The Executioner

Ninety-Seven

A naked black man was sitting in a high-back metal chair. His skin was a dull shade of gray. His head was slightly tilted back. Protruding from his open mouth was a thin, clear plastic tube. But what was causing Captain Blake to shiver wasn’t the tube shoved deep down the man’s throat. It was the two hundred and fifty ten-milliliter syringes filled with blood that had been plunged all over the man’s body. From his eyes to his ears, head, torso, genitals, legs and feet.

Doctor Winston was standing to the right of the victim. He slowly approached both detectives and the RHD captain. Hunter had never seen him look so distressed. All four of them stood in silence. Captain Blake was the first to speak. Her usually calm and authoritative voice had a nervous quiver to it.

‘The killer made the victim into a blood-filled pincushion?’

‘In a way.’ A small pause. ‘Those syringes contain about fifty percent of all his blood.’

The captain’s questioning stare moved from the doctor to Hunter.

‘Without help, human beings won’t survive if they lose over forty percent of their blood,’ Hunter stated.

Garcia let out a constricted sigh.

‘Are you telling me that the killer literally sucked the life out of the victim?’ the captain asked.

‘Ten milliliters at a time,’ the doctor confirmed.

The scene was as abhorrent as it was hypnotic. Disgusting, but they couldn’t peel their eyes away from it.

Gingerly, they approached the victim.

The sight of the two blood-filled syringes plunged into the man’s open eyes were starting to churn Captain Blake’s stomach. She forced herself to look away.

‘The number?’ Hunter asked.

In silence, Doctor Winston directed their attention to the victim’s back. Centered between his shoulder blades and six inches long, the number five had been drawn in blood.

Hunter walked around to the front of the chair. ‘What do we know of the victim?’

‘His name was Darnell Douglas. Forty-one years old. Lived in West Hollywood with his wife of seven years.’

Hunter looked up.

‘She hasn’t been told yet,’ the doctor confirmed with a sad head shake. ‘He was a car salesman for Princeton Cars, also located in West Hollywood. You probably already heard how he disappeared yesterday after taking one of the vehicles from his shop out for a test drive.’

Hunter nodded.

‘My team is dusting the entire car as we speak. If the killer left anything behind, we’ll find it.’

‘How did the killer manage to extract so much blood?’ Garcia asked, cringing as he studied the syringes.

‘Very good question,’ the doctor agreed, ‘and the answer is – very slowly.’ He pointed to the internal midsection of the victim’s right arm. ‘As you all know, given its high-pressure blood flow, the arm’s basilic vein is the preferred vein for venipuncture – taking blood. If you move a little closer, you’ll notice that the basilic vein region in both arms have been pricked to exhaustion.’

Due to the victim’s skin color, hematomas were hard to spot, but Hunter had already noticed the exaggerated number of needle pricks on the midsection of the victim’s arms.

‘If you try to extract blood from someone’s leg or chest or anywhere but a venipuncture site using a syringe,’ the doctor continued, ‘unless you were lucky enough to have hit a vein, you’ll get little, if any blood at all.’

Hunter thought about this for a second. ‘So the killer extracted ten millileters of blood at a time from the victim’s arms and then…’ His words trailed off.

Doctor Winston nodded and pointed to the victim’s neck, where tens of closely set pinpricks were visible on both sides. ‘Not only the arms. He also used the neck veins. Every time he filled a syringe up, the killer needed a place to store it before moving to the next one.’ He looked at Barbara Blake, who was now staring at him – mouth half open, eyes wide. ‘So he didn’t use the victim’s body as a pincushion, Barbara. More of a storage unit.’

Oh God!

‘The killer could’ve dragged this out for hours,’ the doctor proceeded, ‘and judging by what we’ve seen from the previous victims, I’m certain he did.’

‘And he made him suffer,’ Hunter noted.

‘Immensely,’ the doctor agreed. ‘Every new syringe filled with blood was stabbed into the victim’s body as opposed to inserted.’ He pointed to each body part as he mentioned them. ‘Eardrums, testicles, nipples and eyes were most likely the first to be stabbed, as they’d be the ones to cause the greatest amount of pain. In the less fleshy body parts like the face, shins, knees and so on, the needles hit bone.’

‘The killer wouldn’t have gone for the eyes early.’ Hunter disagreed, having a closer look at the victim’s face.

Doctor Winston and Captain Blake frowned.

‘He would’ve wanted the victim to see the needles being plunged into him,’ Hunter explained.

‘Why?’ The captain this time.

‘Oh my God!’ Garcia whispered, realizing what Hunter meant. ‘The killer always goes after the victim’s fear.’ All eyes moved to him. ‘Darnell Douglas was scared of needles.’