Serial by Tim Marquitz Page A

hadn’t thought to return to Mendes’s home and stake it out the rest of the night, and that made him even madder. Had he taken the time to be thorough, and thought less about getting some sleep, he would have known for sure if Bane was Mendes. Now, there was still doubt, however slight.
    Isaac looked to the front door where Captain Garcia was waving to him.
    “Hurry up, Grant. We need to get this fucking scene cleared so we can get the bodies out of here.” Garcia looked exhausted. Blackness filled the deep crevices beneath his eyes and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. “The maid found them this morning.”
    “Cameras?”
    Garcia shook his head. “The mayor didn’t want them installed.”
    Isaac sighed and hurried up the front steps. He slipped past the captain without saying another word. Now was not the time to be anything but compliant. The mayor being killed was a serious blow to the credibility of the police department, and all of that fell on Garcia’s shoulders despite the mayor’s bad decisions.
    Out of instinct, he took a second to examine the front of the house, but saw nothing out of place. As Isaac went through the door, he noticed the frame was intact. There was nothing to show it had been forced, and none of the front windows was broken or left open, so Bane probably entered through the back or side.
    The smell of fresh death and feces hit him the second he stepped inside. He remembered to react offendedly, but all he could do was gape in awe at the carnage displayed just inside the large foyer.
    Directly in front of him hung a young boy, the mayor’s son, not more than eight, still in his pajamas. His throat had been slit and his tongue pulled through the opening and used to tie him to the foot of his sister, who hung above him. Her throat had been slit the same way, her purple-and-black tongue draped about the foot of her mother who hung above in the human chain, followed by the mayor. His tongue was tied to the massive chandelier that loomed in the center of the vaulted ceiling.
    Blood, shit and yellowed streaks of urine ran down the chain of bodies to collect in a thick pool on the white-tiled floor. Isaac marveled at the chain as he circled around it, wondering how the tongues withstood the weight of all the bodies. He found his answer a moment later, spying what appeared to be fishing line woven almost invisibly through the armpits of the victims. The line ran through each, strung up and attached to the beam the chandelier was attached to.
    Isaac eased closer to the boy, remembering his name to be Kevin, and examined the start of the line. For all its ingeniousness, the hole punctured through the boy’s shoulder was clearly done in haste. There was no grace to it. It looked as though it had been made by an ice pick.
    He stepped back to view the piece as a whole just as Garcia grunted alongside him. The captain wanted him to hurry, but Isaac had more to think about than just what had been done. There was a question of time that nagged at him. Could Mendes have done this? Despite appearances, it had been a rush job from what Isaac could tell.
    The children were still dressed, with no signs of mutilation. And while the wife was naked, there was no evidence she’d suffered anything more than the wound at her throat and the humiliation of having her tongue tied to her husband. In her early forties, naturally attractive and clearly surgically enhanced, she likely slept in the nude. The mayor was the only one who bore any signs of mutilation.
    Also naked, his chest had been marred with the now-familiar demon image, but it was blurred a bit by fresh blood. Bane was in a hurry. It wasn’t clean like the others. It was more like the first victim. There were signs he had rushed to get the job done and get out of the house before he was found. The signature toothpicks filled the mayor’s eye, though from where Isaac stood, it looked as if there weren’t quite as many as normal. He’d have