American Devil

Chapter 6 - The Night Keeper

"Are you coming or not? You're here to check out the burnt body, aren't you? Or did you just come for a friendly visit? If it's that, you should have just said so. Here, I'll put some coffee on." Terry turns back around to head into the room but Kyro grabs him by the arm, preventing him from going any further.

"Very funny old man. You know why I'm here."

"Yes I do. Well then, is an old man going to beat a youngster who can teleport? Where did all of that youthful energy go?" He teases with a grin as he heads back into the hallway again. Kyro just shakes his head and follows the geezer out of the room.

The mortuary is at the end of a long dimly lit hallway. It always reminds Kyro of something out of a horror movie, shadows that could be filled with all sorts of shadowy figures, it doesn't help with the stench of death that lingers in the air. Kyro doesn't understand how anyone could willingly choose to work and spend their time here, especially at night. But then again, Terry isn't just about anyone.

With a flick of the light switch, the cold metallic room is revealed. Shelves lining the wall containing the recently departed. Terry heads towards the back of the large room towards one of the fridge spaces, and pulls out the shelf to reveal the burnt remains of a corpse. The smell of burnt flesh overwhelmed the senses as it overpowered the stagnant air. Kyro suppresses his gag and looks at the toe tag to confirm that this is indeed the remains of one Donovan Bishop, but staring at him now there is nearly nothing recognizable about the scorched husk of a human. The skin is charred and flaking. Kyro swallows down his disgust at the sight of the destroyed body. He has to remain professional, stay cool and collected no matter how much he wants to find a trash can and empty the contents of his stomach. He's seen his fair share of burnt bodies, and yet he can never get used to the sight, nor the smell of it.

Terry, completely unfazed, proceeds to explain the body, pointing to the charred skin of the body, that Kyro cant help to stare with morbid fascination and fighting back an urge to turn his head in disgust. "Looks like this is our guy, I've told you this in other cases but skin changes like that only occur after the body has been exposed to extreme forms of heat for a prolonged time period. For it to happen so quickly, the heat had to have been comparable to the heat of a crematory, if not even hotter. Lucky bastard probably didn't even feel anything. As you're already aware, there wasn't a crematory anywhere nearby. So how in the world did they kill this man? Flamethrowers would have left some sort of residue behind, something I could find on the body at least. But alas the police have no clue, and I have no clue. Did you manage to find something that we all missed?"

"No, there was no sign as to where the heat came from. It's the same as in all the previous cases. Somehow a body is burnt by extreme heat and there is nothing to indicate the source of it. It's increasingly infuriating." Kyro adds, clenching his teeth.

Terry places a hand on his shoulder "Well at least the copycats haven't figured out how they do it either. I think that would be even more infuriating."

"Copycats? They are here too?" The porcelain mask focuses on Terry now, instead of on the body lying on the table in front of them.

"Yes. You haven't heard of it? I have several victims here right now that I cannot pin on the terrorist." Terry says as he moves over to a different fridge and pulls out another body. The same stench follows this one too, but the body looks different than Donovan's. "See, in all of the terrorist cases, the body is burnt completely, we could say almost perfectly. As you can see with this one here, which was burnt by a flamethrower, it isn't absolute. There are places more severely affected, and those which were barely affected at all. For example the back is almost fully intact." Terry pushes the body up to reveal its back and Kyro can see that the man was right.