Gallery of the Dead

Sixty-Six

After two more bathroom breaks and a total of almost seven hours behind the wheel, the man whom the FBI had initially called The Surgeon finally parked his car on his driveway. It had been a terribly long and awfully exhausting trip, but by all means worth every second, every drop of sweat, every bated breath. His latest piece of work had been exquisite. He wasn’t shy to admit it. If he could actually put a price on it, he would have to say that Timothy Davis had been his most valuable item yet — inspirational.

The man couldn’t help wondering how astounded the police, the FBI, even the coroner would be once the true extent of his ingenuity and intelligence was revealed through the autopsy examination. A catheter threaded directly through the inferior vena cava? Simply magnificent. Truly the work of a superior mind. No doubt that now they would have to at least recognize his genius, even if they didn’t understand it.

The man loved the little ‘wits’ game he’d been playing. He was proud of how perfectly puzzling, how deceiving, how ambiguous the clues he’d left at every scene were, and they had to be. In a case like this, he had no doubt that the FBI would’ve turned to their NCAVC’s Behavioral Analysis Unit — the topmost elite — the best of the best when it came to puzzle solving. But were they, really? Had they actually figured anything out yet? Would they ever understand the grandeur of his vision, or see the importance of his work?

Despite how much the man enjoyed the game he’d created, he would be lying if he didn’t admit that he was somewhat disappointed with the ‘best of the best’. So far it had pretty much been a one-sided affair. By now, he had expected to see something on the news, or to hear something on the radio, or to at least read something in a newspaper or on the internet, but after over two months, he hadn’t read a word or heard a sound about his work anywhere. Even after Los Angeles.

True, the man had never really cared much for cats. In his view they were animals without a purpose. All they ever did was eat and sleep. They were also disloyal, unashamedly befriending anyone who offered them food. But that wasn’t reason enough to kill them — the man acknowledged that. No, back in LA the man had placed the cat inside the freezer simply for the shock effect. He believed that that would have rubbed up the police and the FBI the wrong way. It was simply the logic of this crazy world — take the life of a human being and people might get angry — take the life of a domestic animal and people will get utterly outraged.

But that wasn’t all. Also solely for the shock effect, the man had practically painted the walls, the furniture, the entire room in blood — and still, even after Los Angeles, not a word about his work anywhere. But things were about to change. The man had made sure of it. Bringing the freelance reporter into the action had been another simple but cunning idea.

‘There’s no more denying it now,’ he said out loud while staring into his own eyes in the rearview mirror.

But his trip to Arizona had proven even more fruitful than he had expected, because by sheer luck, in a truck stop in the middle of shit-kickers-country USA, he had found her.

Just a girl.

Just a young girl.

But perfect in every sense.

From the moment he’d laid eyes on her photo, pinned to that dirty bulletin board inside that greasy diner, he knew his collection would be getting a new piece. Now that he was back home, all he had to do was research her, devise a brand-new plan and then set it in motion, and he just couldn’t wait to get started.