Darker Still
By T.S. Worthington
Copyright 2016 by Make Profits Easy LLC
[email protected]
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: “Home Sweet Home”
Chapter 2: “Grasping at Straws”
Chapter 3: “The Past Returns”
Chapter 4: “Bitter Pill”
Chapter 5: “Loose Ends”
Chapter 6: “Cracks in the Surface”
Chapter 7: “Fatal Error”
Chapter 8: “The Final Showdown”
Chapter 1: “Home Sweet Home”
John Anderson pulled up in front of the crime scene about ten-thirty in the morning. He groaned as he switched off the ignition and willed his body to exit the car. As he stood up his staggering hangover reared its ugly head and sent bolts of pain shooting through his skull. This was followed by wave after wave of dizziness and nausea. He found it difficult to even stand up at the moment, but he had to fake it anyway.
The crime scene was already polluted with cops, forensics guys, and reporters. It was actually starting to remind him of Columbus and he was wondering why he had left the big city to become a detective in a small town like Belpre. This was supposed to be the sort of place where nothing ever really happened, least of all a brutal murder that would make Jeffrey Dahmer squeamish.
He had been awakened by the call about thirty minutes before. Last night had ended the same way most of his nights did with him drinking about a fifth of bourbon and passing out in his recliner watching crime shows on Netflix. It was a routine he had grown quite fond of and he hardly ever deviated from these days. He wished he’d had time to drink more this morning; it might have helped the brutal hangover that he was dealing with. He never used to get hangovers, but he guessed his body was finally fighting back against the copious amounts of booze that he consumed regularly.
Of course he had a lot of demons to drown and he’d barely scratched the surface. He had rolled out of bed, grabbed a clean shirt, splashed water on his face and his hair to slick it back. He brushed his teeth, grabbed a cup of coffee from his coffee pot—had to love those timers—and a few squirts of cologne before he headed out the door.
The chief had warned him on the phone that the crime scene was going to be brutal, but he was still not prepared for what he saw as he entered the modest ranch style house on that clear summer day. The smell greeted him first. It was the smell of death that you could never get used to but you damn sure never forgot either. He was glad he had not eaten any breakfast because touchy stomach full of the sauce and the smell of death were not a good combo.
The victim was a young woman, about twenty years old. Her eyes were missing; this was the first thing that John noticed. This was followed by the fact that her head had been detached from her body and large x’s carved into both cheeks and her forehead. Her body had been stabbed multiple times attacked from every possible angle. It was sickening.
“Oh, wow,” John said.
“This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in all my years in homicide.” The voice of Chief Ben Michaels bounced over his shoulder.
“It isn’t the worst I’ve seen, but it’s up there,” John said.
“Well, I guess being from the big city you guys get a lot more wackos like this than we do, but here in a small town like this it just doesn’t happen.”
“It appears at first glance to be like a drug hit. If I were still in Columbus that is the first thing we would go to,” John said.
“It’s possible. The crystal meth problem is growing by leaps and bounds, but I don’t know if drug hits of this magnitude have really found their way here yet.”
John looked around at the crime scene, being careful not to step on any of the blood spatter that was everywhere. The walls were caked with drying blood, as were the bed sheets the victim was laying on, and the chair in the corner. Whoever had done this had taken their time and had done it right there.
“Do we have a positive ID on the vic?” John asked.
“Yea. Her name is Theresa Daniels. She is a twenty-one year old college student. She goes to Pine Bay Community college.”
“Any employment?”
“No, her folks are pretty wealthy from what I hear and they pay all of her bills while she goes to school. Her dad is a doctor up in Lancaster.”
“Must be nice. Doesn’t sound like the kind of girl who has a lot of enemies floating around, does she?” John asked.
“I doubt it, but we are still checking in to her social circle and close family members. Her parents have been notified and they are driving down immediately.”
John walked over to a few of the forensics guys who were dusting for prints and checking for fibers.
“Any luck?” John asked.
“None. The guy must have worn gloves,” The tech said.
“Any red flags of sexual assault or anything like that?”
“It’s too tough to tell. We would probably have to wait for the ME to examine her.”
John grimaced slightly. He was used to some of the best on site tech people in the business. In a smaller town like this these guys did not deal with murders that often; most of the crimes they investigated were robberies. He was even surprised that they actually had a real forensics unit here. But looking around he saw three guys and they were most likely just collecting stuff. For DNA and actual analysis they would probably have to send that off somewhere. Which would take time. And the longer they waited the more likely that a killer would go free. Time was crucial in these things. He had learned that from his experience.
“Oh my God!”
He heard the voice screaming from the front door. John quickly walked out to see what was going on. He arrived to see two officers restraining a young, visibly distraught, woman. John instantly noticed how beautiful she was. She actually looked a bit like the victim might have looked before some pscyho had decided to kill her.
“My sister lives here! What is going on!” the woman screamed as she struggled against the two oafish officers.
John stepped up and helped free her from their grasps. “Let her go!” John yelled. He understood that they thought they were doing their jobs, but really they were making a difficult scene much more difficult.
The young lady fell into his arms and he stood firmly and let her fall against him. He was going to have to bring out some of his old school charms and keep her from freaking out. He was just hoping that he could remember some tricks from his Victimology classes, but it had been a long time.
“Miss, you have to calm down. Just relax,” John said. He tried to keep his voice smooth and steady, hoping she would pick up on what he liked to call his “mommy voice”. After a minute she did seem to calm down a bit.
“Where is my sister?” she said through tear filled eyes. She laid her head on his shoulder and began to cry as if she already knew where her sister was. It was pretty obvious when you got control of your emotions and thought it through, but John hoped that he could at least sugar coat the incident for her a little bit. He was also hoping against hope that she could tell them something that might be helpful in the investigation.
“Let’s take a walk. I’ll explain everything,” John said as he slowly escorted her out of the house.
The morning air felt good. It was heating up as if it was going to be a bit of a scorcher, but he liked it. He had always wanted to live in a warm climate, so he would take the Ohio summer while he had it to use. It was usually short lived and in a few months he would be cursing the damn cold again. He hated winter and he always had. Everything was cold and dead. It reminded him too much of his job at times.
He took the young woman, who told him her name was Cheryl Dani
els to the coffee shop down the street. In his experience people did their best talking when they were being supplied with caffeine and sugar. It always seemed to help his hangovers too, which would have been a nice bonus to help him deal with the mountain of paperwork on his desk at the moment.
After a few minutes of conversation, John had ascertained that Cheryl was the victim’s half-sister, but they had been half-sisters since they were both five and seven respectively. So they had grown up together they were obviously very close.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your sister. I appreciate your help on the matter; it might help us bring her killer to justice and fry his ass.”
Cheryl smiled slightly. She had one of the prettiest smiles that John had ever seen. He had to admit it was more than a little distracting and it was throwing him slightly off his game here, but he didn’t think she could tell. He had a pretty good poker face.
“Do you know of any enemies that Theresa might have had?” John asked.
“No. She was one of the sweetest people you would ever meet. She was loyal to a fault, a great friend and sister, and she would always be the first to apologize if she had ever wronged anyone.”
“Ok. How about boyfriends? Girlfriends?”
“She just broke up with her boyfriend Steven Rich. He is harmless though; it was probably the only amicable split I’ve ever seen happen. They have stayed good friends.”
“Did Steven ever display any violent tendencies? Any deceptive behavior?”
“No, he is a sweetheart. He is actually kind of sweet and nerdy I thought—that was Theresa’s type. Don’t ask me why, but she has always had a thing for professor types.”
“So Steven is a professor? Or he just plays one on TV?” John asked with a smile. He knew his jokes were corny as the morning after shit, but he found it helped to ease the emotional turmoil of the victims’ families in situations like this.
Cheryl smiled weakly at the joke. At least it provoked some response, he thought.
“He is a Psychology professor at the community college.”
“Ok, I might want to talk with him, just to see if he might know something that might be helpful,” John said writing down a few notes on a small pad. A lot of guys nowadays typed everything into the notepad on their iPhone, but he was old fashioned. He preferred to use the paper and pen method and it had never let him down. He also found it was cute and less intimidating to people. Most people were nervous around cops as if all cops wanted to find some law that people were breaking that didn’t exist yet so he could throw the book at them.
“You’d be wasting your time. He is harmless and I doubt that he knows anyone who would have done anything like this.”
“Well, that is the thing about police work. You can’t leave any stone unturned—no matter how mundane it is—otherwise you will kick yourself later.”
“Interesting,” Cheryl said. John doubted that she really felt that way, but he was willing to let it slide.
“So, what type of work do you?” John asked.
“I’m a veterinarian assistant,” Cheryl said. “Why do you need to know that?”
John was amazed at how guarded this girl was. She didn’t act like someone who had come from such a squeaky clean existence.
“I was just curious. I like to make conversation. It helps keep the mind off things,” John said.
“Well, maybe I don’t want to keep my mind off the fact that my sister was just murdered. I would like to start to grieve.”
“It helps to stay distracted actually. Especially, at first. You are not going to want to go through it all alone and process those emotions that way by yourself.”
“What are you some sort of a shrink?” Cheryl asked.
“Well, not officially. But come to think of it that is part of the job description.”
“Oh, great. So I get the Dr. Phil of cops to be the lead guy on my sister’s murder.”
“Any detective worth his salt is also an amateur Psychiatrist. It goes hand in hand. You have to understand real human nature so you can get inside the heads of the perpetrators.”
“I see. So you walk around just trying to think like a killer all the time? That sounds really healthy,” Cheryl said.
“I know, it does.”
John had actually wondered that about himself on more than one occasion. He had spent so much time working in homicide over the years and walking around in these murderers heads that it was only logical to think that some of that had to be lingering inside of him somewhere and it was not totally healthy. He had thought about one day going to see a shrink and see how much junk was actually left inside of his head about this.
“I’m glad you agree, at least,” Cheryl said and John thought he heard the faintest little smile in that voice.
“So, you and Theresa are half-sisters?” John asked.
“We have different dads, but we grew up together since we were little and we never really noticed that we were half-sisters. We’ve always been best friends.”
Cheryl sobbed a tear out of her eye with a Kleenex. John hated to see her cry and hated to see how something like this affected so many other people besides just the victim.
“I know a bit about that,” John said. “I have a cousin who my parents took in after his folks died in a car accident. We grew up together and we are brothers as far as I’m concerned.”
Cheryl paused a moment. She seemed to be gathering some thoughts or maybe she was just trying to get a handle on her emotions. John wasn’t quite sure. Maybe his skills at reading people were not as advanced as he liked to think they were.
“You asked me if Steven ever became violent or showed signs of being weird.”
“Yes. Why? Are you remembering something?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I want to hear it. It’s ok. Just whatever you can recall no matter how mundane it may seem.”
“Well, I remember once we were having a cookout at Theresa’s place with a few friends and she accidentally spilled one of his beers. He yelled at her, grabbed his fold up chair and folded it up. For a split second I thought he was going to hit her with it, but he instantly straightened up and put that goofy grin of his back all over his face and apologized. The rest of the day went along fine, but for one second I saw something different in him.”
“Well, I’m definitely going to talk to him and see if anything turns up. I will let you know of course,” John said.
“I appreciate everything you guys are trying to do detective, but I want you to level with me. What do you think the chances are that you will find my sister’s killer?”
John looked deep into Cheryl’s eyes. She had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen and he wanted nothing more than to get lost in them while he told her that they would certainly solve this case, but he knew that would only magnify the hurt she was feeling. She was smart and she would know that he was feeding her a line of bull even while she smiled and pretended to accept it. He had seen it all too many times.
“It really depends on a few things. If your sister didn’t have any known enemies and we can’t establish a motive for the murder then the chance is pretty low. I hate to tell you that, but I want to be honest with you.”
Tears welled up in Cheryl’s eyes and for a moment John wondered about whether or not he had done the right thing. He hated to see anyone in pain and he felt even worse when it looked like he was the cause of it.
“Don’t give up hope. We have a great team and we will do everything we can.”
“Great team? Here in Belpre? Do you know how many random murders happen here? Almost none. It is a small town. The only murders that are committed are done by people that were known to the victim and its usually pretty clear cut right away that they are guilty. I follow the news. I know what I’m talking about.”
“I understand that, but you don’t know me. Now the other detectives and officers on the force haven’t dealt with that many homicid
es. I know most of the ones that do happen around here are to do with the rising drug trade or the occasional domestic issue that takes a turn for the worst. But I am not from here. I worked homicide in Columbus for twelve years. I recently got tired of the hustle and bustle up there and decided to come down here to my hometown for a break. I wanted a change of pace. Now it looks like I’m dealing with the same old thing. But I have experience on this. I have more experience than anyone else in the county and trust me when I say that if this murder is solvable then I will find the person who did it.”
John took a large gulp of his now lukewarm coffee to end his rant. He had actually started to fire himself up. It had been a while since he had really gotten excited about catching a killer again. He hoped that it had not been too much for Cheryl to take though. She had a look on her face like she thought he might be full of shit or crazy.
“So, you moved from Columbus back here? And you did it because you were tired of the violence you witnessed up there? I can only imagine in a place that big what kind of depravity you have witnessed,” Cheryl said as the waitress refilled their coffees.
John looked at her for a moment, studying her face. Besides the fact that she was so beautiful that she was hazardous for men with pace makers to be around Cheryl was a very bright and streetwise girl. She had not picked up that knowledge from the small town of Belpre, population thirty-five thousand as of last year.
“Yea, it is insane and twisted what some people do to each other,” John thought. It was only a matter of time before Cheryl found out what sick things the killer did to her sister. She had not seen the body and she did not know the details of how her sister was killed. She did not know that her sister was almost gutted and completely decapitated. She did not need to know yet that her sister’s eyeballs were missing. John had conveniently glossed over those facts when she probed him for details of what happened to her sister.
She would probably find out in the media before long anyway. They had said nothing to the press, but they always found out somehow. He knew that there would be someone on the force who would provide information to the press for a price and it was almost impossible to find out who had talked and kick them off the force. It had been that way in every department he had ever worked in.
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