1985
From a distance it almost looks like a setting inside a snow globe. Soft snow flakes swirling about her still form; the red and blue of the siren lights reflecting gently off the snow bank. Vibrant police vests lighting up from the oncoming traffic and yellow and black tape cordons off the area, keeping the growing crowds of people at bay.
It all seems rather beautiful from afar.
John Constantine takes his time, drinking in the scene. His steps are measured, slow enough to hold the image in his eye for just a moment longer- tripping along the fine line between fiction to reality as his breath mists in the air.
The sun has barely risen, and the whiskey from the night before is still working its way out of his system announcing its departure with a slight headache and a sour taste in his mouth.
He can't remember the last time he has been functional at this hour, if ever. He hasn't even had his first coffee yet and the first cigarette of the day has only just touched the edges of his craving.
John waits until he's only a few feet away before he tares his gaze from the lazily dancing snowflakes, letting the last little bit of beautiful surrealism slip away before he settles his sights on the victim.
She is naked, the snow her only cover as it settles on her flesh in a light dusting as if to try and hide her indecency. Her freezing dead flesh has turned a deep blue around her fingers and toes and her hollow eye sockets stare blankly upwards. Her blue tinged lips are slightly parted, as if about to utter a surprised cry. It is unlikely she had a chance to call for help, as she no longer has a tongue, or vocal cords for that matter.
She has not been out here very long, a few hours at most. Her body has been dumped on the side of a country road, barely missing sliding into the ditch beside her. Even this far out of the city the crowd of people milling about and slowing up traffic was enough to make getting to the scene a bit of a nightmare.
A trucker had called it in at first light, about an hour ago. He sits in the back of an ambulance now wrapped in a blanket with a perpetually startled look on his face while an ambulance officer talks to him in a soothing tone, trying to coax the distance out of his eyes.
The cause of her death on paper is uncertain, in the flesh it is anticipated. All the time in the world can be wasted on forensics but John will stake his life on what has killed her. She will have internal bleeding caused, unbelievably, by a horde of a variety of insects. None of which would attack a person in such a way or swarm together.
There will be carcasses, droppings and insect bites all through her flesh, and not an organ left. She is just a husk of a human being now, only muscle bone and skin as the strange and perplexing left overs from the freak attack.
Constantine almost cringes in anticipation as they finally lift her onto the gurney. He catches a glimpse of something he has come to expect- the killers calling card. He is certain that on closer inspection the gaping wounds in the flesh of her back will form a symbol that looks like a runic 'J', just like all the other victims.
He feels his stomach lurch and he turns his gaze away. He doesn't think he will ever get used to seeing the mutilated dead, human sacrifice on paper is a lot less horrific than the actual tangible corpse before him, it also seems a lot less impossible.
The circumstances of her death are certifiably insane, like nothing anyone of them has ever seen before. It's straight out of some sort of cliché horror film with a corpse that looks so unreal it might as well be a dummy in heavy make-up.
"Not your garden variety of serial killer." He mutters grimly, watching the body disappear under the cover of the body bag, a few insect bodies fall to the snow beneath the gurney on transport. "Or perhaps it is." He huffs, trying to stifle the hysteric laughter that threatens to bubble up.
It's going to kill John to keep that joke to himself.
The case is starting to get to him, his usual aloof manner is just a little less and his shoulders hunch up just a little more. It isn't just the corpses or the manner in which they died, there is something else, something wrong that he can't put his finger on, a niggling little detail he has overlooked.
The investigation has been going on for months now and they are four corpses deep in the case. The news papers are calling the killer 'The Countryside cutter' and making the usual jabs at the force for not catching the monster fast enough.
John's old high school friend, Chas Kramer, has been the lead detective from the start of the murders. The moment Constantine had seen the second article in the news he had called the detective up and demanded to see the crime scenes in person. Chas, already without a lead, had acquiesced in the hopes that John's doctorate in occultism will shed some light on the killers motives.
John hadn't considered the mental stress that would tag along with the case, he had been too busy with the excitement of putting his long years of study to work on something so meaningful.
But now...
Now, it's become personal. He's beginning to feel like the culprit is deliberately pushing him towards a mental break down. Lack of sleep, alcohol abuse, tantalizing clues that lead down the road to nowhere.
They have already barred him from smoking near the crime scene, claiming contamination. His hands shake within the depths of his pockets, his nerves are shot and the last strains of sweet nicotine are the only thing holding him together. John can already feel the craving claw it's way to the fore front of his mind, making him grit his teeth.
It will be a long day.
He takes one last look at their Jane Doe as the final flashes of the swarming media's camera's go off, semi blinding him. Her eyelashes catch snow flakes as the empty sockets stare into nothing and her dark hair sprawls behind her like spilled satin, frozen stiff. As the body bag zips up around her face he wonders if anyone will come forward to claim her. None of the others have had a positive ID yet.
He pulls himself away and heads back towards the police car blockade. Tired eyes darting around the empty fields as his hands dig into his coat pockets, already seeking out the banged up cigarette packet.
It bothers him that the bodies are dumped in the open, something about a serial murderer who also showcases his work reeks of some twisted pride. It's a challenge and a mockery all in one.
He slips a cigarette between his lips and lights it, inhaling the first breath of nicotine with shaky urgency.
"Think it's another one?" John's toxin induced bliss is interrupted by the voice of Detective Kramer. He hardly even glances at John as he speaks, his eyes are trained warily on the victim as she's wheeled away. His hands are shoved deep into the pockets of his rumpled canvas jacket and his shoulders are hunched against the cold. The tips of his ears and nose are turning bright pink in the crisp morning air but he wont dress appropriately until the lakes start freezing over.
Chas is a man in his early thirties, grey streaks beginning to decorate his trimmed beard and dark hair. He wears his usual leather golf hat, white shirt and worn jeans, completing his look of aging bachelor in need of someone to take care of him.
"Yeah." John exhales a cloud of smoke with the word and flicks the butt of the cigarette, dislodging the spent ash.
"It's too early for this shit." Kramer grumbles with a tired look in his eyes. John only nods in agreement and eyes the detectives coffee with growing envy.
"You got anything?" Chas finally asks, wrestling a notepad out of his pocket with one hand. It's a little pre-emptive but John doesn't blame him, at this stage he'd be jumping on any new information like a dog presented with a pigs ear.
"Maybe, don't know." Constantine exhales a cloud of smoke.
"Shit." Chas lets out a sigh, his breath coming out in a cloud of steam. He sets the half-drunk coffee on the roof of one of the patrol cars and fishes a pen from his pocket. "Every time I see a damn fly in my house I just about shit myself." He grumbles, scribbling across the soft cardboard cover of his notebook to get the ballpoint working.
It's the detectives first big case, he's nervous as hell and already grasping at straws. John's lack of conviction is not filling him with confidence.
"That is why we drink, Chas." John exhales and rubs a hand over his jaw. "Ask around, see if anyone has noted any out of place smells." He drops the cigarette butt on the ground and stubs it out with his boot heel.
"That a joke?" Chas takes a moment to squint at him accusingly before subtly sniffing the air.
John huffs slightly out of his nose and shakes his head. "Just ask, it's all I've got at the moment. Anything out of the expected."
Kramer sighs and nods to Constantine before heading back towards the scene, leaving his coffee behind cooling on the roof of the car.
John is an opportunist, the drink doesn't stand a chance.
He hasn't outright told Chas what he's looking for because he's beginning to doubt his own soundness of mind. There has been a particular and fleeting scent in the air present at the past two crime scenes not unlike sulphur, only he couldn't pin point its origin and it was gone so fast it had him questioning whether or not he had just stepped into some ones shit cloud.
At least that's what he had thought until he had gone home. The smell had permeated into his clothing and no amount of dry cleaning would get it out. He'd almost had screaming fits at two different cleaners when they denied all sense of smell.
The police Councilor told him it was stress.
Bullshit.
He is almost expecting it when the scent reaches his nose once more and he hastily lights up another cigarette to waft the smell away. If anyone else makes note of it he'll know he hasn't gone off the deep end and Chas wont think he's seeing demons popping out from under his bed.
He inhales sharply, filling his lungs with nicotine as he opens his own journal, a battered leather bound thing that has seen better days, and flips to a well loved page in the middle. The ominous 'J' symbol peers back at him from a grainy photograph.
John has spent many a sleepless night trying to hunt down the symbol to no avail but he knew the signs, someone is trying desperately hard to make these attacks look like they are a form of demon worship, one that yields results. It has been working the media up into a frenzy, teenagers and demon worshipers are beside themselves with joy.
So they are after a delusional psychopath, but a smart one.
What is more infuriating is that John has the nagging feeling that he knows the symbol from somewhere but he can't place it and neither can any of his contacts. The useless bloody lot of them.
There hasn't even been so much as a license plate or car make to help the investigation, it was like the victims just rolled themselves out onto the road. Perhaps they were all adventuring nudists wandering alone in the middle of winter, ones who liked to be gnawed on by recreational insects. It was as sound a theory as any they had come up with so far.
The victims have nothing to connect them either, chosen at random by all accounts. Different roads, no particular dumping pattern. The murderer kept their habits out of their hobby.
The body of the girl is being loaded up at last, off to the coroners table to be tagged, photographed and dissected, not necessarily in that order. John snaps his journal shut and pinches the bridge of his nose before returning an almost heart breaking look of question from Chas with a shake of his head. He has nothing.
Constantine heads out, irritable and tired, nothing but breakfast and whiskey on his mind. He's got to start pulling up some answers or he's going to lose his god-damned mind.
He takes a moment to mull over his options as he drives towards his home office. He can use the rest of the day to pour over his avalanche of books for the umpteenth time, and when that inevitably brings no results, he is going to have to call in several monumental favors using Chas as a sort of buffer to gain access to restricted reading sections pulled in from all over the country.
There are no promises and little time to wait for the information to get through the fucking maze of bureaucracy before he gets to spend weeks pouring over it all. And for all the information he does get he could very well be chasing a figment of a deranged imagination. The symbol might be completely made up for the murderers own delusional purposes, though John would swear on his nan's grave that he has seen it somewhere before. It had to have stemmed from something, a reference to insects, a poster for a horror flick. He just can't think of anything.
It isn't his job, it's Kramer's, John knows that. But the degrees of separation are narrowing down. This is his field, and how often does someone with his credentials get called in to help out on a serial killer? Never.
He knows there's something he's missing, it's a nagging feeling that is keeping him up all night pulling his hair out.
John can solve this, save lives. He can be the hero, put his name and field on the map, if only he can force himself to remember where he has seen that bloody glyph before.
He makes a hasty decision and turns the car around, heading back the way he came. A twenty minute drive later and he pulls into the parking lot of the Way Point. A rare antiques, artifacts and junk store. Once or twice he has found something of worth here, but the majority of it is rusty, dust mite ridden crap.
He knows he's hitting rock bottom when he starts harassing antique stores, but he's running out of places and people to turn to.
The Way Point owner, Bernie Nelson, is the kind of guy to remember the face of a customer years after selling them something. So on the off chance lady luck isn't shitting all over John's day he is willing to pay the shopkeeper a visit. Of course it's far too early for the shop to be open, so it gives him ample time to light a cigarette or three and find a coffee shop.
By the time Bernie opens up, John is wide awake and just about twitching with the coffee/nicotine combo. He pulls himself out of the beat up car and stubs the latest cigarette out on the gravel before heading into the shop. His trench coat is creased from sitting and his unshaven face paired with bloodshot eyes make him look like he'd slept in his car, or he's a spent the night on a bender, both answers technically not wrong.
Bernie raises his eyebrows at but says nothing. Bless him.
Bernie is a ripened middle aged man with a well receded hair line and cherubic like features. He favours tweed in all forms, and patches the elbows of his jackets himself. His wife has been dead coming on five years, which is a good thing, she had hated John with a vindictive passion. Which, incidentally, is why Bernie likes him.
"Hey Bernie," John offers a half hearted wave whilst moving around the clutter in the store. He takes pains to avoid knocking the piles of dust collectors down, but it's no easy task, especially not in his state.
"John! How are you? How are you, my boy?" Bernie is also English, he has a Coronation street kindly old man vibe to him that John had immediately taken to.
"Not too shabby." John offers a smile, making his way towards the counter, ducking under some hand carved wooden chimes that hang from the ceiling.
"Not too shabby?" Bernie shakes his head, "If you were any shabbier I'd call you an antique and stick a price on you."
John smirks and lowers his chin in an act of shame. His hand subconsciously smoothes out his hair as if it would save his appearance. Bernie chuckles and sets the cloth and cleaner out of view, his chubby hands rubbing against each other as if the motion would rid them of the chemical compound.
"So, let me guess. Not a social visit, no matter what line you spin me." He raises a hand to forestall John's objection. "Not here to buy." He trails off, sucking his teeth in thought while he appraised the other man. "I've got something you want, though, I can see it in those puppy dog eyes."
"I hope so, Bernie." John admits, reaching into his breast pocket and tugging out his battered journal. "I really do, because no one else has shi- ah, no one else has anything." John stumbles a bit over his own words while he thumbs through the various bookmarks and rubber bands holding the pages together. Eventually he finds the right section and places it on the counter, spinning it around for the older man to see.
"Again, John?" Bernie eyes the symbol crudely scribbled there with slight exasperation.
"I know, Bernie, but I'm running out of options. Please just look at it again, see if it sparks up anything?" Constantine tries and fails to keep the desperation out of his voice.
Bernie sighs and pulls a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket. He eyes the symbol for the second time in a handful of months.
"Sorry to say, yet again, my boy, I haven't a clue. Nothings come up since the last time you asked, I would have called." John feels his heart drop. His mind already racing through a string of other questions in hope that Bernie might answer at least one of them.
"What if I told you it had something to do with insects? The old testament kind." Bernie shakes his head again, much to John's dismay. "It was made with a knife- the symbol I mean, right? So I'm thinking it was a ceremonial piece. Right up your alley. Has anyone asked about knives in the last three months?" It was one hell of a long shot, the knife was likely going to be a family heirloom, passed down from crazy great uncle to crazy great grandchild but he needs to try.
Bernie sighs a bit and frowns as he thinks it over. John's heart skips a beat when the old man raises a finger, wagging it as his mind chases through his mental customer data base.
"Now hold on a minute, I might- yes, I might have something. Just let me find- where did I put the bloody thing?." Bernie begins shuffling into the back room of the shop, his hands busily dig through his 'filing system', which is a mass of unsorted, but painstakingly hand written receipts. John feels his heart beat pick up a few notches. He tucks his journal away pre-emptively in hope.
Bernie emerges a handful of minutes later with a business card in hand. He slides it over to John across the glass counter and smiles, no, beams at the younger man. John looks from the card to Bernie, flipping it over to see if he is missing something.
It reads:
The Crossroads Inc.
Harry Bordon
Collector & Aquiree
"What's this?" John asks with a raised eyebrow, the thudding of his heart drops to the usual pace of despair and disappointment.
"That is the card of the man who came in a few months ago." Bernie continues to beam. "He was looking for a ceremonial knife for a client. Of course I didn't have any at the time." Bernie drums his fingers on the glass as he pulled up the memory. "So I told him he might need to contact Bartell's, the auctioneer house, you know the one? Those items usually pop up as family heirlooms, old army bits and bobs."
John taps the card against his fingers, his mind working a mile a minute. It might be something, nothing definitive but it was a thread he could pull on.
"Can I take this?" He gestured to the card, which is already halfway in his shirt pocket.
"Of course!" Bernie calls out as John is already storming towards the door, his jaw set in determination."Don't be a stranger, John!"
Constantine sets a cigarette between his lips the moment he steps outside, his shoulders relax as he fumbles for his lighter. He feels the weight lift momentarily off his shoulders. He has finally found a way forward, and despite it being a definite maybe of a lead, it doesn't matter, it's something.
He pauses as the coiling scent of sulfur shakes him from his internal party. His eyes dart around the car lot, as if he might see the scent trail bared before him. There's nothing but gravel and parked cars, and just like every other time, the offensively fleeting scent has faded once more. He shakes his head and lights his cigarette.
Get a grip John.