Chapter 5 – Eraldo Coil and Rio de Janeiro

Mello strutted into the room and sat in the middle chair.

"You wanted to see me?" he said to L as he sat down.

"Please, drop the attitude Mello. Life is unfair but we are now in the same situation. I am here to talk to you about your future. You have the potential to be number one. However with your attitude as it is, you will never succeed."

Mello sighed and mumbled an apology.

"I understand that you do not know that much about me, true?"

Mello nodded.

"I am L, that much, I'm sure you know. People may have you believe that I am a fraud, that I am just a voice behind a screen. That is for you to decide," L said. After a brief pause, he continued. "In my time as the world's private detective, I have solved many crimes. On principle, I do not get involved in a case unless the stakes are high. I have solved over 3500 cases since becoming L. As other alias' maybe double that number. One of these cases, one I would not have got involved in under normal circumstances, was the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases. I will tell you this story later. However, there is another case I wish to tell you about. A case that stays with me, even after all these years was one I was personally involved with under the name Eraldo Coil. There are two reasons this case stays with me. First, it was my first case under the name Coil. Secondly, the case was disturbing, to say the very least. It involved a young boy, not much older than eight years old. He never spoke. Not a word according to his parents, or at least, what I would assume was his parents. They lived in a hostel. Each morning, they would wake up and the child would be covered in blood, somebody living in the hostel would be dead and one of the child's digits would be missing. A rather grotesque case before I was involved. When I was called into the case, the parts of the boy that were missing got worse, an ear, for example was one part. Obviously, the child was in distress. Having parts of one's body detached in such a gruesome manner would be distressing for anyone. To have nobody to help you when such things were happening must be even worse."

Mello's eyes were wide in horror.

"The situation itself surrounding the case isn't important; the important thing is to know that when faced with a possible mass-murder charge, as the culprit was, people would do anything."

"Was there anything that connected the victims to the child?" Mello asked.

"The victims were black. The child was black. The only obvious connection, other than their race, was the fact they all lived in the same building."

"So why did you need to get involved?"

"The stupidity of the police in the Los Angeles BB case was laughable to me. This case however could have been better analysed by primates. The police involved destroyed several pieces of vital evidence and in some cases even misidentified victims. The first question the authorities asked me was 'do you know who's behind it?' I had been following the case and, in a way, laying-in-wait for a request to get involved.

I knew my answer would not be taken lightly; in fact, I was more than prepared for the hostility I faced. I felt it was somebody in the building, or at least somebody who knew the building well. My immediate intuition would say that the killer was a man; however, with no evidence to support this theory, I dismissed it. I also thought it would be someone seen as a very helpful person, one with many acquaintances but no close friends. I sent Watari, Wammy, to photograph the crime scenes and to retrieve the original crime scene photos from the police. I noticed something I was sure the police had missed. Around each victim was a key, except for the first victim, the janitor, the only one with a reason to hold such conspicuous amounts of keys. The keys all seemed to be for the same room; a room in the attic. A room I was told has never been unlocked. I asked Watari to go to the room and take photographs of it for me. How those keys escaped the knowledge of the police, I'll never know and I dare not comprehend. When I received the photographs, I arranged them into the area I assumed the room would take. After carefully looking at all the pictures, I came to the conclusion that the mother was to blame. After her arrest, she admitted to the crimes. The child eventually died and his mother is now serving a life sentence."

"The kid's mother did it? She cut her child into pieces?"

"I said it was a grotesque case. I, myself wanted to find another explanation."

Mello looked at the young detective that he now knew went by at least three different names.

"Another case that I am particularly fond of, no, not a case I am fond of, that would suggest I like the case. It a case that will be with me forever; a case involving a serial killer in Rio de Janeiro. The culprit in this case was in the end seen to be non-compos-mentis, I trust I don't need to tell you what that means?"

"No. I know what that means. It means he's crazy."

"Not entirely. It means the person's not mentally competent, not of a sound mind. This particular person had cannibalistic and vampire-like tendencies. Serial killers often specialize in manipulation. This one in particular was very good at it. The manipulation the police force suffered before I was called in was unreal, of course, they didn't believe that I alone could solve the case and so they asked for the help of two other detectives, detectives that would eventually loose their names to me. One I have already mentioned, Eraldo Coil. The other was a man named Danuve. This case was a breaking point for me. This case was the case when I acquired the names of the top three detectives in the world."

L paused for a moment and began to chew his thumbnail. Whether he did this to create a dramatic pause or to think about how to continue his story, Mello didn't know. All he knew was he was eager to hear the rest of the story.

"The suspect in this case was a female; that in itself is highly unusual for a serial killer working alone. The police didn't pick up on this. They were looking for a male. She was a socially disjointed woman, someone who didn't fit in well in her society. An ex-prostitute, she also had no self respect. Her first victim, if it could be called that, was her own child. The police didn't call it a victim, purely because the child was already dead at the time. The Brazilian police don't recognise infanticide as a crime. I do, however and it was the missing link that the police were looking for; the basic link that both Coil and Danuve missed. The second victim was a 4 year old girl. She was found in an abandoned warehouse, stripped to her underwear. Her face had been cut to pieces and she had been stabbed in the chest several times.

Obviously the police had performed a SA test which confirmed the child was not molested or sexually assaulted, this should have pointed them to a female, or at least a homosexual male.

The third victim was a six year old boy. He was found 6 days later in a field. He too was stripped to his underwear and his face was mutilated, this suggested to the police that a serial killer was behind the murders. Again an SA test was performed and came back negative. My deductions at this point would suggest the murderer was almost defiantly a woman; however the police continued to look for a male assailant. The families of the victims and all those close to them were obviously distressed. The entire community wanted the killer caught. The next victim, the oldest victim, was a 12 year old male. Unlike the other victims, he was not stripped down to his underwear and so the police didn't connect the case to the previous one. They're assumption was that it was a copycat. After the fifth victim was killed, the authorities asked Coil to get involved, as well as Danuve and myself. The victim immediately after our involvement became public was the youngest, a two year old female. Her eyes were gouged out and the rest of her body was horribly mutilated. When the killer was caught, she confessed to, in all, 9 murders. Only seven bodies were found."

Mello looked in awe at the detective.

"What about the Los Angeles B.B. murder cases?" he asked, hurriedly.

"That is yet another case when an alias was used. That was the first case I introduced myself as Ryuzaki."

I couldn't help myself, I wanted to know what other stories L told Mello and so I made them up. I think they're pretty good myself.