Authors: Jesse Abundis
“ No, I go alone.” She said to him.
“ Pardon?” Klecko was halfway up, only to come back down.
“ I don’t need you with me on this,” Rita wanted no part of Klecko near her right now, after his last lie, he was far from the trusting type. For all she knew he could be in Pardo's pocket, she wasn’t about to put her trust in him. “ I think your time is better spent else where.” She covered up her lie, trying to mask her true emotions. “ I can handle this one solo.”
“ No argument there.” Klecko smiled at her. “ Alright, Captain wants this done right, lets get to work.” Klecko was the first out of the door, with Harkness right behind him. Rita was left with Wilson, Rollins and Joey.
“ Is it me or does Klecko look out of it?” Rollins asked her colleagues.
“ If you ask me, the bastard hasn’t been the same since that Casey Miller investigation.” Rita ignored their gossip, she had bigger fish to fry at the moment.
Chapter 55
Piecing Together Perfection
The fan was blowing at full blast in Karen‘s apartment, but it did little to end this heat wave that refused to leave. Peewee laid on the living room floor as he read Cindy‘s diary, Karen was at the kitchen table, with every transcript of all the victims, going over them for the hundredth time.“ Man, these pages keep getting more depressing than the other, can’t we just skip to the end?” Karen kept her eyes on the photos of each victim, trying her best to spot the clue that was missing, something to get them closer into the mind of their killer. “ Would it be that bad?”
“ Peewee, you can’t just skip to the end, you need to see everything, from start to finish, see where all the madness started.” Karen moved the photos around, began to set each one like a human doll. “ It’s the only way to understand the monster, see what he see’s, think what he thinks.”
“ Do I really want to think like he thinks?” Peewee asked.
“ Maybe, buddy, maybe.” She bit on her finger nails as her mind began to speed up, it was dissecting what it could from each photo, from all the information that had been gather, hoping to find some sort of answer to all this blood and death. Finally from the darkness, she could hear thunder. “ What if he’s collecting them.” She said out loud, grabbing the attention of Peewee.
“ What do you mean?” He lurched his long neck to her direction.
“ For a serial killer, this guy hunts like crazy, it’s almost none stop.” Her eyes ran down each photo once more. “ What does he get from it?
“ He likes killing, duh!” Peewee boinked his head.
“ Then why not move on, why stay in one place for so long, he’s not an idiot, he’s proven that much.” Karen began to tap her finger nails on the table, knowing she was on to something. “ What if…” She stopped herself, it was too far fetched, even she knew it.
“ What if, say it!” Peewee was on the edge of his seat.
“ What if he’s collecting them,” Peewee was still lost, she needed to be blunt. “ harvesting them,” He was still lost. “ He’s making his own meat puppet.” That was clear enough for him
“ What the hell!” His stomach lurched at the mere theory. “ Why would you say that?” He asked.
“You said it yourself, these women were perfect in every other way.” She said to him. “ What if that’s his big plan.”
“ So, what he’s cutting them up and putting them in jars?” Peewee tried his best not to paint a visual picture of body parts in jars, it reminded him too much of the old Carnivals that had the human freak shows, like the baby in the jar, floating in the old murky water, looking like an old dead pig, the first time he saw that as a child he crapped his pants, literally.
“ Maybe,” Karen said. “ I’m racking my brain over this, but what other reason would he get so close to them, if he wanted to kill them, he could do it anytime. For him this isn’t a game, or he would display the bodies for all to see, trying to make a name for himself. Instead he does everything in silence, all this is more personal to him.” Karen could see the pale look on Peewee’s face, she knew it was time to stop and change gears. “ So, you’ve seen Maggie?”
That seem to take the edge off. “ Yeah, saw her two nights ago.”
“ How's she holding up?” Karen put took her eyes off the photos.
“ Don’t know how much she can take,” Peewee said to her. “ The longer this goes, the worst she gets.” No part of him wanted to visit her without bringing something new or at least an end to the whole misery. “ We have to find something, Karen, I can’t keep looking her in the eye and lying to her.”
Karen rose from her seat to take a gander outside the kitchen window, down below the streets were packed with angry New Yorkers trying to find some relief from heat, all ready to stab one another if they got in their way. “ All we got is theories.” She said as she scanned the streets for one four eyed man that might happen to be out there, watching her every move, looking for a moment of weakness.
easy now, keep your mind on the here and now.
Karen thought to herself. “ But that’s the best I can offer.” She took her sights off the window and brought it back to Peewee.
“ Well, it’s something.” He admitted. “ Collecting the girls puts a new spin on things, now we all we have to do is put a face to this cock sucker and the rest is easy.” So he hoped.
Chapter 56
DIFFERENT PATTERN
Rita felt the need for a hot shower, with enough boiling water to peel the skin off, after being locked in a room with Klecko, she couldn’t help it. She’d seen corruption before, good cops taking a bribe here and there, all with the same excuse, they had family to feed, hospital bills to pay, debts that needed to be washed away and habits to feed. All wanting an easy out to their woes, even if it meant selling their souls.
Not once did she think Klecko could be one of the fallen when she turned to her fathers old friends, she begged them to pull all the strings to allow her to work beside him. She’d seen his record, the praise he garner from his time with Boston P.D, the stories everyone would recount about him, it was impressive. Rita would sell her soul to be half the detective he was. But the lie spoken by him rang only the worst for Rita. “ Is that why you left Boston, to be somebody’s errand boy.” Rita spoke to herself in the empty elevator as it descended down to the morgue.
She wasn’t ready to see Denise cold headless body laid out on the table. She could barely hold it together when she saw her in the park. “ Get your shit together?” Marcus Irving was the forensics expert in charge of conducting the autopsy.
The elevator doors opened into a cold breeze, you would of thought death had just past you by , then again maybe it did, this was were all victims came to pay a last visit. She stepped out and hurried down the hallway, keeping her eyes to the floor, counting slowly with each step she took, trying her hardest to calm her nerves.
Rita walked into Marcus butcher shop, where he was busy looking over slides of a crime scene, trying to figure out where the elephant in the room was hiding, while lying in the middle of the room was Denise body.
Rita vision blacked out for a quick second, she covered her eyes and took a deep breath, she waited a good few seconds to compose herself before clearing her throat to let him know she was here.
“ Oh, hi?” He looked at her, unsure who she was. “ Can I help you ?”
“ I’m detective Rita Vazquez, I was told.”
Before she could say more, Marcus interrupted her. “ You’re here for the headless woman.” He paused for a moment trying to remember the name on the case file. “ Denise Hillshire, yes, please come in, make yourself at home.”
Rita felt uneasy with the dim lighting in the room, she was ready to have a panic attack. “ So, what do you have for me?” She quickly spat out the words, wanting to leave here as soon as possible.
Marcus slapped on his rubber gloves before touching the body, the whole action made Rita’s stomach turn. “ You ok? “ Marcus asked her. “ You look pale.”
“ Just tell me what you got.” She covered her mouth, feeling her breakfast slowly crawl up her throat. She gestured to Marcus to hurry it up.
“ Well, the body is spotless. No hair, not a fiber of dead skin from the killer, who ever did this was a pro. The cut that chopped off the head was clean, done nice and neat, no hesitation, I‘m sure as hell this was done with some sort of an electric saw, just to neatly done.” It almost seem Marcus was praising the handy work of a maniac.
“ Time of death?” She muttered through her hand.
“ That’s the kicker,” He flashed his yellow teeth at her. “ The time you discovered the body, she had been dead a good day before.”
“ What?” Rita managed to say.
“ I found frost bites on her body,” He pointed to her legs, thigh and inner thigh. “ Last I looked, we were in a heat wave, heat doesn’t do this to the body.” Rita took her hand away from her mouth as she examined the body as well.
“ So, Pardo kills Denise, saws her head off,” She could feel the strength in her legs go from under her as she stood closer to the body, she wanted to stop talking and find a place to cry, but she needed to keep her emotions in check, she needed to act professional. “ Puts her in a freezer to keep her body persevered, then dumps it out in the park. But she wasn’t frozen when we found her.” Marcus flashed his yellow teeth as his smile grew wider. “ He defrosts her?”
“ My thoughts exactly,” Marcus hand probe around the dead corpse. “ another reason to frost her was probably to keep her blood spilling all over the room,” Rita was fighting to stay in with each image that crept into her head. “ a body is frozen to stop the blood flow and he’s able to work his artistic hands all over her.” Rita glared angrily at the forensic who bit his tongue from saying more.
“ Pardo has never done that before, has he?” She looked to Marcus for an answer.
“ No he hasn’t, neither has he done this before.” He pointed down to her chest.
“ What is that?” Rita asked.
“ I’ve seen past Pardo killings, the victims head is chopped off and never seen again. It’s his calling card to all traders, right?”
“ Right.” Rita answered, hoping he would get to the point.
“ Ok, but, here’s the thing. Denise body was different.” He motioned her to come forward to get a better look. “ Why is it that she was the only one stabbed through the heart?”
Rita felt her vision blur up as she stared at the wounds. “ Three stab wounds?”
“ That’s right, all of them just a mere inch from each other, each one cutting right through the heart valve, this was really neat, taken out of a text book, last I looked Pardo wasn’t much of a book reader, well expect from his poetry that he loves to write, can you believe the fucker is talking to a publisher about it!” Marcus chuckled. “ What a fucking world we live in, flash enough cash and you can do anything you please.”
“ How many people have you shown this to?” Rita covered the body, she couldn’t see it a second longer.
“ No one.” Marcus said to her.
“ How long can you sit on this?” She asked.
Marcus was taken back by that request. “ Wow, hey now, I’m not one to keep secrets.”
“ Look, I know you don’t know me well, but I’m desperate here, I need you to sit on this for a few days until..” She wasn’t sure what needed to be said, she was lost in this whole situation. “ Fuck, look I just need more time. Can you do this for me?”
Marcus sighed, he didn’t like the idea of withholding evidence, but he could see in her eyes that she needed someone to stick by her side, even if it meant just this once. “ I’ll try my best, no promises.”
“ Thank you.” Rita’s world had been turn upside down with this new piece of evidence, was Pardo behind this murder or was someone using his M.O to cover up something much more sinister, if so, Klecko and the rest could be off her radar. This was all too much to take in, she needed to start from the beginning and see what she had miss.
Chapter 57
We Used To Be Kids
12 years Ago
This was a different time, a different life from the one Karen use to live, her arms were bare of tattoos, not a single piercing on her body, her hair was not dyed black as the night, she still carried her old amber hair, never picturing such a life that awaited for her in the coming months. “ I’m doing my best to love you. I’m buying you everything you want, but do I get the respect I deserve ?” Ryan Moser laid beside her, spooning his newly beloved wife in the bedroom of his parents house, a temporary stay until they found a place they could call their own. He held on to her tightly as she masked her saddens into the pillow, covering the tears that would only enrage her husband. “ No, you just look at me with those God damn hateful eyes like I‘m some fucking monster, is that what you think of me!?” He whispered his hateful words into her ear, keeping them as quiet as can be as too not alarm family members below. “ Why can’t you just look at me like you used to, please, I’m begging you.” He cried out to her.