Chapter 26

Chapter 26: Rain Rain Go Away 05
Elliot Evans met that man while working part-time at a convenience store.
From the perspective of mainstream aesthetics, that man could be said to be extremely handsome—tall, with beautiful chestnut-colored curly hair and honey-colored skin, he looked almost like a movie star.
Unfortunately, they hadn’t met in any dignified manner in front of the convenience store counter: Elliot had clumsily bumped into the other person at the back door of the store, all because the man had suddenly rushed out from around the corner, causing Elliot not to see him. The consequence of this mistake was that the plastic crate in Elliot’s hands crashed to the ground, the glass bottles of beer exploded at their feet, and the bitter liquid soaked both of their ankles.
They stood amidst a floor of shattered glass, and Elliot was completely stunned. The next second, things immediately got worse: Elliot’s boss burst out of the warehouse like a nimble beast, spitting a rapid-fire string of accusations at him—though honestly, you couldn’t really blame his boss for thinking that way. When Elliot worked, his head was always bowed, his hair barely covering his eyes, and he was silent and withdrawn. If the shop weren’t so short-staffed right now, the man definitely wouldn’t have hired him.
“Please don’t say that. This isn’t his fault at all.” The person who had bumped into him earlier said this to Elliot’s boss, his tone light and breezy. “I’m afraid I was walking too fast and wasn’t watching where I was going at all—of course I’ll compensate. How much are those smashed bottles of beer worth?”
Elliot was quite certain that the stack of cash the man stuffed into his boss’s hand far exceeded the price of those twenty-four shattered bottles of beer. Regardless, it seemed to satisfy him, and his boss retreated contentedly back into his own territory, like a snake lurking in the sand to hunt its prey.
In the end, only the two of them were left standing there awkwardly. Elliot didn’t know how to thank the other man. He mustered up what pitiful social skills he had, stumbling over his words to say that he really hadn’t seen him either.
“Mainly it’s still my fault… Elliot.” The other replied, and as he called out his name, he thoughtfully sized up the employee badge hanging on his chest. “By the way, my name is Albanino Bacchus.”
It was a name that sounded somewhat familiar, one that had frequently appeared in newspapers and on the news recently. Elliot hesitated for a moment, then asked rather rudely, “You’re the one—?”
“I’m the one suspected of killing his own ex-girlfriend,” the forensic pathologist answered with a smile. Something in his voice told Elliot that he wasn’t actually as sincere as he appeared—at least not regarding the dead Sarah Adelman. “Poor girl. May she rest in peace.”
“I’m curious—as a forensic pathologist, you seem to have invested far too much energy into this case. Don’t you need to work?” asked Lavasa McCard, who was currently trying to find a spot to park on the cramped street without violating any rules. Though Albanino very much wanted to tell him that parking a car in a slum like this, the odds of having your tires stolen were far higher than the odds of getting a parking ticket.
Albanino responded to his question with a smile: “Strictly speaking, my vacation lasts until the first of next month. The chief forensic examiner calling me back to work on this case counts as overtime. Right now, this is the only thing I’m responsible for.”
McCade finally finished parking the car. Albanino pushed open the door, and right below the car was a sour-smelling puddle of water flowing from an overturned trash can. He raised an eyebrow inconspicuously: “I know that interviewing suspects has nothing to do with me either, but to be honest, I’m still a bit interested in the profiler’s work—besides, this is also for Olga. Hestal gets along well with her.”
McCade gave him a skeptical look: “I thought you and Amarette were friends too, at least that’s what Officer Hardy said. During the Landon case, he was your lawyer, wasn’t he?”
“Our relationship isn’t as close as Bart thinks,” Albanino picked a relatively less unbearable spot to stand, closed the car door properly, and watched the other man get out of the car as well. “We often have disagreements. Mr. Amarette isn’t exactly an easy person to get along with.”
There wasn’t much of a lie mixed into that statement, but at the same time, Hestal’s “difficult to get along with” nature clearly hadn’t stopped Albanino from putting the other man’s penis in his own mouth.
The two of them headed toward their destination: the apartment Elliot Evans rented. Albanino only knew which convenience store Elliot worked at. After they paid the convenience store a visit, they discovered that, fortunately, he had filled in his current address when completing his employment paperwork—otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to find such a hidden place anytime soon.
This neighborhood was the dark shadow of a bustling metropolis like Westland. Seventy to eighty percent of the population was Black or Latino, and many of the passersby made no effort to conceal the bulge of the holsters at the small of their backs—not to mention the ones who openly wore firearms on their belts.
They ignored several unfriendly looks and turned into a quieter side path. Then McCard said dryly, “It’s hard to imagine someone like you being close to Molozer. Honestly, she’s not an easy person to get along with either.”
“She really isn’t,” Albanino laughed, wondering if he could squeeze more information out of the other man. “Would you mind telling me what happened between you two? You seem to have a lot of reservations about her.”
McCade was silent for an agonizingly long moment, then admitted, “I don’t know if she’s ever mentioned it, but I really don’t want her to keep doing this job. I think it’s doing her health more harm than good.”
“I’m guessing you mean her mental health,” Albanino replied with a small smile.
“That’s what I mean,” McCade said frankly. He sounded like he had been mired in deep distress for a very long time. “It’s like with this case—the way she’s been performing worries me. You know? She deduced that the killer is a coward, but actually most statistical data shows that cowardly killers tend to target those weaker than themselves: if they’re psychologically fragile? Then they choose to hurt little boys. That’s just how it is.”
“You think she’s wrong?” Albanino asked, knowing full well the answer—the other man’s expression had already betrayed too much.
McCade shook his head. “That’s the problem: she’s almost never wrong. Before she joined the FBI, she worked murder cases at the Chicago Police Department. After graduating from Quantico, we worked together in the BAU for four years. Over the course of her entire career, she’s hardly ever made a mistake.”
“So even if the conclusions she’s drawn this time have no research data to back them up, and even if they sound absurd, you still know she’s very likely right—or rather, you’re even afraid she really is right.” Albanino pointed out lightly. “She’s so accurate that it’s as if she can not only understand what these serial killers are thinking, but even appreciate or love their thinking—and that frightens you?”
“I’m not very good at being the one analyzed in a psychological evaluation, Dr. Bax.” McCade gave him a strained smile. “But—yes. The work at the BAU is extremely stressful. Besides assisting in solving murder cases across various states, we also frequently have to interview killers who are already imprisoned. The cases we’ve handled are far more insane than most people could imagine. Many of my colleagues couldn’t withstand the psychological pressure—insomnia, ulcers, nightmares, mental illness… these things are commonplace at the BAU.”
“But Olga doesn’t have that kind of trouble.” Albanino looked at him directly. “Because she’s too… self-content. So much so that you start questioning the importance of her working at the BAU.”
McCade raised an eyebrow at him and countered frankly, “Shouldn’t I?”
“Not everyone is born to be drawn into the swamp of sin and ultimately sink into the abyss.” Albanino blinked at him and smiled. “Some people are mired in the swamp from the very beginning, while others won’t be swallowed by it no matter how close they get. I think you need to see clearly what kind of person Olga really is.”
McCade’s lips moved, as if he wanted to say something he already knew all too well. And Albanino didn’t expect to rekindle his confidence in Olga Moroz with just a few words. If he were truly that easy to persuade, Olga wouldn’t have left the BAU three years ago. Or perhaps it was precisely because he could never understand her that he ultimately chose to distance himself from her—Olga was still brooding over that book that never got published, little knowing that what they cared about were never the same thing to begin with.
They ultimately chose to remain silent, winding again and again through the twisting alleys, squinting as they examined the rusted door numbers nailed to the walls. Elliot Evans lived at the end of the street, his door half-blocked by trash cans where stray cats lived. When McCard went to knock, the stray cats meowed in protest from the metal cans, the fur on their backs standing on end—something about this scene struck Albanino as slightly amusing.
After a moment, the door opened: the sullen young man they had seen in the photograph stood at the doorway, still stubbornly avoiding eye contact as he faced them. McCard introduced himself as usual—something along the lines of I’m an FBI agent and I need to ask you some questions regarding a case—while Elliot looked past McCard’s shoulder and made a strange expression that was impossible to tell whether it was shock or delight.
He said: “Al?”
—At the very beginning, it was a dinner.
Elliot himself was also unclear about who should be held responsible in that accident that ruined both of their pants. And clearly, Dr. Bax believed that he himself should be responsible for this small mishap; perhaps he felt that the money for compensating the beer only placated Elliot’s boss, but was not enough to soothe Elliot’s soul after being undeservedly chewed out.
In any case, they went to have dinner.
Elliot knew that doctors definitely had a substantial income. If Albanino had picked a restaurant that required formal attire to enter, Elliot would have definitely been unable to resist running away. But somehow, they ended up sitting in a small, warm fast-food restaurant, where Albanino insisted that this place had the best cheeseburger he had ever eaten.
The cheeseburger was indeed very delicious, and Elliot was, unusually, not too restless. Generally speaking, spending such a long time with other people almost killed him. Perhaps it was because Albanino Bax exuded a rare kind of affability, or perhaps—
“I need to get away from that kind of life for a while, at least temporarily.” The other party said frankly, “Almost all the friends I know are in this system—the very system that just threw me into prison—I need a change of environment for myself during the holidays.”
“What did it feel like?” At the time, Elliot asked, staring at his plate as he said it, simply because he didn’t want to look up and meet the other’s eyes.
“Getting caught?” Albanino asked with keen interest.
Elliot was silent for a moment, and one of the two—curiosity or caution—got the upper hand. Then he asked, “No, going through a failed relationship? The TV said she was your ex-girlfriend.”
“I don’t think that’s a failure,” Albanino thought for a moment, then said, “You know—it’s a lesson, one that makes you examine your past actions, and then ultimately, under its guidance, you find the right direction.”
He paused, and the smile that appeared was almost warm.
“And then, in the end, we find the lover who suits us best.”
For McCade, who preferred to keep his personal belongings meticulously organized, the apartment rented by Elliot Evans was shockingly filthy and cluttered.
The dust piled up on the floor had probably not been dealt with since Elliot moved in not long ago. The evenly dust-covered ground was covered in messy footprints—clearly, he had never even thought about mopping the floor. The room was filled with a pungent odor, a mix of damp mold and cigarette smoke. Other than that, there were no other smells—at least, no smell of blood.
McCade made a mental note: if the person before him was the killer, then at least this place was not the crime scene. There was no way this hallway could have remained completely free of bloodstains after nearly sawing a person’s head off.
Elliot carefully let them into the room, his gaze darting about before finally settling on Albanino’s shoulder. He seemed excessively nervous. McCade chose to let Albanino speak, so Albanino asked softly, “Elliot, do you remember my lawyer, the one I mentioned to you?”
Elliot stammered for a moment, then asked in a wavering whisper, “Is it… Mr. Armalite?”
“Yes, it’s him. He’s gone missing,” Albanino said, offering the nervous Elliot a reassuring smile. “Can you tell us where you were yesterday between eight and ten in the morning?”
“Do you suspect his disappearance has something to do with me?” Elliot’s gaze drifted to Albanino’s other shoulder again. “I don’t even know him.”
“Just a routine inquiry. You know how it is—we have to question a great many people.” Albanino smiled reassuringly. “We learned from your boss that you happened to be off duty yesterday morning.”
“…I was on a compensatory day off yesterday. I spent the whole morning resting at home, no one else was there.” Elliot answered guardedly, his mouth tightening. “I ordered takeout a little after noon. Do you want to see the receipt?”
“If you would be so kind,” McCard nodded, then looked sharply at the other man. Even without meeting his gaze, Elliot couldn’t help but flinch. “If I may ask—your hand?”
One of Elliot’s hands was wrapped in bandages, clumsily applied, with spots of blood seeping through. At McCard’s words, his hand involuntarily drew back, and then he answered in a low voice, “I cut it a few days ago on something when I was getting something off the shelf.”
He gestured vaguely. McCard looked up and saw that the shelf nailed to the wall for storing odds and ends had a long nail protruding from it due to shoddy workmanship. In the dim light, it was impossible to tell whether there was blood on it.
It was at that moment that Albanino suddenly spoke up with an awkward smile, “Sorry, could I use your bathroom, Elliot?”
The remaining two people both looked at him. Albanino shrugged with an apologetic smile: “I’ve been on vacation for quite a long time. I guess my stomach can no longer handle WLPD’s coffee.”
The apartment Elliot rented was cramped and oddly laid out. Right upon entering was a short hallway facing a blank white wall, and it seemed one had to walk to the end of the hallway and then turn right before reaching the rest of the apartment. Or rather, they were now standing at the entrance with Elliot, and beyond this stretch of hallway they could see nothing at all. Neither of them had a search warrant, and if Elliot did not invite them inside, neither of them could take another step further in.
Elliot was silent for two seconds, then nodded: “Turn right. The bathroom is in the farthest corner of the apartment; be careful, the light in there is broken, it’s very dark.”
Albanino nodded with what was almost a grateful expression. McCade noticed that before this forensic examiner walked toward the end of the hallway, he quickly glanced at him, then meaningfully winked his right eye.
On a certain day—probably around the third time Albanino invited him to dinner under the pretense of treating him, only to vent endlessly about the Forensics Bureau—Elliot finally couldn’t resist Googling the man.
He was genuinely curious about this person: even if he was on vacation, it was a bit hard to believe that a forensic examiner would be willing to befriend a convenience store clerk on a street corner. But Albanino truly didn’t seem to look down on him, and the expression on his face when he smiled at people could even be called sweet.
Elliot quickly realized that turning to Google had been the right move: during the period when the Bob Landon case was being solved, there was quite a bit of news online about Dr. Bacchus, especially on a website called “Westland Criminal Secrets Network.” The articles there not only introduced the case that Albanino hadn’t actually committed, but even vividly detailed the doctor’s colorful romantic history.
And in the final section of the article, readers were informed of the latest developments in the case—at that time, Albanino’s pre-trial hearing was just about to begin.
The website wrote:
“Most surprising of all, Dr. Bax actually chose the notorious lawyer Hestal Amarette to defend him. As everyone knows, this lawyer is best known for one thing: his exceptional skill at rescuing all kinds of criminals—murderers, gangsters, rapists, every kind of serious offender one can imagine—from the judge’s gavel and the iron bars of prison.
“This lawyer himself has no criminal record, yet he unexpectedly harbors tremendous enthusiasm for all criminals (perhaps tremendous enthusiasm for the prices they are willing to pay).
“An anonymous police source even remarked bitingly last year—after Mr. Amarette got Karl Swain acquitted of one count of first-degree murder and one count of rape—calling him ‘the man who knows criminals best in all of Westland.'”
“Why would Dr. Bax be willing to have this lawyer defend him? This too sparked widespread discussion. Could it be that Dr. Bax had already concluded in his heart that he was guilty? That he had concluded he had brutally murdered the beautiful Sarah Adman, to the point that he had to have the lawyer most skilled at defending capital offenders standing at his side?”
At the very bottom of the article, a news photograph was attached: a candid shot of Hestal Amarette as he walked out of the Westland City Police Department. He was a tall middle-aged man with blond hair and a pair of sharp blue eyes that conveyed an arrogance others could perceive even without a single word being spoken.
—Eliot stared at that photograph, and in the end could not resist reaching out to touch the face on the screen.
Albanino walked almost soundlessly.
He briefly inspected Elliot’s house, not expecting to find anything from what was visible at a glance—after walking to the end of the porch and turning right, he was faced with a small living room, at the end of which were an even smaller kitchen and bathroom. It was truly a case of a sparrow being small but complete in every organ. The kitchen stove was covered in a layer of dark, greasy grime, clearly no one had cooked there in a long time, and the trash can was stuffed full of takeout boxes. Elliot’s bedroom was even smaller; after squeezing in a camp bed, there was no room for anything else. The room was dim overall, making one feel depressed just looking at it.
But there was one thing:
At the end of the living room there was another staircase leading down, clearly going to the basement. The staircase was very short, and one could see the end at a glance—there was a door there.
The door was locked.
Albanino slightly bit his lower lip and glanced toward the direction of the porch: although everything was blocked from view by the wall, he could still hear McCade’s methodical questioning voice, seemingly asking about the vehicle or something like that. The other party slowed his voice considerably, sounding as if he was trying not to make the other person too nervous, but Albanino bet that the other party had understood his look—which meant McCade was stalling for time.
He thought for a moment, then quickly descended to the bottom of the stairs, in front of that tightly locked door. While keeping an ear on the sound of McCade and Elliot’s conversation, he took out a pair of latex gloves and put them on, then pulled a piece of wire from his pocket.
—He hoped his lock-picking skills hadn’t regressed.
With a click, the door was opened.
Herstal Armalite raised his head.
When the knock came at the door from outside, Elliot was right there beside Herstal—he was obsessively insistent on physical contact, which was really not a good idea as far as Herstal was concerned—the longer the other man lingered by his side, the slower the plan to “cut through the rope with a shard of broken porcelain” progressed. When the knock sounded, Herstal almost wanted to thank a god he did not believe in.
The visitor might be a police officer, or might not be. Judging by Elliot’s social skills, the odds of it being a police officer were probably not high. But Herstal understood the current situation well: with the existing evidence, the police definitely could not apply for a search warrant—they would only come to ask questions. The possibility of him being discovered was extremely slim.
So he held out no hope at all. After Elliot left and locked the door of the small room he was in from the outside, he immediately resumed grinding through that rope.
Hestal had to admit that when the locked door suddenly opened, he was startled—if it were the police, they shouldn’t have finished questioning so quickly. Then he saw Albanino Bacchus’s smug smile, one that even the dim environment couldn’t erase, hanging on his face like a dazzling lightbulb.
In that instant, Hestal really wanted to rush over and tear Albanino’s face off his skull with his bare teeth, blood would surely spray all over his face, and this fantasy was almost comforting to him. But not to mention he was tied up and couldn’t move at all, perhaps Elliot wasn’t too confident about the room’s soundproofing, because before he left he had sealed Hestal’s mouth shut with tape.
But apparently the soundproofing was quite good, otherwise there was no explaining why no one noticed when Albanino picked the lock.
Albanino walked as lightly as a cat. He stood at the darkest far end and said softly, “Look at you, darling.”
Hestal did not think they could still address each other with words like “darling,” but he was also very clear about what Albanino was seeing right now—him, forced to lie half-reclined on a tattered mattress, both hands and legs bound tightly, barefoot, shrouded within the halo of a pitiful little lightbulb overhead.
“You’re beautiful,” Albanino’s eyes sparkled as he approached step by step in complete silence, “You look as though you’ve stepped right out of François Boucher’s *Diana After the Bath*.”
Hestal felt not the slightest empathy for his twisted aesthetic sense. Without any warning, Albanino knelt on the mattress, one hand seizing Hestal’s ankle, which was tightly bound by rope—the skin nearby had already turned a disturbing dark purple from poor circulation.
I would gladly have hounds tear you to pieces—Hestal thought to himself, and tried his best to convey this meaning through his gaze. Albanino met his sharp stare with a smile, fearlessly rubbing his thumb against the red, swollen skin of Hestal’s ankle where the rope had cut in.
“Did he possess you? You wouldn’t let such an obvious intention succeed, would you, Pianist?” Albanino murmured. He released Hestal’s ankle and crawled up a little, his body almost entirely pressing down on Hestal. “Did he kiss you?”
Albanino watched him with pure curiosity, then suddenly lunged forward. When Hestal tried to dodge backward, Albanino grabbed him by the shoulder. Then, just like that, Albanino pinned him down hard and leaned in to kiss Hestal’s lips through the layer of tape.
Hestal’s eyes silently conveyed murderous intent, and the hand Albanino had resting on his back slid down without warning—he forcibly pulled the shattered piece of porcelain out from between Hestal’s fingers, which had gone stiff from being bound. Hestal had tried to clench his fingers tighter when he realized what Albanino was about to do, but his hand had gone almost completely numb.
The next second, Albanino jumped off the mattress. Although he knew very well that Hestal couldn’t move right now, he didn’t want to take that risk: after all, the way the other man was staring at him told him that given the slightest chance, Hestal would bite through his throat without hesitation.
“There are still dried water stains on the floor, and there are broken pieces of porcelain in the trash can in the living room upstairs.” Albanino shook his head slowly, looking down at the piece of porcelain in his hand. There was a little bit of blood on it—most likely from when he had pulled the shard out of Hestal’s hand and cut his finger. “You smashed a cup? A very brave attempt, but the rules aren’t like that now.”
Hestal didn’t even know what damn rules this thing had.
“I don’t want it to go too easily,” Albanino smiled gently. He slowly stepped back, retreating once more into the shadows. “I want to see you burn.”
Hestal exhaled deeply, doing his best to suppress the inexplicable fury burning inside him. He heard the sound of the door opening and then closing. Albanino had even considerately locked the door, restoring everything to the way it was—Hestal could foresee that no matter what excuse he had used to slip away from Elliot, he would now pretend to know nothing as he walked back, returning to Elliot and the police officers who had come here with him, pretending nothing had happened, smiling as he said goodbye to the other party.
“I want to see you burn.”
Hestal closed his eyes, able to hear the rumbling roar of blood in his ears and the killing intent gradually rising in his throat.
Note:
[1] Regarding “Diana After the Bath”:
In mythology, Diana was renowned for her chastity, but she was also cruel. The hunter Actaeon, having secretly watched her bathe, was punished by her by being transformed into a stag and torn to pieces by his own hounds.
However, Boucher was a typical Rococo painter with a flashy style. We can see that his Diana is clearly not agile, nor does she appear particularly cruel; instead, she is a delicate, aristocratic court lady. Boucher’s style also drew opposition from some critics, including the French writer Goncourt, who said: “Boucher used lewd innuendo and provocation to alleviate the melancholy of Louis XV.”