Part III - Puzzles
"Yes . . . Puzzles were Yolan's specialty. . .
I thought about heading home. Elsa and the kids would be home and preparing for their midday meal, but duty won out and I headed for my offices at the court instead.
Something told me I would need to report the events of the last few hours to the Marquis and besides, I wanted to see what Yolan thought about the body.
Once inside the gates to the court, I dismissed my guards, with the exception of Lord Bashar and headed for the Inquisitors’ Hall. Yolan was waiting in one of the holding cells. Alastar’s body was laid out on a table, his clothes removed. Yolan had done a thorough examination of the body looking for any wounds we may have missed. I had great respect for the old Inquisitor. he was one of a very few men that I trusted implicitly. I greatly valued his judgment, as my father had done before me.
As I entered Yolan waved me closer to the body. There was a broad smile on his face, which meant he had found something of interest, something new or something he rarely saw. . . "Great, not going home anytime soon."
“Karlton, come closer and see what I’ve found. This was no simple murder, the man was an artist. Look at where the body was cut. The killer avoided the major arteries and cut deep into the chest. I’m fairly certain this young man was alive as his heart was removed.” . . . Yolan could call me Karlton, he'd earned that right.
I trusted his opinion, but needed to flesh out the idea. “Why, wouldn’t it have been easier to just carve the dead body to get to the heart? Was it just to inflict more pain?”
The old man knew what I was asking. Men could be kept alive for days while tormenters were slowly flaying away their skin and removing body parts making them suffer long after they had given up the information they held. I thanked the gods that I and those under me did not use torture, but there were plenty of others in the city who did, not to mention the various cults and killers that inhabited dark corners. Yolan had gathered his experience over decades of service. He had seen a lot.
"I wasn't sure until I saw the cuts in the veins leading to the heart. Look here, see how cleanly they’re cut; the blood was still warm when they were made. The killer wanted a still living, still beating heart."
I tried to think through what use the killer could have for a living heart, and doubt started to enter my mind. If he was killed by a jealous rival, why go through all that effort? “What would they gain from a living heart?”
He leaned back a small frown on his face, even the old man was stumped, "No use I can see. Dead is dead."
He shrugged. "However . . . there are two other things I’ve found. The first are cuts in both of his arms. See? Look how the cuts are shallow. I think they slowly drained away his blood as they cut into his chest. They wanted more then just his heart, they also wanted his blood.” I screwed up my face, but before I could ask another question, he held up his hand and pointed toward Alastar’s ankles. “The marks on the wrists and ankles were probably not made by ropes, my best guess is very fine chains; you can still see the ligature impression of the links on his ankles.”
My hopes for a simple revenge killing melted like snow on hot iron. The removal of the heart I could see, but not the blood. I had thought that the body had been dumped in the northern slums due to the lack of blood at the site, but maybe I had been wrong. "Could he have been killed where we found the body? The limited amount of blood led me to believe he was killed elsewhere?”
“I can’t tell without seeing the site, but you won’t find much blood wherever he was killed. If you can provide me with an escort I’ll go to look at the site myself.”
The old man’s enthusiasm helped ease my concerns. I had a feeling I would need more help from him before this case was over. “Thank you, Lord Bashar will see to it, but before you go, have someone repair the body. The family is expecting it and I don’t want them know that the heart was removed. It is too late to have him raised anyway, no need to cause unnecessary grief."
There was nothing left to learn, so I took my leave. With a heap of unanswered questions and an incredibly improbable motive for murder, I went to report what little I had to the Marquis. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment