Lucas and I were ushered into another room. Someone was trying to decontaminate us. We both smelled of death.
"Well, he's been dead for a while," Xavier said. "Nice scar."
"Thanks," I said.
"I'll know more when I get him to the morgue. He was tasered, probably multiple times. There are burn marks on his chest. They are taking Grace Ericson to the hospital to let her wake up there. A psychologist is waiting and we've called Dr. Ericson's brother," Xavier continued. "She was drugged, but we don't know what with."
"Not triazolam?" Lucas asked.
"She'd be awake by now. This was something stronger," Xavier answered.
"As soon as the HAZMAT folks get done with us, I say we go to where his son's body was found," I hooked my finger at someone who had a scrub brush and a hose. They were encased in a white suit that covered everything from head to toe. I didn't even know if the person scrubbing me was male or female. They kept pouring a chemical on me. It didn't burn, but it smelled almost as bad.
"Consider yourselves lucky, he could have found something predatory to shove in there," Xavier said.
"Rats are predatory, but in this case, I think it was just scavenging a meal. We might want to change hotels, considering Lucas' phobia," I said.
"Nothing makes sense at the moment," Xavier shrugged. "We will be checking Arons for pathogens and toxins during the autopsy. Ericson could have put anything on the body. I'd like to get the rat, but I'd say it is long gone. To answer your question about when he put Arons in your room, it took over an hour for a uniformed officer to stop by Ericson's house after he made the call. Sheriff Rybolt showed up maybe half an hour later.
"I am starting to feel like Alice after she entered the looking glass," I said.
"Good news, we can get a warrant. Him leaving Grace in Lucas' room convinced Judge Penelope Rybolt to give us carte blanche to search his house," Gabriel was holding up a piece of paper.
"This is not a peep show," Lucas said. I looked over at him. "I would hate for them to become insecure over sizes."
Until that moment, I don't think any of us had thought about the nudity of myself or Lucas. We all looked down, including the white-suited scrubber working to make me smell better.
"You smell good enough, let's get a move on," Gabriel grabbed a robe and tossed it to me.
"It isn't for the smell," Xavier said. "It's for the exposure to unknown chemical agents. Decomposition has been sped up by something, hence the black blood clots everywhere."
"What?" I frowned.
"His skin is starting to fall off too. That's not normal. I don't know what it is, so you are being decontaminated so that it doesn't happen to you," Xavier said.
"Ugh," I groaned.
"My thoughts exactly," Gabriel said. "How much longer?"
"Almost done," the scrubber went back to work. It was female judging by the voice.
"Did you touch anything?" Xavier asked.
"I am not really in the habit of touching things I know to be dead," I told him.
"Me either," Lucas said.
"Then you should be good. If you feel any tightness in the chest or start wheezing, let me know," Xavier left.
"My mother would abhor the person I have become, if she knew," I said.
"What?" Lucas asked.
"You can never tell her that I lack modesty and stood in a room with three men and two unknowns being scrubbed down while talking about dead bodies," I told him.
"Your secret is safe with me," Gabriel answered.
"It could be worse, we could all be nude," Lucas offered.
"If you say so," the scrubber stopped and didn't finish the sentence. She took off the hood. Sweat was running down her forehead.
"I've dealt with a lot of things, I have never seen a person with as many scars as you," she said.
"Thanks," I answered.
"Really?" She looked at me, eyes narrowed.
"Each one is a badge of honor. It means I survived," I turned my full attention to her. She took a step back.
"I think you're done," she turned and left.
"Don't freak out the help, Ace," Gabriel said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.
"Oh please, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You just went all dark and creepy on her," Gabriel scolded.
"Maybe a little, I just do not like people judging me by the scars I bear," I told him.
"You have to admit, you have lots, some of them weird. Like the brand on your side and the road rash on your leg," Gabriel said.
"Life's little hazards," I told him.
"For you, yes, for others, not so much," Gabriel handed me a towel. I dried and got dressed. Lucas finished up.
"Shall we go search the good doctor's home?" Lucas asked as he tied a pair of boots.
Dr. Ericson's house was blue with gray accents on the outside. It was an old-style Victorian that had been built in the last twenty years. Gabriel beat on the front door. We waited. No sounds wafted out to us.
After a few more seconds, Gabriel used a breach key and opened the door. It popped open, revealing a dark interior. He found a light switch and nailed one of the copies of the search warrant to the door. I heard the backdoor open.
"We'll sweep the place, then begin searching," Gabriel said into a collared microphone. It echoed in my ear. I hated using the radios when we were standing next to each other. The millisecond delay was enough to cause me some disorientation.
Gun out in front of me, I moved quietly through the house. Gabriel and Lucas were also searching. I entered an upstairs room. The smell was overwhelming. Pine-Sol hit me full in the face. I gagged and backed out of the room.
"Something upstairs," I said into the microphone. I didn't have a HEPA-Mask, but I did have access to a crappy little face mask. They had been positioned by the front door when you walked in. "Grab me a mask, they are by the door."
"On the way," Lucas was capable of moving very quickly, very quietly. I didn't understand how he did it. He weighed over three hundred pounds, yet moved like a ballet dancer.
His whispering footsteps came up the stairs and joined me. After handing me the mask, he trained a flashlight into the room. It fell on the mutilated remains of something.
"Think we found the wife," Lucas said.
Sensing nothing moving, I flipped on the lights. The body lay on the bed. The skin was tacked to the walls. There was a bow and arrow drawn on the wall in blood.
There was a second body in the room, slumped in the corner. Blood had ran down from the hairline and onto the face. The eyes stared at me.
"Fruck!" I yelled and slammed my fist into the wall with enough force to break a hole in it.
I was staring at Sheriff Rybolt. Gabriel came up next to me. His eyes searched the room and found the sheriff. He exhaled loudly.
Gabriel turned and pulled out his phone. I heard him talking to Xavier. I walked into the room. Lucas following me.
I stopped and stared at the bow and arrow. Something in my head clicked. I looked at Lucas.
"His son killed himself after slitting the throat of a moose. The bow has always been the sign of the hunter," I said.
"So?"
"So, that's what this is about. The son was the great hunter, but after he killed himself Dr. Ericson kept the symbol for himself. He's fulfilling his son's mission."
"That's bizarre," Lucas said.
"You said yourself that parents will do almost anything for their children," I reminded him.
"I remember, I wish I didn't," Lucas pulled me from the room. "Find his office, go through it, and see what's in it."
"On it," I went back downstairs.
Half way down there was a squeaky board. I briefly wondered how Lucas had missed it. I began to search the rooms on floor level. I moved through each slowly and methodically. Finally, I found the door set into the back of the stairs. I expected it to open onto a basement staircase. Instead, I found it locked.
I kicked it and it didn't budge. I tried to pick it and found that I didn't have the skill. I sighed and shouted for Lucas.
Even walking over my head, he didn't make much noise. I waited for him to hit the squeaky step but he was beside me in just a moment. I looked at him like he was made of magic.
"Someday, I'll teach you about stealth," Lucas said before ramming the door with his shoulder.
It gave under his weight, splintering the frame and taking the hinges out of the wall. Lucas' secret to breaking down doors, if they opened inwards, he always hit the hinges. For a moment, it seemed suspended in time, then it danced and spun before crashing to the floor. He flipped the light switch.
The room was filled with bookcases, a large desk, an old style office chair, several lamps, and a painting. The painting was gruesome, dead figures danced under the moon. I had never seen it before and didn't see a name on the canvas. I moved to the desk.
Lucas was searching through the bookshelves already. He took out a book, thumbed through it and put it back. He repeated the gesture several times as I opened drawers.
The middle one was locked. I jerked on it hard and got nothing. Lucas frowned at me.
"What?" I gave him a look and took a knife off the table. It had good weight, feeling almost perfectly balanced. I slid it between the drawer and the desk until it hit the latch. For a second, it did nothing, then the lock clicked and the drawer opened. I set the knife back down and took a step back.
The knife was my knife. It had been cleaned, but it was definitely my boot knife. I looked at Lucas. He walked over.
"You'll get it back, eventually," he said, taking a bag out of his back pocket and putting the knife into it.
There was a box inside the drawer. Lucas handed me a pair of gloves. I took them and slipped them on. I'd screwed up grabbing the knife to open the drawer, but I wasn't a crime scene tech, so I'd get yelled at and then the breach of protocol would be forgotten.
Noises came from the front of the house. I was guessing the cavalry had arrived. Ignoring them, I took the box out and opened it.
There was a large photo album, a journal, and a single sheet of paper. I handed the journal to Lucas and took the photo album.
Skin, perfect patches of it, cut with extreme precision were carefully put into the photo holder spots. There was a slip of paper with neatly printed words containing names under them. Amazed, I flipped through the pages. The last spot was wet with something that I imagined came from the human body when you removed skin. The writing was slightly smeared on the slip of paper, but still legible: Hilary Ericson.
"Holy hell," Lucas said. He had moved and was looking inside a hope chest. I walked over to join him. Strips and swatches and patches of skin filled it almost to the top. It didn't smell. Something had stopped it from decomposing.
"Tanning?" I asked.
"Most likely," Lucas gave a loud whistle. Several people in jumpsuits came into the room. They looked into the trunk. A few gasped. A few others turned from the scene. It was gruesome to see the skins stacked together like they were.
I went back to the desk. The piece of paper was still sitting on top. I bent over, making sure not to touch it and read the words aloud.
"The great warriors left this earth for a more divine realm. They frolicked and danced and feasted all the daylong in their kingdoms in the Elysium Fields." I finished and read them to myself again and again. They seemed foreign to me and yet, not so foreign.
"He and his son were both soldiers, right?" Lucas asked, jarring me from my thoughts.
"Yes, and good soldiers go to the Elysium Fields in Greek Mythology," I told him.
"So you were right and wrong at the same time. How do you do that?" He asked.
"How do you manage to walk around like you weigh no more than a mouse?" I quipped.
"He's going to kill himself," Lucas said.
"In the spot where they found his son," I added.