Chapter 46

Chapter 46: Dionysus in the Grave 04
That was not an ordinary day, and Albanino had known that from the very beginning.
—That was the anniversary of his mother’s death, July 25th, a clear summer day. Even at nightfall the interior remained cool, shadows shrouding the house, slowly swallowing it whole.
“Father.”
Albanino stood at the doorway and said softly, one elbow propped against the door frame. And his father—Dr. Charles Bax—sat by the fireplace in the study.
On the desk of this highly respected surgeon sat a bottle of already-opened white wine. Judging by the label, it was that 1990 Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese—the very bottle Charles had won at an auction five years ago.
Looking back now, five years ago feels like a lifetime away. Back then, most people would have considered them successful, accomplished, and happy—perhaps even Charles Bax himself thought so.
Albanino stared at the glass bottle for a moment, then asked softly, “Has something happened?”
Something had clearly happened—because a pungent smell of smoke filled the room, and it seemed his father had completely given up the pretense of maintaining sobriety in front of him. Charles’s face was pale, his chin covered in stubble, and a deep shadow hung beneath his eyes, made all the more ghastly by the firelight from the hearth. He had evidently been suffering from insomnia for a long time.
All of this made him look even older, almost unlike a man who was not yet fifty.
“Nothing,” Dr. Charles Bax replied, trying to keep his voice light, but none of his colleagues or friends had seen anything close to a smile on his face for a long time. “Al, would you leave me alone for a while?”
They all thought it was due to grief—it was simply due to grief.
Albanino gazed at his father, and for a moment, the young man seemed to be lost in thought, then he replied, “Alright, but if you need anything—”
As he spoke, he retreated out the door, and in that moment, he could see what was fueling the flames in the fireplace: paper, pages torn from a notebook, white sheets slowly consumed and curling in the fire, swallowed by a strange charred black.
It was his mother’s diary, obviously; that letter, along with Shana’s diary, had lain on his father’s desk for the past two years, and who knew how many times the latter had leafed through it. Father and son had a tacit understanding not to speak of it, as if the thing did not actually exist.
Just as Albanino was about to close the door, Charles suddenly spoke in a hoarse voice: “Al?”
“Dad?” Albanino stopped in his tracks and asked in a low voice.
“Al, you know, no matter what you…” His father seemed to want to say something, but paused strangely, smiled bitterly, and shook his head, as if he didn’t know how to phrase it. Then he spoke again: “You know I love you, right?”
Albanino was silent for a moment, then said: “I know.”
“Go on.” His father said gently.
So Albarino gently closed the study door, listening to the faint click as the latch caught. He did not leave, nor did he spend his time as his father imagined—immersing himself in the kind of vacation life any university graduate like him would live. He had already received his acceptance letter from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. At a moment like this, most people would be willing to spend their time traveling or furiously making love with their girlfriend in a bathtub—that kind of “real life” that young people crazily immerse themselves in. He confirmed the door was properly shut, then leaned against it, pressing his full weight onto it, and began to wait in silence.
He counted from one to three hundred and twenty-four, then heard a gunshot. The sound was strange and sharp, completely different in tone from what was shown on television.
Albarino stood at the doorway a while longer, then pushed the door open again and walked in. He could see the revolver slipping from Dr. Bacchus’s hand onto the floor, blood dripping steadily from his fingers into the carpet by the fireplace, slowly seeping into it.
Albanino calmly made his way through the smell of gunpowder smoke, selected a white wine glass from the rack by the wall, then picked up the bottle of Riesling from the desk and poured himself a glass.
Apart from the faint clinking of glass, the room was almost deathly silent.
He stepped over the pool of blood gradually gathering on the floor and sat down in the other chair by the fireplace, enveloped in the flickering firelight, directly facing the direction of his father’s armchair. So he could see the blood flowing down from between the brown hair, and the room was gradually filling with a heavy, metallic stench.
That wouldn’t do, he thought slowly. Such a sweet Riesling should be paired with blue cheese and caramel desserts. His father should have understood that too.
Before bringing his lips to the rim of the glass, Albanino let out a soft sigh.
His head also lay in the scorching sunlight. There were truly countless dead here, and no one knew their names; nor did anyone know his name. This skull, at some point, had once produced great thoughts, bright dreams, a love for art and “beauty”; had once shed two streams of hot tears, had once held hopes of “immortality.”
The skeleton had fallen into fragments, becoming dust among dust.
The two corpses stood at the end of the pristine white marble steps.
They had indeed been arranged into a bloody murder scene—in every sense of the word—the younger one propped upright in place by some kind of support, skin pale, body wrapped in a Greek-style light blue robe, the silk covering the parts of him that were gradually decomposing and the putrid green that spread across his skin; beneath these blue silks, countless pale blue crocuses and hydrangeas spilled out, as though he stood upon azure waves, or stood amid some strange blue wreckage.
His throat had been cut with exquisite precision, and the condition of the incision indicated that the skin here had absolutely been cut open only after death. The massive cavity in his throat was filled with blue hydrangeas, those blue petals pouring out from his throat like words.
The other one, by contrast, was somewhat less presentable—at first glance, it was even difficult to determine his sex: nearly all the flesh of this victim’s entire upper body had vanished, his stark white skull and individual ribs glinting under the morning light, with only his legs and back retaining a small amount of muscle, while his skin had been entirely stripped away. The rotting flesh gave off a nauseating stench on the white steps.
And between this flesh and the exposed bone, fresh flowers served as a transition—pale red hibiscus mutabilis and tulips filled his abdomen and chest, while vivid red poppies burst forth aggressively from the empty eye sockets of his skull, their colors so brilliant as to be somewhat ferocious.
This victim had been arranged in a posture of lying face-up on the ground, his hand—now reduced to little more than bone and a few scraps of muscle—struggling as it reached toward the sky, the pale finger bones fixed in place by metal wire, pointing toward a certain direction in the heavens.
The standing young victim stood right beside this nearly skeletal figure, one hand arranged as if tightly gripping the bare skull of the other deceased, while the other hand lay across the other’s neck: blue flower branches had been woven into the shape of a sword in his hand, its blade entangled with the cervical vertebrae of the skull, where clusters of small blue and white hydrangea blossoms bloomed. At the neck of these white bones, red poppies flowed down in the manner of fresh blood, streaming step by step along the stone stairs.
—The last small red flower lay right at the tip of Olga Moroz’s shoe. She stood at the very bottom of the steps, arms crossed, and remarked in a relaxed tone: “He has recreated Artemisia Gentileschi’s *Judith Slaying Holofernes*.”
“Fuck,” Bart Hardy said with utter sincerity.
“Which part of that statement are you complaining about?” Olga glanced at him and teased, “Is it because the Sunday Gardener unexpectedly killed two people today—after all, he’d only ever killed two victims in a single case once before, which is still quite rare—or is it because you have some objection to Baroque painters?”
“I don’t care which painter belonged to the Baroque period!” Hardy cried out in despair, in a voice that a man on the verge of losing all faith in the world would make. “What I care about is: how the hell did he put two corpses at the courthouse entrance?!”
—Exactly. The two of them were standing right at the entrance of the State District Courthouse, with a full ring of police tape cordoning off the wide plaza, and beyond that, the area was completely blocked by reporters’ vans. In such an open location, the WLPD could hardly hope to use anything to block the reporters’ line of sight.
This was just great. Hardy could imagine that within twenty minutes, uncensored photos of the corpses would be spreading like wildfire across the internet.
The two bodies had been placed on the highest step of the courthouse’s stone stairs, with red poppies cascading down the steps like a waterfall, mingling with the mangled, bloody corpses—a sight that induced physical revulsion.
“The CSI people said all the surveillance footage from that night was wiped completely clean. The security guard stationed in the guard room was attacked from behind and is still in the hospital with a concussion,” Olga said, though she knew that what Hardy had just blurted out was merely a desperate complaint—he didn’t really expect an answer.
Hardy let out a heavy sigh. “But I don’t understand—why did the Sunday Gardener choose this location? He’s always favored open woodland, or parks with water sources. A courthouse, really? It’s high-risk, and—”
“And grand,” Olga said with a low laugh.
Hardy glared at her.
Just then, a police officer walked toward them carrying several sheets of photocopied paper, but before he could hand the documents to Hardy, Olga intercepted him. She deftly plucked the pages from the officer’s hand and let out a short laugh.
“The victim who still has his face intact is named William Brown, commonly nicknamed ‘Billy’ by his friends,” Olga read aloud. The paper contained a photocopy of the deceased’s social security information and other records. “Oh, this one was involved in a lawsuit before: he sued his boarding school teacher for attempted rape, and the teacher bit his face while he was trying to struggle.”
Hardy couldn’t help but look at the young victim’s face, where the pale scars were clearly visible. Victims this young always left a bad taste in his mouth—clearly because he had a child of his own at home.
He asked bitterly, “Does any of this even matter?”
“It matters a great deal, Bart!” Olga waved the few sheets of paper in her hand and said loudly.
She paused, full of fighting spirit, then pointed at the two corpses. “Look at these two bodies—why is this young man named William Brown carefully adorned with silk and blue flowers, while the other victim was flayed, with half the flesh on his body unaccounted for? Also, the gardener arranged the two of them in the pose of *Judith Slaying Holofernes*—the beautiful young woman Judith killed the invading general to protect her hometown… And we all know that after Artemisia was sexually assaulted by another painter, she repeatedly created works based on this biblical story. Bart, although this wasn’t the Sunday Gardener’s inclination before—but I’m guessing he wouldn’t choose a victim with such a special experience, a theme like this, and do it all for nothing.”
Although Officer Hardy really wanted to complain about that “we all know,” he was already completely shocked by what Olga’s words revealed. He stammered, “You mean—?”
“Correct.” Olga answered crisply, tossing the paper in her hand back to the young officer, who fumbled to catch it.
Then, she said to that officer, “Please, bring in the forensic scene investigators from over there.” The forensics bureau’s vehicle had just arrived outside the crime scene, and the scene investigators were desperately trying to break through the reporters to get past the cordon—an attempt that currently seemed entirely unsuccessful. “We need them to extract DNA from the other deceased besides Brown. I have reason to suspect that he is the one mentioned in the files—”
Olga paused, then craned her neck to glance at the papers in the officer’s hands, clearly having forgotten the name she had just seen.
She quickly found what she was looking for and read it aloud: “…Anthony Sharp.”
“Really? Isn’t that conclusion a bit too hasty?” Hardy couldn’t help asking. After all, judging the name of an unidentified victim with nothing but bare hands was something they had only ever seen in those carelessly made detective TV dramas.
“Absolutely not hasty.” Olga shook her head. She quickly walked up the steps, then without any warning knelt down beside the corpse lying on the ground. She lowered herself, and under Hardy’s shocked gaze, brought her face close to the skull stuffed full of poppies.
“Olga?” Hardy asked, his tone suggesting he thought she had finally lost her mind. Though it made no difference—in Lavasa McCard’s eyes, she had surely already reached the brink of madness.
“Look.” Olga said in a low voice. From the skeleton’s perspective, following the direction pointed by his fingers convulsively reaching toward the sky, one would discover that the pale white bony fingers were pointing directly at the tall statue in the courthouse square.
—A female figure with her eyes blindfolded stood on a resplendent pedestal, a sword in one hand and a set of scales in the other. This sculpture was the most conspicuous structure in the plaza in front of the courthouse; even from an extreme distance, it could be seen at a single glance.
“It points its finger toward the Goddess of Justice.” Olga spoke in a low voice, letting out a light, airy laugh. “An amusing irony, isn’t it?”
Albanino blinked drowsily.
He felt as though this sleep had left him groggy and muddled, his whole body aching unbearably, and the arm pillowed beneath his head had gone completely numb from the pressure. Really, for someone who had been working under intense strain for over twenty-four hours, this sort of thing was entirely possible. He groaned and shifted, hissing through his teeth from the numbness in his fingers. He had just tried to lift his head when his forehead struck something.
—Correction: his forehead had hit the Westland Pianist’s shoulder.
A person’s life might contain a vast array of choices, but “waking up in the morning to find the Westland Pianist looking at you with the expression of ‘why don’t I just strangle you'” is generally not included in most people’s life plans.
Albanino glared at the other for a moment, then asked very logically: “…Why am I in your bed?”
Hestal let out a sigh—there it was again, that sound of coming home from work to find the dog has shredded the sofa.
“How much do you remember about last night?” he asked irritably.
“Are you asking before or after I put Billy and the others out on display?” Albanino’s voice was still low and soft from grogginess, tinged with a hint of amused laughter. “I remember everything before that clearly, but after that I’m pretty sure I was more or less unconscious on the way back.”
—And that was basically how last night had gone: Albanino had finally finished his work as the Gardener at around midnight, so he drove back into the city with his not-yet-fully-installed artwork and Hestal, who had spent the entire day idly watching him work.
Albanino dropped Hestal off near his law firm, then took the two corpses and went off to some unknown place. Since the other man had no intention of taking him along to set up the crime scene, Hestal didn’t bring it up at all.
Or perhaps they both had to admit: that was still too intimate, especially when it came to the part where the gardener’s handiwork was put on display.
Then he drove back to the apartment where he lived—his car had been parked these past few days in a garage near the law firm, a long-term rental, no cameras, no parking receipts, a good choice. Because he never walked home, and being caught on the cameras around the apartment complex walking home at midnight would still be a bit strange.
He sincerely hoped he was being too nervous, but when you’re a deranged serial killer, there’s no such thing as being too careful.
Hestal thought that was the end of it: he returned to his own apartment, while Albanino had most likely gone back to his rented apartment to catch up on sleep after setting up the crime scene. Once again, they had played out the whole process of briefly intersecting and then going their separate ways, just like every time before.
But things clearly did not go as he had expected, because at around four in the morning, an uninvited guest showed up at his apartment.
Albanino Baks appeared swaying at the foot of his bed like a ghost—Hestal confirmed afterward that the man, after staying awake for twenty-four hours, had still managed to find his home accurately, and had even picked the lock to get in. It was sheer dumb luck that Albanino had avoided triggering the security system alarms—he mumbled something that no one could make out, then flopped down onto Hestal’s bed with a thud.
He fell asleep as fast as if he had dropped dead.
All in all, Albarino did not drive that SUV with the swapped license plates into Hestal’s apartment building’s underground parking garage, nor did he enter wearing the clothes he used for disposing of bodies, and he certainly didn’t bring back any tools of the trade. This considerate behavior, to some extent, saved his life—it kept him from being strangled to death by the Pianist in the dead of night, and also kept Hestal from kicking him out of bed.
At this moment, after hearing the other’s concise description of what had happened last night, Albarino mused aloud to himself, “I’m quite sure I avoided all the cameras near your place yesterday that could have caught me—I have to say, even though the apartment you rented is upscale enough, there are quite a few blind spots. After I observed your apartment, I’m certain I could do it even while sleepwalking.”
Hestal wisely did not ask what “observed” meant—he anticipated he wouldn’t like the answer.
Then he asked, “So why did you risk being caught on camera to come to my apartment?” And then you even collapsed onto my bed—is that something a deranged serial killer should be doing?
Albanino blinked at him, then burst out laughing with a puff.
“It’s possible that everything really was done subconsciously by me; it’s also possible that I’ve never slept with you, and I feel a bit unhappy about it; or, this is a display of vulnerability—people all believe that when your bedmate lies in your bed, it’s their most unguarded and most fragile moment. Did that make you feel at ease?” Albanino said in a low voice. “Among these answers, pick one you like and believe it.”
“You know that when you say it like that, it’s impossible for me to feel at ease,” Hestal replied.
“But haven’t you already realized this possibility long ago? That’s not like you,” Albanino retorted, his voice light. “Besides, even so, you still slept with me, didn’t you?”
“Are you expecting me to drag you to the living room, or should I go sleep in the living room myself?” Hestal retorted. “I don’t think either of those is a good idea.”
Albanino drowsily half-closed his eyes. The bed was far too warm, and he truly did not want to move at all. But still, he put his slowly churning brain cells to work and asked, “Then what do you think is a good idea?”
Hestal stared at him for a while, then a smile appeared on his face.
He said, “This.”
Albanino followed his gaze upward—and then he realized that the hand he had been resting under his head wasn’t just resting under his head. His wrist was locked in a genuine metal handcuff, and the other end of the handcuff was cuffed to the headboard.
“I think this is a good idea. It gives a great sense of security,” Hestal said slowly and deliberately.
Albanino said, “Fuck.”
“Alright,” Bates said, staring at the two bodies, his face all scrunched up, “so we’ve got two deceased, one named William Brown, the other named Anthony Sharp. They were in a rapist-and-victim relationship.”
The officers had already taken enough photos to secure the scene, and the forensic scene investigator’s preliminary autopsy had been done as well. Now the CSIs were removing those flowers from the abdomens of the corpses. Bates and his colleagues would forever hope to find some clue from those flowers.
But unfortunately, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; no matter how many times they tried, they still couldn’t extract the Sunday Gardener’s fingerprints from the petals.
“Obviously,” Olga mused, “Bart would never make such a guarantee before the DNA test results come out; but I’m quite certain, judging by this theme, that the other victim must be Sharp.”
Bart was now directing other officers in the distance to survey the surrounding environment. Bates glanced over there a couple of times, then asked, “But why? Kill the criminal and the victim together? I thought killing criminals was the Westland Pianist’s thing.”
Indeed. The Sunday Gardener never cared about the identity or background of his victims. The people he killed spanned all ages, from old to young. Once he even killed a sixteen-year-old girl who had come from Los Angeles to Westland to visit relatives. The child had been missing less than three hours after getting off the plane. There was simply no logical explanation for it—one could only say she had the bad luck to run into him.
And tailoring a scene to present based on a victim’s background? The Sunday Gardener had never done such a thing.
Olga shook her head: “That’s not the strangest part of this case. If you ask me, the strangest thing is right there—”
She extended her hand from a distance and pointed at the throat of the young man nicknamed Billy. The hydrangeas had all been removed from that spot, and now the wound lay exposed and hideous. The metal frame on his body had been dismantled, the silk fabric taken away, and he now lay naked on the ground, waiting for the forensic bureau’s people to place him in a body bag.
“His throat?” Bates asked, utterly bewildered.
“Yes, because the Gardener always cuts his victims’ throats cleanly and efficiently, doesn’t he? He never wastes time torturing the dead.” Olga gazed at the pallid corpse. “There are no other wounds on the victim’s body, so he was most likely killed by a slit throat as well—but this time the Gardener destroyed the wound left by the cut, and then decorated it with flowers. In the past, he never covered that wound with anything else, and didn’t mind it being left bare…”
“Maybe he just had a new inspiration this time?” Bates said uncertainly.
“Maybe,” Olga said in a low voice, her brows furrowing sternly. “I hope that when the forensics bureau conducts the autopsy this time, they can provide a more detailed opinion about this wound. We might be able to infer from the autopsy report why the Gardener did that…”
Her voice suddenly caught in her throat, because Hardy was striding briskly toward them. And the expression on Officer Hardy’s face was one they all knew well—it was the expression he wore when he had discovered something.
“Olga, I just realized something!” Hardy said loudly. “This case has a breakthrough!”
“What?” Bates asked before anyone else could.
“William Brown was not yet seventeen when he was nearly sexually assaulted. To protect his privacy, all case materials were kept confidential at the time. It would have been impossible for an ordinary person to know about the relationship between him and Sharp.” Hardy spoke urgently, barely giving himself room to breathe. “The gardener had to know that William Brown was nearly sexually assaulted by Sharp in order to stage the crime scene like that, right? That narrows down the pool of people who could have known…”
“The police officers involved in the investigation, some of the teachers at that school, and the judge, prosecutors, and jury?” Bates guessed, following his line of reasoning. Hmm, could the case really have involved prosecutors and a jury?
“There’s also a member of an anonymous sexual assault trauma support group,” Hardy said loudly. “My subordinate questioned Brown’s friend, who has recently been attending the support group’s therapy sessions. But I think the likelihood of the killer being in that support group is relatively low. After all, it’s an anonymous support group—Brown wouldn’t have used his real name there, let alone mentioned Sharp’s name. But of course, to be safe, I’ll have someone investigate the support group members, even if it’s just to rule them out…”
Olga’s eyebrows suddenly furrowed, and she abruptly raised her voice: “The mutual aid association?”
Hardy nodded in confusion: “Yes, it’s held in a small theater every Sunday—”
Then they watched in disbelief as Olga gasped sharply—a loss of composure she rarely ever showed.
“I understand.” she said with difficulty. “I know that support group: I previously recommended that Al and Hestal attend that support group.”
The other two people simultaneously burst out in exclamations of shock. One said, “What?!” and the other said, “What did you figure out?!” This drew frequent glances from the CSIs who were working.
“This case is connected to Hestal,” Olga said through gritted teeth. “That’s the reason—why one of the victims was a criminal. And we all know that killing criminals is not the Sunday Gardener’s style at all. He doesn’t care about criminals.”
“Or maybe him and Al going to the support group was just a coincidence?” Bates said, struggling to phrase his words. Though from the sound of his voice, even he didn’t believe what he was saying. “Even though the two of them have become suspects now, after all, Bart also said that Brown wouldn’t use his real name when he went to the support group, so—?”
“No, I’m saying this absolutely has something to do with Hestal,” Olga replied. She frantically swept her hair back behind her head, looking like an angry lioness. “And it probably has something to do with Al too—just think about it. The Sunday Gardener previously placed a skull filled with fresh flowers on Hestal’s desk! And Al—he and the Pianist case caused a huge uproar.”
Hardy pinched the bridge of his nose with his hand and said slowly, “…So, is it possible that this case is the Sunday Gardener’s response to the Pianist’s previous case? To express his mockery of the rapist?”
“A certain twisted pity for the victim. Of course.” Olga looked straight at Anthony Sharp’s remains as they were being collected, her tone gloomy. “He could do this to Sharp, and he’s willing to do the same to… ‘a certain’ rapist. That’s the stance he’s expressing; and he deliberately chose a member of this support group precisely to display this scene to the person he wants to see it: that person knew William Brown before. As soon as that person sees the news coverage of this case, they’ll immediately understand the Gardener’s meaning.”
“So how would the Gardener know that William Brown attended the same support group as them?” Bates couldn’t help asking, his voice trembling slightly, clearly having thought of something bad. “Has he been following them? Has he been right beside them all along?”
The three of them fell silent for a few seconds, perhaps all carefully pondering this possibility. The atmosphere was deeply unsettling.
Then, Officer Hardy cleared his throat and said dryly, “Regardless, we need to talk to the two of them—right now.”
Note:
[1] Regarding that bottle of Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Trockenbeerenauslese:
This flashback should be set in 2001, and the wine was produced in 1990. As mentioned in previous notes, white wines generally have little aging potential, but this bottle is a Riesling—the white grape variety most suited to aging.
This bottle of wine actually has an extremely long full name:
Egon Muller – Scharzhof Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese, Mosel, Germany.
Egon Muller: Refers to the Egon Muller winery in the town of Wiltingen in Germany’s Mosel wine region. This winery produces the best Riesling wines in Germany and indeed the entire world.
Scharzhof: The Scharzhof vineyard of the Egon Muller winery. It is one of the few vineyards in Germany that only needs to be labeled with the vineyard name on the wine label without also indicating the village name (that is, Wiltingen, the town where the vineyard is located).
Riesling: A white grape variety, mainly produced in Germany.
Trockenbeerenauslese: A subcategory under Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (QmP), one of the quality classifications for Riesling wines. Trockenbeerenauslese wines are made from late-harvested Riesling grapes infected with noble rot, and this wine is sweeter than Riesling wines of any other classification. The production of Trockenbeerenauslese wines is extremely limited, roughly 200-300 bottles per year, and the grapes must be picked entirely by hand (hence the “berry-selected” part).
In summary, this bottle of wine basically comes from the best Riesling vineyard in the world, and it is also one of the lowest-production wines from this estate… Moreover, due to the stringent production conditions, Egon Müller’s Trockenbeerenauslese is not produced every year. Currently, there appear to be only 13 vintages on the market. In 1996, when Charles Bax was buying wine, there may have been only three vintages available for sale (essentially at auction, because the production is so small that it is nearly impossible to buy).
(PS: I looked it up, and the current reference price for this 1990 wine in the domestic market seems to be nearly 130,000.)
So, when a wine collector opens and drinks a bottle of this grade, we can obviously reasonably infer that something absolutely terrible has happened.
[2] Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes”: