Blood of Gato

"Can you believe this?" Carl's voice was hushed, almost reverent—like he'd stumbled upon a shrine. His thumb jerked toward the grotesque arrangement: five bodies, bent and folded until they resembled a heart. Something unholy pulsated in the silence of it, as though the killer's hands had left behind not just flesh, but the trace of his obsession.

The yard stank of wet cardboard, copper, and something sweeter, rotting just beneath the surface. Puddles caught the spinning red-blue lights like fragments of dream, fractured mirrors blinking across the asphalt. Caution tape flapped against the fence—fluttering irregularly, too much like breath.

Carl's throat was dry. "We should set a stakeout. Or traps." He tried to sound procedural, but his voice betrayed him, thin and restless. They'd been here more often than at home, circling the same grounds, never catching up to their phantom. He always doubled back here, as if this place itself mattered—like a stage on which he rehearsed his theater of blood.

"He's escalating." Sam's lighter flared against his cheek, sudden and jarring, painting his face with a fire's glow before the wind devoured it. He tried again, just to keep his hands occupied. "Once every two weeks—that was the rhythm. Predictable. Almost controlled. But this?" His smoky breath coiled toward the heart of corpses. "Five. At once."

At the perimeter, Anna tied back her hair with a rubber band, shooing gawkers. "Step back, please… Any cameras? Anyone filming?" she called, voice firm but not unkind. Tomi moved alongside her, scribbling notes: alibis, sightings, shadows, noises in the night.

"Halloween's coming," Carl said, still studying the arrangement. "Maybe that's his trigger."

Sam exhaled smoke through a thin laugh. "God help us at Christmas. Imagine him decorating a tree." His words dripped irony, but the image lingered between them all the same—festive sparkle woven through horror. Both men shuddered it off.

"Don't tempt fate," Carl said. He crouched, knees sinking into the wet asphalt. Latex squealed faintly against fabric as he shifted a collar. Greenish pigment stained the victim's throat—not bruising, but paint.

Lia, the medical examiner, approached in silent, careful steps, booties crackling. Her headlamp cut a narrow glow across the bodies. "We got lucky again," she said. "Your friends here belonged to—"

"…the Irish mafia," Carl finished without looking up.

Lia blinked. Sam arched a brow.

"You've had dealings with them?" she asked, flipping through her logbook.

Carl swabbed dirt from the victim's chest. A tattoo emerged: a clover, unmistakable but wrong—five leaves instead of four, petals stretched and crooked, as though inked in duress, in a cellar.

"A signature," Carl murmured. "Only twisted. Five leaves. He might've been an enforcer."

Sam leaned closer, his voice edged with grim amusement. "Last week, our gourmand feasted on pasta. Now he's hunting leprechauns. Think he's after their pot of gold?" He smirked at his own crack, though it froze when his eyes settled on what Carl had been staring at: the hollowed cavities where hearts should have been. Black, yawning gaps.

Sam swallowed hard. "Jesus…"

"Carl," he added, voice faltering back toward the personal, "you're Irish too, right? On your dad's side?"

Lia rolled her eyes. "Guys, we have work to do, by the way." She moved toward the cart with bags for evidence, leaving them to bicker.

Carl swallowed the word that rose to his tongue, inhaled the damp, metallic air, and gave a curt nod.

"Yeah. Father's side. And that's about the fifteenth time you've recycled that joke. Do us both a favor—buy a new joke manual. Or better, set fire to it."

Sam raised both palms in mock surrender. "Alright, alright. But you know—manuals like that don't come cheap."

Carl ignored the jab, his eyes still heavy on the bodies. "Time of death?" he asked Lia.

"By sight—eight, maybe nine hours ago." She bent low, gloved fingers prodding lightly at a forearm. "Lividity fits, cooling too. Cuts are precise. No frenzy here, no indulgence—this was restraint. No bleach trace, but something stronger—menthol. And on two pairs of shoes? White dust. Plaster. With cement flecks. On another, thin metal shavings. Someone's coming from a workyard—warehouse or workshop."

Anna slipped under the yellow tape with an exhausted ease, brushing her temple as if to keep her thoughts straight. Behind her, the crowd whispered and shifted—plastic bags rustling like surf. Her gaze settled on the heart-shaped formation of bodies; her smile was thin, almost unwilling.

"Valentine's Day come early?"

Carl exhaled through his nose, a sound closer to a snicker than a laugh. Sam jerked his chin toward the neck of the closest victim. "Irish boys. Five-leaf clover ink. Our Heart-Eater, not Gato. Methodical this time. No cabaret."

"El Diablo Gato," Anna corrected, her voice flat. "That's what the headlines call him. Though I'd give him a different name." Her eyes flicked, briefly, to the impossible hollows carved clean into each chest. She looked away before the image could lodge too deep.

"Not far from Sophie's flat," she said suddenly, nodding toward the gray apartment block looming above the alley. One window was still patched with raw plywood, ugly and temporary.

Carl dragged at the back of his neck with one latexed hand, leaving a sheen of damp across his skin.

"Yeah. And she studies at Bulman. Same place as that William you tracked—the kid whose wallet turned up at the Piers'. After we followed up, figured out they're both on that same campus."

"Perfect," Anna nodded. "That gives us a bridge. Carl and I'll head to Bulman, see what's new in that shining academy of theirs, and ask Sophie if she knows William."

Sam's laugh came brittle. "And we? Guess we draw the shorter straw—an Irish pub run out back of Walker's garage. Been craving real whiskey anyway. Might find someone who knows whose boys got folded into… this." He gestured loosely at the 'heart,' as though the word alone soured his mouth. "Tomi!"

Tomi pushed through the crowd, snapping his notebook shut. His breath showed in the cold.

"Nothing clean to work with. Everyone saw everything and nothing. Except—an old man with a mutt. Said the dog went mad barking, then bolted back in, shivering, tail clamped. Said it was around three-ten."

Silence spread between Carl and Sam in the same beat. Both knew: dogs sense what men rationalize away.

"Even animals can't stand our heart-thief," Sam muttered, rubbing at his brow. Then louder: "Fine. Tomi and I hit the pub. Carl, Anna—you keep your campus saints busy."

"Copy that," Tomi said, already bending into his phone. He paused, looked up. "Also—the corner camera. Vandalized with black paint. Last week, at least. Don't think that's a coincidence."

Carl gave a sharp nod. "Pull every feed in the radius. Block by block if you have to." He turned to Anna. "We head to Bulman."

"Don't miss the menthol," Lia murmured from the corpses, voice tight with fatigue. "It fades. And bag the shoes—dust may be our breadcrumb."

"On it." Sam mock-saluted with a cotton swab, then glanced sidelong at Carl, voice lowering on instinct. "And—if campus gets heavy, you call me in. One more pair of ears, no questions."

Carl's mouth curved—not into a smile, but close enough to pretend. "If I scream, you'll hear me." His hand checked his coat, thumb brushing instinctively against the brass coin hidden there. Habit… or prayer.

Anna caught the flicker in his eyes, her own steady on him.

"Well," she said. "Shall we?"