Harvey pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to squeeze out some of the tension forming around his eyes.

He’d been to a Thai massage parlour recently. A beautiful place that just seemed to perpetually smell like sandalwood. It hung in the air, thick but still light, and pleasing in an odd way. And so much red laquered wood that he guessed was probably the sandalwood, but didn’t know for sure as he’d never seen it as anything other than a scent for oil burners. He assumed it was some kind of wood at the very least, although a lot of things had a peculiar habit of being named for things that they clearly weren’t.

Like “sweet breads”, something he was intent to never order for dessert again if he could help it. The memory of the place filled his consciousness, and again his nosed promptly flooded with the olfactory recollection. His supraspinatus could feel the pounding of hands that seemed to grip like iron, but were gentle enough to relieve the aching tension that seemed to perpetually bubble beneath his flesh in that particular spot to the point that his neck would be slightly askew some days. The last thing they did before sending him on his way was to massage his face in a manner that not only relieved the scowl that was by now a nearly permanent fixture, but also clearly demonstrated that they could crush his skull at any point they wanted to during the fifty-five minutes in which they caressed his naked, oiled body. I’m going to have to get some sandalwood incense for in here, he thought to himself.

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“You’re doing it again” Trey said from the desk behind Harvey, interrupting his happy place, and filling it with mental spin offs that would have been akin to a viking raid on a medieval farmstead.

“Doing what!?” Harvey grumbled.

“Rubbing the bridge of your nose, like you’re about to have a migraine or something. Sheesh, take a pill.”

“No more codeine in the drawer.”

“Then go and ‘borrow’ some oxycontin from the evidence room. Jesus, why do I have to think of everything!”

Harvey shot Trey a look. Whilst it would be highly hypocritical of Harvey to disapprove of Trey’s habits when it came to recreational pharmaceuticals, considering his own checkered past with experimenting, including even a few run ins with the law, he at least had the good graces not to be intoxicated on the job. It would only take institutionalised random drug testing, and pretty much the entire police force would be fucked, because almost everyone was abusing something or other. Some took things as powerful as mycindal to deal with the pain where they’d been shot or stabbed. Others took zoloft or protheidan to deal with less obvious forms of pain. A lot were taking a plethora of amphetamines, most often the ritalin they’d insisted their own kids be prescribed for so that they could actually take it themselves, simply to keep up with the grueling lengths of their shifts… And some took things a bit less medicinal, but a lot more entertaining.

Not that it really mattered, because without a prescription, they were all as illegal as each other. What did matter was how much you could lie about it to cover your own arse if the hammer ever did come down, and that a lot of criminals could potentially walk free if you’d been taking the ‘wrong’ ones. What made it worse was that Harvey did miss the effects that some of those pills and potions did actually have. They had bouyed his mood inthe past, when he was younger, during better days.

A stark contrast the grey emptiness that seemed to fill the majority of his waking moments, just plodding along and simply being in a way that just is. No past was, no future will be, just the permanent imperfect present is.

But those were choices he’d made in the past, and living to regret them now was wasteful. There were things he could do, and things other people did for him, that did indeed cheer his mood and provided a a trite and stereotypical ray of sunshine through his roilingly obvious clouds of mediocrity.

“No,” Harvey said, continuing to run the bridge of his nose, his finely crafted designer glasses in the other hand. “No, we’ve got to figure this shit out.”

“Yes, let us earn our paychecks,” Trey commented glibly “lest we be a wasteful state expenditure and be slashed in the next budget cut.” He chuckled to himself, at a joke that was possibly a bit to grim for even Harvey’s sickly black sense of humour to find amusing at the moment.

They were looking over victim photos.

Limbs torn from sockets, genital mutilations, bruising patterns consistent with large hands beating, tearing, prodding and flagellating bare flesh that had gone tender under dozens of blows that it had receiving prior to coagulating blood preventing any more damage from being done. At least any damage that the victims would be able to notice. Their families would, perhaps. The range of colours that presented alone were shocking. Deep scarlets finer than Persian rug being sold by some two bit migrant. Purples more majestic than the finest royal cloaks, the kind only brought out for the coronations of world’s great monarchs, or still present when those monarchs were hung or beheaded for daring to be so stupid as to not realise that people without bread often did not have some sort of confection to take its place. Yellows of the sort unobtainable without large quantities of cadmium, and equally damaging to the person sporting the colour as simply ingesting said metal when attempting to get a finer point on a brush.

It was the kind of tableau of gore that would have made Wes Craven want to get out a camera, or given Chuck Palahniuk wood, Trey thought to himself, stroking his chin in a manner that would have seemed appropriate for someone with a beard, but just seemed agitated on his smooth, boyish face.

And there there were the photos of the knots. Every victim tied in knots. Wrapped up in knots. Kept down by knots. Knots. Not handcuffs, or tape, or chain. Things that were readily available at any hardware or junk store. Rope knots. Home made rope knots. Home made rope. Made from some kind of plant fiber. Sinewy, tough, consistently fraying but not damaging to the whole thread and weave.

It was bizarre. The knots were the clear commonality between all the murders, what made it obvious that the first two were connected. Really obvious. No one, literally no one, used ropes like that anymore. At least, not in the developed world.

Clearly they had some kind of meaning, an intrinsic bearing on the case. Whichever one of hell’s own bastard sons had made this mess of three seemingly unconnected people had gone to no small effort in order to actually make this rope. And they’d done it at no small expense, either.

The lab analysis on the first two came back with puzzling results. It was a fiber that was consistent with, but not precisely, sisal. Neither Harvey nor Trey had a clue what sisal was, when the report came back. Frankly, neither had Lee initially. You could make rope synthetically, or you could make it out of hemp, cotton, corn silk. Jute if you got desperate. Not that either of them knew the term “jute” either, but Harvey had insisted on “the fluffy crap on the underside of leaves”, while an argument and fifteen minutes of time wasted online revealed the term. Those all sounded like things ropes could be made from. Sisal on the other hand.

---

Trey had been preening his nails at the time, always outwardly bored by the technical conversations filled with jargon that would never be of any use to him again, unless he was called as a witness in court, in which case he’d merely brush up on it again. Or get the departments legal team to just tell him what the Crown Prosecutor wanted him to say. He didn’t care much for factoids that their work consistently presented him with, although they did make for amazingly good conversation filler and the occasional in joke.

“It’s a kind of cactus, a member of the agave family to be precise” Lee had explained, days earlier.

“Agave? Like what they make tequila with?” Harvey asked, as Trey’s head snapped up, attention instantly driven from his own hands fiddling with each other at the mention of what Harvey diplomatically insisted on calling ‘coffee’ around the office each afternoon, when asking if Trey would like a glass of his own.

“Mmmm,” Lee grunted “although not at all like the agave tequilana” Trey lost immediate interest “and it looks something more like a palm tree.”

“But this stuff is rare, right? I mean, I’ve never heard of it before.”

Lee looked taken aback. Detectives never confessed ignorance, especially not to lab workers, whom they consistently attempted to get into pissing contests with. Especially not Harvey, who insisted on being right. The fact that he had just let this one go straight by informed Lee that he was seriously disturbed by a number of the issues surrounding his current case.

“Ahh, no, actually,” Lee replied as he turned back to his computer to look at the information he’d dug up, “Ummm… It actually accounts for over one percent of all fiber productions world wide, including synthetic fibers, and is one of the most commonly used fibers in the 3rd world for making rope an-”

“Fuck!” Harvey beat a fist against Lee’s desk, chewing on his already cracked lip. His lip certainly wasn’t looking good. Between the constant chewing, the regular smoking, and what looked to be cold sores forming at the edges due to stress, if put under magnification Harvey’s lower lip probably looked like they could have been part of their crime scene photos as well. It was as if someone had taken flesh and begun to sandblast it whilst applying extreme heat, then decided it needed some tenderizing and folding whilst in this already parched and broken state. Harvey himself looked like he could use more sleep. Or at least fewer cigarettes and donuts.

Lee decided that it would be best to continue “…and twine. Uhhh, here it’s most commonly used in that rope carpet you find in inner city apartments. I always thought it was rather wanky myself, but some people say it massages your feet.”

Harvey was already at the door by the time Lee turned back to look at the spot he’d been occupying previously. His face was twisted into a snarling visage of deep thought and coil-bound stress as he muttered some kind of thanks before closing the door behind him with a thud that left wall hanging ornaments slightly askew.

Trey, on the other hand, was still occupied with his nails.

“Vertier?” Lee began in mock sweetness.

“Yeah?”

“Did you have some other business with me? I’m kinda really busy sorting out clues for people that actually do some work around here.”

“Ahuh,” Trey rolled his eyes as he continued to file, “That’s a really fucking helpful tone you’ve got on at the moment. As a matter of fact, I do have something I wanted to ask you about. Something that’s possibly important, but you just have to go and king dick over things all the time.” Trey hauled himself off the seat and sighed “Well, whatever, I suppose it doesn’t matter that Agave and Aloe Vera are both dessert and tropical climate plants… I mean, that doesn’t sound like a clue or anything important like that.”

Trey slammed the door behind him, with a lot more force than Harvey had. The kind of force that could easily dislodge valuable knick knacks or picture frames with photos of loved ones inside from their precarious positions on desks or ledges or hung from the wall, shattering the fragile plastic, porcelain or glass that kept precious memories and thoughts locked inside, imbuing them with a weight that could only be felt in ones heart when they were finally destroyed and gone. It was a sad thing for Lee that he had none of those things adorning his walls.

Lee just stared at the back of his office door for a few moments before he began berating himself over the fact that he’d overlooked something so amazingly obvious.

That had been a week ago now.

You might also like to read:

1. Penitence & Therapy pt8
2. Penitence & Therapy pt6
3. Penitence & Therapy pt7
4. Penitence & Therapy pt3
5. Penitence & Therapy pt9

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