by Tyler Porter
“Listen kid, you still got a whole hell of a lot to learn and I can only teach you so much before I’m out of here, but let me lay down some wisdom. His mother gave him that name and it seems disrespectful to her if I don’t use it.” I laughed as I spoke jokingly.
“Shut the fuck up.” He laughed. “Let’s go, I got the room ready.”
I got up and followed him to the hot seat. It was an intentionally small grey room with a glass mirror on one side and solid walls on the other three sides. A small, steel table sat bolted down in the middle of the floor with one chair on the far side and two chairs on the other. We stood in the viewing area behind the double-sided mirror and looked at the boy who sat handcuffed in the room. He had scrapes on his arms and face from the arrest.
“Jesus brother, you really did a number on this guy.”
“Yeah, he was resisting.”
“Sure he was. Just don’t go getting the department sued on your last week.”
“Now that I think about it, that would be a nice little departing gift for Neil,” I said hearing the tech who was running the cameras and audio let out a giggle to himself at the comment.
“Alright,” Hunt started. “We ready to roll?”
“I’m ready to roll, yeah,” I answered.
“Cool, let’s go.”
“No. Just me this time.” I could see the rage flare up in his expression.
“What do you mean just you?” he asked.
“I mean I am going to handle the questioning alone on this one,” I said as I began moving toward the entrance to the room.
“Oh, don’t go giving me that lone-ranger bullshit Casey; I’ve been on this case since the beginning!”
“Yes, you have, and you’ve been a tremendous asset, but we are going to play this my way. Alright? I know you hate the idea of it kid, but you’re going to have to trust me.”
I didn’t give him the opportunity to argue, because I knew he would. I left the viewing area, turned the corner and walked into the hot seat swinging the door closed behind me. I strode over to one of the chairs facing the boy and slid into it. I leaned my head to the right slightly and stared at him. I had heard, several times before, that my stare was unsettling and it proved useful in past interrogations. The boy said nothing, but body language does not lie.
He slowly turned his body away from trying to make it seem as though he was just adjusting for comfort. His shoulders were hunched forward and his arms were crossed in front of him. A sign of something to hide. I was purposely leaning back, relaxed, in my chair. The best way a cop can be positioned in situations like that is to be in a state of relaxed, aggressive confidence. I let him sweat it out for a couple minutes, then leaned forward and put my hands out in front of me on the table with my fingers interlocked. There was a manila folder on my side of the table. I reached over, slid it in front of me, opened it and began to recite the contents.
“Eric Jones. Age nineteen, 5’10”, one hundred and eighty-five pounds.” I paused, sized him up momentarily, then brought my attention back to the information sheet. “Only child, been arrested several times, some for drugs, but mostly for domestic violence. With Melanie Green though, you jumped from assault to murder—”
The boy said nothing.
“—That’s a pretty big jump Eric. What’d this one do to cause that much of a change?”
Forty-five minutes and several unanswered questions in I was getting nowhere with him. I knew I was going to have to kick it up a notch, so I pulled the picture out of the folder and set it down in front of him. It showed a woman, maybe in her mid-twenties, lying on a bed. It was a horrific scene. Blood stained the bed sheets and a pool of it had developed under her corpse.
Her body was peppered with stab wounds and her eyelids had been stapled open. The entire scene was straight out of a horror movie, but probably the most disturbing part of the picture was her hands. Each had been mutilated. The thumb and pinky had been removed from both leaving only three fingers on each. Eric Jones turned a pale white.
“I think I’m gonna get sick,” he said as he started to gag.
“Jesus Christ, not on my floor!” I yelled at him as I raced to the corner of the room to pick up the trash bin. I set it on the floor in front of him just in time. He puked for several seconds and if anything was in his stomach, it was now sitting at the bottom of the bin. He finished convulsing and sat back up in his chair, his face even paler than before.
“I can’t….I can’t take it anymore. I didn’t do that! I could never do something like that.” I believed him. A stone-cold killer with this kind of handy work would not have such a weak stomach.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s assume, for the moment, that I believe you. If you didn’t do this, why did you run from me this morning? I mean you dove through a glass window. Call me crazy, but that sure seems like you had something to hide.”
“Because I knew it was going to get pinned on me.”
“Wait, wait, wait. So, you didn’t kill this girl,” I said pointing back at the picture of Melanie Green. “Yet you knew we would think you killed her, so you ran is that what you’re saying?”
“Yes!” He was becoming visibly upset.
“Okay, continuing with our assumptions, if you didn’t kill her then why would we think that you did?”
“Because of all the evidence, it was all planted man! The fingerprints, the knife, all of it!”
“Okay now we are getting somewhere, I just figured you were stupid enough not to wear gloves or clean up after yourself, but all this time it was all planted huh?” My faith in him was dwindling quickly.
“Fuck you man. You’re not even taking this seriously!”
“Listen kid, you want me to take you seriously? Then start talking! What the hell aren’t you saying?” He slouched in his chair and exhaled heavily.
“She was a customer, but she didn’t pay for it with money…” According to his file, Eric Jones was a small-time cocaine dealer, and Melanie Green was apparently a fan of the white, powdery substance. I nodded suggesting my understanding and that he should continue. “We got pretty tight, but then one night she didn’t show up. I called and texted her, but she didn’t respond. Couple days later, she texted me to meet her at some warehouse on the east side.”
“And you didn’t think that was strange at all?”
“Of course I thought it was strange! We’d only ever been together at McDonalds and the back of my car!”
“Then why did you go?” My patience were running thin.
“I don’t know man…I guess….I guess I started feeling her.” Tears began to form in the corners of his eyes. “I thought maybe she was in trouble so I went.”
“And what happened when you got there?” I asked.
“The door was opened, so I went inside. It was just this big empty warehouse with a bed in the middle. I saw her laying there from the door, and I thought she might be sleeping, but when I got closer I saw it.”
“You saw what?”
“The blood. It was everywhere...everywhere. I went to leave but before I could I got a text from a number I didn’t know.”
“Which said…”
“It said for me to listen to the voicemail on her phone…it was lying next to her on the bed.”
“And?”
“I listened to it…it was one of those voice changer things that makes your voice sound deeper. It told me that all of the evidence was there to prove I killed her and that I was to take the fall for it. If I didn’t, it said that they would do the same thing to my family...my mom.”
“Very interesting, and where is her phone now?” Now we really were getting somewhere.
“It’s with the rest of my stuff. They took it when they brought me in. It’s the grey one.”
I stood and left the room without another word. I could feel the adrenaline pulsing thro
ugh my veins. Not because of what I might find on the phone, but because the case wasn’t over. The worst part of my work was the work coming to an end. There was no satisfaction in it. I usually caught the bad guy, but people still died. There were still lives that I couldn’t save. The chase was the part that kept me motivated and once the chase was through, it was hard for me to look at another case knowing there would be more victims I couldn’t save.
I hurried to processing and found Officer Jim Cullen sitting behind the front desk squinting hard at the computer screen that sat in front of him. He had been on the force almost as long as I had, and he had always wanted to be a detective. He just didn’t have the mindset for it. He was extremely book smart, but street smarts eluded him, and he could not stomach the sight of a blood. He flashed me a big crooked smile as I approached.
“Hey Norris! Heard you brought in the guy who cut that girl apa—” He stopped mid-sentence as he pictured what he was describing and gagged.
“It’s actually looking like it might not be that easy. You have his stuff somewhere back there?”
“You know I do! That’s my specialty! Keeping track of items that pass through this room. Not a damn thing gets passed me; you can believe that.” He had found a great enthusiasm for his work in recent years after being denied for detective for the seventh consecutive time.
“Great. I need a grey cell phone that was checked in with his things.” Cullen wandered into the back room, ruffled through a few shelves and emerged with the device.
He handed it to me and held out his other fist for a bump. I bumped it. He’d always looked up to me. I’d even had a chance to train him for a short while. He was the only person I had ever trained who could not get the count to three exercise down. Most officers would get very nervous when they were about to make an arrest, interrogate or confront a proven killer and I always taught the same technique.
Close the eyes, inhale, hold it in and count to three before releasing the air. I’d tell my trainees to imagine blowing out the stress and anxiety with the exhale. It generally worked perfectly and I, myself, had used it countless times when pursuing criminals over the years, but Cullen, for some reason, could never quite get it figured out.
“Thanks Jim,” I said as I turned to leave.
I fast-walked back to my office and closed the door behind me. People called me a lone wolf and I guess, to a certain point, they were right. I liked doing things my way and it seemed like any time I let others “help,” they got in my way somehow. This might have been my very last case and I was not going to have it screwed up.
I sat down behind my desk and set the phone down in front of me on its back. I pushed the button on the side and it lit up instantly. There was no passcode on the device, so I was able to swiftly maneuver to Melanie Green’s voicemails. There was only one saved. I pressed it, hit the speaker button and pushed play.
The message said exactly what Eric Jones had told me when I questioned him. The caller had used a voice changer and described in detail how the girl had been killed. It went on to say that there was plenty of evidence to connect him to the murder and that he was to let it. The voice said that prison was far better than what he would experience if he didn’t take the hit. The same experience Melanie Green had endured and the same one that would come for each member of his family if he did not comply.
The recording finished leaving me frustrated and unamused. I hadn’t learned anything new and worse; I had wasted time. There was a lot more to this case than Eric Jones, and I had very little time to solve it. I stood to take the phone back to Officer Cullen, but as I did, it began to vibrate in my hand. I looked down and read the text-message on the screen that came from an unsaved contact.
Hello Detective. Are you enjoying my work so far? The text read.
I looked around the room, there was no one. I stormed into the lobby of the department looking for anyone not in uniform. Whoever was texting the phone had to be close by, but again I found only officers. Then, an off-putting realization came to mind. It could be someone in uniform. I walked in normal stride back to my office closing the door behind me and sat behind my desk to respond.
Who is this? I texted back.
Feeling frightened Casey? The person typing in the other phone knew who I was. I have a technique to help with that. Close your eyes, take a breath, hold it in...and count to three.
Chapter 2: Second Kill
Three murders. That’s what it takes to be considered a serial killer. I knew this number well. I had spent most of my life studying serial killers, analyzing them, and idolizing them. I always found a couple of things so interesting. The way that each individual always had a certain part of the kill that they focused on more than all the others. For some, it was the lead up to the final blow. For others, it was the weapon that they used. Some of them enjoyed the chase more than anything…I think that is the category that I matched up best with.
Another thing that always captured my attention was how most of the killers I had read about had a certain type that they hunted. Blond single mothers on their way home from dropping the kids off at soccer practice. Rich men leaving strip clubs or renting a hotel room with a prostitute under their arm. For me, it never mattered. I had imagined the kill so many times and I never focused on one demographic or another.
I just longed for the kill.
I had also read that many times after the first one, a killer could stay hidden or, as the cop shows called it, dormant for years afterwards feeding off that one experience. That was not the way it was with me. Melanie Green, for instance, was a momentary pleasure. Pleasure was the perfect word for it, but it had worn off quickly. I would be lying to say that I didn’t enjoy it. The blade of the knife slid in and out so easily. She’d hardly even put up a fight. Killing her was boring, almost. Now, though, the real path that I’d been searching for had finally shown itself. Detective Casey Norris.
He knew what I had done. He would have no choice but to come after me and our little cat and mouse game had only just started. He was interested, sure, but it wouldn’t stop his retirement. Not for one murder, but for a serial killer…perhaps. That meant two more were going to be required. That didn’t bother me at all, in fact, it excited me. It, in a way, justified what I was doing. The killings were meaningless, honestly. They were just a way to get the attention of the main target. Now that I had his attention, I had to keep it.
I looked back over the text messages we had sent back and forth—the little breadcrumbs I had sprinkled for him. He had tried calling and texting my phone several times since our conversation. He would, no doubt, be starting the process to locate it, but that would do him no good. The phone had been programmed to ping between different cell towers and tracking it was impossible. Still, I had no need for it anymore. I dropped it to the floor, picked up my right boot and stomped with tremendous force hearing the phone crack under the pressure.
Very little sunlight was able to find its way into the room. There were two double-paned windows on either side of the basement where I could look out and see the street, but that was it. No other light except the light coming from the small, dim lamp in the corner. This place was perfect for my project. It was remote enough that no amount of screaming could ever draw attention, but close enough to the city that I wouldn’t have to drive the entire country to find my next kill.
The house itself was great for a single person with no spouse or children. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms all spread over two floors. The two-car garage was big enough to store both my Toyota Camry and the twenty-year-old Ford pick-up I had only bought to transport the bodies. All the amenities that I needed, all great things, but the basement was my favorite part. It was unfinished, which to most people would be a turn off, but for me, it was exactly what I needed.
It was dark, damp and cold with no carpet or furniture. It was one large open space with one room boxed out on each side.
One room contained a refrigerator and the other held the sub pump. It had some of the old steel posts spread around the main area that supported the home, but to me they weren’t an inconvenience to the space.
They were perfect for chaining someone up to with no chance of escape, which is exactly what I had done with Sophia Johnson. I left my spot at my workbench and turned toward her. Fear had always intrigued me, probably because I was never able to feel it. The way that it effected the eyes. Just like the eyes on Sophia were now. The eyes never lied.
Wide open with ever expanding pupils. She had this same uncontrollable response every time I walked toward her. Then, she would frantically look around the room for a weapon or way to escape, but there was none. It was all useless. I approached her and she curled her knees up to her chest and closed her eyes. I bent down next to her. I could have sworn I could actually smell the fear on her. Whether it was real or just in my head, I loved that smell. That’s what made the hunt so lucrative. She flinched and closed her eyes tight as I rested one hand on her left knee.
“Come now Sophia, it’s rude to ignore people,” I said. She said nothing and refused to open her eyes. “Do you remember the video that I showed you the other day?” She nodded her head. “Good. Do you know why I had to staple her eyelids open?” She slowly opened hers.
“Bec….because she woul….wouldn’t look at you?” Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“Exactly! She wouldn’t look at me. I think that is disrespectful don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t you think I deserve respect Sophia? Don’t you think I’ve earned that much?”
“Yes.” I could tell immediately she was just telling me what I wanted to hear.
“….Liar.”
“What!?”
“You are a filthy little liar just like the last one was! Lying is disrespectful!” I shouted.
“No! I swear! I respect you, I promise!”
“You don’t respect me. You think I’m a joke! Just like the rest of them! I’m just a joke right!? Ha Ha Ha!? Well, I’ll give you something to laugh about.”
