Serial

by Tim Marquitz

  She stared at Isaac for a moment, and finally nodded. “Yeah, sure. Cool.” She started toward the car.

  “Don’t forget your keys.” He pointed to the colorful jumble that lay on the ground beside her car door. She giggled and snatched them up, almost falling over as she bent for them. Righting herself against her car, the woman clutched her keychain and wandered over to where Isaac held the passenger door of his car open. She slopped down inside, bouncing the car on its shocks as he shut the door.

  Isaac went around to the other side. He spotted something out of the corner of his eye and snapped his head around to look. There was nothing but the wall and an old fire escape ladder hanging above the ground. He shook his head, angry the new killer had him jumping at shadows, and slid into the driver’s seat.

  His keys still in the ignition, he started the car up, turning to glance at the woman. “Buckle up,” he said as he shifted into gear. She battled with the seat belt for a second, rolling her eyes at him. Isaac waited until he heard the latch click before he pulled out of the driveway. He drove slowly and casually, doing nothing to draw attention.

  “You have a name?”

  “Karen,” she answered, doing her best to adjust her legs to keep from bumping into the cooler at her feet.

  Isaac gestured to the cooler. “I was preparing for having the next few nights off. You want an ice-cold beer?”

  She turned in the seat to stare at him. “But you’re a cop.”

  He looked at his watch and laughed. “Only for another five minutes, and I won’t be drinking until I get home. Besides, it’s not like anyone can see you through the tinted windows, anyway. Don’t worry about it.”

  Karen appeared to ponder a short moment before she reached down and peeled the lid off the cooler. A six-pack of Guinness cans sat chilling inside. She grinned and pulled one out, the ice crackling as it filled in the open space. Popping the top, she took a sip and sighed, drying her free hand on her jeans.

  “You have good taste in beer, for a cop.” She swallowed another mouthful, a tiny trickle leaking from the corner of her mouth.

  “Were you expecting Coors Light?”

  Karen choked and pulled the can away, chuckling. “Yeah, something like that.” She took another sip and Isaac motioned to the cup holder set between the seats. Karen downed a little more and reluctantly set the can down.

  “I’ll give you a couple for the road, once I get you home, but I don’t want to have to carry you inside. How would that look to the neighbors?”

  She glanced over at Isaac, her smile turning subtle. Her eyes ran the length of him and settled at his crotch as though she was contemplating giving the neighbors something else to gossip about.

  Isaac grinned, but kept his eyes on the road. “I’m not going to have some brute of a boyfriend trying to kick my ass, am I?”

  She shook her head and snatched up the beer again. After a long drink, she set the can between her legs and let out a quiet sigh. “None that cares, so no worries.”

  Even from his peripheral vision, he could see her eyes wavering. Isaac reached over and pulled the can loose from her legs, letting his palm rub her thigh as he did. Her eyes fluttered closed and she sucked in her bottom lip. She was ready.

  It just wasn’t for what she was expecting.

  He set the can in the holder as he drove past Karen’s exit just as she peeled her eyelids open. She looked at the green highway sign as it slipped by and raised a limp finger to point at it, her tongue thick in her mouth.

  Isaac patted her on the leg. “It’s okay, Karen,” he told her as he continued on, casting a glance at her. She tried to nod, something deep inside her still trying to be compliant, but she didn’t have the strength. Her head lolled to her chest and she sank into the seat, held upright by the belt.

  To the soundtrack of her quiet exhalations, Isaac made his way back to El Paso. The clock on the dashboard shined a bright 3:30. He was cutting it close, but he could make it work.

  Come morning, no one would be thinking about the upstart murderer.

  Chapter Five

  Isaac leapt from bed at the trill of his alarm clock. He slapped it to silence and dashed into the shower. Perspiration still clung to the curtain from when he’d showered only hours before, but it always paid to be clean. He smiled as he recalled his morning’s activities before he’d crawled into bed for a mere two hours of sleep. It had been glorious, though a bit rushed, but the best was yet to come.

  Out the door, smelling of Irish Spring, he hopped in his Charger, leaving the Toyota in the garage, and headed to the station. He’d foregone his morning ritual of watching the news, partly out of running late to work, and partly out of concern that the local report would once again spoil his high. He even took the back route to work, avoiding the congestion of the highway to eliminate frustrations.

  A smile split his cheeks as he rounded the corner onto Raynor Street, pulling into the station’s parking lot. A number of media vans were parked haphazardly around the side entrance, cameras and crews clustered by the door and clambering for attention. Isaac could hear their raised voices as he passed, on his way into the secure lot. Busy little bees.

  He parked and went inside, the furor of activity outside mirroring the tension in the station. He walked by the breakroom to see a wall of uniformed officers and detectives alike staring at the television mounted on the wall. The news spewed tersely from a pale-faced reporter, the intersection of Montana and US 54 pictured prominently behind him, before the whole scene flickered to the side entrance and the placid face of Adrian Sifuentes, the department’s PR guy.

  Captain Garcia strode by and swept Isaac up by his arm, pulling him away from the crowd before he could hear what was being announced. The captain stayed quiet until they were in his office, the door slammed shut behind them. His eyes glimmered.

  “The Ripper struck again,” Garcia said as he dropped into his chair, not bothering to wave Isaac to a seat. “That crazy son of a bitch must be pissed to dump a body so close to us, not thirteen fucking blocks from here.”

  Isaac sat and shook his head. “That’s not his MO, Cap. You sure it was him?”

  Garcia shrugged. “While the preliminaries aren’t in, the girl had her tongue split like a fucking snake, same as always. Pretty little thing too.” The captain yanked the top drawer of his desk open and pulled out a bottle of Pepto. After a big swig, he slammed it onto the desk, pink bubbles welling up at the opening. “He strung her up by her entrails, right the fuck over the highway for the whole world to see.”

  Isaac sighed and leaned back in his seat. “Mendes on it?”

  “Yeah, yeah, but I didn’t bring you in here to put you back on the case. I need you to bust ass on our latest malcontent. He’s stirring the Ripper up something fierce.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because the sick fuck shoved a toothpick through the girl’s nipple, that’s why. If that’s not a message, Grant, I don’t know what the hell is.”

  Isaac nodded, his face whitewashed with neutrality. The killer inside smiled. It was that, and so much more. “He’s also never dropped two bodies this close together, so maybe you’re right.” Isaac sighed. “I’m on it, but the new guy isn’t as brazen as he seems. Minus the defensive wounds on the first, I believe there’s a measure of premeditation involved. He isn’t just hacking folks up for the fun of it. There’s more to it—a rhythm, a pattern of some kind that isn’t apparent, especially with the toothpicks.”

  “I don’t care what you have to do to figure it out. Just make it quick. I’ve got the chief’s approval to burn overtime and open up assets to you, as needed, but he’s going to want results for the money he’s spending. Shut this toothpick motherfucker down so we can focus on the Ripper. We can’t afford a serial killer pissing match, with all that’s going on in Juarez right now. The feds are just looking for an excuse to cut in and screw us out of our funding.”

  Isaac stood and waved a hand. “I understand.”
He made no promises as he headed for the door, but he had all the motivation he needed to rid the city of this new serial killer. The feds were a bull Isaac had no interest in provoking.

  On his way back to his office, he passed the breakroom. A different gaggle of officers was on display, but the news was the same. Isaac smothered his smile as Detective James Chapman called for his attention.

  “You see this shit, man?”

  Isaac leaned inside the room and glanced at the TV, nodding, doing his best to mimic the other detective’s distressed look.

  …brutal and barbaric, the unidentified victim left to hang by her neck in a noose made of her own intestines. The po…

  “He’s fucking up. We’ll get him,” Isaac told the other detective as he walked away.

  He laughed inside as he shut the door to his office, drowning out the angry comments of his fellow officers and the drone of the news report. Brutal and barbaric. The words echoed in his head. Karen had hardly been a masterpiece, but Isaac was content with the results. He’d made no mistakes. Better yet, her death had brought the news back full circle to where it belonged. There was no mention of the toothpick killer, only the Desert Ripper, as it should be.

  Garcia had been right. The toothpick through the girl’s breast was a message—a warning, but it was also a challenge, a marking of his territory. El Paso belonged to Isaac and he’d brook no usurpers in his domain. El Paso’s fear was his alone to reap.

  Isaac’s hands trembled as he sat before his computer, fury stiffening his knuckles while he accessed the criminal database. He took a moment to calm himself before he went on, his fingers tapping frantically against the keys and fumbling his password. He couldn’t let his anger and excitement get to him. Too much rode upon his professionalism, his certainty in the kill. Novices panicked. Novices found themselves in cuffs facing an empty life in prison or the chair. Isaac was no novice.

  With eighteen confirmed kills, nineteen once Karen was credited to that list, and a half dozen more, moldering in the desert sand, that had yet to be found, he was assured of his anonymity as long as he didn’t allow the upstart to draw him out. Isaac had rushed Karen, but he’d taken no chances. The cameras at the intersection he chose had been down for months—TXDOT had yet to even file a work order—and none of the security systems of the neighboring businesses covered the location, given their facing and the distance from the drop point. Even then, Isaac had taken precautions to obscure his features. It made the dump easy.

  If anyone had witnessed what happened, there would be nothing more to the story than a homeless couple staggering across the bridge, drunk or high, the pair collapsing on the bridge. Would anyone even notice that only one walked away shortly thereafter? He’d set the body to tug against its own weight, tightening the fleshy noose until Karen slipped over the edge to dangle above the morning traffic. There had been at least two blocks between him and Karen before she finally toppled.

  Isaac smiled at what must have greeted the first passersby to see Karen hanging in the bright light of morning. The Sun City lived up to its reputation, the day’s brilliant radiance plying its touch early to chase away the desert shadows. He wished he could have been there to see it, but that was the mark of an amateur or fool. Detectives are trained to survey the scene, and it’s the first thing they do. Serial killers don’t leave their victims out in the open unless they want the attention, the visceral thrill of knowing their work has been discovered. The police know this, so they scan the crowd looking for the idiots who stand out and haul them in first—the ones who fidget yet show no expression, the ones lingering in the back with no apparent interest in getting close to take a peek, or those too eager to see the ruin of their fellow man. These are the novices whose streaks end short. They might as well wave a flag claiming responsibility, for all their lack of subtlety.

  Fortunately, the modern world craves sensationalism just as much as killers do. It’s no longer necessary to hoard trinkets or pieces of the corpse to remember the victims by, furthering the risk of being caught. The Internet and news networks store it all, keeping it nice and organized and out there to be accessed at any time, without a fingerprint to trace. It’s there to be salivated over in high def and full color. One need only to be patient and the scene, in all its glory, will be revealed as a morbid society peels back the layers of necessary secrecy and chases the evidence into the light. All the while, the same society rails at the impotence of police forced to hemorrhage their only clues and give up all hope of bringing a criminal to justice.

  God bless America.

  Isaac grinned as he put his fingers to work, the shaking in his hands calmed. He wondered about his competition as he opened a file on him, dubbing him the Toothpick Killer, for lack of a better name. Once he was done filling in what little information he had, he set the links to alert the coroner and lab of the file’s creation, and searched their outgoing databases for any new information regarding his case. There was nothing worth mentioning.

  Isaac sighed as he refreshed the case, over and over, growing frustrated. He’d have to drive across town to collect the TXDOT videos of the Border Highway, but he knew that would be a waste. The lighting in the area was substandard at the best of times. Even if the killer’s vehicle had been caught on tape, it would be little more than a pair of headlights in the dark, which no amount of technical wizardry could draw into the light.

  Not yet ready to abandon the physical evidence he hoped would come in soon, Isaac shifted over to the Ripper case to see if Detective Mendes had made any headway. Isaac grinned, knowing there would be nothing to worry about. Despite the temptation to alter records to cover up his crime, he had never once done anything to the Desert Ripper’s file. Right after hanging around the crime scene, that was the surest way to get caught. Isaac covered his tracks from the start so the record stood pristine. There were no stray hairs or blood to be found, and no way to trace the homemade Rohypnol he used to drug his victims. He didn’t need to adjust the record because there was nothing linking him to the crimes. That was how he’d avoided his brethren for so long, even before he’d been put in charge of the case.

  Happy to find the captain hadn’t lied, his password still opening the Ripper’s file, Isaac flipped through the newest entries made by Mendes. It told him nothing he didn’t already know. Mendes was adequate to the job, his notes perfunctory, but he wouldn’t fare any better than anyone else at finding the Ripper. There simply was no trail to follow.

  Isaac flipped back to the Toothpick case and growled at the lack of updates. There was nothing left to do but review the traffic tapes until something came in. Isaac set out and steeled himself for the aggravating drive across town in rush hour traffic.

  Chapter Six

  The machete sunk into the supine girl’s breast, cleaving through until it thunked against bone. The impact sent vibrations dancing up his arm. Her sightless eyes stared away without knowing the brutality being inflicted upon her husk.

  He’d seen the news report of the Desert Ripper’s latest kill, the media defying the police’s mandate to not report on the single toothpick shoved crudely through the girl’s nipple. It was a message to him, and the networks had been more than willing to pass it along. He expected no less. They wanted their pound of flesh from the city.

  He had their attention—both the media and the Ripper. Now, he just needed to keep it a little longer. Once more he let the machete loose, its blade cutting through the tender stomach of the girl lying on the plastic-sheeted floor. He restrained his enthusiasm, making sure each cut was in its place this time. He needed to be precise. Though it was the toothpicks the media focused on, it was the slashes that told the story he wanted to get across. Would the Ripper respond?

  He hoped so.

  Come morning, El Paso would stare into his defiance, the answer to the Ripper’s challenge resting in the dead sack of meat at his feet.

  The news had dubbed him the Toothpick Killer, but tomorrow he’d lay claim to a monik
er more suited to his purpose. For now, there was flesh to rend. The machete fell again.

  Chapter Seven

  The night had been a long one for Isaac, full of dead-end videos and a coroner’s report that did nothing more than confirm what he already knew about the victims. Sleep had evaded him in his anxiousness for the inevitable hunt for family members and witnesses. None would shed any light on the killer.

  Isaac’s morning was no better. He sat hunched in a ball of fury on the couch, transfixed by the television. He’d received the call from Garcia a little over an hour earlier, telling him about the kill scene that awaited him. The Toothpick Killer had ignored Isaac’s warning, striking once again with a deliberate statement of defiance. He would not be scared away so easily. His feet braced in the proverbial sand of his victim’s corpse, the new killer had shrugged off the media’s label and had staked claim to a name all his own, laying his intentions bare.

  This is Jessica Rodriquez with a News 7 exclusive. The Toothpick Killer has claimed yet another victim in what appears to be an escalating battle of bodies here in the Sun City, but there’s more. The killer has sent Channel 7 a second letter claiming responsibility for the horrific murder of a seventeen-year-old girl whose butchered remains were found in the parking lot of the local high school she attended.

  While police won’t release the details of the crime, the scene too horrible to describe, the killer has stated he will continue to murder the citizens of El Paso until his nemesis breathes his last. He did not name this nemesis, but we assume him to be the Desert Ripper, the serial killer responsible for the brutal murder on display at US 54 and Montana yesterday.

  Again, we can’t tell you everything disclosed inside the letter, but the killer has decried the Toothpick pseudonym in favor of the name, Bane.

  Stay tuned to News 7 for—

  The news report faded away as Isaac thumbed the Volume button. He had fired the first blow of the conflict by the inclusion of the toothpick, but Bane had rallied back with the declaration of his name and the proclamation of his expectations. Bane was looking to be the dominant terror in the city. He wanted the Ripper gone. Isaac snarled as he gathered his things and headed for work, coffee forgotten in the pot.