Lucien Lacoste (PC) is really great at making himself appear... less than sane.
When Chief Hale arrived at the scene, he noticed a hulking guy in a duster with a cowboy hat kneeling over a dead body. After sprinkling something on it, the guy walked to a GCSO patrol vehicle, where paramedics were removing a critically wounded Deputy De La Cruz from the shot-up cruiser. Without sparing a glance for the Chief or explaining anything to the paramedics, the guy starts anointing the wounded deputy with oil, feeding her a sip of wine and chanting Latin over her.
As the big guy notices Chief Hale watching, he sprinkles salt and water over Deputy De La Cruz, makes the sign of the cross, and asks Chief Hale if he would like a benediction. Whereupon I roll a Reaction Roll for Chief Hale. 1-1-1. I ask Lacoste's player if there is any number below which he'd consider using Luck on the Reaction Roll.
Player: "Is he gonna shoot me?"
GM: "He's probably going to have a very strong feeling that you are a serial killer, considering all the blood you have on you and the fact that you're giving people the Last Rites, instead of, uh, acting like a cop at a crime scene where there are still wounded people and the suspects might even be close by."
Player: "Right. So, he
might shoot me?"
GM: "Let's say he'd consider it."
So Lacoste's player used Luck and managed to convince Chief Hale he was just really religious (Lacoste is a Jesuit-educated seminarian), not a psycho killer. Sergeant Duke's testimony helped. The two severed heads didn't.
The two reporters from the Daily News who caught pictures of Igor's head lying on the street and Lacoste performing his occult Catholic rituals over the bodies and wounded did not improve Chief Hale's night.
Of course, Lacoste's player felt that it was unfair that anyone might suspect Lacoste of being a deranged killer, as he'd decided
not to kill Alberto, the driver of the box truck that blocked Broadway Street. Lacoste got to the truck shortly after Buddy Duke and when he saw the ruin that someone had made of the poor driver, Lacoste's player genuinely felt that the only humane thing to do would be to put Alberto out of his misery. Aware that shooting him would probably be hard to explain, Lacoste actually deliberated: a) Strangling him, b) Snapping his neck, c) Suffocating him, d) Severing his jugular or e) Giving him an overdose of morphine from the ambulance.
Only after all the other players argued that Lacoste would never get away with it did Lacoste relent and simply injected enough morphine into Alberto to make him more comfortable as he gradually slipped into unconsciousness while bleeding out. Lacoste might or might not have been able to stop the massive bleeding from arteries in all limbs, but in the event, he didn't really try, he just held Alberto and used Diplomacy to calm him while he died.
Yes, that is where most of the blood came from. Well, that, and beheading two people with a Bowie knfe.
Aftet seeing Alberto, the players weren't really that shocked when they found the four other butchered bodies inside the gated compound garden. It was what they found in the next garden that convinced them of the utter and inhuman evil they were dealing with.
Using a garden rake snapped into two sharp sticks, someone had crucified a yellow/cream coloured
Lacy Dog to a house. Spinal injury paralyzed the dog below the waist, but someone had carefully made an incision higher up on the belly to eviscarate it where it could feel it. The throat had been cut artistically, severing the vocal cords and windpipe, but not the carotid or jugular, and the tongue pulled through the cut. Finally, the eyes had been put out and the flesh on the face flayed.
The PCs later learned that the dog was formally named 'The Yellow Rose of Texas', but most often called 'Rose' or 'Texas Rose'. And she was still whimpering when the PCs found her.
This time, no one stopped Lacoste when he pulled out his Bowie knife and finished cutting her throat. Before her owner could come out, Lacoste performed a Lay to Rest ritual*, the same as he would later use on the humans killed in the ambush, and then covered Rose's body with a tarp.
*Lacoste's player thought about it and then declared that dogs had souls, citing the well-known 'All dogs go to Heaven' doctrine.