Chapter 54

Chapter 54
Ben

I grabbed my jacket and gun, joining Gerald and a small team heading for the docks. The drive was a blur of flashing lights and piercing sirens. The city streets were eerily quiet for a Thursday afternoon, a symptom of the widespread fear. Most people were probably holed up at home, glued to their TVs, waiting for the next shoe to drop. Well, they were about to get a whole damn boot.

When we pulled up to the designated coordinates, the scene was already swarming. Dozens of police cruisers, crime scene vans, even an ambulance. The yellow tape was already up, stretching around a desolate, forgotten pier, the kind of place where old fishing boats went to rust. The air hung thick with the usual police chemicals—a mix of disinfectant and something metallic, something you learned to associate with blood.

I could see Rhodes’s sleek black sedan, parked haphazardly, one door ajar, like he’d jumped out in a hurry. My gut twisted. This was it. This was the Killer's final act for Rhodes.

"What have we got, Gerald?" I asked, my voice tight.

Gerald just shook his head, looking grim. "Forensics is already on it. Uniforms found the car, then followed a drag mark down the pier. They just radioed in. Said... it's a spectacle. Get ready, Ben."

Ready. Like you could ever be ready for this Killer’s handiwork. I took a deep breath, the metallic smell stronger now, making my stomach clench. We walked down the rickety old pier, the wooden planks groaning under our weight. The air was cold, damp, carrying the briny smell of the bay mixed with something else, something cloying and sweet, like stale meat.

And then I saw it.

My breath hitched. My vision swam for a second, my eyes struggling to process the sheer, grotesque reality of the scene laid out before us. It wasn't just a body. It was... a statement. A final, horrifying punctuation mark on Rhodes's reign of terror.

Rhodes was there, alright. Or what was left of him. He was positioned upright, strapped somehow to one of the thick, barnacle-encrusted wooden pilings that held up the pier, his back to the rough wood. His head was slumped to one side, facing the dark, murky waters of the bay. He looked like a puppet on a cross.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Not even close.

His body had been meticulously, brutally stripped bare. Not a stitch of clothing left. His skin, usually so pristine, was a canvas of deep, ugly lacerations. Not stab wounds, not gunshot wounds. These were long, shallow cuts, crisscrossing his chest, his arms, his legs. They didn’t look like they were meant to kill, but to inflict unimaginable pain. To flay.

And then I saw the details that made my gorge rise. His entire torso, from his sternum down to his hips, had been cut open. Not a clean surgical incision, but a jagged, crude tear. And from the gaping cavity, something was missing. Not just organs, though those were gone too. Something far more symbolic.

His ribs. They had been expertly, horrifyingly removed. Every single one of them. The exposed flesh was glistening, raw and red, where the bone cage used to be. It looked like someone had opened him up and taken the very framework of his body. And then, I saw where they had gone.

Arranged on the weathered, splintered wooden planks around his feet, laid out in a horrifying circle, were his ribs. Each one bleached white, almost pristine, stark against the dark, wet wood. And on top of each rib, a small, neatly folded wad of cash. Hundred-dollar bills, tied with tiny, intricate red ribbons. And on top of each wad of cash, something else. A small, miniature wooden gavel. Dozens of them, scattered like grim offerings.

My mind flashed back to Sterling, surrounded by piles of money and gavels. But this was… this was a thousand times more intimate, more sickening. It was like the Killer had performed an autopsy on his very soul, exposing the core of his corruption.

And it wasn't just the ribs. His eyes. They weren't closed. They were wide open, staring blankly at the sky. But instead of eyeballs, there were two large, perfectly polished silver coins, one on each socket, glimmering dully in the weak afternoon light. Like a grotesque payment for passage into the underworld.

And then the message. Spray-painted in bold, angry red on the wooden pilings, right above Rhodes’s head:

THE BONE MERCHANT. THE PRICE OF COMPLICITY. THE FRAMEWORK OF LIES HAS CRUMBLED. THE CITY REMEMBERS.

"The bone merchant." It made my stomach churn. Rhodes, selling off the very structure of justice, profiting from the misery and the lies. And the ribs, the framework, were removed. It was brutally, sickeningly poetic.

Evans, from forensics, was already there, her face a mask of horrified professionalism. She was pale, her lips pressed into a thin line, but she was moving, documenting, trying to process the nightmare. "Ben," she said, her voice strained, "this… this is a new level. The precision. The… the statement. It's like nothing we've ever seen. The killer isn't just killing them. They're turning them into goddamn symbols."

I stood there, frozen, the cold wind off the bay doing little to cool the sick heat in my gut. Rhodes, the man who had dismissed David’s theories, who had tried to bury the truth, was now the ultimate display of that very truth. His final act had been to expose the rot with his words. His death was now exposing it with his very body.

"Has anyone notified the mayor?" Miller asked, his voice shaking slightly.

"On it, Lieutenant," a young officer replied, his own face green.

The magnitude of this hit me like a physical blow. Sterling’s death had shaken the city’s political foundations. Rhodes’s public meltdown had shattered public trust. But this… this was going to rip the city wide open. The Assistant Commissioner found like this, in such a grotesque, symbolic display. There would be no covering this up, no spinning it away. The Killer had gone for the jugular, and they'd succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest nightmares.

I pulled out my phone, my fingers fumbling. I had to call David. He deserved to know. He’d been trying to tell us. He’d seen the patterns, the messages, the hidden truths. And now, the Killer had screamed it out for the whole damn city to hear, with Rhodes’s body as their final, horrifying billboard.

I found David’s contact, my thumb hovering over the call button. He was still recovering, still weak. But he needed to know. He'd been right about Rhodes, about the systematic rot. And now, the Killer had literally dismantled the man trying to uphold that rotten system.

The phone rang twice.

“Ben?” David’s voice was hoarse, still rough from the hospital.

“David,” I said, my voice barely a whisper, the gruesomeness of the scene pressing down on me. “It’s… it’s Rhodes. They found him. At the old docks.”

A beat of silence on the other end, heavy and full of unspoken dread. David already knew what "found him" meant with this Killer.