John had hoped the girls would stay outside, he knew it was going to be gruesome, but Ayako had been very quick to remind him that she was a doctor, and Mai and Masako, though they looked uneasy and a little green even at the thought of what the body could possibly look like, did not want to be left out.
The coroner was a small middle-aged man, no taller than John; friendly to talk to, but very clinical when it came to actually discussing the body itself.
"I know you're going to want to look at this by yourself, Father, so I'll leave you alone," he said as he walked ahead of the group with John and Kasuya, "but I can't imagine what else it could possibly be other than the obvious. He was completely drained of blood, and the wounds are similar to the others."
"But there are differences," John phrased it like a question. If they were the exact same, he would have said so.
"They're worse; messier. I think you might be right, either this is a bizarre group of rabid animals, or one sick son of a… sorry, Father."
John didn't comment, and just let him lead them into the morgue.
"The others are still in there, right where I left them," he said as he opened one of the doors to the large storage refrigerator, pulling out the flat tray that the body was on, covered with a white sheet. "Help yourself to any of my tools, just sterilize them afterward. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for my lunch break."
Monk, Mai, Ayako, Masako, and Yasu watched him as he left, finally speaking when the door closed:
"He's a little… strange," Mai commented.
"He's normal enough," John said with a half shrug. He'd dealt with some pretty weird people to the point that it didn't bother him.
"How long have you been here?" Monk asked.
"A few days."
"Seems kind of strange for him to just leave us in here."
"Most people in town have seen a Catholic priest only a handful of times in their lives, if at all… I don't think they know what to expect from me, and in a way that makes all of this easier."
"About that, I'm still confused about why you're here in the first place," Monk commented, and Yasu nodded.
"I'll get to that back to the hotel," John knew they could tell he was avoiding the question… he was bad at concealing that.
John put on one of the smocks that were in a drawer of the counter, which was full of medical equipment, and Kasuya and Ayako joined him, the three also snapping on a pair of latex gloves. They walked back over to the body, the others making a semi-circle around them, wanting to see, but not wanting to get too close.
John took a deep breath, and pulled the sheet back; and it was only through exposure and extreme composure that kept him from gagging, and even Kasuya's eyes widened.
"Okay, definitely an escalation…" John kept his breathing even.
"The other bodies weren't this bad?" Kasuya looked at him.
"No, the earliest ones, which I was only shown pictures of, were consistent with animal bites, and even the bodies from the last two attacks, which happened just before I got into town, didn't have many more wounds than the first, heavier scratching mainly: I'll show you in a minute."
"They didn't just bite in the areas that would give them the most blood flow, either," Ayako commented, her voice more clinical about it than usual… but this wasn't exactly the usual, either. "There are bite marks in those areas, yes, but there are still quite a few scratches on the calves and feet," she had pulled the sheet off of the feet and legs as well, so that it was just covering the man's pelvis and upper thighs, "and look, they've sunk their teeth in, but haven't actually bitten down.
"Wild animals wouldn't do this," Kasuya said, "animals aren't sadistic, and these would have been meant to cause pain, not for feeding."
"The bite marks aren't consistent with human teeth, either, not on this body or the others," John commented.
"The scratches are the exact same as those on the wall back at the crime scene," Yasu looked more than a little green, but he was examining from about a meter away.
"Gaki, in art, are always depicted with nails of varying length," John said, "and these marks are consistent with gaki I've dealt with in the past."
"You've come across multiple gaki like this?" Masako sounded confused, and a little scared.
John nodded, "usually it's just one or two; I wouldn't have called you out if I wasn't sure it was a group of them, which increases the danger level considerably to the point that I'd be in over my head on my own."
Masako looked sad, and John knew why: she knew that there were evil spirits out there, but he was sure that, as a medium, she mainly came into contact with kind, or pitiable ones, and that gaki were always seen as relatively harmless; it must be a bit of a shock to find out that this wasn't the only case of corruption out there.
"I'm sorry, Masako," John apologized. His instinct was to give a pat on the shoulder, or some form of contact, but he was still wearing his latex gloves, and he'd already put his hands on the body, so that option was out.
She nodded, and gave him a pat on the shoulder instead.
They finished examining the body, and then John showed them the wounds on the other two, just to confirm, but no new conclusions were drawn. Their paper smocks and latex gloves were thrown in the garbage, and they eagerly left the morgue, having decided… much to Monk's dismay, that what they were after were definitely gaki.
They walked back to the hotel, breathing in the fresh air with, again, a new appreciation for it.
"Now, John, enough side-stepping," Yasu was the first to bring it up again.
"Seriously… why are you here in the first place?" Monk pressed, and Ayako put her hand on John's shoulder.
Oh boy… he hadn't been looking forward to this at all.