To Catch A Killer

To Catch A Killer (6) Late Night Musings (Watty Awards 2012)

The edited version of the 6th chapter! This chapter is dedicated to a wonderful girl that I know and her sister! They truely are two of the most amazing people I know of even if I've never meet them face to face! Again thanks to Demoiselle_dragonfly for her amazing Editing work!!

I sat at my apartment desk till the early hours of the morning thinking over the case. There were so many things that just didn’t add up.

There was no evidence linking Tucker to the crime scene apart from the single strand of hair which was found on the corpse (corpse). It was far too convenient to be a mere coincident. There were no finger prints, boot marks or even flakes of skin so the existence of a single hair contaminating the crime scene seemed illogical. All my senses were screaming that it was planted there for us to find.

There was nothing missing so it wasn’t a robbery. We found no text messages or deleted emails. There was just nothing that indicated this was a crime of passion, an act of revenge or desperation.

There is only one thing worse than not having any leads on a case and that is to have to tell the victims loved ones a shocking truth about the person they had lost. In this case, it was the fact that Lucy Denver had more than one bloke on the go at once. Her father was shocked as expected but it was her boyfriend that was the most troubling. Never in my entire career had I scene a reaction quite like this. It was the most staggering scene I had ever witnessed.

He went still as if he’d been paralyzed by the news. I sat across from him in the small interview room waiting for him to respond to what I had said. Then he laughed. At first it was quiet and I struggled to hear it but soon he was loudly goffering with tears streaming down his face. It was when his laughter turned to giggling that I knew something wasn’t right. There was something in it that sounded wrong, almost unnatural. And the next thing I knew he had stood up and thrown his chair at the wall next to me. 

It took three burly officers to subdue him and place him in the holding cells. If I was to be honest I think he knew the entire time that she had been unfaithful but he had stayed with her. Watching him made me think of the way I had acted when I found out about my ex-wife’s affair. Looking back maybe I was as cold and emotionally unreachable as she had claimed I was.

It was two in the morning when my youngest son Toby walked into to the adjoining kitchen and flicked on the main light. Although he was at university studying Criminology he still stayed at home. There was a general understanding that although he said he only stayed at home because of the cost of student accommodation, we both knew it was because he worried about me.

 After the initial separation, when he was only twelve, it took a long time for me to be able to look after myself. It took even longer for me to be able to have the boys stay over for any length of time. It wasn’t very long before they were living with me full time once I was capable. James, my eldest, was seventeen when the divorce was put in to motion, and as soon as he turned eighteen he left his mother, who had taken the boys to live with her partner and future husband, and moved in with me. When their mother died I finally had both of them living with me as I had always wanted, just not quite under that circumstance.

“Dad?” he asked groggily as he padded barefoot into the living room which also served as the dinning room and my office “what are you doing up at this time of night? You have work in the morning!” he stated placing a hand on my shoulder.

His white pyjama trousers had turned a slight pink in colour, an obvious casualty from his last failed attempt at learning to use a washing machine correctly. His blue-green eyes were puffy from sleep, his short sandy brown hair was dishevelled and flat on one side. As I looked at him I saw his mother, but not in a bad way.  He looked like the woman that I used to love, the lovely woman that I had married, not the woman who had betrayed me. He may look more like me but in my heart and mind he was more like her in his temperament and manner. Despite his height he always seemed to look so young, especially when he was still re-entering consciousness. I smiled gently at him.

“That’s a good question Toby but I should be asking you that,” I replied whilst standing up. He was obviously taller than me now, a grown man. But I had to smile when I noticed the plate full of midnight snacks, “You shouldn’t eat in the middle of the night son, you’ll end up ruining your teeth.”

“Dad,” he replied confidently, “I’m 21 and an adult so I can stay up as long as I want to and eat what I want. Anyway I’m not the one who has to go to work in less than six hours.”

I almost laughed at his attempt to argue his point. “And I’m not the one who has to be up in less than four hours to go to work. I have an afternoon lecture and that’s it for my day.” I placed my hands on his shoulders and turned him around, before steering him down the narrow corridor of family photos and into his room gently pushing him back into its darkened depths. Before I could leave however, he started to speak again.

“Dad, don’t let this new case, whatever it is, stress you out too much ok,” he said quietly from the shadows of the room.

I couldn’t help but smile again as I shook my head and headed off to my room for a few hours’ sleep. But even that room held papers and photos coloured with coffee stains. My old pine desk sat in the corner looking like a hoarder of files and evidence. The room was the same as it was when I bought the apartment almost seven years previously. It was a beige colour with a rather sickly brown and yellow carpet.  Perhaps it was time to redecorate, if I ever found.

A Killer Point Of View

I stalked the streets looking for my next victim. I already had a small list of cheater who I was going to get rid of but no order.  I decided on Chloe Sanders. She had gotten married less than a month ago but was continuing to have an affair with his best friend, business partner, and best man, Davis Mortimer. Jason Sanders, Chloe’s husband, was a self-employed, self-made business man who worked in advertising. They had gotten engaged less than five months into their relationship and were married a year after that.

I watched as her relationship with his best friend, and later best man, grew. Secret meeting at fancy restaurants and luxury hotel rooms were their chosen style. Whilst her husband was away making money she was appending his money so she could straddle his business partner behind closed, and expensive, doors.

Her husband was clueless. He had no access to her separate bank account even though he transferred thousands of pounds into it almost every other week. I’m sure that if he did know he would do much more than just cut off her bank card.

I found myself wondering as I watched her meeting him at the door of yet another hotel if what I was doing was the right thing. The thought lasted for less than a second. I knew deep down that my vendetta against the cheating, manipulating wh*res of the world was a just cause. I’ve been doing it for years behind the scenes, using different methods and strategies but I find that the most satisfying way to remove these smears from the human race is to re-enact the murder of Porphyria from the poem by Robert Browning. It’s the thrill and satisfaction that I get from squeezing their last breaths from their body that keeps me content to use this method, even though I know that it won’t last. But it doesn’t have to because soon others will start to see things the same way that I do and then the world will be a better place.   

As I walked the still bustling night streets I glanced at my watch, a small face on a thin black leather strap, it was time for me to leave my hunt. Just in time to I thought as the rain started coming down in sheets biting at my face and forcing me to upturn the collar of my dark wool coat and retract my ungloves hands some way into the sleeves. If I wasn’t in a hurry to get back to my home I would have noted the way the lights of the roaring cars almost made the streets glow amber, but I didn’t have the time to romanticise my surroundings as I hurried away.

I deleated the origional unedited version of this chapter with no great loss as I recieved feed back, I hope this will do better.