The nameless dead

Two

Peter Sebastian, Director of the FBI’s violent crime unit, was not a happy man. In the last week his hitherto stellar career (apart from the jolt at Washington National Cathedral) was beginning to turn to excrement.

First, there had been the murder in Manhattan: civil rights lawyer Laurie Simpson found decapitated in her apartment, her innards piled on a dresser above which a large red swastika had been sprayed. Her head had been carefully positioned upside down in the toilet bowl. Examination of the wounds suggested that a large, but by no means unusual, knife, probably manufactured for the hunting market, had been used, while the paint was a very common brand. The CSIs had discovered minimal signs of a forced entry-the killer had picked two complex but fairly standard locks, but there were no foot-or fingerprints and no significant fibers or other traces. NYPD detectives were following up on Ms. Simpson’s professional activities-the legal practice in Harlem had been vandalized by far-right extremists more than once, and she had written some strongly worded antifascist pamphlets when she was younger. The fact that her dead black lover’s face had been at the center of the swastika seemed to point indisputably to racist motivations.

Now Sebastian was standing outside a lakeside house in Michigan, listening to the harsh cries of birds that he could neither see nor identify and looking at the darkening surface of water that would take a man’s life in minutes. He shivered in the late afternoon gloom, hoping against his professional experience that the dead man was not the second in a series. He had heard enough on the phone from the local sheriff to suggest that the same killer could be responsible, but he wasn’t going to draw any conclusions till he had scoped the scene. The CSIs had finished earlier, but the supervisor was on hand to give a report. On Sebastian’s specific request, the body had been left in situ. December on the shores of Lake Huron meant that decay would be slow and the gas boiler in the house had not been turned on.

‘Sir?’ Sebastian’s assistant, Special Agent Arthur Bimsdale, a twenty-eight-year-old so fresh-faced he could still have been at junior high school, handed him pairs of overshoes and latex gloves, as well as a white protective suit.

When they were ready, the detective in charge, a heavily-built man by the name of John Jamieson who smelled strongly of sweat, took them inside the house. It was in a state of disrepair, the paint flaking and the wood distressed.

‘No sign of forced entry,’ the big man said, looking round. ‘There were no tire tracks in the driveway apart from the vic’s truck. And no recent footprints around the house except the vic’s.’

‘So we have a ghost.’ The smile on Arthur Bimsdale’s lips froze when he caught Sebastian’s eye. ‘Sorry, sir.’

In the living room they were joined by the senior CSI, a blonde woman with a heavily lined face.

‘Traces?’ Sebastian asked.

‘We’re analyzing,’ she replied. ‘Nothing that stands up and begs for attention.’

‘Prints?’

‘Comparisons are underway. Most of what we’ve got so far belongs to the victim.’ She shook her head. ‘A killer this organized would have been wearing gloves.’

Sebastian turned to the detective and noticed that a single hair nearly an inch long curled from the policeman’s left ear. ‘Witnesses?’

Jamieson shook his head. ‘As you can see, there aren’t many houses in the vicinity, and it’s quiet up here during the week.’

Peter Sebastian looked around the room. It was furnished by what must have been original pieces dating from the fifties, many of them in poor condition. The floral wallpaper was faded and the curtains frayed. There were piles of CDs, books and newspapers around the floor. The juxtaposition of old and recent objects struck the FBI man.

‘The place used to belong to the vic’s aunt,’ Detective Jamieson continued. ‘She died early last year and he took it over. Guess he didn’t have time to do any refurbishments.’

‘Has the dead man been positively identified?’

‘Well, not officially. Seeing as the body’s still here and…how we found it. But the sheriff knew him.’ The detective bit his lip. ‘So did I. Met him once at a charity disco.’

Sebastian’s nostrils flared. ‘That’s another reason to show respect by using the man’s name.’

Points of red appeared on Jamieson’s cheeks. ‘You’re right.’ He looked down. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the body is definitely Sterling Anson’s.’

The FBI man nodded. He had never liked the way law enforcement professionals deprived the dead of their personal identity by calling them ‘vics.’ It was a professional issue. If you kept in mind that people were unique individuals, you were more likely to nail their killers.

‘I understand Mr. Anson was quite a celebrity in these parts,’ he said, softening his tone.

The detective nodded. ‘Everyone in Detroit knew of him. Most people thought he was a great guy, but he did have his enemies. Someone tried to burn down the radio station when his show was on air a couple of years ago.’

‘Those fucking Nazis,’ the CSI put in. ‘After that, they called in the next time he was broadcasting live and said they’d get him sooner or later.’

Sebastian turned to Jamieson, who nodded. ‘It was a public phone and no witnesses came forward. We never caught them.’

‘And you don’t have any idea of their identities?’

‘No, we don’t.’

‘After all this time.’ The senior FBI man let several seconds pass to register his disapproval.

‘The thing is,’ Jamieson said, ‘he used to talk about the threats he got on air rather than reporting them to us. If he was telling the truth, there must have been dozens of them.’

‘All right, Detective, let’s see what you’ve got.’

They moved into the hall and toward the stairs. According to the briefing Bimsdale had prepared on the Bureau plane from Washington, Sterling Anson was a Howard Stern look-alike whose nightly talk show knocked lumps off anyone who demonstrated racist tendencies. He never hesitated to name names, and several companies had fired staff displaying prejudice. Businesses run by bigots had been harassed out of business. Anson was an obvious target for retaliation, even though he had never suffered personal physical attack. Until now.

‘I didn’t see any alarm system,’ Bimsdale said.

Jamieson shook his head as he led them to the second floor. ‘Seems he was too fearless for his own good.’

On the landing, where the metallic smell of blood was pervasive, the CSI stepped forward. ‘This isn’t pretty,’ she said, her hand on the first door to the right.

Peter Sebastian leaned forward and took in the badge on her chest. ‘Don’t worry, Martine. We’ve seen it all before.’ When the CSI looked at Bimsdale, who swallowed nervously, he amended his statement. ‘Well, I have,’ said his boss.

He followed the woman inside and immediately regretted his bravado. It was true that he had witnessed the worst that the country’s murderers could provide, but the scene by Lake Huron was a real eye-opener.

‘We think the killer may have been let into the house by the vic…by Mr. Anson,’ the detective said.

Peter Sebastian’s eyes were fixed on what remained of the talk show host. ‘Why’s that?’ Bending down, he lifted the cover of a plastic container on the rug below the suspended body. Two blood-drenched eyes stared up at him.

‘Like I said,’ Jamieson said, after a long pause, ‘there’s no sign of a break-in.’

‘But that’s not all,’ the CSI said, pointing to the curved piece of rolled steel from which Anson was hanging head-down. ‘There are traces of blood on the hook in the beam.’

Sebastian looked around at the congealing slick on the floor. There were spatters on the walls, too. ‘So his throat was cut before the hook was attached up there? You think that suggests the killer didn’t gain prior entry?’

The detective nodded. ‘The medical examiner said that Anson took a blow to the back of the head that would have knocked him out.’

The senior FBI man looked up at him. ‘Is it likely that a man with a history of threats would have opened the door to a stranger?’

Jamieson frowned. ‘If it was a stranger. We’re checking with his family and friends. His wife, who’s Chinese-American, said he was careful at their place in the city-they’ve got two small kids-but up here he was less concerned.’

Sebastian and Arthur Bimsdale got as close as they could to the hanging man, the younger agent visibly shaken. Sterling Anson, a Caucasian in his early forties, was naked, the ends of his long brown hair dipped in his blood. The wound across his throat was wide and clean-edged. Apart from the removal of his eyes, his chest and abdomen had been mutilated. He had been cut from groin to sternum, with another incision running across the belly button.

‘It’s inverted,’ Sebastian murmured, glancing at his assistant. ‘If he was standing the right way up, the cross would be upside down.’

Jamieson was immediately alert. ‘You seen something like this before?’

‘Not exactly,’ the FBI man replied, turning to the CSI. ‘Has anything been drawn or written in the house? Anything in red?’

The blonde woman shook her head. ‘What were you expecting?’

Sebastian didn’t answer. The swastika in Laurie Simpson’s apartment had been kept from the media to avoid copycat actions. ‘Have you been through all the rooms?’

The woman looked at Jamieson and raised an eyebrow. ‘We know our jobs, sir,’ she said, her chin jutting.

‘Not suggesting you don’t. But this killer strikes me as highly devious.’ He turned to Bimsdale. ‘Arthur, you go with Martine here and check downstairs. Lift all the rugs, take all the pictures down.’

‘No stone unturned,’ said the young agent earnestly.

Peter Sebastian watched them go and then looked at the detective. ‘We’re going to do this floor together. Have you got a camera?’

Jamieson nodded, his expression stony. ‘Why would the murderer hide something when he left his victim in full view?’

The FBI man gave a humorless smile. ‘Two pretty dubious assumptions behind that question. First, just because Sterling Anson was made a display of doesn’t mean the killer wasn’t subtle in other ways. Second, you just classified that individual as male. Why?’

The detective rubbed the back of his head. ‘It would have taken some strength to haul him up there,’ he said, looking at the beam. ‘Even though he wasn’t the biggest of men.’

‘And there are no women strong enough to do so?’

Jamieson raised his shoulders, but he looked unconvinced.

Peter Sebastian ran his eye around the room again. As with the first floor, the furniture was old and the decor in tatters. There were several reproductions of artworks on the wall, but his attention was immediately attracted by an amateurish painting of Martin Luther King above a bookcase. He stepped over, his heart pounding, as he realized that the other frames were all slightly awry, while the doctor was perfectly aligned.

‘Take some shots,’ he said to Jamieson, and when several angles had been photographed, he reached out and took the painting down. The wall behind was unmarked.

‘Damn,’ he said, under his breath. Then he turned the frame around and got an immediate adrenaline rush. Two inches high and painted twice in red was the letter S-jagged and fraught with the weight of history.

‘Shit,’ said the detective, ‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘If you’re thinking that those letters form the initials of the SS, Adolf Hitler’s elite guard, then the answer is affirmative.’

‘So some neo-Nazi bastards did get him.’

Sebastian didn’t reply. He wasn’t worried about neo-Nazis; his concern was over the son of a genuine Nazi- Heinz Rothmann, responsible for the failed plot to kill the President in the autumn. He stepped out of the room after giving Sterling Anson’s body a last look. It wasn’t just that Rothmann junior saw himself as a real Nazi. He had also resurrected the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant, a vicious cult that included among its rituals human sacrifice-with the victim suspended from an inverted cross, throat cut and eyes put out. The problem was, Heinz Rothmann had disappeared more successfully than a firefly at midday.

‘Where are you going?’ John Jamieson asked.

‘The bathroom.’

The detective joined him in the run-down room. He knew the CSIs would have found anything obvious. The FBI man was on his knees, his head close to the floorboards. Then he groaned and reached for a pink, knitted toilet-roll holder on top of the cistern.

‘Camera,’ he ordered.

Jamieson fired off some shots, then watched in horror as the cover was removed. A human tongue, Sterling Anson’s chief weapon against fascists and racists, had been placed inside the cardboard tube.

The sole Master of the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant looked up from the couch, displacing the surgical gown that had been placed around his shoulders. Southern sunlight was streaming in through the windows in the roof and dust motes swarmed in the beams. He remembered the Latin poet his father had made him read as a teenager, the only non-German writer the old man had ever cared for. For him, Lucretius was a master, who had raised science above the arts. He alone had shown the glory of creation and the futility of fearing death. Atoms were the basis of all things, as Democritus had proved, and all things could be changed by adjusting molecular structure. Even dust consisted of atoms. And dust, as everyone knew no matter what they purported to believe, was what human beings ultimately came to-unless you consigned yourself to the Lord Beneath the Earth.

‘I’m ready, Mr… Master.’

Heinz Rothmann, formerly known as Jack Thomson, and now the possessor of seven alternative identities, glanced at the gaunt man in faded surgical scrubs. ‘Is that you, Doctor? The last person who kept me waiting was sent to clean the snake cages.’ He gave an empty smile. ‘While the creatures were still in them.’

The doctor wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Are you sure you won’t have an anesthetic, Master?’ He avoided looking directly at the man with the striking aquiline nose. The Master must have once been handsome, but the way his hair had been cut-short at the sides and back like the Fuhrer’s-gave him a bestial look.

‘I am sure. Proceed.’

As the scalpel cut into his face, Rothmann felt the blood course hot over his cheek, but there was no pain. The conditioning program that his sister had developed just before death had been completed and was a success. Those who believed wholeheartedly that the world could be cleansed by the genius of the Fuhrer felt no physical pain-only regret that the great man had not been able to complete his work.

‘It’s over,’ the doctor said, stepping back. He picked up a mirror and held it in front of the Master, swabbing the blood from the wound.

‘Very good,’ Rothmann said, his eyes narrowed. ‘But my father had dueling scars on both cheeks. Proceed.’

As the second cut was made, he thought about Matthew Wells. Where was he?

He needed to find him. After his sister’s death, Rothmann had thought only of avenging her, but more recently he had realized that he needed him alive. The problem was, nobody knew where he was.

The Master nodded as the doctor showed him the second wound. Wells wasn’t the only problem he had. The murders in New York and Michigan concerned him. There was something going that was unacceptable.

It was time the Antichurch took control.