Hidden Order

CHAPTER 43

Garden Court in Boston’s North End was a one-way street that only allowed parking along one side. It being Boston, parking was always at a premium and there were no spaces available. The killer hadn’t expected there to be any. Pulling his van up as far as he could onto the sidewalk, he made sure there was enough space for traffic to get by and placed a placard on his dashboard that read EMERGENCY PLUMBING REPAIR IN PROGRESS. It wouldn’t stop a cop determined to give him a hard time, but he hoped not to be here long enough to draw much attention. In the meantime, the sign might prevent an angry local from calling the police because of how the van was parked.

He parked as close as he could to 5 Garden Court Street in order to use the van to obscure the entrance. Stepping into the cargo area, he opened the sliding door from inside and had unfettered access to the building’s front door.

With his pick gun, he made quick work of the cheap lock. In the blink of an eye, the door to the empty, unoccupied ground-floor apartment was open. Stepping inside, he did a quick check to make sure no squatters had taken up residence since his last reconnaissance. It was clear.

He used a collapsible aluminum loading ramp to wheel the gang box out of the van and into the squalid apartment. As soon as it was in, he quickly offloaded the rest of his equipment, including the van’s spare tire.

The window facing the street had been covered over with newspaper and he had no idea if the apartment even had functioning electricity. Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t risk any light from inside spilling out and drawing attention. Snapping a series of glow sticks, he tossed them into corners of the tiny apartment and then used a staple gun to hang the padded moving blanket over the inside of the window.

With that complete, he focused on getting the buckets cooking. Using his knife, he pried off their lids and with the cinder blocks and bricks, he created a series of raised platforms for each, in order to get them up off the cracked linoleum floor.

Next, he ignited the torches and placed them around the metal buckets in order to start heating their contents. The trick was getting them close enough to bring the ingredients to a boil without rupturing the buckets themselves and having them spill their contents all over the floor. It had taken him some practice in the days leading up to this moment to get it just right, but he had been able to perfect his technique and was confident that he could reproduce the results once he arrived in the apartment.

Very soon the air was filled with the liquid’s pungent odor. He knew that it wouldn’t take long to spread farther up into the three-story building. As he had at the Liberty Tree Building, he kept a silenced pistol at hand while he worked. If anyone came to investigate the source of the smell, they’d be immediately dispatched. The lion would not be deterred from his kill.

He used a professional-grade infrared thermometer to monitor the temperature in each of the buckets. As they started climbing closer to their boiling points, he assembled the rolling winch system that would allow him to move each of the buckets to where he needed them without risk of spilling any of the liquid on himself.

When the winch system was assembled, he rolled the spare tire into the bathroom, placed it in the tub, unscrewed the lid of a large jug, and poured the contents over it. He then placed the timing mechanism and rapidly made his way back to the living room and extinguished all the blowtorches.

Unlocking the lid of the gang box, he lifted it up and looked inside. The man inside had been stripped of all his clothing and his head had been shaved. His hands, feet, and neck were shackled to eyehooks welded to the bottom of the box. He had also been gagged. The gag was necessary not only for quietly transporting him, but to silence the screaming he was about to do.

The killer knew he was deviating from his instructions, but nevertheless he had chosen not to administer the paralytic this time. He wanted his victim to thrash and spasm. When they later examined the body, he wanted all involved to see the signs of the man’s struggle and to envision how painful his death must have been.

Making sure that the casters beneath the gang box were locked, so that it would stay in place and not begin moving across the floor, he used the rolling winch system to pick up the first boiling bucket and bring it to the box.

It took a moment to get it to the correct height, just above the rim of the box, but once he had it where he wanted it he hooked two claw hammers underneath and splashed the boiling liquid inside.

The naked man writhed and screamed in agony as the hot substance boiled off his flesh. Quickly, the killer fetched the next bucket and poured it in.

The gang box was made of thick metal panels, which helped retain the liquid’s intense heat, while its welded seams prevented even one drop from leaking.

It took him exactly eight and a half more minutes to empty the remaining buckets and then five more minutes to clean up and make sure he hadn’t left any clues. His hair and clothing reeked, as did the rest of the apartment, but it was nothing compared to what it was going to smell like soon enough.

Confident that the scene was exactly as he wanted it, he retreated outside, pulled the apartment door shut behind him, and climbed into the van. He looked at his watch and reached into his backpack for a small handheld scanner. Turning it on, he set it on the seat next to him and turned the key in the ignition. As he drove off the curb and headed away, he smiled. Sleepy Garden Court Street was about to get very, very active.