Love Lies Bleeding by Remmy Duchene (carter reed txt) 📕

"Andy, I know what a serial killer is. I'm a cop."

Anderson stopped typing and glanced at Leo quickly before turning back to the screen. "The code is called Satan's Formula. In the nineteen hundreds—I'm talking the early nineteen hundreds, around the exact ending of the eighteen hundreds—women started going missing in Germany. I'm talking in broad daylight someone would just vanish. Then two days after the disappearances, the women would be found, naked and headless, on a public road. On her body would be writing—numbers and letters. This went on for about eight years with no one catching on. Everyone just thought the killer was just sick."

"They all are."

"Then around 1908 this student saw it and began working on it. He was a mathematician—a brilliant one. He finally cracked the code. You see, the women were vanishing from around the Die Bibliothek library. He hypothesized that the letters were author initials—and not just any author, but the king of gore."

"Edgar Allan Poe?"

Anderson smiled, obviously surprised he knew that. Leo blushed.

"Right. Poe died in 1849 so he had plenty of chances to write a whole bunch of stuff both published and unpublished—enough for this code."

"Okay… But how do we know how to decode this. What are the numbers for? What if this guy isn't using Poe for his?"

"There's a small chance of that but people are creatures of habit. They rarely deviate from the original codex. Let's try the first one." Anderson picked up the paper and looked at it. "Every period means the end, right? So the first three letters are from the author's name. This one is easy. EAP. T. 1 1 is Edgar Allan Poe and the numbers are… the first word in his first work."

"What the hell?"

Anderson patted his shoulder but turned again to the computer. "So, Edgar Allan Poe. And the T is for Tales—and move this over here… this first code is…. the!"

"All that for one word?"

Anderson nodded proudly. He was so beautiful at that moment Leo couldn't control himself. He kissed Anderson just as the doorbell rang.

"I'll handle this; you keep working on that. Can you work while I drive?"

"Sure can. But we're going to need something from my house first."

"We'll stop by your place. Let me deal with this."

Leo exited the room with what Anderson had just said to him floating through his head. He handed over the box with strict instructions then gathered a few things for their road trip. He put in a call to Daniel but his partner didn't pick up so he simply left a message. Finally, he wrapped his arms around Anderson's body from behind and kissed the back of his neck.

"I know you're busy at work but can I talk you into getting in the car?"

Anderson moaned. "Let me finish this word… pendulum?"

"Come on. Road trip, remember?"

"Right. I'll grab my tablet at home because it has wireless internet to take wherever."

Before they left, however, Leo took a moment to kiss Anderson and hold him against his body. Perhaps it was to reassure them both this could end differently than with their tears. Taking a breath, he released Anderson and took his hand. He lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss to the warm flesh there.

"Let's do this," Anderson smiled.

Chapter Thirteen

"This makes no earthly sense," Anderson muttered, as he scribbled the final word on the piece of paper. He stared at it for a while and shook his head before re-doing the first few words. He banged his first into the side of the side of the car.

"Whoa!" Leo called. "Chill out for a minute."

"Easy for you to say. This shit isn't driving your ass crazy."

"I take it you're finished. Tell me what it says."

"The pendulum falls. Light a descent into the pit. The bells tell a perverse tale to the red death portrait."

"What?" Leo questioned

Anderson looked away from the paper and frowned deeply at Leo. "That's what the paper said. All those fucking numbers and letters—and it's a fucking piece of crap." He tossed his hands up. "I really don't get it. Who would go through all this trouble to write a poem?"

"Maybe it's more than that. Put it down for a few minutes."

"I can't."

Anderson began going over the code again, just to make sure he didn't miss anything or screw up the cipher."

"Andy—come on. Put it down a sec. Let's talk."

"This your way of saying if I take a break and come back to it, I'll have fresh eyes?"

Leo laughed. "You got me."

Anderson took a breath and placed his stuff on the backseat, stretched his legs out some. He turned his head to watch Leo eyeing the traffic before him with what Anderson could describe as contempt. Reaching a hand over, he rested it against the headrest of Leo's seat then dug his fingers gently into Leo's hair.

"Can I talk to you about something?" Leo asked.

"Of course."

"I haven't been with anyone in about three years," Leo confided. "It's not for the lack of possible men. I just—I don't know; I got comfortable with being alone."

"Why me? Is it because of my father?"

"Don't be silly. I don't know why. It's not like I went into all of this thinking I would seduce you or anything like that. It just happened. The truth is, I didn't fight it all that hard."

Anderson listened to those words and turned his attention back to the road, just as traffic picked up. It was taking them longer than it should to get to Maspeth, traveling on the I-495. Anderson was never a fan of long drives, even the not-so-long ones. Road trips were a pain in the ass on the best of days. When they were a little way away from Maspeth, he took a deep breath.

"You didn't have a choice, Leo. Frankly, I'm just that fabulous."

Leo laughed.

"I was thinking about it too, you know," Anderson spoke seriously. "I just didn't want to push too hard. I tend to do that—the pushing too hard bit."

"I