Strings of muscle clung to the raggedly broken bones jutting out of what remained of each arm. The victim’s legs were gnawed through at the thigh, the femur bones bitten clean through. Blood saturated the carpet and the nearby couch cushions, as if he’d been dragged off the couch to the floor. Fat bits of flesh were scattered across the floor around the body, but Patrick didn’t see any sign of the missing limbs or organs.
Patrick would bet his entire next paycheck the guy had been eaten alive.
Members of the Crime Scene Unit and a representative from the medical examiner’s office were carefully working around the body. The state of the victim made their job slightly more difficult than usual.
“You told the next of kin they’re getting ashes back and not a body for a viewing, right? Did you burn all the other ones as well?” Patrick asked.
“They all got cremated. Standard procedure for homicide cases under our purview. We’re not new at this,” Dwayne said, sounding vaguely irritated.
Patrick knew most police forces didn’t like a federal agency coming in and stepping on their toes. The defensiveness wasn’t unusual. But he needed to play nice if he was going to get anywhere with this case. So he bit back the retort sitting on the tip of his tongue, mindful of Setsuna’s request, and focused on the dead instead of the living.
“Anyone have a spare set of gloves?” he asked.
“In the case,” a woman with CSU on the back of her jacket said.
Patrick followed where she pointed and went to dig up a pair of latex gloves. Pulling them on, he approached the body and crouched down for a closer look at the victim’s face. The report he’d read on his MacBook during the short flight to New York had contained details about the dead that weren’t showing up in the press—yet.
The waxy skin of the mutilated face was cold to the touch. He pulled down an eyelid to get a better look at what linked this murder to all the others. The astrological sign sliced into delicate skin had been done with such precision that Patrick doubted it was the work of the demon who had ripped the body apart.
He touched a finger to the sign that represented the immortal god Ares, an uneasy feeling settling in his gut. In his experience, nothing good ever came from magic that called to the gods.
Patrick couldn’t sense any magic left behind in the body itself. Whatever spell the signs had been a catalyst for, it was nearly gone now. The only trace of it left was the residual of hellish taint.
“Are the signs the only things connecting the murders?” Patrick asked.
“The current MO is half-eaten bodies and the signs. There aren’t any links we can find between the victims. There’s no consistency between their economic, religious, racial, or social backgrounds. We’ve only found bodies in Manhattan though,” Dwayne said.
“Can you be certain they’ve only been found in Manhattan? Are they all locals?”
“The PCB has jurisdiction in the five boroughs. We’ve looped in our affiliates outside New York City, but we haven’t received any calls from other departments, and we haven’t released critical details to the public,” Casale said.
“Any sign of forced entry?”
“None. Door was locked and so were all the windows except the one running the air-conditioning unit, but there’s no sign it was tampered with,” Allison said.
“Poor guy’s wife is a nurse and came home after an overnight shift at New York-Presbyterian in Lower Manhattan. Found him like this,” Dwayne added. “She had a nervous breakdown, and EMTs removed her from the premises.”
Patrick settled his weight back on his heels, still studying the body. “Hopefully not far. I’ll need to make sure she’s clean of magical residue before she can be let go. You said you ran off the local SOA agents previously working with you. What was their conclusion?”
“Nothing helpful,” Casale said with a snort. “One witch suggested looking into hellhounds and maybe getting animal control to help with it.”
Patrick rolled his eyes. “On a scale of one to bullshit, I call bullshit. Body looks like it got hit by a magical IED, not a rabid dog.”
“You think that’s what happened? A magical IED?”
“No. I guarantee the ME report for this victim will be the same as all the others in this case. No forced entry into the home. Body half eaten, and signs carved on their eyes.” Patrick stood up and stripped off his gloves, depositing them in a biohazard bin nearby before heading to where the other three stood. “Killings like this, especially with the signs, means these people were targeted for a specific reason.”
Casale studied him with an unreadable look in his eyes. “You’re talking assassination.”
Patrick shrugged. “Assassination, murder—both get you dead.”
“That’s more than the other SOA agents gave us, Chief,” Allison said quietly.
Which shouldn’t be the case, but Patrick was familiar with the rot hiding deep within the SOA that Setsuna and her predecessors hadn’t been able to completely carve out.
Patrick crossed his arms over his chest, the jacket pulling against his shoulders with the motion. “I’ll need to see the full file on this case, not just the encrypted report you emailed my boss. I also need to make sure no one else is leaving with residual black magic in their souls. Who else has been in contact with the body?”
“We’ll get you names,” Casale said with a grimace. He waved a hand at the crime scene and everything in it. “Give me your take on all of this.”
