“Yeah? Oh shit, you’re that reporter.”
“Not a reporter. I’m a journalist. I don’t do TV. But can you answer a couple of questions? This looks important if you have the whole gang here.”
From the street right in front of Gene’s curb, she could see inside better than she could from her car. She could see a body lying on the floor, surrounded by men, still taking photos. She counted four people with FORENSICS stitched to the backs of their jackets, plus two more people she recognized: both the Sergeant and Lieutenant of Homicide. And who was the guy, still on his knees, on the lawn? He still had yet to move. Then, as men with labeled jackets left the body and gathered on the porch, from behind them she could see who she knew to be from the Medical Examiner’s office.
“I don’t have time for this right now.” Captain Cole stepped on the running boards for some assistance, and climbed into the cabin of his truck. He slammed the door with vigor, much to the displeasure, but not surprise, of Cassandra. She’d given up hopes, until the Captain lowered his windows and said, “Alright, fuck it. You’re lucky I’m the right amount of pissed off today. No one deserves to be a cop killer and not have their face plastered all over the news. Ask away.”
“Oh, wow. Okay, let’s start with that. You said cop killer? What happened here?” Cassandra once again fumbled with her journal, containing all the notes she had taken on various issues over the last several weeks. Once her pen was in hand and ready, the Captain started from the beginning.
“Well, this is Gene Maxwell’s home. You may have heard of him. He was one of the best detectives this city, or any city, has ever or will ever see. He was a dedicated hero, and his retirement was set for two weeks from yesterday. He was gunned down in his home late last night at around ten p.m.” Captain Cole stopped there to allow her to write everything down. Then he waited for a response.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Captain. And for the city. Do you have any suspects?”
“Yes, actually. We have reason to believe that Detective Maxwell’s murder is directly related to the murder of Terry Edmund, who was also shot late last night. We’ll be running a ballistics test to confirm a match, so until then it is just a suspicion. But our primary suspect in both killings is Alexander Hart. Hart was Terry Edmund’s business partner, and based on information that Terry Edmund gave us just yesterday, we know that Hart was obsessed with Edmund’s ex-wife. Edmund’s ex-wife is the girl on the news who went missing a few weeks ago; her name is Zoey Edmund. Anyway, yesterday morning, Detectives Maxwell and Moretti were called into Terry Edmund’s office, because he had suspicion that Hart was related to Zoey Edmund’s disappearance. He had said that Hart was obsessed with her for a while, and that his temper was extremely volatile. Currently, we are operating under the belief that Hart found out that Terry Edmund had relayed his suspicions to the police, and killed him for it. Next, he later went to Detective Maxwell’s home - this home - and shot and killed him as well. Detective Maxwell was the lead on this case, and was the detective that had direct correspondence with Terry Edmund.”
It was a hefty load to process all at once, but Cassandra managed to write the gist of it.
“That all sounds circumstantial. Do you have any evidence tying Hart to these two murders?”
“Nothing concrete as of this moment. Except for one thing. Pinned to Detective Maxwell’s body was a business card. It was pinned face down with the writing ‘courtesy of’ and when we turned it over, sure enough it was Alexander Hart’s business card. When you tie this with the fact we had just learned of his probable connection with Zoey Edmund, and Terry Edmund was murdered in cold blood that very same night along with the lead detective on the case, it seems pretty solid, doesn’t it? They were shot within hours of each other and nothing was missing from either of the two scenes. Neither was a robbery; their wallets were both accounted for, along with any valuables lying out. These were targeted murders; that we are sure of.”
“Great, thank you very much, Captain. Any final remarks?”
“Yes, actually. I want it to be made perfectly clear to everyone, that we are operating under the full suspicion that Alexander Hart is directly responsible for the disappearance of Zoey Edmund, and two additional murders. One of those murders was a member of law enforcement who had a very respectable career serving the city of Dallas for over forty years. I want Hart’s picture in the newspaper and on TV; I want his name on the radio. Project it on a billboard or blow it up on a banner and have a plane drag it across the sky. I don’t give a fuck, but I want everyone and their dog to know who this guy is. Thank you. I hope that’s plenty,” he ranted.
Foot on the break, he pressed in the stop/start button, turning the ignition all the way, firing up the roaring V8 engine, and he sped off in a cloud of grey exhaust that would only be so visible on a cold winter’s day, leaving Cassandra Johnson, or Cass as her friends called her, with the jackpot of all jackpots.
It was her lucky day.
SIX
It took Marco until he watched the Captain speed off in his truck to snap out of his daze. The image of Gene lying there, blood pooled in his mouth, on his chest, and on the floor nearest him still haunted him, and it had been haunting him for the better part of the last thirty minutes. His mind went frantic, continuously looping different possible scenarios that may have unfolded. A constant swarm of unfortunate creativity seized control of his brain’s gears and mechanisms, hijacking it and leaving his body temporarily useless, until the nightmare that was indeed reality had thoroughly run its course.
Eventually, though, after his brain had exhausted itself, he was back in control of himself. Then, the bitter bitch named Reality reared its ugly head back, and he would have cried some more had he had anything left in the tank. Instead, he stood up on his own willpower and headed towards his own car. He had a strong feeling of vertigo or dizziness, or perhaps it was low blood sugar. He felt weak and used the hood of his Mercedes for support as Jeff and Sergeant Davis approached.
“This is crazy. Unfair mostly, but crazy,” Jeff said, the first of the two of them to speak. They both stood opposite Marco, eyeing him.
“Yes. Definitely. Unfair for everyone. Unfair for Gene, for his daughter, for us, for the city. Unfair for you, Marco; I’m sorry. I know the two of you were close,” said Sergeant Davis.
Sergeant Davis was generally a very well-spoken and rather formal individual. He rarely used any form of slang in substitution of words that were more dignified; he rarely wore anything more casual than a button-down and tie (even on his days off), and he never used profanity. He had his career and image to think about, after all, and he was perhaps overly-worried about his career. He failed to realize, however, that absolutely no one in the Dallas Homicide office cared if he used profanity, because most of them used it interchangeably with other common words themselves.
“Fuck,” Jeff continued, “I’m sorry, Marco. Really, I am.”
Marco nodded his head in acknowledgement of their condolences, but did not respond. Receiving the message, the sergeant walked away, giving him a kind pat on the shoulder, and the detective followed closely on his hip, doing the same.
Marco was left there, alone again, unable to face the inside of the home. He decided to let Jeff and Sergeant Davis handle this one.
He watched as the Medical Examiner boys carted Gene off. Or, rather, a form that lied underneath a covering to conceal his dignity. He was loaded into their vehicle and driven off and soon, one by one, everyone left the scene. The forensic techs loaded into their Geekmobile and scuttled off, the Medical Examiner’s delivery boys were long since gone by then, and the rest of the Homicide unit, including Jeff, Sergeant Davis, and all the officers that accompanied them, had filed out as well.
Eventually, Marco was alone at the scene, now wrapped in yellow police tape from the curb to the door. He leaned calmly against the hood of his car as a slight bitter breeze nudged him. His thick black hair waved slightly in the wind, disheveling what wa
s once a neatly groomed style. It was silent again, but this time not because Marco was shutting the sounds out; it was silent because it was silent. The bustle of the neighborhood was nonexistent due to the hour, and the sounds of the city were just out of earshot. It was a cruel silence, but the silence was peaceful.
Unfair, devastatingly heart-wrenching, but peaceful.
In the peaceful quiet, Marco fondly remembered his lost friend, mourning his absence.
---
2010
The hunger only grew deeper inside of Alexander. It wasn’t necessarily the need to kill, but rather the need to release pent up stress. And violence was the only method to which Alexander was aware.
It was no secret that he was bullied. The teachers and school faculty were well aware and did nothing; his mother was well aware, and insisted that Tom do something, and of course Tom did nothing but make it worse. He would go to school and get physically and emotionally abused by the other children, then come home and get physically and emotionally abused by his stepfather, only on a much deeper and more impactful level. His life was a living hell, and his only escape was at the other end of a blade or something blunt. The only way to fight off the abuse was with abuse of his own, beating something into a sickly pulp.
The rage built up until he murdered his one and only friend for practice. It worked, too. The boy was immediately filed as missing, and was never found. It was so easy to get away with, and that only made him crave it more. Eventually, he channeled his abuse into the boys that were abusing him at school. Rather than targeting the innocents, he went directly for the ones that caused him the most pain.
There was one boy named Mitchell whom everyone called Mitch. He was the leader of the gang of sorts, and he was always the first to begin the tormenting. He was too big, too strong, too popular to hurt directly, so Alexander had to find creative ways of releasing his frustration. One day, Alexander followed the boy home. Mitchell didn’t live far from the school, so tailing him did not take long, and Alexander quickly found where he lived. For days, he would watch him. He would follow him home, watch him go inside to his loving parents, observe as he was greeted by his animals: one dog and one cat. Then he decided that would be the best way to enact his revenge.
After school one day, Alexander asked his mother if he could go to a friend’s house to hang out until dinner. Immediately after school, he went around town killing time until the sun set, and when it finally did, he drove to where Mitchell lived, and waited. Finally, around dinner time, Mitchell’s family let the beloved dog outside to do its business, and it was never seen again. That is until its severed and bleeding head was discovered in Mitchell’s locker.
Mitchell always had his strong suspicions that Alexander had something to do with it; he didn’t hide it, after all, but he never openly accused him of anything. Instead, he got the message and backed down, thus solving Alexander’s bully problem. He called all his friends off, and school was immediately much more pleasant.
But home was not. It did not solve his home problem. Alexander was quickly growing to be bigger and stronger, and increasingly resistant against his aging, but not old, stepfather. Resistance only got him bruised and tormented more brutally, still hidden from his totally oblivious mother.
So, the need stayed. The violent, pent up and fuming rage built stronger and stronger, boiling over until it was unbearable. That’s when he started picking them off. That’s when he picked his human targets. He picked the boys that he could manage to make disappear, and he did exactly that. One by one over the next year, they began disappearing, just as Jamie had a month or two prior.
The parents, the police department, the reporters and anchors on the news, the entire town, and everyone else in the world, were completely unaware that each of the boys were beaten or stabbed to death, then set to fire, then buried in a shallow grave underneath a growing tree. The cases would forever remain unsolved, and Alexander would forever get away with it, however it never quite satisfied him. It was never enough.
He needed to go after the root cause of his anger. Only that would fix him.
---
2012
As Alexander’s senior year wound down, his time became very limited. His test scores were remarkable, with a 33 on the ACT and a perfect SAT score of 2400. He was the soon-to-be valedictorian of his class, and it wasn’t even close. His GPA was a 4.2, as it was not rare for him to achieve higher than a 100 in some classes. However, despite his excellent testing and the abundant funds that Tom possessed, it was unlikely that Tom would allow him to move off to college. Several months prior to his graduation, he made the ultimate decision that Tom had to die. For numerous reasons, really, so the decision came easy. If he were ever going to redeem his miserable childhood, save his mother from a certain miserable future, and keep his own future from being a miserable one, Tom had to go.
With Tom’s death, his mother would inherit all of that money and be much safer. Sad perhaps, but safe. Plus, she would be thrilled to pay for his tuition, although it was unlikely that most schools would make him pay any tuition, anyhow. Alexander told himself many reasons as to why the logical thing to do was kill Tom - that the decent and right thing to do was kill Tom. But deep down, he knew it was for reconciliation. He knew it was for his torture-filled childhood. He knew it was for the burn scars on his hand and arms. He knew it was for a nonexistent sex drive due to the years of molestation and, on some occasions, rape. For the monster inside him that craved bleeding the life out of a living being. For all of his past indiscretions, Tom had to pay the piper. Maybe, just maybe, Alexander thought, that was enough to cure his insatiable need to kill. Maybe, just maybe, it would be one final release, and it would right all the past wrongs.
Definitely. Definitely, definitely, it was the only way.
---
Graduation was a mere month away. Alexander had used his own money from working to discreetly apply for colleges under Tom’s nose.
Tom vehemently opposed college. To Tom, it was a liberal cesspool where kids go to get brainwashed and turned into commies. He refused to have any hand in Alexander’s “education” and would not pay for any tuition, any application fees, any travel expenses or living expenses. Tom had also called college a “drug-fueled communist orgy,” and refused to allow his precious plaything to be a part of any drug experimentation or sexual discovery.
But by this point, Alexander already had a plan for getting rid of Tom.
Tom was high-profile; if he were missing for more than eight hours, people would take notice immediately. His face was all over YouTube, Facebook, his company’s website, and other shows, as his name was gaining steam rapidly in the alt-right movement of the south. And because Tom was so high-profile, the kill process had to change just a little bit.
In the middle of the night in early May of 2012, Alexander snuck into his parents’ bedroom, and found Tom’s wallet lying on the nightstand next to his phone. He looked through it and found his favored credit card, then pulled it, along with the phone, and retreated to his bedroom.
From the computer that Tom refused to pay for, calling it a “porn machine,” Alexander went to the first travel-booking site he could think of, and booked a one-way trip to Asia. Along with it, he booked a hotel with no check-out date, and paid in advance for all sorts of tours and excursions. In Tom’s phone, he changed his mother’s contact to his own phone number, so that if he were to text Tom, it would appear as if Jackie were texting him. There wasn’t much risk to this, because the two of them never texted back and forth, and rarely called each other. He returned the wallet and phone and went to bed. Tom was rich; he probably wouldn’t even notice that his card had been used. He never checked it. His bills were auto-drafted every month from his bank account, and his bank account never ran low.
The next morning, Alexander stayed home from school, claiming to be sick and throwing up all through the night before. When Tom left for work and Jackie went downstairs to do whatever it is she
did all day, Alexander started the process. He snuck into their bedroom and packed a suitcase full of Tom’s clothes. He jammed in just about every shirt and pants combination that was in his closet; he packed all of his socks and underwear, all his toiletries, including his toothbrush and toothpaste. He packed his personal shampoo and conditioner, and his body wash. Tom thoroughly researched each business before buying products from them, just to make sure they were not flamboyantly liberal or ultra left-wing. If their executives were outspoken Democrats, or they used business funds to donate to liberal causes, he would refuse to buy from them. Alexander especially made sure to make it blatantly obvious that he had taken everything possible. He left random things lying around, like a mismatched sock or two, or a balled-up shirt on the floor, leaving as much of a mess as he could: a brilliant frame job, he thought.
Alexander downloaded an app onto his phone that allowed him to use a second phone number for texting. The number appeared as a true number to the recipient, so there was no hint of falsity. After the bags were packed and hidden in Alexander’s bedroom, he texted his mother with the false number, claiming to be the mother of one of Alexander’s friends, and that they needed to discuss something. He said in the text that Alexander had some “concerning behavior” and that it was best they talk in person. He texted back and forth with his mother, disguised as a concerned parent, until he set up a fake lunch date in the city with her. From where they lived, with Dallas noon traffic, it would take about an hour to reach the restaurant, and an hour to come back. Plus, he would make sure to text her all the while, claiming to be running late, until eventually cancelling altogether when the time was right. It would get her out of the house long enough and waste enough of her time to give him plenty of time to get the job done and be back home as if nothing ever happened.
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