The lab guy spieled. “Those tubes contain chemicals that we’ve ID’d as antipsychotic drugs. The negatives were mostly too blurred to identify, but we were able to figure out that most of them were pornographic photographs. The images were mostly burned off with chemicals taken from the refrigerator in the kitchen: our boys owned a whole cornucopia of corrosive solutions. I’ll hypothesize here: Peter and Baxter Englekling were tortured before they were shot to death–that we know. I think the killer showed them each negative individually, asked them questions, then burned them–and the pictures. What was he looking for? I don’t know, maybe he wanted the picture participants identified. We found a magnifying glass under the couch, so I’m leaning toward that theory now. Also, note the plastic bag marked ‘Heroin’ extruding from the couch, the contents of which, of course, we locked up. Four bags total in a safe little hidey-hole. The killer left a small fortune in salable dope behind.”
Into the kitchen, more chaos, the icebox open–spilling tubes, bottles marked with chemical symbols. Stacked by the sink: something like printing press plates.
The tech man pointed to the mess. “Another hypothesis, gentlemen. In my crime scene report you’ll note that I’ve listed no less than twenty-six separate chemical substances found on the premises. The killer tortured Pete and Bax Englekling with chemicals, and he knew which chemicals would scald flesh. I’d call his torture method a means of opportunity, so I’m betting the man had an engineering, a medical or a chemistry background. Now the bedroom.”
Bud thought: PATCHETT.
Back to the bedroom, blood drops in the hall along the way. A small room, a twelve-by-twelve slaughterhouse.
Two body outlines-one on the bed, one on the floor, dried blood tape-to-tape both places. Clothesline sash wrapped around the bedposts; more sash on the floor; taped circles on the bedsheets, the floor, a nightstand by the bed. A bullet hole circled on one wall; a forensic display on a corkboard: more scalded negatives.
Lab man: “Just glove prints and Englekling prints on the negatives, we dusted every one of them, then placed most of them back in their original locations. The ones on the board were found here in the bedroom, which as you can tell was where the torture and the killings took place. Now, those small circles on the bed and elsewhere indicate sections of torso, arm and leg tissue scalded off the Englekling brothers, and if you look closely at the floor you’ll be able to see patches of singed carpet caused by chemical spills. Both men were shot twice with a silencerfitted .38 revolver. Baffling threads we took off the shells indicate the silencer and indicate why no shots were heard. The bullet hole in the wall is our one real lead, and it’s easy to reconstruct what happened. Bax Englekling got free of his bonds, got ahold of the gun and fired a wounding shot before the killer got the gun back and shot him. The shell we took out of the wall had shredded Caucasian flesh and gray arm hair stuck to it, along with 0-plus blood. Both Englekling boys were AB-minus, so we know the perpetrator was hit. The blood drops leading out to the living room and the negatives that he took out to look at indicate that it wasn’t a major wound. Lieutenant Hatcher’s crew found a blood-soaked 0-plus towel in a sewer down the street, so that was his tourniquet. My last hypothesis is that this bastard really had a hard-on for those negatives.”
Hatcher spoke up. “And we’ve got nothing. We’ve canvassed two dozen times, we’ve got no eyewitnesses and those goddamned brothers did not have a single K.A. that we’ve been able to turn. We hit doctors’ offices, emergency rooms, train stations, airports and bus stations looking for sightings of a wounded man and got nothing. If the brothers had an address book, it was taken. Nobody saw anything or heard anything. Like my science buddy says, our guy really had a boner for those negatives, which might–and I emphasize ‘might’–have something to do with our victims coming forth on that Nite Owl case of yours years ago. They had a dirty-picture theory then, right?”