Page 168 of Healed

“You might wanna tell him to check downstairs as well,” I said, nodding my head in the direction of the pools of blood on the wooden floor. “Depending on how long that’s been here, there’s a high chance the downstairs neighbours are going to get an unwelcome shower in the next day or two.”

“Did you hear that?” Dante said into the phone. “I told you, mate. It’s a fucking red room.”

He had a point.

I walked around the room, taking my phone out and snapping pictures, emailing them over to Hacksaw on the secure system we had.

I took one of the walls with the blood sprayed up it, and then one of the bodies on the floor. The woman had her throat slashed, her fingers had been cut off, and her legs had been hacked to pieces.

The woman next to her wasn’t in any better state. Her clothes had been sliced off her, and thick globs of semen were on her chest and face. Her fingers were also missing, and a rope had been tied around her neck. Her eyes were bulging and bloodshot, her tongue hanging out of her blue mouth, and all the veins in her face were visible.

Next, I walked around the sofa, taking a picture of the blood-soaked cushions, and that’s when I saw him.

“Shit! Dante!” I called over before crouching down and grabbing the chin of our prospect, turning him to face me. “I found Mike.”

“Ahh, fucking hell,” Dante grimaced as he looked over the back of the sofa, the phone to his ear. “Confirmation of the location. This was definitely the girlfriend’s flat. Mike’s here… yeah, he’s alive, pal. He’s playing a game of Scrabble with the dead bodies. What the fuck do you think?” he hissed down the phone to Hacksaw, turning his back to me again.

I checked Mike over, looking for any sign of a message to us, but his death seemed relatively clean compared to the women’s. That was until I looked at his face closer, seeing that his lips were split at the edges.

“Why me?” I muttered to myself before placing the phone down and using my fingers to pry his cold lips open.

Empty.

His mouth was fucking empty.

No teeth.

No tongue.

“The message is pretty damned clear here,” I said.

“What was that?” Dante asked.

“His tongue has been cut out and all of his teeth removed,” I explained, pulling Mike’s chin down so Dante could see. “Clearly Nico didn’t want him talking.”

“Hacksaw, mate, just get here as soon as you can. I’ve got to go.”

He disconnected the call and pocketed his phone.

“Anything else?” he asked me.

I stood up, straightening to my full height, and looked around. The flat was relatively small, with an open-plan kitchen and living room. Three rooms branched off, one of which I could see was a bathroom since the door was already open, and I assumed the other two were the bedrooms.

I walked over to the bathroom and poked my head around the door, noting that it was relatively clean and small.

And thankfully free of a crime scene.

“Unless there’s something in the bedrooms, it looks like this is it,” I said.

“Which one do you want?” Dante asked as I came to stand next to him.

“Hell, no. You can take both.”

“I’m not taking both. You take them.”

“I found these bodies. You owe me.”

“I was arranging a clean-up crew. I wasn’t twiddling my fucking thumbs, Vienna.”