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In the Blood

Mike Rader

    Sheriff Ziegler said he wanted the report by that night.
    I’m a county medical examiner and I agreed. Actually, I could have told him precisely what he wanted to know in that instant.
    
    1920 had started quiet out in our part of Kentucky. Except for the corpses. They’d found the latest body like all the others: a bloodied mess in the woods. But this time it seemed the killer had left a clue. A clumsy smear of blood on a tree.
    Sheriff Ziegler told me, “Frank, first I want to know if that’s blood on that piece of bark. Then I want to know what it is, one way or the other. Human blood, we got a serial killer. Animal blood, we got ourselves some mighty dangerous critter. A bear, mountain lion, something.”
    I’m Frank Goggins, and I’ve been examining blood samples for twenty years. You might say I have a certain thirst for the work. And I knew I was wasting my own time when I got down to work in my lab.
    Quick tutorial: there are many tests for liquid blood like the Teichmann test, but when it comes to crime scene blood — clotted or dried blood — it’s a different story. So I flicked on my wireless and started work on my guaiacum test. I use the resin of a West Indian shrub named guaiacum, mix it with hydrogen peroxide and the blood sample. If the sample was actually blood, a blue color appeared.
    Which it did.
    I whistled softly to myself as I worked.
    I started the Uhlenhuth test, so named after the man who developed a serum that reacted only to human blood and not animal blood. First I dissolved the blood sample in salt water and then added the serum. I watched for the human blood proteins to react. If the blood was human, the serum would turn dark.
    It did.
    Then I waited some more.
    Sure enough, it happened, just as I knew it would.
    The serum lost its darkness. It turned pale.
    It told me what I already knew. The blood was a mix of human and animal.
    My blood.
    It’s how I was born — a crossover between two worlds.
    It’s obviously not something I talk about.
    Some people have given me strange looks. Even the Sheriff once said to me, “Well, Frank, better roll up your sleeves and get on with it,” and then he said, “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen your sleeves rolled up.”
    Truth is, my back and upper arms are covered with thick black hair. It puzzled my parents, got them speculating, got them talking about a family member who disappeared in the woods and came back, very different, years later. Fortunately my parents aren’t around to talk about me anymore. I saw to that in my teens.
    I’m happy with who I am. Living alone, spending nights in the hills when I hear the call.
    And as for my job, what else would I want to do? I love working with corpses. My passion, you might say.
    I emptied my flasks and materials down the sink, then opened my locked drawer. A piece of the victim’s flesh was inside.
    I chewed on it for a while, waiting for a suitable amount of time to pass before I called the sheriff and told him it was wolf’s blood most likely.

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