Devil's Cradle

by Drew Avera

  I cracked my neck to relieve the tension built up from the stress of sitting at my desk most of the day. The miniscule amount of relief was negligible as I returned to the task of building the case file and cramming every bit of information into it I could. Once everything was in place I opened my email and saw the message from Dr. Walker, the forensics medical examiner. The subject read, “Jane Doe”.

  My eyes scrolled through all of the formalities until I came across the line used for the identity of the victim. In bold, black letters it labeled the victim as “Unknown”.

  “Damn it,” I said as I printed the message out to include in the case file. It seemed our girl would remain a Jane Doe for a while longer. I felt nauseous knowing her family might never know what happened to her. The truth was that there were several hundred cases of unknown identity and they piled up higher each day. There were numerous victims and countless family members affected by these tragedies.

  My mind wandered to my sister Sarah, just as it always did when cases like this fell into my lap. Each time the winding maze of evidence brought me to another dead end I felt like I was failing Sarah. I couldn’t put my finger on why I connected the two, but it was my way of handling it. Maybe I thought by solving one murder it would make up for the guilt I felt in surviving Cason Letum’s grip, only to have Sarah fall prey to the monster several months later.

  I shoved the document into the case file and shoved it into my desk drawer. I was pissed off and needed some time to wind down before I went crazy dwelling on it. I turned my computer monitor off and stepped out of my cubicle, placed my weapon in its holster, and walked out.

  3 Nov 2021

  After several months away it still feels somewhat like home. The offices were painted and rearranged in my absence, but it was idiotic to think everything would just stop like a clock with no batteries just because I wasn't there. My therapist said that mentality was a side effect of trauma, that abuse or other hellish experiences can disassociate you from the world almost like a complex where one thinks the world revolves around them. I never bought into that theory, but what did someone as damaged as me know?

  There was a large glossy sign that read, "Welcome Back, Sam!" It hung loosely above my cubicle where my service weapon and badge lay in wait.

  "Hello, Officer Martinez. Or should I say Detective?" The Chief of Police said as he turned a rolling chair around and faced me. He stood up and I was surprised to see him outside of his own office upstairs. He looked happy to see me.

  "I don't know how you pulled the strings to get my detective badge back, but thank you." I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed, holding onto the moment for dear life.

  "No strings, Sam, just a matter of looking after our own. Both you and I know what you did was illegal, but after what that bastard did I wouldn't expect anyone to resist the urge for revenge. I can't help but think he got what was coming to him. I know that's not the politically correct thing to say, but, fuck politics. I'm speaking as a husband, father, friend, human being. That sick piece of shit shouldn't be allowed to breathe."

  I couldn't help but smile at his indignant attitude towards the law be helped uphold. "Careful now, you might be condoning criminal activity," I replied. I sang the words teasingly.

  He chuckled. "Make no mistake. I understand, not condone. So how are things personally?" He changed the subject abruptly.

  "It's hard. I haven't seen my mother and father in several months and I think it's because of what I did. They're not together anymore, and when I'm around them I feel like a stranger. Do you get what I mean?"

  He leaned against the divider separating my cubicle from another, his gut half-hanging over his belt. He pushed his glasses higher up his nose and spoke. "I can't speak for a parent losing their child, but I imagine it changes you quite a bit. Try not to hold it against them. They may feel just at odds about it as you."

  I rubbed away a tear forming in my eye and answered. "I'm trying to understand, but I don't, at least not in a way that helps me deal with it."

  He placed his hand on my shoulder and looked me straight in the eye. "Take it from a guy who’s been around the block. You need to focus on YOU right now, not them. If you're healthy in mind and body, the rest will work itself out."

  "I'll try."

  "That's all I can ask. In the meantime why don't we go over there and cut that cake everyone's been drooling over for the last hour?" He chided me away from the self-loathing I was ready to endure and back into the world waiting for me to embrace being back at work. There I was thinking the whole world stopped for my problems. But why shouldn't it? I thought to myself as I followed him into the break room and deeper into the crowd. 4 Jul 2022

  There was a tingling in my fingers that drew me from my sleep. It was reminiscent of the calling which brought me to each victim before I was incapacitated. I tried to move my fingers hoping the tingling was a restoration of the nerve damage I experienced when Samantha Martinez lost control and stabbed me in the prison visiting room. She was wild, out of control, and ignorant of the proper way to stab another human being.

  My scars were hideously mangled. My chest wore a bulk of the damage inflected upon me, but I wore the stripes well. Somewhere underneath the scar tissue were the tally marks of some of my victims. I wore them on my heart now and in my mind. Each cut shared between my victim and I was a communion of tarnished souls. I saved them the pain of their sins. I brought them to God in that way.

  My eyes lowered to watch the tendons lay dormant even as my mind screamed for a twitch. I only needed one slight movement to satisfy my desire to escape the paraplegic shell. It was useless. I was once a god amongst flies, the heap of shit called Chicago bred more maggots, each one becoming a bastard to the system. Criminals!

  I let her slip from my grasp, didn’t I? My careless, cocky attitude put me in this chair, but it was something more. I chose her as a victim. I chose her to free her from the life of another blinded sheep I communed with her, but she fell away from discipleship. Perhaps it was for the best. She did find her true self when I saw her last. Through the tears she was there. Despite the rage, she was there. Our souls connected in that moment. I felt it, and I know she did too.

  “Samantha.” My voice was harsh, brittle, and dry. I hadn’t spoken in months and it felt foreign to me. There is no one here capable of striking a conversation worth having so I sit alone, silent.

  I craved her now, despite our differences I would love to have her company one more time. “Samantha,” I croaked. Silence invaded the room, content to listen for my love. She was only a child then. I had no way of knowing what she would become. Was I wrong? Was it fate?

  “Samantha.”

  The sun had fallen and the first bursts of fireworks filled the air outside. America celebrated independence, but were they truly free? There is a confinement in leadership. You are never free when you serve or bow before another entity. Only the sheep believe the lie, and the wool had been pulled from my eyes, and hers. I could feel it, we were one now. We shared the blade, she and I. “Samantha.”

  Bright hues of blue and red filled my eyes as the streaming explosives launched into the sky represented the rocket’s red glare. Freedom was a lie! Look at me now, imprisoned by my flesh and the weakness of humanity! There’s no consolation prize for enduring life this way. There were only the memories of what it was like being struck impotent and useless.

  Was I angry? Yes, but not at her. I was mad as hell at God. He beseeched me, and I in turn beseeched her. My darling, my chosen one, was not to blame for this. I blamed God.

  I stared outside, no longer enthralled with the celebration. I was caught in my own world. “Samantha.” 20 Nov 2022

  Life was a storm; I realized walking into the hospital ward. Lightning flashed above my head, masked by the low-hanging clouds. Rain had yet to fall, but it was imminent. I tried to keep my mind on something other than the task at hand. Fear gripped me and would not let go, but still I soldiered on, compelled t
o follow through with whatever misdeeds fate had in store.

  Everything was planned. The fake identification badge dangled from my white lab coat. My hair was cut short and highlighted. My makeup was dark, like my soul, I looked like someone else. I felt like someone else.

  The clacking of my shoes against the tile floors was a constant reminder I was here, in this moment. Each rectangular light cascading from the ceiling enveloped me in its lukewarm glow and then released me to another as I strolled through the hallways. I knew everything I needed to about his location. I called in advance, pretending to be a representative of the state. I was a good liar, or the person on the phone was an idiot. Either way I had what I needed.

  Where was everybody? For a state hospital this place was empty. The cold walls of the institution were hollow of life. I felt the same. Another left turn and I could see the door to his room. It was next to an emergency exit which would prove useful. A few more steps would bring me outside his room, just on the other side of what was to come.

  I could see lightning flash through the window at the other end of the hallway. The sun was not down, but it was shrouded in darkness. How fitting? My hand reached for the door handle and I took a deep breath. I had to control my fear and not let it control me, but isn’t that what I’ve always done? I let everything control me.

  I was a leaf in the wind, tossed and forgotten. I could see it in their eyes. My mother, my father, my friends, or at least the friends I still had. There was disappointment and despair when they looked at me. I was a broken thing to them, too weak to be handled so they left me to my own devices. Alone is where the madness set in, the taste for something darker.

  I eased the door open and peered inside. Fifteen feet away and looking the other way Cason Letum sat in a wheelchair. His limbs were limp and useless, his head rested against a cushion attached to his chair. He used to be corded in muscle and standing like an omniscient foe. Now he sat, weak, pissing in a tube and shitting his pants. I had done this to him and he deserved every second of it.

  I walked up behind him, the heels of my shoes sounding like snare drum taps to my ears. I didn’t try to sneak up on him, I knew he wouldn’t scream. The voice in my head told me. It beckoned me to come closer, so I did. Another lightning strike, this time with a gentle roll of thunder lit up the room. The window mirrored us as I stood behind him. His pale flesh glowed in the ever-darkening room and I stood as a dark angel of vengeance behind him.

  Our eyes met in the reflection and he recognized me. There was something about his eyes that caught my attention and held it like a kid holding a bug. I couldn’t look away, but it wasn’t fear. It was realization. We had the same look in our eyes. 20 Nov 2022

  Cason blinked and released me from his gaze. An ounce of pity crossed my mind, but I shut it down; I wasn’t about to allow this monster to deter me from what needed to be done. I swallowed back the fear and opened my mind to the anger and hatred that fueled my life for the past ten years.

  I lowered my lips to his ears and spoke. “I want you to know I am proud of what I’ve done to you. You are a monster who preys on women and children. The best thing for you and the world is a bullet in your head.” My words were thick with anguish. Thoughts of my sister flowed in my mind.

  “You took everything from me. My happiness, my sister, you destroyed our family. I can’t even trust a man or know love because of you!” I reached into the pocket of my lab coat and pulled a black Smith and Wesson knife from it. The serrated blade flipped from my thumb and I brought it beneath his chin. His breathing grew heavy I could see as his chest began to rise and fall laboriously.

  “You like the feel of a cold blade to your victim’s flesh? How does it feel against your own?”

  “Do it,” he said beneath strenuous breaths, his voice hoarse and forced. I didn’t know if it was his fear or the result of my attack on him at the prison. I had stabbed him multiple times in the chest and he almost died. They bastard lived, but was paralyzed and who knows what else. Perhaps he was mostly unable to speak thanks to me.

  “Why should I relieve you of this life?” I asked. I had every intention of doing it, but I wanted him to beg for it like I begged for him not to kill me through the tape on my mouth. I’m sure others had as well.

  “Because you want to,” he said.

  I was taken aback. He was right! I lifted the blade to the side of his face and watched him in the reflection of the window. Lightning was more frequent now and the room was pretty well lit. Our eyes met and I paused only for a second to take in the fact I was finally going to have closure.

  With our eyes fixed on one another I dragged the blade down his face. There was no expression of pain in his eyes. Instead, it was a look of elation. Blood seeped from his face and the smell of iron filled my nostrils. It was all too familiar.

  The only tell-tale sign of what was happening to him came from the quickening pulse. I could see it in his jugular as I looked down. The carotid artery running down his neck was protruding and welcoming. I watched sweat trickle down his neck and onto his chest. A small pool of it rested in a crevice above his collarbone.

  There was a small triangular shape between his neck and collarbone that caught my attention. It was where every one of his victims had been stabbed to death. They were tied and defenseless so his aim was near perfect every single time. It made sense, if they blade went deep enough it could touch the heart without contacting any bone.

  I put the blade on the other side of his face and sliced down, deeper this time and tears filled his eyes. Still, he did not cry out. He was a silent victim like he forced all of his own to be. My knife dug into his flesh above his eyes and carved out a lip of skin. His eyes looked at me as they became covered in blood. I was defacing the monster of my past, but it was still not over, not by a long shot.

  I flipped the knife around in my grip and looked back down at his scars along his chest. Each tally mark was another girl like me and Sarah. I wondered which one represented my sister. I held my breath and pulled his head back. A wicked smile greeted me as I thrust my blade into his lower neck. I felt the tip of the blade hit his collarbone and deflect it more into his throat. I had to pull the knife harder than I expected to in order to get it out of his body.

  I could have stopped there, but I wasn’t ready yet. Again and again I stabbed. I didn’t know when he died, the darkness had consumed me. All I knew was that it was over. I was finally free.

  Epilogue

  15 Dec 2022

  I hate this haircut, I thought to myself as I looked at myself in the mirror while I dried my hair. The highlights were finally fading out and the natural dark brown was finally starting to show again. It’s been three weeks since justice was served and still they talk about him as if he were a martyr. Frustrated, I turned around and turned off the television showing his picture. Surprisingly they have no idea who killed him. I found that to be mildly entertaining.

  I tossed the towel onto the bed in the hotel room and take a seat, pulling my scrapbook from the desk. Jim died on this day three years ago. That was when I lost a true friend, and all hope. I turned the page and looked at the few pictures I had of him. Pictures of different events at the precinct when he would come and find me just to see if I was doing all right were on the first page. Some pictures of backyard barbeques where we would drink a few too many and talk about what would have been had Cason Letum never entered our lives. I even had a picture of him a few days before he died.

  I loved that man like a father. In fact, he was just as protective as my own father, but at the same time would talk to me about what I was dealing with. My dad would just talk about the weather and avoid any kind of emotion he could. I pulled a tear from my eye and turned the page again.

  It had been a long time since I looked at a family picture. We never took any after Sarah passed away and seeing her smile again brought a smile to my own face. I felt like killing Cason broke the chain that weighed me down for so long. I didn’t even think
about her as a victim anymore, or myself. I wished I could say the same for my parents. I haven’t spoken to them in well over a year. I doubt they knew I had anything to do with his death, and if they do there’s no way they could find me now. I was as dead to them as Sarah.

  Another group of pages showed everything I have on Cason Letum; old newspaper clippings from when he attacked me, when he escaped the hospital, and when he killed my sister. I even had the ones from when I attacked him at the jail and when they transferred him to the local ward. Of course there were a few new entries in my scrapbook. My favorite read, “Serial Killer Cason Letum found dead. Police say Letum, thirty-eight years old, was killed with a knife. He was stabbed multiple times and his face and fingertips were cut off. There are no suspects at the time, but experts believe he was murdered by a killer with the same motif as the one who killed a girl five years ago. The case is still under investigation.”

  I turned another page and looked at a school picture of a girl named Annabel Gomez. She had dark hair and eyes and her name was etched onto the picture with gold foil. It looked like a yearbook photo as best as I could tell. Her face was familiar to me and it was no surprise as to why. I had a copy of the Jane Doe police report dated June 19,

  2017.

  It was a dark time in my life, and this case affected me personally. They never identified the body, but I knew who she was. I spoke to her briefly. She was not a good

  conversationalist. All she did was ask me, “Why are you doing this?” and beg for her life. Couldn’t she understand I was doing her a favor? Life is hard, and it gets worse as you get older. Pain and struggles add up, and the next thing you know you are unable to breathe.