No Mercy. John Burley

ready for lunch.’

      Ben unlocked the door to his small office, and the two men entered. Ben walked behind his desk and sat down in a swivel chair on plastic rollers that tilted slightly to the left. Garston stood next to the only other chair in the room, his head nearly brushing against the low tile ceiling. His massive frame eclipsed the token ray of light emanating from the hallway just outside, and Ben switched on the desk lamp.

      ‘Have a seat, Sam,’ he said, indicating the vacant chair. The chief descended upon the hapless piece of furniture, which groaned in modest protest. The look of guarded anticipation that darted across Sam’s face suggested to Ben that more than a few chairs had failed him unexpectedly during his tenure on this earth. Ben was grateful when this one did not. He liked Sam, who was sharp as a tack and conducted his job with surprising kindness and decency.

      ‘Looks like this one’s gonna hold,’ Sam observed, optimistically glancing down at the chair beneath him.

      Ben smiled. ‘If it don’t, we’ll take it out back and shoot it.’

      ‘Won’t be the first time,’ the chief commented. He interlocked his fingers and cracked the knuckles loudly, the noise reverberating off the walls of the small office. It was a bad habit he’d abandoned twenty years ago at the request of his wife, but it occasionally resurfaced during times of stress. He looked up guiltily. ‘Sorry about that.’

      ‘No problem.’

      Sam took a deep breath and let it out. ‘So, what’ve you got?’

      Ben opened the left drawer of his desk and pulled out a dark green file. It contained multiple photographs and his typed dictation from the night before. ‘Young kid, as you know,’ he began. ‘I’d say about fourteen.’

      ‘We think we have an ID on the victim,’ Garston said. ‘Kevin Tanner – a fifteen-year-old high school student from a neighborhood adjacent to the spot where the victim was found. Apparently, he didn’t come home last night. Wasn’t reported missing until this morning, about two and a half hours ago. Kid’s mother and younger brother are out of town visiting relatives, and the father works nights at a shipping company in Steubenville. Father came home this morning to an empty house and became concerned. Contacted us at six thirty a.m.’

      ‘This Tanner kid might have just gone over to a friend’s house overnight, or left early this morning before his old man got home from work.’

      ‘Not likely,’ Sam replied. ‘Father says his son wouldn’t spend the night at a friend’s house without checking with him first. He also says he got home a little before six this morning, so it would’ve been pretty early for the boy to be up and out of the house. Also, the family has a dog. The animal urinated on the carpet overnight. Father says he’s never done that before. Probably hadn’t been let out since Mr Tanner left for work at five p.m. yesterday afternoon.’

      ‘Long shift,’ Ben commented.

      ‘He works twelve-hour shifts a couple of days a week. The father’s description of the boy matches that of the victim. He’s down at the station right now filing a report. They’ll keep him for some brief questioning, but we’d like to get him over here to ID the body after that.’

      ‘That’ll be ugly,’ Ben said. ‘The body’s in pretty bad shape. Someone did a number on this poor kid.’

      ‘Uh-huh.’ Sam cracked the knuckle of his right index finger. Pop! It sounded like a firecracker within the tight confines of the office, and Ben jumped slightly in his seat. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

      The pathologist looked down at the report in front of him. ‘Well, there were multiple stab wounds from an unknown instrument,’ he began. ‘I don’t think it was a knife. The entrance wounds measure about 0.75 by 0.9 centimeters, and all appear to be made using the same weapon.’

      ‘Screwdriver?’

      ‘Maybe. There’s a wound entering the neck and extending to the skull base. That would mean the instrument was at least six to eight inches long. There were eight stab wounds to the head itself. Two of them pierced the skull.’ He was sliding pictures across the desk as he spoke.

      ‘Interesting.’

      ‘Yeah, that takes some force – or at least determination.’

      ‘Or rage,’ Sam commented, studying the pictures.

      ‘The attack was extraordinarily violent,’ Ben continued. ‘The victim was bitten by the assailant several times. In fact, he wasn’t simply bitten – he was ravaged. There are several large avulsion injuries to the soft tissues of the face, neck and chest where the skin has been partially torn away.’

      ‘Consistent with bite wounds?’

      ‘It appears so.’

      ‘Could the bite wounds have come from an animal, perhaps one that came across the body after the boy had been murdered?’

      ‘Unlikely.’ Ben shook his head. ‘Most animals have much sharper canines than humans, and a different dental structure. These serrations along the wound edge’ – he pointed to a picture lying in front of them on the desk – ‘are consistent with a human dentition pattern.’

      Sam studied the picture for a moment. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said, and when he looked up at Ben his face was slightly ashen. ‘It just seems so … savage. I don’t understand it.’

      ‘I haven’t gotten to the best part yet,’ Ben replied.

      ‘You mean the fact that the victim’s genitals were discovered in the woods fifty yards from the site of the body?’

      ‘Yeah. That won’t be easy for the father to hear about.’

      ‘Then I suggest,’ Sam said, eyeing Ben from across the table, ‘that you don’t tell him.’

      ‘I wasn’t planning on it,’ Ben said. He swiveled around in his chair so that he could look out through the open office door while Sam shuffled through the photographs sprawled like fallen soldiers across the desk. It was Saturday, but the Coroner’s Office was beginning to come to life. Tanya Palson, who tended to most of the clerical responsibilities of the office, had arrived and could be heard at the front desk answering the phone.

      ‘There’s one other thing you might find of interest,’ he commented as Chief Garston continued to study the photographs in front of him.

      ‘What’s that?’ Sam asked, eyebrows raised slightly.

      ‘I think the perpetrator was left-handed.’

      ‘Yes, I was just noticing that,’ Sam observed. ‘The puncture wounds to the body are clustered along the right chest and flank. Assuming the assailant was facing the victim, he must’ve been holding the weapon in his left hand.’

      ‘Exactly,’ Ben concurred. ‘Also, the two head wounds puncturing the cranium follow a trajectory through the brain that angles slightly to the victim’s left. They enter through the coronal and sagittal sutures.’

      ‘The what?’

      ‘The skull is actually made up of several different bones which merge together during early childhood along what are called suture lines. They’re weak points in the skull.’

      ‘Fault lines,’ Sam suggested.

      ‘Yes,’ Ben agreed, ‘in a manner of speaking.’

      ‘So he got lucky, then?’

      ‘Perhaps. But there were eight wounds to the skull, and all of them were clustered around the suture lines. I think,’ Ben said thoughtfully, ‘that maybe he knew what he was doing.’

      ‘What are you saying?’

      ‘My overwhelming impression’ – Ben looked somberly across the table at the Jefferson County Sheriff – ‘is that he’s done this before.’

      Pop!