Mark Hammon and his assistant shared a brief look with one another before settling their gazes on Sean.
“Why did you bring me here Mark? You know I’m no good with cases like this… I gather intelligence, not hunting serial killers”, Sean reminded the man. “You drafted me off from the anti-terrorist watch team remember?”
“Yes Sean… I did that and for good reason but something else is at play here”, Mark Hammon sighed. “The bodies… the police over at NYPD ran some of the prints and they came back”.
He could feel the bombshell about dropping and it wasn’t going to be easy to take, considering Mark couldn’t even seem good enough to air it immediately.
“Give it to me straight Mark! Don’t hold back on me know!” Sean demanded.
Martha cut right in. “Susan was one of the victims”.
He paused, stared at the lady and nodded as though he had heard but it didn’t mean anything to him. The name definitely made his eyes widened and his lips curl into one of discomfort but he wasn’t about showing it; he wasn’t going to get all soft now because he had heard his ex-wife who left him and ran off got killed.
“Let the police handle it… but thanks for the information though”, Sean upped himself, neglected the file and began walking to the door.
He had barely reached within touching distance of the door knob when the loud bang into the table startled him.
“For Christ’s sakes, Sean, show some respect to the woman!” Mark Hammon yelled. “She was one of us darn it and also your wife!”
Sean flipped around, red faced and barely able to tuck his emotions away. “She was! Was, as in left me and ran away without any explanation or reason as to why she would dent out relationship!”
Martha upped herself from her seat and soon came close within touching distance of the distraught man.
“She ruined my life! She ruined my bloody life and made my career what it is!” Sean raged on. “So, don’t fucking expect me to give a rat’s ass that she got herself clipped by some killer”.
He could hear the harshness in his own tone but considering what he had to go through ten years back, he was far from feeling sorry for her or showing his hurt that something terrible happened to her.
“You cannot keep blaming Susan for your own mishaps son!” Mark Hammon shot back from where he sat. “You started using and you spiraled out of control by yourself after you never even tried contacting or looking for her”.
Martha stepped in between the pair immediately. “No need for heightened tension between you two… you used to be friends… best friends and now, things shouldn’t be any different”.
Sean Stein scoffed, tendered his head towards the ground and toyed with his fists. He couldn’t recall the last time he and Mark had seen themselves as friends. The years had blurred out since his used-to-be best friend became the Director of the CIA and suddenly decided to cut all friendly ties they once shared. It was partly why he had descended into using drugs in the first place too.
“I want nothing to do with her”, Sean closed his eyes, pictured the day she threatened to leave him and how it was the last time they ever spoke again.
His fury raged on and his disgust had no tempering, while he craved and cached to get out of the office as soon as possible.
“She was murdered, Sean”, Martha reached for his face with her hand. “Your wife was murdered and we believe it happened because she might have caught up on something”.
The all-too-certain expression on Martha’s face almost made Sean burst into laughter. He knew she was good at bearing the best emotional expression for the occasion but even he was left baffled about how good she was.
“You two can concoct whatever you want but I’m leaving”, Sean mused and headed for the door, yanking it open and feeling the fresh air of freedom slap him in the face.
Mark Hammon had gotten up from his seat now, fuming and clench fisted as he yelled, “She was with child when she left! She was with your child!”
Sean froze and felt his hand tighten around the door knob before his knees felt weakened and his stomach sunk farther down. Mark Hammon could be a trickster to get whatever he wanted from people when he found bluntness not working but this was another level.
“You lying piece of shit!” Sean Stein turned back around, lunged towards Mark Hammon with clenched fists but found Martha interceding as she stood in between them both.
“He is telling the truth! He speaks the truth! she reiterated his words “Susan was with child but she didn’t want us telling you until you got your drug addiction shit together… we assumed she left the agency because she needed the fresh start, which was her wish”.
He could barely believe his ears and his widened eyes told just that.
“She worked for you and you’re telling me you never even bothered to know what happened to her when she left?” Sean looked perplexed. “You two knew about the baby and never told me?”
He couldn’t tell just how betrayed he felt but something within him had sapped and he wished he could vent his frustrations out somehow.
“Susan made us promise to leave her alone and for a while she responded to our messages before she stopped and we assumed she left the country which was what she intended doing in the first place”, Martha explained. “This comes as a shock to us and it is why we brought you in”.
Sean continued to gawk at them both with utmost discomfort. His pale face, absent of strength and words to spill only showed just how much he felt for the woman and how he still felt for her.
“We are sorry for not telling you all of this, but you deserve the truth”, Martha continued. “Now we realize she never left the country because some psycho took her life”.
“Susan would want you to take this bastard down”, Mark Hammon added. “We take care of our own, Sean”.
Sean moved briskly towards Mark Hammon, pointing his finger right into the man’s face and scowling baldy, “Don’t you ever think you know what she wanted! You knew all along and you told me nothing!”
Mark Hammon walked away, rounding the table and picking up the file to have a brief look at it with saddened eyes.
“You both knew the rule about having any romantic relationship within the agency and how it compromised things”, Mark Hammon spoke silently. “I am sorry I didn’t tell you everything though and I feel guilty for it too”.
Sean simply reached his arm out, received the file and jet out the room.
Martha waited few minutes before turning to Mark Hammon. “Do you think he will be alright?”
Nodding his head in assurance, he replied, “Sean Stein is a nightmare even I wouldn’t want investigating me”.
“But he has a record for falling off the rails. Wouldn’t he just slip back into old habits?” she sounded in skepticism.
Mark Hammon took his seat and relaxed himself into it perfectly. “He will do anything for Susan… she was the reason he stopped the drugs in the first place and more so, he is the best we’ve got”.
There was no doubt to it; Mark Hammon knew something his assistant didn’t; the fact Sean Stein was meant to be the Director of CIA had his wife not gone ahead to reveal his drug problem forehand during an internal review and her worry that the pressure associated with the work could make things worse for him.
“I hope you’re right on this, or we might just open ourselves to a shit storm”, Martha sighed and walked out of the room.
Mark Hammon drowned himself in thoughts and stared blankly at the wall clock ticking away on the opposite wall from where he sat.
“Time will tell” he thought to himself.
***
Cutting through the next turn to his right in dangerous speed, Sean put the car into gear and pushed down hard against the throttle until he could feel the wheels threaten to go off of his car. The adrenalin seemed to numb the pain coursing through his veins but nothing could quench the trauma he had received by hearing all he did from his
one-time best friend and now boss.
“How can you do this to me?” he asked himself before making another dangerous turn around a parked car just opposite his destination as the driver within the car yelled and cursed with disgust.
He had not thought of her in years or at least, he had tried hard not to. She remained the one person he knew Susan was loyal to and would be able to shed some light on all he had just heard. Pulling into the driveway to the old looking house, Sean Stein stormed out the parked car and headed for the front porch immediately.
“Anna!” he screamed. “Come on out you lying piece of shit!”
A frail looking lady with shaven head emerged from the side of the house with a frown across her face and her eyes narrowed in focus on the source of the disturbance.
“What are you doing here?” she spoke in weakened tone. “I don’t want you around here”.
“You lied to me about Susan! You claimed she left town… moved to another country and sent you post cards!” he yelled at her immediately. “Is that true now?”
Anna slowly approached Sean with a convicted look on her face. “She did send me post cards of her travels but then she got a job as a police officer over in New York”.
Sean gasped, swallowed down hard and stood akimbo. “How sure are you of this?”
She nodded with certainty. “I’m pretty sure. I even got a picture from her once when she newly resumed the post there”.
Anna walked past him and disappeared into the house, leaving Sean to battle damning thoughts in his head as he struggled to believe everything he had learnt of his wife that morning. He assumed she went to some extra length to keep away from him but everything he had heard so far didn’t make any sense. To make things worse, he couldn’t stomach the courage to have a look at the images of her dead body in the file handed to him.
Anna returned, holding a picture with a smiling and happy looking Susan just the way he remembered her to be in it.
“Did she ever mention the fact she was pregnant?” he looked up to her and inquired.
Anna shied away from the question but found Sean’s staunch gaze unshakable until she nodded briefly.
“Jesus Christ!” Sean bellowed. “Why would you all keep this from me? I had a right to know!”
Anna shot right back. “Forgive me for not informing you during your periods of crazy drug binge that your wife was pregnant so you could exhaust your madness on her”.
The stinging words brought back memories of the last night they shared together in discomforting flux. The details forever remained blurry but he could tell he had struck her, and Susan packed her things that night vowing never to return.
“Why are you even interested in her all of a sudden? Years passed and you never for once cared to return my calls or even my mails and now you are… “, she halted, upon noticing the beads of tears rolling down his cheeks.
Sean sniffed, ran his fingers along the picture before speaking. “Susan is dead… someone chopped her into bits few months after she left here for New York I’d assume”.
Anna looked on in horror, barely able to keep to her feet and she slumped into a crouch and clamped her hands over her mouth. Sean walked back around and headed for the car with the picture of his wife donning a New York Police Department branded uniform. His heart felt shredded and the last bit of humanity he had been clinging to for years suddenly seemed non-existent.
She was his world after all; even if he never wanted to acknowledge it. Getting into his car and taking a minute to process the events that had unfolded, Sean Stein picked up the file in the passenger seat where he tossed it, while the distant image of a wailing Anna didn’t seem to baffle him one bit. He would focus on the file and know all he needed to about her death. The Captain’s words blurred out and the gory images came into better focus and he fixated his entire senses and awareness on them. They looked nothing short of beautiful, even if others saw them as the work of a twisted mind.
Slowly, he perused the cut marks, the sliced fleshes and the dismembered body parts of every single victim until he came across “the one”. The one body he couldn’t account for in his memory and which haunted his nights until now. He couldn’t help but notice the seemingly perfect cut marks bearing striking resemblance to his.
“It is impossible”, he thought.
The idea that he might have sliced up the body in the manner the killer did looked too real to be true, but the memory remained absent and that was the major problem. Sighing out loud and looking away as a slender, tall lady with perfect physique walked across the floor and towards the screen, Detective Jake found his interest piqued for the second time in the same day; it never happened often.
Something about her had stuck out in his head from the day they met. She looked better now; cleaner and definitely drier than the last time they met.
“Listen up guys…
Chapter Two
S
even days; that’s what it has taken for the department to spiral into chaos following the revelation at the underwater dump site their new killer chose to keep his secrets hidden. Captain Luke like always had begun channeling his frustrations out through those in the building and the demand for the killer’s head on a silver platter was no different.
Like a man void of strength and understanding, and rightfully so, Detective Jake stepped out from the elevator and began the slow, yet extremely lengthy and uncomfortable walk towards the conference room which was subject to be his destination about twenty minutes ago. Seeping through the doors were the Captain’s words in heightened tone and rough decibel.
“Eleventh body!” Detective Jake thought to himself for the umpteenth time like the news had just hit him.
Had he not been there while the bodies were being escalated from beneath the water, he would make a case for it being a mistake or some confused mix-up occurring during their transport of the bod parts to the morgue or coroner’s office. The truth was ripe in his face and right there in documentation too as every lip in the station had begun murmuring about it.
“Eleven dead bodies”, many had whispered.
Straightening himself and his suit until his face barely bore a wrinkle of worry, Detective Jake pushed open the glass doors and graced the conference room with his attractive presence. Staring in his direction with a hint of desires were the feminine officers who had found comfort in the handsome and seemingly attractive face of the young detective.
The men leered in envy and snorted at his penchant for disregarding time and appointments, but Detective Jake could care less for what they thought or what issues they had with his cockiness. He had a job to do, as did they even if his bordered around covering his own ass from imploding while his colleagues did the exact opposite.
“Keep your calm buddy… you aren’t the only one in this”, he mentioned to himself with tender, whispers before occupying the empty seat at the back of the group.
Captain Luke tailing the young detective around with his eyes, cleared his throat loudly. “It is always nice to have you here on time Detective Jake! I appreciate the punctuality!”
The room tore into laughter and even more from Detective Jake’s enemy and sole competitor; Mike Rondon. Watching Jake soak up the sarcastic criticism only seemed to brighten young Mike Rondon’s face with the evil grin on his lips and his staunch and hawk-like gaze refusing to look elsewhere.
“Simmer down everyone! We shouldn’t allow Detective Jake’s penchant for lateness to forget the sorrowful week we have had thus far with these inhumane killings”, Captain Luke warned.
The entire room fell silent once again, going dark, as the projector got switched back on to the gruesome images of the dead bodies now spread out across clinical tables with tags on them and names of the victims correctly labeled as he would have done, with the exception of one. His eyes narrowed and his lips twitched as he felt memories associated with each kill slowly coursing through the entirety of his body.
“I wonder if they’d get to see things as they truly occurred”, he said to himself. “Can they appreciate art for what it is or the beauty of having a lifeless body so meticulously dismembered?”
The words taunted him but he couldn’t see past the mistake in the fact his work had come to light. It would spell not just doom but even more turmoil should the right connections be made even if he had done everything as perfectly as possible.
“We’d like to welcome Ms. Connell, our profiler for this case to help us give an insight into what we have on our hands”, Captain Luke left the floor for the stunning lady to take her spot.
All eyes remained glued on Sarah Connell who remarkably seemed undaunted by the fact she was standing before men driven by alpha egos. For one, Detective Jake found her bold but with a hint of cockiness as she strolled across the floor and left them all waiting for what she had to say.
Sarah turned around and nodded at her audience like a teacher would her student before taking in deep breaths and voicing her thoughts;
“We have eleven bodies on our hands, all women and definitely within the age range of eighteen to twenty-four”, she began.
Detective Jake smiled to himself. “Easiest information to gather from the database”.
He waited for the juicy part where his work would be appreciated even though the idea of it being dissected in such manner haunted his very soul. Yet, it felt like injustice was being done to such preciously and meticulously carried out work of art which had span the entirety of ten years with a kill designated to satisfy his urged for the entire year.
“Our killer is definitely left handed, judging by the origin of each blade mark across the flesh and he definitely possesses surgical skills, which means he is a professional”, she continued.
Detective Jake couldn’t help but squirm with approval while he listened on.
“My guess is, he dispatched of these ladies while they remained alive”, she added and then passed for the information to sink into the thoughts and minds of her audience. “The killer loved his work and every single body had been appreciated in a manner I have never seen before”.
Mangled Page 2
