Blood In The Ring
By Joseph Kindermann
The rain had already washed the place clean by the time Simmons arrived, and the clean-up crew were hard at work scrubbing away the rest. But the scent of blood still haunted the alley, whispering tragedy with every breath. Nights like these made him regret quitting smoking. The smell of smoke was a welcome cover, something no nicotine patch could ever replace. Briefly he considered asking one of the cops buzzing around the scene if they had a pack to spare, but his chance, perhaps fortunately, slipped by him as a youthful voice suddenly called out to him.
“Simmons? Detective Simmons, sir?” A young man approached him, an energy to him that screamed ‘eager to please’ but a face that screamed ‘out of my depth’. The relief that poured from his face when Simmons nodded in confirmation confirmed it. This guy was a rookie. Probably never seen a case like this before.
“Got here soon as I could.” Simmons told him. “Said it might be something in my area, officer…?”
It took the boy a few seconds to realise he was being asked his name.
“Werner!” he blurted once he realised what Simmons meant. “Mike Werner, sir. And um, yeah…” His eyes drifted to the tent at the end of the alley. “Yeah, I think it is.”
The white canvas was a stark contrast to the black walls of the buildings around them. In a sense, it felt a little mocking to do all this in a tent, considering the circumstances, but that’s just how things had to be. Taking a deep breath, Simmons pulled back the curtain and stepped inside.
Yep. It was one of his cases alright.
Face down on the floor in a white chalk outline lay the body. Their back was covered in dozens of clotted knife wounds, and around their neck was a long, multicoloured string of handkerchiefs. Simmons shuddered at the sight of it. No one deserved to die like this.
“You were right to get me involved.” Simmons said to Werner, slipping on a sterile plastic glove. “This is a textbook case of clown murder. One of the worst I’ve ever seen.”
He knelt to examine the body closer as Werner hovered anxiously around him.
“You mean they’re real?” the boy said. “Clowns I mean?”
Simmons didn’t answer right away. He turned the victim’s face over, wincing at the crusted remains of cream and pastry that dripped from his broken face.
Poor bastard, they even hit him with the pie.
He heard Werner struggle not to vomit. The clown’s inhuman work might’ve been enough to dispel Werner’s doubts, but Simmons’ was the kind of man who’d drive the point deep enough to hit the heart.
“Course they’re real, kid.” He said, letting the face drop back to the floor. “And they’ll kill you and your family and everyone you love, if people like us don’t catch them first. What, they don’t teach you about clowns in the academy anymore?”
Werner shuffled his feet, his face turning as crimson as the red nose laying menacingly by the body.
“They do, sir.” he said. “But I thought they were just making it up. Trying to scare us.”
Frankly, Simmons couldn’t blame him. First time he heard of clowns, he’d dismissed them as a rumour too. People with dead white skin, swarming out of tiny cars, juggling knives and honking their noses? Sounded ridiculous, he had to admit. Until the day he found himself face to face with one in an alley not dissimilar to this one. His leg ached at the memory, where the unicycle had smashed the bone.
“Well, they’re real.” he said grimly, stepping away from the beast’s bloody work to look Werner in the eye. “And you should be scared, Mike. You should be.”
He left the tent without another word. He’d seen all he needed to. The boys in white would clear up the rest of the mess, and poor schmucks like Werner would inform the family, and that’d be it for them. But for men like Simmons, the job wasn’t over. Not yet.
He reached into his coat pocket, briefly resting his hand on the magnum he kept inside, and the rough wooden stake beside it. The tools were comforting. Saved his life more times than he could count. Ended a lot more. If you could call such things ‘living’.
His heart thumped in his chest as he stepped into the night. His fingers twitched, every sense now keenly aware of the danger he would be in. Clowns could come from anywhere. Even above if their nests had a tightrope. But in spite of it all, Simmons began to smile.
No, his work wasn’t done. Never was. Never would be. Not until every one of those red-nosed sons of bitches lay dead. That was the vow he had made. To his mother, to himself, to everyone wronged by these ungodly abominations.
The circus was in town. Time for Simmons to start the show.