The Last Son of Cain: Blackcoast, #1

By Carlos Reyes

"The last son of Cain" is the first installment of the #Blackcoast saga about the private detective Martín Costa, a criminal profiling retired after the murder of his wife and who will be involved in different murder cases once again as he participates as an advisor in the search for a psychopath nicknamed the Master, who will become his particular Moriarty while pursuing different criminals throughout the saga. Intuitive, disgustingly intelligent and with a striking humorous point, Dr. Costa will even see old ghosts and worse nightmares reborn. Throughout the saga he will be accompanied by invaluable companions such as Inspector Irene Sanleón, with whom he will have a strange romance / attraction, Inspector Ricardo Dobico or Commissioner Gabriel Brescia.

In this first installment and his first face to face with the Master, he will try to find out who is behind the serial murders that plague the streets of the city of Santiago. Each corpse is a perfect reconstruction of the signature, modus operandi, and victimology of a famous serial killer from the past.

Martín Costa will understand that he is before the perfect murderer. The question is: will he be able to find him and prevent the deaths from accumulating victims to the case?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Jul 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071554739

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The same feeling as initiation, it’s similar to the exact instant when a girl gets naked in front of you for the first time. The heart starts beating with force, stronger than ever before. The hands, soaked in sweat, slide disoriented on your thighs, far from finding the path that your head had planned previously with attention to detail. Echoes of words carried by the wind flutter in your ears, living germ of strange consciences that are alien to you. Nothing matters in the world, just you and the person in front of you who is willing to –or who knows, perhaps not— fall apart, merge into a single being. The same nerves, driven by questions that torment your head, that dislocate your whole being because they remind you of the possibility for you to be wrong, that there is a chance for everything to lead to failure. That the mistake is included in the action. And you don’t want that to happen. The same doubts, all consolidated in a lack of confidence that makes you enjoy the moment, relive it again and again or, on the contrary, allow you to take a step further in your improvement. But there is a remarkable difference: you are closer to perfection, like the painter who creates one canvas after another until culminating in the line of eternal Eden.

To love without being loved, to be feared without knowing fear.

Those words, traced in a vulgar napkin before the feet of his second victim years ago, came alive when one last breath gave off another one, innocent of that monstrous being’s perversions. And Sici Larandes had enjoyed the same privilege than many other targets. So easy and so simple to the extent he could barely recognize not having the need to kill again in advance. The woman, in her early fifties, had allowed him to enter her premises —a roadside bar at the entrance of the small town near the bustling city— shortly before closing, when there are no customers left. The excuse behind the need to go to the restroom and his normal face was the key not to suspect what would happen minutes later. It was even easier to surprise her, as he slipped between the tables quietly, the woman turned her back to him without fearing danger.

It was a mistake, a big mistake. A metal poker slightly over 40 centimeters (15 inches) leaning near the fireplace has been his chosen weapon to sentence Sici Larandes. The blast in the skull would be the prelude to the following facts that would return Lázaro to his most animal condition.

He dragged the skeletal woman’s body all over the main room of the bar, leaving the blood trail as bread crumbs like in the famous story, crossing a grimy pantry to go outside of a covered night that threats of raining for the rest of the week. Only the circulating cars’ noises on the county road broke a gloomy silence. His vehicle was parked only a few meters away from the secondary entrance of the premises, therefore hiding Sici’s body wasn’t such a problem. This van will be as famous as the Bundy Beetle, thought Lázaro while drawing a bitter smile in his cracked lips. He pushed the body and closed the gate with stealth. He looked at both sides to make sure he was the only conscious person there and got into the van to get lost in the shadows of a tree-lined path, quickly going away from the crime scene. In a few hours he would have completed his new work and again would have let the world write in pain at his feet.

So he went back to his first time, not the one concerning sex, but the one that showed him the reason why the world had got him called. He remembered that the girl’s body wouldn’t exceed 40 kilograms (88 pounds) when it kept floating on the swampy wastewater near the village where they were both born. She was still naked in his memory when he distinguished between the depths of her memories the entrance hole at the liver’s height still spitting blood, which mixed with the stinking watery liquid, forming an uneven furrow that was being lost through one of the pit’s drains. His hand was strongly holding the knife hilt, soaked in its sharp long blade. He had only needed twelve years to charge the fist of his victims, to feel for the first time the long and pleasant need to kill. Perhaps, as one would vulgarly say among the hermits, his first sadistic orgasm. And the only way to experience true sexual desire for someone other than himself.

Lázaro parked next to the house chosen weeks ago to finish his great work. All the details had been studied and perfectly arranged. Nothing out of the script would happen. The narrow road by which the vehicle occupied its maximum extension opened in its path under the flashes of some moldy headlights that were hanging from the plate such as two lanterns tied with wires. Two wooden fences provided with vertical and horizontal sticks delimited the stony and muddy path. Behind was the sign that gives name to the house of two floors and a basement. O'Via do Finisterre, Lázaro reviewed in his mind when he was entering into the private parking width in front of the main porch. He smiled as he fell from the front seat into the cold night and perceived the nauseating smell that came from the main hall of the house. He opened the tailgate and he dragged Sici Larandes's body to the main stairs, brittle wood that crunched with the strides of Lázaro as he stepped with his muddy leather boots. Two turned off small lanterns were still moving due to the gentle push of a premonitory breeze from an even major storm. A broken sound that embraced the night in that secluded place of the busy and absorbed civilization. A metallic table working as a welcome object in front of the moistened front wooden wall that surrounded the big house was tracing shadows on their backs in the fullness of darkness. A thin diffuse line, an anfractuous stroke of mist slid to the edge of sight.

The night fell silent inside the house with the echo of the main door closing, not forever, but just for a few more hours. The necessary ones for Lázaro to finish that job and to paint the work of a madman, of a psychopath. An imitator.

A perfect one.

SIMPLY GEIN.

Everything has a beginning

CHAPTER 1

The blow of sheet metal against sheet metal filled the gap inside the Fiat 500 which was rented in the airport terminal. A man dressed in a raincoat which barely showed the municipal police uniform he was wearing under it, tore his face with a cold smile. He looked, he read, he reread and he studied again my identification like he was trying to settle distances and to show me who was the encharged in that place. You are just a fines deliverer, I thought while I was picking up my identification from a wet hand. The windshields were not enough to face the flood that gave the good morning to that great northern city. A waterfall stood between the real world and me, dense enough to the extent that the only notable difference compared with a Goya painting was the soft voice tone of my special partner.

—It’s curious —she told me while pointing at the command post (formed by a waterproof fabric and four iron rods) where the agent hid once again— that being such a distinguished member within the security bodies of Europe, a simple cop decides whether or not you enter in a crime scene. 

I looked at her sideways and gave her a dart-shaped smile.

—There are fools everywhere.

Two minutes later, the jerk came out with a very different expression in his face.

—Excuse me, Mr. Costa... they are waiting for you inside the house —he informed with a trembling voice.

I raised two fingers and slid them across my forehead, throwing them towards him as if I were passing them through the visor of a cowboy hat. I speeded up the Fiat 500 enough to blow up a cloud of mud and water in equal parts. Through the rearview mirror, I could almost see the agent cursing my stoic vendetta.

The muddy road leading to the house was a short journey. Even from the provisional command post, you could see the stir formed around it, a compendium of uniformed and civilian agents, the latter forming the vast majority of the forensic team. That property seemed to be abandoned for a long time; leafy trees neglected, weeds crossing the road, worn, heavy and wet wood, surrounding the four walls of the discord. An inquisitive layout of a Bosco that was scratched by the Judicial Police team and distributed by the four corners. As if it was a welcome device by the competent authorities, a herculean guy and a woman of a minuscule size wearing their police identifications hanging from their necks were waiting for us. I stopped the Fiat and pointed Alessia with an expression to pick up my work briefcase from the back seat.

Stepping on the floor was like falling into the curse of the bottomless deepness of quicksand. I lost sight of my moccasins, under the lardy embrace of a muddy puddle, to cover 2 centimeters (about one inch) of the leg of the trouser pants that matched with the waistcoat and the shirt that I had chosen in the morning to undress from the pajamas with Batman motifs. I noticed the water boots that my two hosts were wearing.

—My most sincere apologies, professor —said the man with the sloppy beard, holding out his hand to strongly shake mine—. I forgot to recommend the appropriate equipment to join the investigation. The North of Spain has these wonderful things... it rains regularly.

Before answering I stretched the rods which connected each part of the umbrella that I always carried in my continuous trips to that region. The cloth acquired its shape spitting water drops under a layer around me.

—Notifying me the characteristics of the crime scene is enough —I answered with the biggest of the smiles I could wield—. I am always prepared for the rain.

—I am Charly Liseda, a homicides inspector. I have been entrusted with the direction of the investigation after the withdrawal of the previous officer.

—How long have you been in the investigation? —I asked him, closing the door and giving Alessia another copy of the umbrella similar to mine.

The inspector doubted his answer. He exchanged glances with his partner, reproach of the arrogance perhaps of my pernicious tone.

—It was assigned to me a week ago —he answered. Frown, defensive answer. Ten years in Homicides support the decision of my superiors.

I applauded, inwardly, his response. That guy already overcame me in something: his pride was powerful. A cop who surely wouldn’t be happy to have a private detective in spite of being a forensic psychologist, criminologist, or former member of the SAC[1], a group of the National Police Force. I, in his place, would act in a similar way. It was like putting Fernando Alonso in a second seat to be controlled by his test driver.

—Calm down, Liseda, I’m not the enemy. My sole intention is to be helpful in the investigation. —I studied the exterior of the house, the worn wood, the environment that enveloped us under the rain cascade during the late hours of the dawning—. How many victims are there already?

—Since everything started? This is the tenth.

Ten trophies of a psychopath capable of hiding like a ghost. A tricky case that was charging foxes along the way. Liseda wasn’t the second replacement in the investigation because of what I had been able to read in the reports sent from the Central Headquarters. There were several names collected in their endless lines, each pushing the nebulosity of the next to complete one of the worst analyzes I had read in recent years. And in my opinion, always very personal, that cop with the air of Bruce Willis in the final scene of Die Hard or Vin Diesel in any of his icy filmographic glances barely had the slightest idea about where he deposited his marked nose.

—Your curriculum surprises me, doctor Costa —Liseda confessed with thick.

—Why is that?

—World sub-champion of fast memory, also of association of ideas...

Then, I understood his storyline.

—Yeah, well... it’s impossible to be the best in everything —I confessed with a smile, giving the inspector to understand how little I cared about what he could think of that kind of personal details.

—I imagine that is what makes you a different police adviser.

His behavior, although from the outside didn’t appear, was even normal.

—Yeah, well, a different private detective. By the way, a tough case, I suppose.

Liseda changed his expression. He seemed like wanting but not being able to understand the intention of my question.

—Yes, a complex case. Why do you say it?

—Man, if you had to come to me it’s because the usual tools have failed.

Touched and sunk. In the center of his pride but smart enough not to enter a debate that, in advance, he had lost.

—What has he left us this time? —I asked without taking my attention off the work that the men and women of the scientific police were carrying out.

Charly Liseda exchanged glances with his workmate. It was strange because of how they occurred.

—I am sorry —I interrupted them in their extrasensory connection shifting my attention to her—. They haven’t introduced us. Martín Costa.

I held out my hand and pressed hers with a certain force, conscious of knowing the necessity of showing the strong personality that one has before a stranger with a crooked look. That was the case of the little companion of the Homicides inspector.

—Macca Barreran —she answered with a highlighted lightness—. I am Liseda’s workmate and sub-inspector of his team.

She would barely reach 1.60 meters (5.2 feet). I would almost bet for 1.50 meters (5 feet) —even if I knew that I was exaggerating, something I loved to do in my interior world—. Her hair was combed and collected in a high ponytail, which gave her an excessive head size.