Bloodlust

The air was thick with an eeriness he had not felt for years. There were two squad cars parked outside what was now an official crime scene, their occupants talking frantically into their radios. His cell phone rang at 5 AM, interrupting his morning jog. Captain Aguirre was not one to call; especially not on a Sunday morning and never on his number. They used to be close friends, but their relationship became strictly professional after his reinstatement.

“What have you got, Ramirez?” he said, walking up to the uniformed cop standing guard outside the cordoned area.

“Good morning, Lieutenant. I hope you had a light breakfast today.” Ramirez grimaced.

“That bad, huh?” he replied, not breaking stride. Ramirez had been in the force for almost ten years. He’d had his share of blood and gore. Nothing seemed to faze him anymore, yet he was turning green at the collar.

“Just brace yourself, sir. It’s not something you see every day.”

Police Lieutenant Lance Chavez nodded, taking a deep breath as he reached for the gum inside the front pocket of his hoodie. He took a stick, tore its wrapping, and popped it into his mouth. There was nothing scientific backing this habit, but he found that chewing gum while inspecting a crime scene helped keep the bile down. He was almost at the top of the ridge when he noticed something strange. One characteristic of a crime scene was the undeniable stench of blood. Some of his colleagues would even put Vicks on their nostrils to block it out. Lance never adhered to the practice, as he needed to have all his faculties at full potential during an investigation. He wouldn’t have needed it now, even if he used the ointment. The scent of blood here was faint, barely noticeable.

Still, nothing could’ve prepared him for the scene that greeted him when he finished his trek. Déjà vu hit him like a runaway train. The top was a dry plateau, which was unusually cold and foggy this morning. Luscious mango trees hemmed the area, hiding it from view. It was the middle of summer. Those trees should’ve been thick with ripe fruit. Yet the only things swaying from their branches were five emaciated bodies. All naked, all bone-thin with papery, white skin. All were female. Chavez strode forward with trepidation, picturing a similar scenario from the distant past. Seven years ago, to be exact. It was his first time assisting in a major case. It was also his first failure.

He stopped in front of the bodies, looking for similarities and differences. Like before, the women hung upside-down, their fingers almost touching the ground. Unlike before, though, these women looked beaten and tortured. The vicious slashes and dried-up wounds on various parts of their bodies bore witness to that. In the previous case, except for having their throat slashed, the bodies were practically unmarked.

Could this be the work of a different perpetrator? Aguirre didn’t think so. His exact words that morning were: it’s happening again.

Yet, something about this was different. Their throats bore wounds but were not slashed. Upon closer inspection, Chavez noted that all five victims’ necks, arms, breasts, and legs had tiny pinprick marks. One body had more of these marks than the others. They appeared to be in groups of two, equally spaced and precisely rounded. What weapon would have been used to make them with such precision?

“Poor girls,” a feminine voice behind him said, causing Chavez to glance back. He’d met her before, the lead SOCO agent in this area. Garcia, if he remembered right. She was a tall woman with alert eyes and a no-nonsense attitude.

“Have you inspected the bodies?” he asked.

“Yes, before you arrived. Preliminary only. We were just waiting for you after Capt. Aguirre called. He wanted you to have a look before we transport them to the morgue,” she said, motioning to the three men with the same emblem on their jackets trudging up the ridge with body bags and stretchers.

“Do you have any idea regarding the cause of death?”

“For now, I’d say hemorrhagic shock,” she replied, swiftly putting on a fresh pair of gloves.

“But I don’t see any major wounds on the bodies. How could they have bled out? I don’t see any pools of blood around here.”

“Yes, but these girls still lost a lot of blood. It didn’t happen here, either. This is just a stage.”

Another thing in common with the previous case, Chavez thought.

“They look emaciated, don’t they?” Garcia continued. “Like someone starved them to death? I don’t think they were. They look emaciated because they don’t have any blood left. Like something had sucked them dry.”

“Sucked dry?” Chavez said, his throat going dry. The other girls had lost all of their blood, too.

“In a manner of speaking. I’d have to do a more thorough analysis to be sure. All I can say is that these girls don’t have a single drop of blood left in their bodies,” Garcia said before walking away to rejoin her team.

Chavez’s eyes swiveled back to the unfortunate women as Garcia’s team took them down from the tree.

A familiar horror dawned upon him, curdling his blood. Instinctively, his fingers grasped the wooden cross underneath his shirt, protecting his heart.

And, possibly, his sanity.