“Except that one, of course.”
Marcus was humiliated and ready to leave. He was frustrated too. He knew they weren’t going to find anything out here. The killer was too methodical.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said to Angela.
He looked one last time at the team of forensics investigators.
“They won’t find anything,” he said.
Marcus and Angela headed back down the dirt path towards the parking lot. Patterson watched them leave.
“You okay?” Angela whispered.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
But he knew he wasn’t.
Marcus and Angela walked down the hallway of the police station. It was like any other government building, completely void of personality and color. They entered a small room at the end of the hallway. Inside was Jerry Norris, fresh out of college and still very eager to please. Norris was an AFIS technician, trained to operate the Automated Fingerprint Information System. Angela appreciated his enthusiasm. He got on Marcus’s nerves, though; not because he was annoying, but because his naiveté reminded Marcus of himself at that age.
“Any results?” Angela asked.
“Perfect match,” Norris said.
Norris pulled up a photo on his computer of the victim. It was an all-too-typical mug shot, vacant stare, messy hair, facial expression that says she’s either drunk or drugged out of her mind and has only a vague idea of what’s happening to her.
Angela was not looking at Marcus. All of her attention was on the mug shot. If she had glanced his way, she might have caught the split second of shock, dread, and panic that registered on his face.
They were looking at a photo of Eva Parks. Sweat started breaking out on his forehead. When had she been grabbed? He had been with her just last night.
Angela leaned closer to the computer screen so she could read the victim’s name.
“Eva Parks,” she read out loud.
“A couple of arrests for prostitution. One for drug possession. Nothing major,” Norris said.
“Well, Miss Eva Parks, you now have the distinction of being victim number eight,” Angela said.
She turned to Norris.
“Got an address for us?”
Norris handed Angela a post-it note. He was eager to please.
“Good luck,” he told her.
“Thanks,” Angela said.
Marcus continued to look at the mug shot of Eva Parks.
He felt ashamed.
Angela parked her car outside Eva’s apartment complex. Marcus looked out the window. The building was the way Marcus imagined it would be. The windows were covered in grime and filth. Litter was spattered about the grounds. Worn-out cars lined the sides of the streets.
Marcus and Angela walked up the cracked sidewalk towards the double doors that led inside. Marcus heard a baby crying when they approached the building. He would cry too, he thought, if he had to live here.
They pulled the doors open and went inside. Marcus would not have believed it possible, but the interior of the building was actually worse than the outside. The hallway was dim with flickering and buzzing fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling, and the cracked and peeling walls looked like they hadn’t been painted since the building was constructed three decades ago.
They had called ahead and arranged for the landlord to meet them. Apparently the man lived in the building. They found his apartment and knocked on the door.
Within a few seconds the old man pulled the door open. The landlord was in his seventies. He had wispy gray hair and was about thirty pounds overweight. Marcus assumed he had bought his shirt several pounds ago because it strained at the buttons. He was short, much shorter than Angela, and his back was slightly hunched over. His face was wrinkled, but his blue eyes shown bright.
“Hello, detectives,” he said.
Angela smiled at the old man. He reminded her of her grandfather.
“I’m detective Darden. This is detective Carter. We’ve come to see Eva Parks’s apartment.”
The landlord picked up a large ring of keys from a metal dish by the front door.
“She’s in apartment twelve.”
The landlord exited his apartment and shut the door behind him. He then locked his apartment.
“The guy knows this place well,” Marcus thought. “I wouldn’t leave an apartment in this building unlocked for two seconds.”
Marcus and Angela followed the nervous landlord to Eva’s apartment at the end of the hall. The old man’s hands were shaking, and Marcus could hear the keys dangle in his bony fingers.
“Is Eva all right?” he asked.
“Did you know her well?” Angela asked.
“We talked from time to time. She was nice to me.”
Marcus didn’t know how to tell her Eva was dead, and he felt another stab of guilt for the times he had been with her, used her more accurately. They reached Eva’s apartment before he could figure out what to tell the old man. The landlord fumbled with his keys, finally found the right one, and then unlocked the door. Marcus motioned him aside.
Marcus and Angela both had their guns drawn. Marcus, as usual, insisted on entering the room first. Angela followed him a few paces behind.
Thick curtains had been pulled across the windows and the room was in blackness, except for the dim light from the television set. It was turned on, and they could see a home video of Eva Parks having sex with another woman. The women clearly knew they were being taped because they would stop kissing and smile and giggle at the camera.
The apartment was hot, extremely hot. It must have been over a hundred degrees in there. Marcus and Angela were both still wearing their winter coats and beads of sweat immediately began to run down their foreheads.
Marcus tried the light switch, but no light came on. They both removed small but powerful flashlights from their coat pockets. They panned their lights across the main room. Trash was everywhere, garbage, clothes, food. Everything was on the floor. A small coffee table had been turned upside down. The place was a disaster zone.
They carefully walked around the garbage, which was not an easy task. They made their way through the main room and walked back to the bedrooms. There were two bedrooms in the back. They tried the first room, which was on the left side of the hallway. It too had been trashed. The mattress was thrown off the bed and had been ripped to shreds. The lamp and nightstand were lying on their side. Clothes had been removed from the drawers and closest and were randomly tossed all over the floor.
They exited that bedroom and walked over to the second and final bedroom. Marcus pushed open the door, and the smell hit them like a ton of bricks. It was the worse smell either of them had encountered and its stench was unmistakable. Death.
Marcus scanned his flashlight across the room. It had been thoroughly trashed like the two previous rooms they had entered. Before either of them could step into the room, they heard a small crash. Both clutched their guns tightly. A small cat ran between them.
“Jesus,” Angela said. “I almost shot it.”
Marcus ignored the cat and continued to shine his flashlight into the room. The first thing he noticed after the smell and the garbage was the small bed that was pushed against the far wall. On it, a large sheet stretched over something or someone.
Marcus walked over to the bed and examined the bed sheet. The top of the sheet had been tacked to the wall behind the headboard. The sheet looked like a tiny tent, something you might see in a child’s room when they were playing fort. He couldn’t see through the dark sheet and nothing was sticking out of it. He dreaded pulling the sheet back, but he had no choice. He looked over to Angela. She watched him intently.
Marcus turned back to the bed. He reached into his coat, pulled out a glove and slipped it over his right hand. Then he pulled one of the tacks out of the wall. He pulled the second tack out and peeled back the bed sheet.
A second cat sat on the bed and licked a pool of blood that had congealed on the mattress
. It hissed at Marcus for disturbing him, and Marcus furiously knocked the cat away. It naturally landed on its feet and fled the room.
Despite her best effort, Angela looked away. The site was worse than anything she had seen or imagined before. The other crime scenes were nothing compared to this. The killer had increased the horror level by several degrees.
The woman underneath the bed sheet was naked, her back pressed straight against the headboard. Her arms were outstretched and her wrists had been nailed to the bedposts. Blood covered her neck and chest. They couldn’t see the letters MAI but assumed they were carved into her back. Like the body of Eva Parks, her face had been removed with great precision. There were also small bite marks on her torso from the cats. They had feasted on their dead owner.
It took several moments before Angela could look again. She thought she might vomit for the first time at a crime scene. Bile rose up her throat, and it was with great effort that she forced it back down.
Marcus had not averted his eyes, and he couldn’t take his eyes away now. He was beyond angry, beyond fury. It wasn’t because of what he was looking at. That was truly horrific, and it affected him just as much as it affected Angela. He was angry because he knew the killer had left nothing behind. He knew this woman had died in a brutal way, and her killer would probably not be brought to justice unless he decided he wanted to be caught. They were outmatched, outsmarted, outmaneuvered at every turn. They were like the high school chess team playing against a grand master. It was a joke. More than a joke. They had failed at every step of the way. Marcus felt helpless. There was no other way to describe it. He finally closed his eyes and prayed the killer would burn for what he had done to this woman.
Suddenly they heard a man retching. They both turned and saw the old landlord bent over, puking his guts onto the hallway floor. He had slipped in quietly behind them, obviously not realizing what he might see. Marcus’s heart went out to him. Eva had apparently been his friend. He wondered if the landlord could possibly get over what he had just seen. Marcus knew he himself wouldn’t.
CHAPTER 8
The Boy in the Woods
The boy was around six years old. He had short, dark hair and was bundled in a heavy winter coat. There was a thin layer of snow on the ground. The sky above was still and gray, and it looked like it would start snowing again at any moment.
The boy stood at the edge of the woods. He loved to explore them any chance he got. He would build forts and pretend he was either in outer space or fighting some villain from across the sea. He entered the woods, anxious for his next adventure.
He was not heading to his fort now though. He was exploring, perhaps looking for the site of his next space battle.
As he got deeper into the woods, the world seemed to melt away. Things became more quiet, more peaceful. It was like entering another world. A dream world.
The boy saw something flap in the gentle wind making its way through the trees. It didn’t look like a leaf, so he ran over to it, intrigued.
It was a flat, thin object and its corners curled when it was struck by another strong breeze. The boy kneeled beside it. He was almost afraid to touch it. Something about it scared him, although he couldn’t tell why.
The wind picked up, and he saw the thing was about to float away. Without thinking, he bent over and snatched it up.
He held it up to the sky.
It looked like a mask, but not like any Halloween mask he had seen before. It was the color of flesh, and the mask had a sad look to its expression. The boy was wearing gloves. If not, he would have also been able to tell that it didn’t feel like any other mask he had known. It would feel like dried skin. Rough like leather.
The boy’s fear eventually went away, and curiosity took over.
He held the mask up to his face, staring through the holes in the flesh mask where the woman’s eyes used to be.
CHAPTER 9
I Can’t Make Him Stop
To say Marcus was mortified at having to watch Eva’s pornographic video tape was an understatement. He prayed the shame he felt didn’t show on his face. He knew he could hide it from most people in the department. But Angela was a different story. Sometimes he felt she knew him better than he knew himself.
The small television had a DVD player built into the set. Angela had placed the TV at the end of a conference room table. Angela had turned the volume down, but Marcus could still hear Eva’s voice in his head. It haunted him, and he wanted desperately to yank out the video, throw it to the floor, and crush it under his shoes. Every time Eva looked at the camera, Marcus felt like she was staring at him.
“You used me,” he imagined her saying to him. “You used me like all the others. You didn’t kill me, but you may as well have.”
Angela and a forensics investigator sat on one side of the table, going over the crime scene files and photographs. Thank God, Marcus thought. Thank God Angela wasn’t watching him fall to pieces right in front of her.
Marcus walked away from the table and stood as far away from the TV as he could.
The forensics investigator read out loud from a report.
“No prints in the apartment except those of Ms. Parks and Ms. Davis. No traces of semen on the bed sheets. We’re still waiting for the results of the carpet fiber tests. It’s a real mess in there,” he said.
“So is the roommate confirmed yet as the victim?” Angela asked.
“Yeah, Julia Davis,” Sergeant Ramsey said.
Angela looked up and saw her boss standing in the doorway.
“Her prints were in the system. Busted for prostitution just like Eva Parks and the others,” Ramsey continued.
“They’re always in the system,” Marcus thought. “He wants them found. Always.”
Ramsey walked in the room and dropped a thin file on the conference room table.
“Learn anything yet?” he asked Angela.
She hadn’t, but she didn’t want to tell him that.
“Yes,” Marcus said.
Angela turned to him. What did he know that she didn’t?
“There was a third person in the room when this video was made,” Marcus said. “This video has to mean something. I doubt Parks or Davis would have been watching this video, so the killer must have wanted us to see it for a reason.”
“How do you know there was someone else in the room?” Angela asked.
“Someone was operating the camera,” Ramsey said.
Angela turned to the television set and saw the camera zooming in to Eva’s face. How had she missed that?
“When’s Parks’s autopsy?” Ramsey asked.
Angela looked at her watch.
“Shit. Started five minutes ago,” she said.
“Then I suggest you get down there,” Ramsey said.
Marcus was already heading for the door.
Marcus and Angela donned surgical garb and entered the autopsy room. It had the clean and sterile look you would expect it to. Eva Parks’s body was displayed on a table in the center of the room. The body was on its back, and a long Y-incision had been made in the chest. It was a gruesome site, but nothing compared to the discovery of Eva’s butchered roommate earlier in the day. Marcus had been unable to shake the images from his mind. When he closed his eyes, it came flooding back. It took all of his willpower not to break down.
Dr. Cassidy Greene stood beside the body and nodded to the two detectives. Greene had been a medical examiner for over fifteen years now, and she was generally considered to be the best on staff. She was in her late forties, tall and thin and beautiful. Angela liked Greene, but she was also slightly intimidated by her. It wasn’t fair someone could be so tall and so attractive and yet so smart all at the same time.
Dr. Greene was about to say something, but Marcus held up his hand and stopped her.
“Please, allow me. There are traces of venom in the blood, indicating the victim died from a snake bite. There’s no sign of rape and no traces of semen in or around the vagina
. But you did find three pubic hairs in the region that don’t belong to the victim. And judging by her occupation, the hairs most likely belong to her latest customers.”
“Actually, there were four hairs,” Dr. Greene countered.
“Anything else?” Angela asked, obviously not expecting there to be.
“Yes,” Greene said.
Marcus and Angela were clearly taken by surprise, but they didn’t comment. They just walked over to the examining table.
“It’s not with the body of the victim. It’s the snake,” Dr. Greene said.
“Different species?” Marcus asked.
“Same kind, as far as I can tell. But I found a small incision in the snake that was glued shut.”
Dr. Greene walked over to a stainless steel tray that had been placed on a nearby counter. The body of the dead snake was coiled on the tray. Beside the snake was a tiny glass vile.
“I found this inside,” Dr. Green said, picking up the glass vile.
Marcus walked over to her and took the vile. He held it up to the light and studied it. It looked like there was a small slip of paper rolled up inside the vile.
“That was inside the snake?” Angela asked.
“It’s a slip of paper,” Marcus said.
Was this the break they had been waiting for? Was the killer frustrated they weren’t keeping up with him? Maybe he was trying to put them back in the game.
Marcus uncapped the vile and removed the slip of paper with a pair of tweezers he got from the counter. He carefully extracted the paper and put the vile back onto the tray beside the body of the snake. He then unrolled the paper and read the tiny print out loud.
“I can’t make him stop.”
Marcus looked over to Angela. He couldn’t see the expression on her face because of the surgical mask she was wearing. But he knew what she was thinking. Things were about to get even worse.
“What about the snake that was draped around the roommate’s neck?” Marcus asked.
“I haven’t done her autopsy yet, but I did search the body of the snake. No incisions.”
“Thank you,” Angela said.
Dr. Greene nodded.
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