Entropy (8 page)

Others read the case file, trying to understand why the police had failed to apprehend a suspect.
Mull instructed members of the department to maintain a watch on the local weather forecasts, as well as setting up patrols around large areas of water that were publicly accessible within the township limits. It was expected that the perpetrator would dump his next victim in water, and may have been following the patterns of recent weather forecasts. But no one actually knew what would come from one day to the next. I waited feebly for the next body of water to crash up against the increasing coarseness of my skin.

I watched the streetlights on the opposite side of the river reflect off the water and float like diseased fireflies, drowning in the night. I sat on the edge of the bank, which was sodden with water.

The crushed guardrail on
that
curve had been temporarily patched. Remnants of police caution tape were still wrapped around the base of a tree as a somber reminder of Hannah's accident. I had once thought this path of decay had started on the concrete steps of a small pool, partially filled with stagnant water. But I now realized that it actually happened a few months later, when the emergency responder pressed his lips over my wife's and broke two of her ribs trying to resuscitate her on the banks of the river.

I wondered how long she had been seeing him, how often in seclusion they had shared each other's flesh and previously unrealized fantasies. Or perhaps they had never spoke about them, determined not to breach that level of emotional intimacy.

Blood was beginning to seep through the small cotton gauze on the inside of my elbow which the woman at the hospital had taped there less than an hour ago. Some mistakes punish you forever, regardless of the act of contrition, or moreover, the act of forgiveness. In sleeping with him, that swelled, dead man, Hannah had acquired a communicable disease; a virus she which she subsequently carried and passed on to me.

In a moment of unforgivable fragility, I had broken and forgiven her. We then made love as we never had or ever will again. I had grown hard inside her, mere days after she had being discharged from the hospital after the accident. Her plaintive voice had continually wondered aloud if I was going to leave her. When she had shut the bedroom door behind me, I paused and yielded quietly to her advances and apology, unable to ask any of the things that I should have.

Was I disposable? Or was I a representation of permanence, someone she needed when she slept, when she breathed, as if no one else's body could fit so tightly inside hers? Would she still touch me in the desolate places of my body, my arid plains of uncertainty and fear, where fallen tears of self-pity and regret became grains of sand, burning the boundaries of my existence? When she touched me would she feel me or someone else?

I once felt safe, needed. I wanted so much to trust, to honor the compassion that existed in the curves of her hips, the tenderness of her fingertips across my thighs, and the sensual violence in the crashing of her buttocks against the strength of my pelvis. Her moans made the muscles in my aching body crave her, as her hair collapsed across her collarbone, her body leaning, yearning, her nipples warm against the outer edges of my lips.

I wanted her to tell me the truth and to caress me. But her touch frightened as well as aroused me. I was like a child, both curious and afraid of the encompassing dark, the terrible secrets that it held within its absence of color, within its bones and skin; secrets I now feared to hear her to even whisper as I withdrew and came on the inside of her thighs. In the young twilight, I held Hannah. I kissed the small of her back and she turned reaching towards me, the light splashing across the plane of her stomach, and a smile forming in the corners of her beautiful mouth.

However, all I could think was that I should have never saved her, merely held her close as we drowned. I had a difficult time in dealing with the chilling truth inherent in that. Our marriage, our closeness had become poisoned.

Sitting on the river bank, in my mind I could still see the depressions in the eroded soil from when I carried her in my arms and laid her unresponsive body across the scattered grass. I buried my hands deep into the muddy bank and removed them, spreading the earth across my face and neck, trying to camouflage the man underneath. I began sobbing, held hostage by those seven or eight seconds where I wished she would have died. The burgeoning reddish sunrise bled into the water from the scaffolding and buildings, like oils falling from the edges of a mounted canvas.

Water can grant you knowledge if you let it.

No one ever told you what to do with it though.

It was calm, but all the things that were placid and still were overshadowed by the inhumanity and senselessness in everything around me: the dead children, the innocuousness of the seemingly ashen landscapes and the marriage I had once valued. I looked down and tugged carelessly at the gold band around my finger.

While other towns were reacting to the decline in the rural economy and traditional industry, my town was suffering the consequences of not being able to adapt: inevitable decay and entropy. Construction lights left on at the abandoned scrap metal development cast shadows around me and across portions of the river. A small launch passed slowly on the water, a few thin fishing lines hanging over the side. At the moment it passed, the small floodlight mounted on its front highlighted the silhouette of a lone figure standing at the far edge of the bridge, their arms folded over the railing, obscured by the shadows. The body paused slightly, hunched over as the launch passed, then rose and straightened their posture. Whoever it was seemed oblivious to my presence and my purpose in coming to the river.

I stood on the dampness of the bank and unbuttoned my shirt, moving into the water ankle high. I welcomed the momentary cold sting. I closed my eyes and pushed through the bleak water, wishing the hopelessness and the rot would wash across my body and run away in the currents. The car Hannah had been traveling in with that man was still lifeless at the bottom of the river. The department had considered it too dangerous to remove it at the time, because of the currents and a lack of manpower. It had been a little over a month. Several other accidents had happened in the river over the past few years or so. Undoubtedly, other objects rested beneath the surface.

It was the second time that I had been here since it had happened. With my guidance, an insurance adjuster used an underwater camera after the accident, to capture some of the scene. Some of the photographs were in the preliminary report. It reminded me of a graveyard of ships, pieces of metal and glass rotting at the bottom of the sea. I felt like one of those lost, forgotten structures and was now going to be at one with them, trapped helplessly, fathoms beneath the water where I couldn't breathe, and where I would deteriorate, rotting in the drink.

I was suddenly distracted from my musings and self-loathing by an object falling from the darkened bridge and plummeting into the river, near one of the support beams that anchored the bridge to the riverbed. Was it the person I had seen on the bridge minutes ago? I held my breath and swam across the river. After nearly 200 feet, I came across a dark, mesh-covered object floating on the water. Pulling one corner towards me, I revealed the mangled body of what appeared to be a boy. His features had been savagely slashed. There were layers of skin absent from his cheeks and jaw line. Part of the right side of his skull was crushed. His blood covered my hands and wrists.

I replaced the mesh covering over his body. I spun around rapidly in all directions, searching around me. I could see no one within the vicinity of the bridge. Holding on to his torso, I started swimming back towards the bank. Tightly, I held onto his tiny body, as if I were his father, trying to protect him from danger.

My thoughts were shattered by the crack of a gunshot and a bullet crashing into the water beside me. Looking over my shoulder, framed by the breaking dawn, was the silhouette of a man, standing at the opposite end of the bridge. Overcome with a new sense of self-preservation, I let go of the boy, closed my eyes and dived under the surface, as deep as I could go without equipment. As I reached shallower water and resurfaced, a second shot echoed, the slug missing me and pounding into the dense mud and sand. I stumbled onto the river bank and rolled behind a tree.

Water could punish you if you let it.

“Someone had gotten too close.”

That's what Mull had said. The possible murderer never planned on anyone seeing him dispose of a body, especially so early, at nearly 5:00 a.m.

“You didn't see anything?” Mull asked.

“No. I heard the body drop, but I didn't know what it actually was until I got closer,” I said. “From where I was I couldn't see anyone.”

“What the hell were you doing here at that hour?”

“I couldn't sleep. I got up to check some of my equipment and then went out to the hospital,” I said. Mull softened when he noticed that I had lowered my eyes to the ground. It must have occurred to him that this was where the accident involving Hannah had happened. But with Mull, I could never be entirely sure.

“Where was the body?”

“Near the base of one of the bridge supports about 200 feet out,” I said.

There was no handgun or any other evidence discovered near or around the bridge. I was sitting in the passenger seat of my car with a large blanket draped over my shoulders. I rubbed my forearms and my hands, but I couldn't shatter the numbness that overtook my fingertips. I was probably in shock. Four wooden stakes had been used to mark out an area of about fifty feet along the shoreline. Police caution tape bordered the area as a member of the forensics team placed handfuls of mud and sand into a sieve.

“It's almost like an archaeological dig,” Mull explained. “They're sifting through the debris to find the bullet that missed you. It was fired from such a distance that its trajectory, speed and impact would have been affected by the wind and the density of the sediment. That's why the area has widened a bit,” he said.

“Why would he take such a risk in dumping the body here? Usually, despite the hour, there is some level of bridge traffic,” I said.

“Not this morning,” Mull replied.

“Why?” I asked.

“The bridge was closed from 10 p.m. last night until 9 a.m., because of a burst water main on the far side, according to the permit. The road's barricaded about a mile in. But that would have only heightened the challenge of dumping the body here because if he approached in a vehicle, he could have easily been seen,” Mull hypothesized. “Did you see a car, van or a truck, anything at all?”

“No. I ducked under the water when I heard the first gunshot. With the bridge closed, wouldn't that mean that he would have to have carried the victim on foot?”

“It's possible. The victim weighed less than fifty pounds. But what he did to the boy would have required privacy. There's no way he would risk doing that where he could be seen, or leave trace elements behind. So far, he's been extremely careful. He had to have parked somewhere close by though.” Mull called over another detective and asked him to check to see if anyone was given a parking ticket in the vicinity, this morning or late last night. “We'll check for any abandoned vehicles as well; anyone missing plates or tags. These murders are getting worse.”

“You mean the violence?”

“Precisely,” he said.

“That first night you remarked it was just the beginning,” I said.

“I know. I was only trying to prepare everyone just in case. I've studied endless case histories of similar crimes, but I never expected anything like this. It's different from most cases involving children. They're not only sexually abused but the recent bodies we have discovered are also essentially mutilated. There's an incredible amount of rage involved in the action. But it does strike me as odd that he wanted to dump the body here,” he said.

“It matches his apparent water fixation,” I said. “Water destroys,” I added.

“But all those bodies appeared like he meant them to be found in this area. All the other victims were isolated or contained. If this last body had gone undiscovered it could have ended up down the river, hundreds of miles away. What do you think?”

“Well, it makes sense if you take into account the strength of the currents.”

“Unless he panicked,” Mull suggested.

“Yeah, but why this time? If he's taunting us he'd want the body to be found around here, right? He's apparently been very controlled up to this point, as you said, considering the brutality,” I stated.

“Maybe he was going somewhere else with the body, but the bridge closure altered his route somehow. I just hope we have something in our records to match the ballistics from that bullet to.”

“You think it might be linked to other unsolved cases?”

“We will look, but I don't think we'll find anything. Unfortunately, his modus operandi revolves around children. I don't think he'd waver from that,” Mull admitted. “Not after this many victims,” he added. “It's possible that it might narrow things down some. But the only thing he's obviously changed or accelerated in any way is the violence.”

“Which simply means our unidentified silhouette is getting angrier,” I added.

“He hates; plain and simple. There's no way around it. I'll look into the specifics of the bullet that was fired at you. Go home,” Mull suggested and as he started towards his car. He rubbed out a cigarette into the ground near where I had been sitting earlier that morning and had emotionally fractured. I could still see my hand-prints traced into the sand.

“It could be coming to an end soon, one way or the other.” Mull called out as he continued to walk away after grinding out his cigarette. The sound of the bullet thumping into the water echoed with each one of the detective's footsteps. I clamped my hands over my ears and tried desperately to remember the sound of anything; anything but those shots, even the pleasurable moans of Hannah and that man in a passionate embrace.