The Mark Of Cain 05

After the Westland Pianist committed another crime, there was a real buzz about it on various media.

Although Westland City was a city with at least two psychopathic killers – at least two, just because the law and order here was so bad; who knew if there was a serial killer who insisted on turning his victims into ashes, so that no one could ever find them? – but the public was apparently more interested in the Pianist.

Albarino was well aware of this bias by the media. If he were to comment on it, he would say, "I know why you guys think that, but that's very bad taste."

The main reason why these people were so interested in the Westland Pianist was that his chosen victims were not good people. People who consider themselves innocent would relish in such things, as long as they thought that such terrible events would not befall them.

If they were facing against the Sunday Gardener, they would have feared for their throats being slit, and then having their eyes planted with dahlias as their demise; they had no such fears in the face of the Pianist. Days after the murder, the Pianist dominated the front page of the newspaper for three days. Now, a group of people were still arguing on social media whether the Pianist was a vigilante or not – come on, how could any vigilante stab a live person onto a stake and cut him open?

On Sunday, Albarino was working overtime at the Forensic Bureau, where several cases with victims dying of unnatural causes, mostly suicides, car accidents or drug overdoses, have accumulated. While he was opening up the bodies in the autopsy room, the trainee forensic pathologist helping beside him was talking excitedly about the Westland Pianist: apparently even forensic pathologists aren't exempt from things like gossip.

"He must be a madman from head to toe. That's so horrifying." Tommy, a trainee forensic pathologist at the Forensic Bureau, said as the freckled, red-haired young man gave an exaggerated shudder, "We've all listened to the lecture by the FBI, haven't we? The kind of lunatic who could only get an erection from ripping the organs out of the victim– "

"I'm pretty certain that's not what the lecture by the FBI said at the time, Tommy." Albarino was dumbfounded by his words. He handed Tommy the bone saw in his hand and gestured for the other man to open the skull of the body lying on the autopsy cart. Tommy worked with ease[1]; the air was filled with the strange smell of bone dust that flew around when the bones were sawed. "The Westland Pianist is very complicated; they have merely speculated that he is a sadistic killer. Everything is inconclusive until he is arrested and subjected to detailed psychological tests."

[1] 轻车熟路, idiom, lit. to drive a small chariot down a familiar road; doing something familiar with ease

Years ago, when the Westland Pianist first began committing his crimes, the FBI did send agents and profilers to assist in the investigation. They had come several times, and it lasted for several years, but they were still empty-handed. After Bart Hardy took over the Pianist's case, people from the FBI stopped coming so often. Probably since the Westland Police Department and the federal police eventually both realized that no one could do a better job than Hardy, and no one could do any worse – in any case, everything was pointless.

Tommy, carrying a bone saw, watched Albarino pour the dead man's brains into a container. He pouted childishly and shook his head: "We'll wait and see. I bet the Pianist has erectile dysfunction– if someone managed to catch him."

Albarino smiled. He was about to say something when his phone suddenly rang: it was a strange ringtone that sounded like the piercing howls of a cat in heat, which startled them both. Albarino muttered something under his breath, shoved the brain in his hand into Tommy's, and hurriedly began to remove his gloves.

Tommy held the basin and the slightly trembling brain inside it. "Huh?"

"It's Officer Hardy on the phone; I have to take the call." Albarino said quickly. There was little progress on the Pianist's latest case. On his end, Hardy was extremely busy; he had not heard from the other for several days.

Albarino walked a little bit away from the autopsy cart, picking up the phone, "Bart, please tell me you caught the Pianist."

He might have said that a little too flatly[2]; Hardy did not respond for several seconds. The other party froze for a moment, then replied with some embarrassment, "No, no ... we just received a call. I suspect that the Pianist has committed another crime."

[2] 劈头盖脸, lit. splitting the head and covering the face, idiom meaning "in your face".

Albarino paused for a moment, injecting the right amount of shock into his voice: "What? That's too busy for him, isn't it?"

"I don't know–" Hardy stuttered surprisingly, "I mean, I can't figure out what the madman is up to, but the best guess is that Pianist is doing it again. Al, you'd never guess what happened: Thomas Norman is dead, too."

That wasn't really true, and Bart certainly couldn't have known the truth. It was all just because the Pianist had chosen his victim he had picked before. There was no fun if he didn't fight back.

Albarino smiled silently from an angle Tommy couldn't see.

– That was a body of water.

It was located inside an estate, a country house for the rich to vacation and have fun, on about three or four acres of land. The Norman Brothers bought it a few years ago to escape the heat of the summer.

The estate had a real forest inside, with a river flowing silently through the beautiful shade: the river was the main reason why the land was so expensive. Some leaves had already fallen on the calm water at this time of the year; it wasn't too cold yet. Heading deep into autumn, the gold and red leaves would cover every inch of the water. As for now, you could still clearly see things under the clear water.

There was something underneath the water, or rather, a dead body hanging upside down: a piece of wood was stuck deep in the mud under the water and a figure pierced upside down through the stake. Through the fluctuating light and shadow inside the water, the pale white body of the naked corpse was distorted into strange shapes by the ripples. It looked very horrifying.

When Albarino arrived, there was a strange scene unfolding before his eyes: Officer Hardy was both mentally and physically drained, directing officers to try to get the body in unknown condition out of the water. Bates was standing on the slippery riverbank with his camera, also directing his group of CSIs to take evidence for the wet mud of the riverbank, but both of them didn't seem to know where to start.

And Olga Molozer was standing a little further away, where an ambulance, obviously out of place, was parked. There was a man standing near the open door at the rear of the ambulance; Olga was forcibly draping an orange blanket from her hand onto the man's shoulders.

As Albarino walked over, he heard the man say in a matter-of-fact tone, "I'm really all right, Miss Molozer, instead of caring about me, you should–"

Albarino stared at the two of them with a frozen expression. He couldn't be blamed, after all, the person in front of him had unexpectedly appeared. He said incredulously, "Mr. Armalight?"

Olga turned at his voice and looked at Albarino with an overly cheerful smile on her face: "Al!"

Probably, this fresh murder case at hand made her happy. Did she leave the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit because of this improper behavior?

And the man who had just been forcefully draped in that blanket by Olga was none other than the attorney Herstal Armalight, who had met Albarino and the others a few days earlier for the Richard Norman case. He was now fiddling impatiently with the edges of the stupid little blanket with his fingers, frowning at Albarino.

"What's going on here?" Albarino couldn't help but ask as he approached the ambulance, "I heard Bart say that Mr. Thomas Norman was killed too, but how did you end up here as well?"

"He texted me last night, to set up an appointment to meet him here this morning." Herstal said in a low voice, his face a little pale but still mostly calm, "It was quite strange, since this estate is, after all, used by my client for his vacations, so he doesn't usually talk business here. But after all, with the recent death of his brother and the chaos of his men, I would have thought that he needed a more private space to discuss–"

"But by the time he got here, he found out that his client had already been sunk in the river." Olga shrugged her shoulders, her tone still very cheerful; Albarino could imagine why, with the Westland Pianist murdered a pair of brothers one after the other, who had never done that before; it was like Christmas for the criminal profiler.

Herstal looked at Albarino, his gaze still cold: "I know what you're thinking, Albarino. Although sometimes, the suspicion on the person reporting the crime is high, I didn't kill him. My dashcam can prove that."

Yes, it was at this time when Albarino realized that Herstal's car was parked on the ring road by the lake. He wanted to complain about it the last time he drove with Herstal to the Forensics Bureau. That guy drove a Rolls Royce Phantom; he was rich enough to make Albarino's teeth sour with enviousy.

"I didn't suspect you of being a murderer, espeically condemning you for killing your employer, really." Albarino said with a smile.

"Is that so?" Herstal swept his eyes over him lightly, not intending to hide his mistrust. "You chided me a few days before for being indifferent to a corpse."

Albarino was tempted to say, "I don't see you getting emotional now that your other employer is dead", but that was not what came out of his mouth: "No, you're still wearing a blanket."

"I definitely didn't ask for this blanket myself. Apparently Officer Hardy thought I was very psychologically scarred after witnessing a murder scene. He must have forgotten what I do as a lawyer." Herstal grunted.

"But I don't think even lawyers like you would encounter a situation where both of your employers were killed within a week." Albarino pointed out, and the other man rolled his eyes, "Herstal, even for you, it's a difficult day, isn't it?"

Obviously for anyone who witnessed a crime scene, they would have a difficult day. Herstal glanced over at him, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a subtle angle of sarcasm: "Since when did you start calling me by my Christian name?"

"Just now. Because we're not in the morgue right now, and I'm planning to flirt with you." Albarino said sweetly in a feigned manner, relaxing and leaning his body against the side of the ambulance door, "Do you want to grab coffee with me later?"

"Not today," Herstal wagged his finger pointedly, perfectly mimicking the tone Albarino spoke with in the morgue that day, "and preferably not at the scene of the crime, Dr. Bacchus."

"You guys are so cute." Olga commented without the slightest hint of prejudice, "Of course, it would be perfect if you didn't do this behind the barricade tape."

By this time, Hardy's team had finally dragged the body out of the water by the tireless efforts of the officers. The body, which had begun to swell under the water, was immediately surrounded by a group of CSIs, like vultures swooping down on dead remains.

Officer Hardy shouted from a short distance away, "Al!"

"All right." Albarino smiled slightly and lifted up the box of investigative tools in his hand, "Enough small talk. Anyway, it's good to see you here today; next time, I'd prefer not to meet next to corpses."

Herstal looked at him and didn't even try to hide his cold, light grunt.

Now, the dead Thomas Norman was lying cold on the ground. He had previously been hung upside down from a stake stuck in the water, naked, with his feet overlapping on top of the wood by a long nail that looked very painful.

When he was underwater, his whole body was hanging upside down, so he could not be seen clearly in full under the cover of the rippling water. After being pulled up, people realized that his appearance was really hideous.

Apart from having his feet nailed together, Thomas Norman's chest – approximately the same place where his brother was staked through – also had a large bloody hole. The hole was filled with red flowers; in addition to large red ones, there were also some soft stems with soft red buds, but the leaves were carefully removed and dangled along the edge of the wound. Everything was wet after being pulled out of the water, so the flowers looked like a trail of blood droplets.

The strangest thing was that the dead man's dark hair was decorated with a pair of ram's horns, which were firmly fixed in place by some method, with a garland of flowers encircling the horns. A large number of long, soft branches fell from his hair; the buds on it were blood-red. In addition to that, the wreath was mixed with many small pale pink flowers with five petals.

Albarino kneeled on top of the wet dirt next to the body, not minding that his kneecaps were gradually soaked by the dirt and the cold river water. Bates stood beside Hardy and was reporting on the progress of the scene investigation team just now.

"The killer must have left footprints on the riverbank when he placed the victim under the water, but he was so cautious that all of them have been removed." Bates frowned and said, "We extracted all the material, but there probably would not be anything valuable out from it."

"That guy's too cunning," agreed Officer Hardy, "Damn it."

On the other hand, Albarino reached out to examine the victim's lower jaw: "Rigor mortis has not yet begun to disappear, but livor mortis still doesn't fade when pressure is put onto it. Because of the water, the core temperature of the body can no longer be used as a criteria for prediction. It's now nine o'clock in the morning – he must have died last night already, and has probably been dead for more than twelve hours."

To be exact, it was eight forty-nine last night — the moment when Albarino plunged that knife into the chest of the new heir of the Norman family. The unpleasant eyes of the man back then in the interrogation room widened in horror as blood spurted from his chest, all hidden under the blur of nightfall.

Ghastly and muffled gurgling sounds escaped his throat when he opened his mouth. He gasped, "You– why did you–"

Ah, he must have recognized Albarino; after all, Albarino had struck up a conversation with Thomas Norman over for the signatures for the documents.

"Don't worry, I'm definitely not murdering you because you won't go to the Forensics Bureau to sign the authorization forms in person." Albarino replied to him rather amiably, though given that those were probably the last few words he would ever hear in his life, it wasn't to be appreciated.

He smiled cheerfully, feeling his heart pounding with joy.

"You're a present." He said.

Officer Hardy made room for Albarino and Bates so that the two of them would be in a less uncomfortable position on their knees when examining the body. He looked over to Herstal, who was standing a short distance away, and asked, "Mr. Armalight, when did you receive the text message Mr. Norman sent you?"

Herstal took a few steps forward, as it was really too rude to shout at each other several meters apart. He didn't seem to be afraid of the body and wasn't too close to ruin the evidence, so Hardy didn't stop him. The lawyer checked his phone after standing still and said, "Ten-thirteen yesterday night."

"Fascinating," Olga pointed out, "that's a point in time in which the victim should have been dead already. So the killer sent you that text message?"

Albarino pulled the phone out of Thomas Norman's pocket and unlocked the screen with the gradually cooling corpse's fingers. He usually liked to arrange these corpses in a public place; the exhibition should have been visible to everyone.

But for this time it was less convenient. He had stalked him all the way to this estate for a date with a lover before finally finding the opportunity to kill him. Bringing the body back to the city to arrange it in some lake was too difficult. This hunt was a spur of the moment thing, slightly rushed, so now he would have to make do with this.

Well, it would be nice to let a specific person see this work of art, he thought to himself as he smoothly retrieved that lawyer's phone number from his address book. Let his next prey see the beautiful remains left by his last, still completely unaware of their future fate at present – seems romantic enough; he could accept that.

It was a gift as much for the Westland Pianist as it was for Herstal Armalight, killing two birds with one stone.

With a bloodthirsty smile on his lips, the Gardener happily pressed the send button.

Herstal evidently calculated the time in his mind, then agreed with Olga's view. He frowned and said, "If Dr. Bacchus did not deduce the wrong time of death, it should be so."

"I'm confident about that, but I think there's one more thing." Albarino used his gloved fingers to fiddle with the wound on the deceased's feet. The fleshy parts had little blood and seemed extraordinarily pale. He paused, then examined the frighteningly hollow hole in the dead man's chest in the same way. " – this time the murderer is probably not the Westland Pianist."

Olga interjected with a fair amount of certainty, "It's the 'Sunday Gardener,' isn't it?"

Officer Hardy cried out, "What?!"

Because apparently, the speculation that "two of Westland's most famous serial killers chose the same pair of brothers as their victims" is even crazier than "the Westland Pianist killed a pair of brothers one by one".

"You see, all the wounds on the body don't have a vital reaction, so obviously, the killer killed him before cutting open his stomach, then sewing it shut, and nailing him to a stake. Which is not what the Pianist would do, and there aren't any piano-string strangulation marks on his neck." Albarino said. "I'm going to take the roses out; Bates, lend me a hand?"

Bates made a noise in agreement, then the two men dug the wet flowers out of the huge wound in the dead man's chest. As Bates took the red flowers away and shoved them into bags, Albarino reached out his hand and dug it into the bloody mess inside the dead man's chest to grasp something. When he took his hand out, his fingertips were moist: it was some dirt particles.

Albarino stuffed the dirt into the dead man's chest, near the heart, and then began to decorate the corpse's chest with flowers. This was a skillful task, because he would have to hang the body upside down. The bouquet has to be secure enough to last until his police department colleagues fished the body out of the water without falling apart.

The flowers that hadn't fully blossomed were as bright red as blood; indeed, they were used metaphorically to represent blood. The Westland Pianist would see it, he thought, and then he would understand what he was doing.

The Pianist was the one who really likes to get blood everywhere, and that was the most visual manifestation of his cruel lust. But Albarino didn't like it.

The other side would know the pointed mockery he wanted to express. Albarino smiled as he fiddled his fingers with the delicate flowers, the soft, fragile buds brushing his fingertips.

I understand what you mean; those folks in the police department didn't get it, only I did – I know what you are expressing, but frankly I don't appreciate it. You have wasted the victim that should have been mine.

I believe I am better. I shall show you.

Albarino frowned as he surveyed the dirt on his fingers, not seeming to figure out what it was. He put the blood-stained dirt into an evidence bag as well, then proceeded to examine the head of the corpse. He observed the pair of ram's horns for a moment, and then gave out a short chuckle.

"What is it?" Officer Hardy asked.

"It's pretty scary. The killer punched holes in the bottom of the ram's horns and then sewed them to the victim's forehead with thread." Albarino said with his head tilting downwards, carefully brushing away the dead man's hair with his fingers to show the skin covered with dense stitches. "However, they are without any signs of blood congestion or redness, so it also looks like it was sewn on after death."

Hardy frowned, "While the killer obviously didn't torture the dead while they were still alive, these details are way too similar to the Pianist's last case."

He had used a similar stitch to sew the ram's horn to Little Norman's forehead, as if it were a wound on his brother's abdomen.

He would rather dress the dead as the god Pan if he used ram's horns in his designs usually. Of course, he hadn't thought before that things would turn out the way they did now, or how by chance, he collided with another serial killer on their choice of victim.

– but he enjoyed challenges.

"I don't see any other serial killers besides the Sunday Gardener putting flowers on the dead," By this time, Bates had returned, raising his voice to point out to others as he walked. "I don't know what those red flowers just now were, but those on top of the corpse's head seem to be apple blossoms."

It was at that moment, Olga suddenly exclaimed "ahhh" in realization, startling everyone.

When they looked at her, she was staring blankly into somewhere in front of her, with her mouth open in a silly way. A moment later, she suddenly jumped up – literally jumped up – and almost stepped on Bates, who had just squeezed through towards them.

"I got it!" She abruptly said, waving her hands exaggeratedly as if to materialize her thoughts in midair. "The case of Thomas Norman is certainly not the work of the Westland Pianist! The Sunday Gardener must have understood the theme of the Pianist's last creation, and wanted to deliver a message to him instead– !"

"Wait a minute, please?!" Hardy yelled with a frown. He looked as if he was about to go crazy. "How did we even get to this conversation?"

Albarino staggeringly stood up to his feet and looked at Olga's flushed face with interest. His legs were already a little numb from kneeling, and they were covered in mud. He accidentally stumbled as he limped across the last section of the slippery riverbank, but fortunately, he was supported by Herstal at the elbow, who was standing by the side.

"Please be careful." Herstal's brow was furrowed, though Albarino noticed that he was actually still focusing most of his attention on Olga.

For Olga, she was waving her hand wildly: "There's a theme to the Pianist's work, but none of us had realized it before! The press conference released the details of Richard Norman's murder, so the Sunday Gardener must have realized it when he saw the story on the news – the theme that the Pianist's murder was trying to convey was 'Cain'!"

There was a moment of silence between them, and then Albarino let out an "ahhh".

Albarino said, "I understand now."

"I beg your pardon, please explain because I did not understand at all." Herstal grunted as if irritated. The man must have compartmentalized an assortment of grunts to be able to use them for different occasions.

"A complicated metaphor," Albarino saw Olga nod encouragingly at him, so he spoke slowly and thoughtfully. "Cain was the son of Adam and Eve, a farmer, wasn't he? The Pianist dressed him up as a scarecrow in the field and then stuffed a handful of wheat into the wounds in his chest and stomach – the grain from the fields was a burnt offering to God after Cain's bountiful harvest, but God didn't take his offering, so he was envious of his brother because of it."

Officer Hardy stared straight at Herstal: "Last time in the interrogation room you mentioned that Thomas Norman was more capable than his older brother, so Richard Norman was envious of his younger brother."

Herstal nodded slowly. He seemed a little surprised: "Yes, it was widely known among those around them."

"But envious of the younger brother?" Hardy couldn't help but ask, "That was his crime? Is that the crime the Pianist killed him for? Wasn't the Westland Pianist the type to do things along the lines of an eye for an eye when torturing his victims?"

"Thoughts in his mind really aren't crimes, of course, but what if Richard Norman has once put his thoughts into action? A failed assassination? Or perhaps, the Pianist felt that Richard Norman, for all his crimes, being envious of his own brother was his greatest sin?" Olga speculated, "Of course, now that they're both dead, probably no one will know the truth."

Herstal frowned and stared quietly at the corpse lying on the floor.

"What about the apple used to replace the heart?" Bates couldn't resist interjecting.

"A symbol of original sin, I guess." Albarino said, still staring at Olga as he spoke about his detection. The other was, surprisingly, still smiling, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "Men ate the fruit of the forbidden tree; thus there was sin, and everything which happened after that. Didn't Byron's closet drama[3], Cain, express through Cain's words–"

[3] A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed on stage, but read by a solitary reader or sometimes out loud in a small group. (Source: Wikipedia)

"'The tree was planted, and why not for him? / If not, why place him near it, where it grew / The fairest in the centre?'" Herstal suddenly continued the later half of the words Albarino was about to quote in a flat voice. He looked calmer than he had a moment before.

"What a surprise, Herstal." Albarino fluttered his eyelashes, offering him a small smile.

"I think that's pretty much what it means." Olga nodded approvingly, "In short, the Sunday Gardener must have understood the Pianist's intention, and he responded."

Officer Hardy swallowed dryly and pointed to the dripping wet body lying on the ground, "So, the Sunday Gardener killed Thomas Norman, then decorated him– "

"Decorated him as 'Abel', a similar theme." Olga said lightly, "Richard Norman's body was stuck face up on a stake in the apple orchard, while his younger brother Thomas was upside down on a stake in the water. I suppose the Sunday Gardener used the water as a mirror, so that Richard Norman's corpse was a sort of reflection of his brother's body, similar to him but not quite. The ram's horns on his head represented the flock Abel grazed, and the apple blossoms referred to the forbidden trees of Eden. As for the red flowers and the long, red-budded branches, they represented the blood, the blood of Cain who had killed Abel, and the blood of Abel flowing out from the wound in his breast – "

Herstal suddenly grabbed Albarino's wrist and lifted his hand up a little: Albarino's glove was still stained with blood and a few dirt particles.

"The Sunday Gardener stuffed the dirt inside Thomas' wound; that is, inside Abel's wound," Herstal said lowly, giving Albarino a profound look, " 'Now art thou / Cursed from the earth, which opened late her mouth / To drink thy brother's blood from thy rash hand' ..."

"If you keep doing so well, I'm afraid Bart will have to hire you." Albarino teased with a laugh.

"So what the hell is this about?" Officer Hardy couldn't help but growl in his deep voice, "The Pianist killed a person, and we, the police, didn't grasp the theme he tried to convey by killing him, but the Sunday Gardener did – and not only did he understood it, he killed a man as well to tell the world he understood... What the hell does he want?"

Olga let out a dry laugh and spread her hands open: "I don't know why he did that, to show his appreciation for the other's work? Or did he want to show that he could express himself more beautifully than the Pianist on the same subject? Or did he really just want to shout, 'I get it', to the Pianist? Either way – he was sending a message to the Westland Pianist."

She scanned the quiet crowd, somehow not as anxious as Officer Hardy. Perhaps, as long as you didn't care about the lives of those who died, you won't be anxious at all, just like Albarino's heart.

In this regard, Herstal was also right, as he had said to Albarino before, "As I said before, the living and the dead don't have the same meaning. For this one in front of me – personally, it doesn't mean much."

Olga shrugged her shoulders lightly, laying down judgment[4] on those lunatics who roamed some shadowy corner of Westland City.

[4] 盖棺定论, idiom meaning wait until the coffin is closed to lay down judgements on someone's life; here it's just used to make it sound more epic.

She said, "Apparently, two of the most terrifying psychopathic murderers in Westland are starting to notice each other."

Author's notes:

1. This story is set in 2016, so all models of cars appearing in the story are those that were available before 2016.

The author wanted Herstal to drive the Rolls-Royce Cullinan, but unfortunately that type of SUV was only available in 2018, so I could only let him drive the Phantom (although I actually still wanted him to drive the big car). The car's launch price is almost £215,000 or so, for the extravagantly rich.

And the red Chevrolet sports car that Albarino drove is actually a fifth-generation Chevrolet Camaro – the same type car that was Bumblebee in Transformers – priced at almost $30,000 USD, quite plain and suited for everyone.

"The harmonious daily life mini theater for psycho serial killers"

Al: Does the Pianist have an erectile dysfunction?

Herstal: ...