All the Sinners Bleed

by S.A. Cosby

“The South doesn’t change. You can try to hide the past, but it comes back in ways worse than the way it was before. Terrible ways.”

“Stop it,” he said out loud to no one. He rubbed his face with both hands. The shrapnel from the explosions had left that question-mark-shaped burn scar on his belly. The scars on his soul were not visible but were no less horrific.

That what had happened before would happen again. The wheel spins and spins and eventually it lands on the same number it landed on twenty, thirty, forty years ago. No matter what they found inside the school, the season of peace had passed. Now the season of pain had returned, on his watch.

Titus saw the agony that wound its way through Latrell. It twisted his body. It contorted his limbs. It was as if his arms and legs were being pulled and drawn by the weight of a guilt and shame Latrell couldn’t properly articulate. His hands gripped the rifle with manic desperation, fingers undulating in and out like the tentacles of a deep-sea creature who had no knowledge of the sun.

“Evidence makes convictions, your gut gets you to the heart of the case,” Ezekiel Wiggins, the only other Black agent in the Indiana Field Office, was fond of saying. Titus thought the truth was somewhere in the middle. Evidence could be tainted. Your gut could lead you astray. You had to find a balance between technique, intuition, and the truth.

In Titus’s penance-driven mind he’d thought so, but now he realized that was the height of naivete. You pick up an axe, you’re going to chop down a tree. You pick up a gun, whether you are wearing a star or not, eventually you’re going to chop down a man.

Titus knew that was always a possibility. The algorithm of law enforcement made it a near-inevitability. That didn’t make it any easier to reconcile the fact that he held the power of life and death.

Hundreds of moving parts were now set to begin locking into place like rusted gears in an old engine. Any or all of those parts could bite him in his softest places. But that knowledge wasn’t the only thing paramount in his mind.

Titus sighed. He would keep setting the pieces of his life in straight lines. It was all he had. It was all that brought him a modicum of peace.

“I can’t believe it. The stuff you said was on his phone. I can’t believe Mr. Spearman was into…” Davy’s face trembled. “Kiddie porn,” Carla said softly. Titus kept his gaze straight ahead. “It wasn’t just porn,” Titus said. He took off his shades and rubbed his eyes. “It’s real bad. He was … he was in the pictures.”

“We would have found them. The Wercomico is brackish. Has a little salinity to it. Bodies float. Ain’t you ever heard Pip’s story about the baptismal drownings back in … what was it, ’68? No. They had to put them somewhere else. A place that was special to them. A secret place,” Titus said.

Cam rubbed his chin. “When I first came back, Mr. Spearman saw me in the Safeway. He spoke to me. He didn’t look away. He didn’t … it didn’t seem like he felt sorry for me. A lot of people couldn’t even look me in the eye.” “There’s people who thought Danny Rolling was a hell of a singer,” Titus said. “Who’s Danny Rolling?” Cam asked. “The Gainesville Ripper. Killed five college students over four days back in 1990. Cut one of their heads off and put it on a shelf near the body. He was one of our case studies at the Bureau.”

That didn’t mean he had to stand there like an extra in Gone with the Wind and take it while this jackass in the faux-retro hipster hat got his rocks off talking to one Black man about another Black man being killed. He could despise Latrell’s actions without reveling in his death.

What he wanted to say but couldn’t bring himself to was: “Think of the worst thing you’ve ever seen. Now imagine seeing it dozens of times. See it and hear the screams that come with it and the cries for mercy or for God or for mama and knowing that there will be no mercy, no rescue, no divine hand of God coming down to smite the devils. Think of seeing that and knowing that it will stain you forever like the fucking mark of Cain.” Instead, he said: “Let’s go to bed.”

“Dig your nails in my back,” he’d whispered last night. In the cold light of morning, he didn’t know why he had asked. He supposed the lizard part of his brain had taken over and it had conveniently forgotten that Darlene didn’t like to be the aggressor. But he had needed that aggression last night. He had needed it to chase away the pictures on Jeff Spearman’s phone that were now pictures in his head. He had wanted to feel … anything besides disgust. Say what you will about her, but Kellie never had a problem with aggression. In fact, she craved it. If she had been in his bed last night, he’d— Stop it. You got a good woman. Appreciate that, he thought.

“Spearman and the Last Wolf. I think they did it and I think they got off on it. They liked knowing those bodies were out there. They liked having that secret. But secrets can be corrosive. You hold it in, and it starts eating your insides. Pretty soon you find yourself willing to do anything to stop the pain. For Latrell that meant blowing a hole in Jeff Spearman’s head wide enough to put your fist through,” Titus said. It occurred to him he could have been talking about himself as well as Latrell. His secret was patiently waiting to be revealed. Hanging over his head like a dull sword of Damocles.

“Men like this, like Spearman, they don’t like to let them go. We need to chop through those roots and get closer to the tree,” Titus said. He ignored Warren’s dig about his past. He was used to the people who voted for him deifying his time with the Bureau and those who didn’t vote for him dismissing it. Titus thought if they knew why he’d stepped down, the roles would be reversed. He took no solace in that knowledge.

“How many?” Titus asked. Davy wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Seven so far. Boys and girls, just like you said was on the videos.”

Sometimes grief is love unexpressed. Other times it’s regret made flesh.

Titus turned and slammed the ax into the chopping block. “I used to believe in God’s plan. I believed he would heal Mama. Even though he’d never spoken to me. He’d never answered any of my prayers, but I still believed he’d heal her. Stop her muscles from turning to bone. Touch her with his heavenly hand and take away her pain. Stop her from howling all night. But he didn’t,” Titus said. “She died at forty years old and the world just moved on. So, when you tell me it was God’s plan for them boys and girls to end up under that weeping willow tree, I have to ask myself, which one of us is the bigger fool? You for saying it or me for listening to it?”

“I prayed for you. Because I know you’re hurting. She was my wife. She was the best woman I’ve ever known. So I know how much you’re hurting, because I’m feeling it too. But, son, faith is never foolish,” Albert said. “Pop,” Titus said as he brushed past his father and went into the house, “faith broke my fucking heart.”

“The third person is somebody local. They knew this place. Not just the burial spot but the county. I’m guessing a white male between thirty and fifty. Physically strong. Organized. He’s not flipping from job to job. Probably doesn’t have a steady girlfriend or wife. If he does, they have a dysfunctional sex life. He’s got land. Enough land to build a shed or outbuilding that he soundproofed. Some place semi-remote. Where nobody noticed him bringing in live teenagers and taking out dead bodies. The … injuries he inflicted on the victims were horrific. He has a lot of anger. Lots of rage. There was a lot of religious iconography on the walls of the building where the crimes took place. He may have theomania. He’s obsessed with God or thinks he’s God or is angry with God. Maybe that’s the source of his rage,” Titus said.

“You really think it’s that simple?” Dr. Kim asked. “Evil is rarely complicated. It’s just fucking bold.” Titus touched the brim of his hat and left.

Titus wrote down all the details that Dr. Kim had shared. At the top of the page he wrote the phrase “Curse of Canaan.” He was sure that was a reference to the Curse of Ham in Genesis. A bit of Old Testament vitriol that multiple empires had used to justify subjugating various peoples and keeping them in chains. Titus could remember one social studies teacher who had said without a hint of compunction that Black people were cursed to be slaves by the word of God. When he’d gotten home from school that day and told his mother, he watched as a tornado brewed behind her eyes.

Old Testament, New Testament, it was just words with a little w, written by zealots as PR for their new cult founded in the memory of a dead carpenter.

“I’d like to thank everyone for coming today.” The hunt was on.

Ezekiel had told him once, “You can demand respect. You can treat them with it too. You can save their children. You can find their wandering grandparents. You can judge the goddamn pie contest. But sometimes you still have to remind them you’re not to be fucked with. It’s the only thing some people understand.” Titus thought about that as he put Marquis in the back of his truck. That thought made him incredibly sad.

“It was weird, ya know? Bunch of angels on the walls. Creepy angels with weird faces,” the caller said. His voice was soft as crepe paper. Titus gripped the phone. No one knew about the angel paintings from the video.

“Ask them about anyone in the congregation that seems off or odd. Anyone who is secretive but also aggressively helpful. Anyone who is prone to mood swings but also someone who is hyper-religious. Someone who seems like a quiet person but also too good to be true. A lot of times sociopaths will overcompensate with extreme emotions. They don’t really understand how real empathy, real emotions work, so they parrot it but they sometimes go overboard,” Titus said. He paused.

“They’ve already made one. They did something that made Latrell crack. There was some precipitating incident that made him kill Spearman. If we hadn’t confronted him, I think he would have killed the third member of their little murderous trio too. So they’ve made that first mistake. I’m willing to bet they’ve made more. Let’s go find out how many,” Titus said. He nodded toward the door.

“Reverend, if you’ve seen the things I have, you’d realize the devil is just the name we give to the terrible things we do to each other,” Titus said.

“Sheriff, I asked you earlier, but you didn’t respond. Would you mind if I included you in my prayers tonight?” Reverend Wilkes asked. Titus paused. “I don’t mind, but maybe you should pray for someone that believes, Reverend.” “God loves the believer and the nonbeliever all the same.”

Yeah, but I don’t love him back. I left that abusive relationship a long time ago, Titus thought. “Have a good evening, Reverend,” he said.

The congregation of Holy Rock didn’t wear hoods and they hadn’t burned a cross in anyone’s yard, but Titus had no illusions about their thoughts about him and people like him. It came off them in waves, like the rot from a gangrenous wound. A putrefaction of the soul.

The body had no face. The skin had been peeled away like the rind of an exotic fruit. What was left behind was a terrible contortion that seemed to be half a scream, half a laugh. Lidless eyes stared out at nothing, like a blind man staring into the sun. It was a cool day in mid-October, so there were no flies buzzing around the corpse, but other insects had found the remains. A few ants trundled across the mouth and over the tongue. Fat black beetles crawled over the body’s naked chest. A smooth gash ran across the body’s throat and opened it like a secondary mouth.

A crown of blackberry thorns encircled the head like a wreath. Titus could see what he had at first taken to be the cleaned and scoured skin of some large animal, maybe a deer, attached to the victim’s arms was actually the victim’s lungs. The killer had sliced the man’s back open and then pulled the lungs through the slits.

angel. If the symbolism wasn’t obvious enough, someone had carved URIEL in the victim’s chest, right above a death’s-head tattoo over a Dixie flag background over the victim’s heart.

“A lie can be halfway around the world while the truth is still pulling up his britches,” Helen Crown was fond of saying. Another piece of wisdom from his mother that time had borne out to be terribly true.

“I’m so sick of people saying ‘this is Charon’ like everyone around here is a goddamn virgin and no one has ever stepped on a sidewalk crack or stole a grape from the Safeway. Let me tell you something I learned in the Bureau. Doesn’t matter where you are from or where you live, people are people. They can be jealous or hateful or twisted and sick. They steal and they lie, and lie about stealing. They fuck each other’s husbands and wives or sons and daughters. They go to church every Sunday and hoot and holler about brotherhood and living in Christ, then they come right out and call you or me a porch monkey before they go home to beat their kids. Then have the nerve, the unmitigated audacity, to point at somebody else, at some other town, and say, ‘No, those are the sinners, those are freaks, not us, not Charon.’”

There was a chasm everyone had to traverse at one time or another called failure. Fear was the bridge that carried you over that crevasse.

I Am the Beast Slouching Towards Bethlehem, it said in what appeared to be black ink.

Yes, small towns are like the people who populate them. Eventually they will give up their secrets, but the price for those revelations is always paid in blood.

How I feel? Titus thought. I feel like the Woodsman when he confronted the Big Bad Wolf. I’m going to have to split someone’s belly to return us to any sense of normalcy. That’s how I feel.

“The phrase on the bodies came from Elias. A child he was raising killed his brother. A mixed-race child. So he’s person of interest number one. Latrell and Cole made deliveries together, now both of them are dead. Is there a connection between them and Elias? Is Elias the Last Wolf? He doesn’t appear strong enough to subdue Cole. Cole was saying he did some work for a guy, that was why he called the hotline. Then he turns up dead. And Dayane Carter is the last text message he got before he ended up dead,” Titus said.

“Tom, how many of your neighbors’ children ODed because you was carrying water for Jasper? How many of them are in the fucking ground because you needed a new pool pump? You think about that for a while before you ever try to speak to me again,” Titus said. He went down the steps of the deck and walked back to his SUV through the front yard. He thought he heard Tom sobbing as he walked away.

“We got a call yesterday from someone who knew details of the case no one besides us and the killer would know. He referenced a flock and how he was the wolf that was going to devour it. Then she says something to me about a flock.”

His body was naked as the day he was born. A wooden stake, about as big around as a baton, had one end shoved in the dirt. The other end was shoved in Elias’s anus. It was what was keeping the body upright. Flies buzzed around the body, playing electric blues on their translucent wings. The past few days had been unusually warm. While Cole Marshall had been spared the indignity of flies crawling across what was left of his face, Reverend Elias received no such consideration.

Polly Anne smiled. “He liked to say he enjoyed a different kind of love. Eventually his father demanded we produce some heirs. Horace cried before and after. And during, he closed his eyes and then I closed mine, and I think we both were far, far away. After I had Scott and Alanna, we came to an … understanding. We would be husband and wife in every way but one. He was free to find a different kind of love … and so was I.”

“I know Fall Fest usually brings in a ton of money for the county. But Ricky Sours and his boys are planning on marching down Main Street hollering about blood and soil and the Great Replacement and White Lives Matter. How big of a leap do you think they’d have to make to start blaming people who look like us for the two white men killed in the county?”

“In vino veritas,”