The sun slipped slowly behind the distant knolls and darkness drew nigh. Reluctantly, Dian decided to leave the crime scene. She’d been hanging around hoping to pick up some useful information.
There was none.
The crime has taken place many hours, even days before, and whatever could have been left behind by the perpetrator was already washed away by the Typhoon Glenda that had hit the city mercilessly. She’d watched experts in the field lost for words, speculating, looking for clues they knew never existed. The police had cordoned the area with red tape and kept curious onlookers and inquisitive journalists away. Dian had been able to have access to the area, thanks to her father, the Police Chief Inspector Arnel Amparo, who’d called the investigator and advised that she should be allowed to take a look at the victim. She’d taken some few pictures at close range and under strict supervision and had left the forensic team to do their work.
The earth still smelled of rain, the ground covered with bramble, leaves, and branches torn apart from tress by the storm. Dian has seen a lot of crimes, but this one was chilling, the shock of it was still working her nerves as she walked the solitary trail that led away from the shoreline. She wanted to get into her car and drive home. The dead body of the model-like girl laid on a stretcher and ready to be packed like fish into a bag and hurried away to where she didn’t know was all that filled her mind at that moment. The girl had been raped and strangled to death, the naked body, slender and beautiful, lay gloriously on the stretcher. Who are you? Why are you killing young and beautiful girls? What did they do to you?
As though to answer the disturbing questions on her mind, there was first a rustle of leaves, then a jolt in her heart. She stopped in her tracks and instinctively reached for handbag. Her heart thrummed.
“You don’t need that,” said a metallic voice. A lean man on a faded tweed jacket came out of the brush. He looked like someone standing on a mount of ants, shifting his feet on the ground uneasily.
The man could have been anything from an innocent hunter easing the load of his bowels to a heartless sexual predator. Whoever he was, his sudden appearance before Dian made her want to scream, but she noticed the urgency in the man’s eyes and his nervousness and the words stopped in her throat. It was the nervousness. In her career Dian has learned to read body language and to interpret the signs of nervousness. This has always been very useful in interviews. The way somebody clasps their hands in front of them or the way they heave out would lead her to the only question that would let them tell her the secret they have been keeping for years. Nervous people can be very dangerous, she reminded herself. But a nervous person could easily break and say something important. It is like things would go back to normal after talking.
But this man who’d suddenly appeared on her path like an apparition didn’t fall into any category of the kinds of nervousness she was acquainted with. Why are you nervous? Is it the drugs, alcohol, or something that scares you? Is it a secret you don’t want anyone to know, some deep-seethed guilt? Or are you the killer calling around to watch the victim for the last time and savor the sense of restlessness and helplessness of the incompetent police and the forensic team with lousy tools?
“We need to talk,” he said, in that voice that was between metallic and fruity. Dian thought they have met before for there was something strange and familiar in the way he spoke.
“Who are you?” Dian asked, taking a step backwards and the lean man moved two steps forward, his eyes not straying from the spot where Dian stood. They were the color of wakefulness. “Talk, I am listening,” she said, smartly.
“Not now, Dian Tan,” he’d called her by her whole name. Dian’s celebrity status would have made her feel like everyone knew and loved her, but she was no feel. The unsettling thing was the familiarity and the ease with which the man talked to her.
“We can’t talk here,” he said.
“I am afraid,” Dian started, but the lean man held his hand up, as though to signal to her that he was the one calling the shots. “You want to know who did this and I can help you find more than that. However, we won’t get anywhere if we stood talking here. Meet me at the train station on Tuesday. I will be waiting at the South entrance to the subway. You’ll find a cigarette kiosk near the entrance to the subway. I will wait for you there. 7:30 pm. And don’t be late, please. I can’t afford to linger anywhere for long.” He hesitated, and then looked at her eyes intently, as though he were looking for a sign, then said, “Remember, they always leave a trail. Look for the trail.”
And he was gone.
