Page 47 of Molly Boys

Once Henry returned with the doctor, Archie would say long enough to see that Lord Stanley was indeed uninjured and then he resolved himself to walk away and not look back.

14

Aheavy hand tossed a sheaf of papers on Archie’s overflowing desk. He looked up to find a pinched expression gracing Dr Shaw’s usually relaxed face.

“What did you find?” Archie asked as he started leafing through the report.

Dr Shaw lowered himself into an old wooden chair which gave a token creak of protest.

“There’s no doubt it was the same man.” Shaw’s jaw tightened. “But there were marked differences in the state of the corpses when compared.”

Archie stared at him before placing the open report back down amongst the piles. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

Shaw released a frustrated breath and rubbed his hand over his face tiredly. “The puncture marks are almost identical to those found on the other victim and all of his blood was drained. Also the vertical incision along the spine is the same, but that’s where the similarity ends. In the case of Mr Wakefield, the spine had been drained of fluid. In Mr Perkins’ case, the spine was damaged prior to being drained.”

“Damaged how?”

“His neck was crushed and the broken bone tore into his spinal cord, probably killed him instantly. May be a small mercy. I suspect his blood was drained after death, which wasn’t the case with Mr Wakefield.”

“Were you able to ascertain how his neck was crushed?” Archie asked.

“There was bruising to the neck that looked suspiciously like finger marks. The shape was consistent, but the size of them…” He shook his head in puzzlement. “I’ve certainly never seen hands that big.”

“I see,” Archie murmured. Unfortunately, he had.

“In addition, Perkins had bruising to his whole body, as if he’d been thrown about and handled roughly. Then there’s the borehole to the back of his skull.” Shaw frowned. “It was very precise. It didn’t penetrate the brain, just the space between the brain and skull.”

“To what end?”

“The fluid inside the skull cushions the brain. Whoever did this may have wanted to access that fluid,” Shaw speculated.

“He seems to be awfully preoccupied with extracting bodily fluids. What do you think he wants it for?”

Shaw’s bushy brows drew together. “My best guess would be medical experimentation.”

“Given the puncture marks, the incisions, and now the borehole, I suspect you may be right.” Archie tapped his fingers against the unread report. “Was there anything else? Anything of a more personal nature?”

“You mean like with the other boy?” Shaw asked, shaking his head again. “Not that I could tell. There was no indication Perkins had been indulging in acts of a sexual nature in the manner Wakefield had, but it’s impossible to tell definitively. Why?”

“It speaks to the type of victim the killer is seeking,” Archie mused. “Although there’s no evidence Perkins pursued the same interests as Wakefield… maybe that’s not a deciding factor. They were both young, healthy, attractive. Maybe that’s the draw for the killer.”

“If the killer is pursuing some kind of misguided medical experiment, that would make sense.” Shaw stroked his moustache slowly, which Archie had noted he tended to do when he was thinking. “He would want his subjects to be healthy and robust.”

“Wakefield wasn’t exactly robust, not the way Perkins was. Wakefield was… delicate,” Archie decided, trying to find the right words to articulate his overcrowded thoughts. “Pretty, almost to the point of being feminine.”

“It’s hard to speculate with only two victims,” Shaw said. “But regardless of how or why he chooses these men, I suspect he has some kind of medical training. Anyone can get lucky hitting a vein with a needle but the precision of the cut to the spine and the sheer skill of the borehole…”

“I’m inclined to think you’re right, but therein lies the problem.” Archie moved the report in front of him and searched his desk until he found a sheet of paper with a sketch on it, which he handed to Shaw.

“What’s this?” Shaw took the picture and stared at it.

“It’s an artist’s impression of the man I saw trying to abduct his next victim two nights ago.”

“That’s impossible,” he scoffed. “Surely an exaggeration.”

“As impossible as it may seem, I saw him with my own eyes, and I’m not the only one. The boy, the witness from Charles Wakefield’s crime scene, described this man too.”

“But…” Shaw looked down and stared at the sketch of a monster of a man that looked more like a bear. The artist had drawn the assailant next to an average-sized man, most likely for comparison purposes, and he was almost double the size.