One Hell of a Night

           "Watch the hallway."
         

 
            Detective Alvin Ruthledge looked up at the uniformed officer standing in a dining room. The blue-clothed man was pointing at the floor a few feet away. "There’s a hell of a mess in here."
            Ruthledge looked down the hall and lifted a greying brow. "No shit." It wasn’t a lie; blood stained the flower-printed wallpaper in gouts and splashes, and pooled on the beige carpet in wide, drying spots. It even marred the polished wood plaque cheerfully proclaiming this the ‘Dallas Family Cabin.’ "What’d he use?"
            "An axe, I think," the uniform said, leaning against the doorjamb as he jotted in his notebook. "We’re looking for it, but we didn’t want to fuck anything up until you got here."
            The homicide detective nodded, mentally cataloguing splatter marks as he toed carefully down the hallway. It wasn’t unusual in Willington, West Virginia to get a call involving screams, a suspected domestic dispute. It was, however, unusual to have the screams stop so abruptly, only to be puncuated with a gunshot. No wonder the neighbors had refused to come out of the house until the third unit arrived.
            Ruthledge stopped in the doorway to the living room and blanched. "Holy Mother of…" It was a ghoulish scene in there, with blood and bits of flesh spread across the entire room. A ruin of what he could only guess was the wife lay crumpled in front of the small television, one hand outstretched towards the dark green couch. She’d been hacked something nasty, leaving only a few untouched bits of corpse to be noted. With professional curiosity, he walked into the room, avoiding an ear, a foot and a few bits of unidentifiable flesh with his polished brown loafers. Crouching by the body, he glanced it over, noting the horrible wounds in the woman’s back, baring bone and organ tissue. Her legs had been hacked off above the knee, and he puzzled momentarily, imagining the strength needed to work through the muscle and bone in the thighs. There were defensive wounds in her left palm, and her right arm was clearly broken in the humerus. Ruthledge grunted as he rose, looking at the grey-faced officer standing in the doorway.
            "We found the husband," he said, swallowing hard. Rookies had to face some twisted things in their first few weeks, but not even twenty years on the force hardened someone to carnage like this. Ruthledge nodded, stepping over the body and picking his way back to the hallway, checking to make sure he hadn’t tracked through any blood.
            "He dead?"
            The uniform nodded, staring resolutely at the wall. "Yeah. Through the head."
            Ruthledge nodded again and headed for the staircase, listening to the eerie silence of the house. Homes violated like this always seemed to be in shock, keeping quiet until something would unleash the hellish screams which had soaked into their walls. Ruthledge smirked, amused at his own thoughts, and headed down the hallway to the open door. He stumbled halfway there, nearly falling with a loud curse, and looked down at the small, worn teddy bear he’d tripped on. A line appeared between his brows as he toed it.
            "There were kids here?"
            The uniform standing ‘guard’ outside the other scene nodded, checking his notebook. "They had two kids apparently. The oldest is about nineteen and he’s in the Army, overseas I think."
            "And the other one?"
            The uniform shrugged. "A little girl, the neighbors said. Weird one that hides a lot. A couple of the guys are checking the yard for her. No one said they saw her. She’s not in her room." Ruthledge shook his head, marvelling at the capacity for human cruelty even as he walked into the master bedroom. Oh yeah… No question here. The blood, slivers of bone and brain matter had left quite the mess on the double bed and up the wall. The corpse lay half-off the bed, the .45 magnum still held loosely in his right hand. His clothes were caked with blood, presumably from his wife, and had left stains on the bedspread. Ruthledge eyed the corpse, busily donningrubber gloves.
            "See the bullet anywhere?"
            The uniform nodded, pointing at the wall. "It went right through his skull. I think it’s stuck in the wall. The tech should be able to dig it out without hurting it much."
            "Not like there’s anyone to put away for this," Ruthledge muttered, walking fully into the room. He’d seen a lot of murder scenes in his twenty-one years on the police force, and even more in his five years in the homicide department. There had been a lot of bloody bedrooms, and there was always something…off about them. This one was no different, and he went straight to the closet, wondering silently why the door had been left open. The rest of the house was in pin-neat order, the kind of order that stemmed from abusive marriages in his experience. This was out of place, although the idea that the man had to snag his gun from the closet did come to mind. Ruthledge paused, glancing at the officer still standing in the doorway. "How long till the tech arrives?"
            The uniform glanced at his watch, shrugged. "Hell if I know. He was at a shooting downtown when we called."
            "Damn," Ruthledge muttered, eyeing the closet. He knew better than to break any chain of evidence, even when the scene was as clear cut as this. Shrugging, he turned back to the corpse and looked for a long moment. There was a pause, and he walked forward, his eyes narrowing. A glint of gold on the man’s chest had caught his eye, and he was mildly surprised to see a woman’s necklace around the thick neck. It was distinctive: a light chain with filigree leaves, and tight on the man’s neck. "Why were you wearing this?" He glanced around, making sure he wouldn’t mar anything, then put a hand on the bed, leaning close to peer at it. The late wife’s? An heirloom? Ruthledge frowned, wishing silently for the tech to grow wings. He hated waiting.
 

            "Okay, was that the last shot?" Mark Cuttleberg lowered the Polaroid, deftly catching the developing picture between his fingers.
            "Yeah, if you got the closet doors." Ruthledge tossed his cigarette butt out the open window, his fourth in three hours, and motioned to the closet.
            "I did." The tech didn’t bother hiding his annoyed tone as he gathered up his kit. Detectives always seemed to think a tech would never get exactly what they needed, and Mark was one of the best.
            "Good." Ruthledge headed directly for the closet and pulled the doors open, scanning for a box out of place, clothing mussed… Something, anything that might show where the gun had been hidden, a reason for the open doors. There really wasn’t anything. The shoes were neatly lined up on two shoe racks, and the closet was big enough for his and her clothing, separated by a hanging garment bag. He glanced it over, then tiptoed to glance at the shelf. He paused, then dropped his gaze back to the garment bag. "What the…" Jewelry? Who kept jewelry in a garment bag? Ruthledge frowned, then glanced over his shoulder. "Hey, Mark? Can you get a picture of this?"
            The tech grumbled, tossing his own cigarette out the window, and picked up the Polaroid camera, already setting his exposure and bracketing his frames. "Of that bag?"
            "Yeah."
            Mark shrugged, then blinked. "Why is there jewelry in there?"
            "Hell if I know. Just take the picture so I can check it out."
            The tech nodded, snapping off several quick shots and catching them with ease. He tucked them into a manila folder while Ruthledge unzipped the bag and began rummaging. It was all women’s jewelry, some of it worn, cheap plastic, some of it looking really expensive. He held up a garnet necklace, a beautiful thing designed to look like a vine of roses, and looked over it at Mark. "Is that box on the dresser the wife’s jewelry box?"
            Mark took a quick photo of it, (CYA was the law in the Willington police force,) and opened it, glancing through a couple of drawers. "Looks like. One of the earrings we found in the hallway matches this bracelet, I think."            Ruthledge nodded, frowning as he put the garnet necklace back. A black pleather makeup bag was in there, buried under a small heap of necklaces. He dug it out and unzipped it, his eyebrows immediately lifting. "Mark."
            "Yeah?"
            "You remember that body we found about a month ago? The one on Elm Lane?"
            "Uh-huh," the tech said, walking over to peer at the bag’s contents. "The Hacker’s work, wasn’t it?"
            "…yeah…" Ruthledge fanned out several driver’s licenses, pointing to one. "Didn’t Edgerton ID her as Janice Yarrow?"
            Mark leaned closer and blinked, his eyes widening. "Holy shit. You mean this guy might be the Hacker?"
            Ruthledge flipped through a couple more ID cards and nodded. "That’s exactly what I’m thinking. The third serial killer in Willington’s history, and he caps himself after hacking up his wife. You know if they found the axe yet?"
            "Yeah," Mark said, taking a quick picture of Ruthledge’s hand with the fan of cards. "It was in the bathtub down the hall. He was keeping the gun there. There were bullets all over the floor. I guess he was having trouble loading it."
            Ruthledge sat back on his heels, looking at the twelve or so cards in the bag. "They didn’t have any jewelry on them. This fucker took it with him."
            Mark swallowed hastily and went for the door. "I better call the station. We’ll need more people out here."
            "Call Edgerton; he caught the first couple of them," Ruthledge said, his eyes never leaving the cards. "He’ll be thrilled to close those cases."
            The tech nodded, the gesture unseen by the detective, and scurried down the stairs. One of the uniforms was systematically combing the living room, now that everything had been labeled and photographed, jotting things down on a broad yellow pad of forms.
            "Where’s the phone?" Mark hopped from one foot to the other, fairly dancing with impatience. "This guy might have been the Hacker."
            The uniform jerked, his eyes rounding, and silently pointed to the kitchen. Mark nodded and dashed for it. He did nearly drop the receiver, the dial tone buzzing loudly, when he heard the shout from the living room.
          
            "Christ! The little kid’s behind the fucking couch!"