Eye of the Beholder by David Ellis Read Free Book Online Page A

And it hadn’t taken them long to find it. Burgos had been listening to the tape on his headphones before the questioning. The tape was amateur grade, bearing a makeshift label with the name of the musical group—“Torcher”—handwritten in bloodred ink in a thick Gothic font like calligraphy. The title of the tape—“Someone”—was written beneath it in the same manner.
    The song with the relevant lyrics bore the same title, “Someone,” a song that lasted less than three minutes. It started slowly with an acoustic guitar playing single notes, but then all hell broke loose, violent guitars, thumping bass, incessant drumming, while the vocalist screamed the lyrics like machine-gun fire. If you closed your eyes and listened, you wouldn’t comprehend anything. But they had a copy of the lyrics, which they had found handwritten on a piece of paper in Terry Burgos’s bedroom.
    The lyrics from the first verse of “Someone” described six murders, in more or less the precise manner that Burgos had committed them:
    A girl who is cool to someone at school until he opens a heart once so cruel
    Thespian lesbian glamorous actress rejection so reckless Colombian necklace
    His poetry flattery just didn’t matter she told him to scatter assault with a battery
    A senior so prim her figure now trim since she got rid of him eye for eye limb for limb
    A neighbor’s daughter nobody fought her until someone taught her to sleep underwater
    Now it’s time to say good-bye to someone’s family stick it right between those teeth andfire so happily
    The lyrics, however sophomoric, were filled with rage. Riley imagined an outcast, rejected by women, probably by everyone. Terry Burgos likely would fit that bill. But Burgos hadn’t written the lyrics. And what was really bothering Riley were the biblical verses that Burgos had cited on the paper found in his basement. Six different passages. He’d read them all, thanks to a cop who had a King James Bible in his locker. All but one of them was from the Old Testament and could be attributed in some way to these acts of violence.
    The book of Hosea said that for nonbelievers, God would “rend the caul of their heart”—or “open a heart once so cruel.” Romans wrote of lesbians being worthy of death, which corresponded with the “lesbian” in the song. Leviticus talked of burning a promiscuous woman to death, which could be loosely translated to being scalded with battery acid. Exodus referenced the infamous eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-tooth, limb-for-limb language for those who practice abortion—in the lyrics, a senior “now trim since she got rid of him” probably referred to a senior who’d had an abortion. The book of Kings suggested death to those who mocked a prophet. The biblical verse hadn’t mentioned anything about drowning, but presumably the “neighbor’s daughter” in the song had mocked the song’s author, who evidently considered himself some kind of prophet.
    That left the final murder described: Now it’s time, to say good-bye, to someone’s family, stick it right between those teeth and fire so happily. This last murder in the first verse had a different quality in the song; the percussion and bass disappeared, and the singer had sung the lyrics a cappella to the tune of The Mickey Mouse Club.
    And Burgos had followed these lyrics. He had stuck a gun between Cassie Bentley’s teeth and fired a bullet through the back of her mouth. He had done so after beating her severely. The corresponding biblical passage, from Deuteronomy, had described a different act of violence—the stoning of a whore. The lyrics and the biblical passage weren’t compatible. Burgos had followed them both; he had stoned Cassie and shot her.
    But Burgos had originally written down a different verse, not from Deuteronomy but from Leviticus, which had talked about adultery, and which called for death to both the adulterer and the adulteress. Why had Burgos changed biblical