked.
“We tested them for DNA. Found a few viable samples, but we don’t know how degraded they are. We’re also running their DNA against the national and state databases. Going to run the dental records too. None of them had any form of ID. Funny you mentioned fibers. We found synthetic hairs on the two we’ve examined. Most likely from an expensive wig. We’re running textile typing on them now. We’ve also identified most of the metallic objects we excised from the bodies. There were nails, straight pins, lengths of baling wire, razor blades.” Dr. Kim paused and took a deep breath. “We identified all the metal objects except one. Go to the last page of the file.”
Titus did as he was asked.
Sitting on a small table next to a metal ruler for scale was a rusted T-shaped object. The arms of the T were as thin as pipe cleaners. The bottom of the T was cylindrical and rounded at the bottom. It reminded Titus of a toy he’d had as a kid. It was called a cap bomb. It resembled an old World War II bomb. You put pop caps in it, then tossed it on the ground. They would explode like gunshots.
“We’ve done image searches, reached out to the state police. I’ve emailed the pic to the FBI. So far no one can tell us what it is,” Dr. Kim said.
“The Bureau will probably have a database with five different examples of whatever it turns out to be,” Titus said.
“You’re familiar with their thoroughness,” Dr. Kim said.
Titus smiled ruefully. “Intimately.”
Dr. Kim nodded. “And that’s all we have so far. I’ll have toxicology and the DNA back in a few weeks.”
“I know the state has a backlog, but is there any way to bump this up to the front of the line?” Titus asked.
“Sheriff, these aren’t the only kids we have on the table. But I’ll see what I can do.”
Now it was Titus’s turn to nod. He closed the file again and put it back on the desk.
“Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Kim,” he said. He stood and put his hat back on.
“Do you ever wonder how they do it? Or why? Why would someone … do what they did to those children?” Dr. Kim said. For a brief moment the cool, detached mask fell away and Titus could see the face of Julie Kim. A human being with empathy and kindness in her heart. If the pictures on her desk were to be believed, she was also a wife and mother in addition to being the chief medical examiner.
Titus straightened his hat. “I usually try not to think about it. I try to focus on who they are, not why they do it. But if you want an answer”—Titus pulled his shades from the pocket of his shirt—“they do it because they like it. They do it because they can,” he said. He put on the aviators. “It’s not really deeper than that.”
“You really think it’s that simple?” Dr. Kim asked.
“Evil is rarely complicated. It’s just fucking bold.” Titus touched the brim of his hat and left.
* * *