Shadowed Heart

I smell it before I see it.

The horrid smell of death welcomed me to the scene even before I could lay my eyes on the latest victim. The aroma of stale blood, assaulting my senses.

The moon hung low in the midnight sky, casting an eerie glow upon the gruesome tableau before me. I was well asleep when I got the call of the murder.

"Detective, this way, please."

The town's police chief, a ruddy old man who was three months shy of retirement, approaches me and tries to walk me through the small crowd that had now formed since the news got out.

Soon, I was bombarded with questions from a few reporters who were clamoring to get a statement from me.

"Detective, what do you have to say about the latest development?"

"Is this case connected to the other murders the once peaceful city of Lakeville has been plagued with in the past three months?"

"It's been three months now, and there's been no lead on who might be behind these murders; what exactly is going on? The people need to know. "

Another question from an agitated reporter gets thrown at me, adding to my annoyance.

I wasn't exactly annoyed at his question. I was annoyed by the truth in his question.

Three months, seven murders, zero leads.

Four months ago, I was transferred to the Unsolved Crimes Unit(UNCU) here in Lakeville on special order. I had earlier applied for the transfer to be closer to my pregnant only sister, who was due any moment, so when it came through, my joy had known no bounds.

What I didn't know was that I was about to be plunged into a series of murders that'd prove to be the toughest case I'd ever taken on in my twelve years in service.

Just before the entrance, a little girl of about nine or ten years clad in a polka dot pajamas is wailing uncontrollably while clutching on to a stuffed doll.

"Momma!!! I need to be with Momma!!!"

She's being held down by two policewomen, and my heart broke at the sight.

"Poor girl. No one deserves to go through such a horrible experience at such a young age." Hudson says.

"Did she witness it?"

"No, but she was the first person to walk in on the scene then she raised an alarm."

My heart cracked further from picturing how jarring it'd have been for her to see that.

Twelve years walking in the force, and I've seen more murder scenes than I see my period, but I still have the same reaction.

As I stepped through the yellow tape that marked the perimeter of the crime scene, a chill swept over me, sending a shiver down my spine.

When I see her, I tune out the noises from the Crime scene investigators already getting to work. I don't even hear the remarks Hudson, the town's police chief, is making, nor do I hear the uncontrollable wails from the little girl.

At this moment, I'm in a trance, and it's just me and her.

She's a young woman in her early thirties. I deduce this from what is left of her badly burnt body. I crouched down, my gloved hand tracing the contours of the victim's face, her lifeless features etched in eternal torment. Her face is burnt beyond recognition, but her blonde hair remains.

There's almost nothing left of her clothing.

She was found at the fireplace when the police arrived, but she lay stiff on the floor, now draped in white covers.

I soaked in her features. Her left hand folded backward in a clenched fist. My eyes rushed to her right hand, searching for the one thing that'd confirm it was him.

There it was - A cut middle finger on the right hand.

The bastard!

It was the same psychopath. They were all related.

It couldn't possibly be an imitation as this one piece of information we've judiciously withheld from the public.

The psycho always took a middle finger as a memento from his victims.

My eyes moved from the body to the floor of the living room. They hadn't found any murder weapon, but she was believed to have been stabbed in her right chest before being left to burn in the embers of the fireplace.

The crime scene was a study in chaos. Broken glass from a table lamp glistened like shards of crystal, a cruel evidence of the struggle that had unfolded here. A discarded cigarette butt lay smoldering nearby, forgotten in the heat of the moment.

Was it hers or the killer's?

Blood smudges trailed from the beige sofa to the fireplace. The killer had probably stabbed her on the sofa and then dragged her body to the fireplace.

This makes me wonder if perhaps he'd raped her on the couch before finally killing her.

Following the previous pattern we'd noticed from the past murder series, three of his female victims all appeared to have been raped before they were killed.

My mind wandered on various scenarios that had played out in this very room a few hours ago.

What were her last thoughts?

Did she know him?

Who's this psychopath?

And most importantly, what was he thinking?

A fresh wave of anger and indignation washes over me.

This had to be his last murder. I'd see to it that it is.

* * * *

When I had staggered into my house by 3 am, lights all turned off, I had whispered a prayer through sleep clenched teeth that when I woke up the nightmares would have drifted away like smog and there would be sun shining through the clouds.

Nine times out of ten prayers go unanswered. This was one of the nine.

The first thing I realized when I came back into consciousness was that someone else was in the two bedroom. Then I heard the off key whistling of some church tune and my fingers relaxed on the butt of the SIG Sauer that slept under my pillow. It was Julie, my sister. Pancakes floated in the dry morning air. Good thing her cooking was better than her singing was.

I stumbled out to the kitchen area, my eyes could barely lift and it felt as though someone had sat on my head while I had slept; someone heavy enough to be a sumo wrestler.

Julie looked up to me, her extended belly bobbing as her face brightened; “So you finally decided to join us on this timeline.”

“Good morning, Julie. What time is it?”

She flicked her wrist to her face, “10 am something,”

I yawned, imagining saliva fangs stretched across my mouth like some medieval flesh tearing monster was peeking out from inside my throat. “Damnnn…”

“Do you still have space for pancakes or your belly has been filled by solved cases already?”

In response I walked up to my sister behind the counter and bent to stare at her belly, “Hey, little boy, please don’t have bad humor like your mother, okay?”

It was sort of relaxing to watch her heave with laughter. Julie was a bright soul, a light that felt false because of the grime and dark that painted the world I lived in.

“When last did you speak with mom?” Julie asked, her voice was tiptoeing around themselves, as though she was avoiding a nerve she could touch.

I turned my face away in reply. It was the way of things, for daughters to grow and drift away from their parents. I had no problem with it. But Julie never failed to try to make me feel guilty with every opportunity. I had no strength for that sort of exhaustion this morning.

Julie was still speaking, “She’s considering selling the house..”

“Is something wrong?”

Julie shot me a dirty look that said ‘you would know’

“No she’s alright. Her retirement plan is basically to travel to all the countries she and Dad used to fantasize about and live on cruise ships.”

I tried to feel something. I did not know what I was supposed to feel. “Good,” I said. It was a sad wonder how time had washed away my emotions towards Mom. I had used to love her, in that fierce way that makes a man run a knife through another man in defence of a woman.

The news was on; I heard something that caught my attention; “…The police are baffled by the lack of clues. They appear to have exhausted every resource, but nothing has led them to the identity of the Middle Finger Killer.

The city is on high alert, residents are scared to go out at night, and children are too afraid to play in their own neighborhoods. The fear has seeped into every corner of our community, casting a dark shadow over our once vibrant city.

The police are urging anyone with any information, no matter how insignificant it may seem, to come forward. They're asking residents to be vigilant, to be aware of their surroundings, and to report any suspicious activity immediately… In sports…”

Julie looked to me helplessly; she knew I had been assigned the case the minute my bags touched Lakeville. She knew it was driving me crazy and down dead ends, driving me past unwashed dishes at the 3 am in the morning.

I shrugged and nibbled the edge of a pancake. “That’s the best name they could come up with though? The Middle Finger Killer?”

Julie tried to rub the tension off my shoulders. It felt good. It felt good to finally let out the words after they had bounced around my head for days. “I mean, hardly anything in my two years working with the UNCU actually prepared me for this guy. The art of a catching a criminal depends on the fact that they would always slip up, go careless, leave a loose thread that we would tear through. But not this guy; zero forensics, no weapon, no trail, a profile that doesn’t point us anyway, an MO that is as bizarre as it means shit.It’s a Hollywood director’s wet dream; only I’ll be damned if I feel any excitement. The massage feels really good thanks. How’s Jordan?”

Julie’s voice was cooing, soft like a heartbeat, “You know, working.” Jordan was Julie’s husband, forehead swallowed by acne and very much unapproved by our parents. He worked as a foreman, having wasted much of his youth running around with gangs in inner city Detroit. Mum and Dad did scoffed at redemption stories so Julie had played the I’m-an-adult-anyway card and moved out here to Lakeville with Jordan, both envisioning a quiet cottage by the forests that bordered the town. I had always privately thought she was the boring one. But this morning, watching her auburn hair fall on her rounded shoulders and listen to her talk about mundane things like her indecisiveness in choosing the color for their baby’s cot with such fervor, I kind of wished I had her life. I tried to sink my head into Julie’s petty worries and girlish excitement, to drown the way alcoholics tried to disappear into a bottle. It never worked with them and their liquor, it was not working right now. I had a fierce headache playing conquest across my left temple. In some seconds I wanted to scream everything to a jarring stop, and break things into jagged tearing edges. In other seconds, I wanted to clutch Julie’s silk nightwear and press myself into it, through it, fall into some other side beyond the cloth.

They had drummed it into our skulls back in cop school; Never let your emotions mix with your job- that’s when all the mistakes happened; the trigger-happiness, the slip of tongues, the shoddy double checks. My memory of my camouflage clad professors yelling the rule into our faces was sepia toned now. But when you looked at your face in the mirror after you had helplessly watched a child reach out for the lifeless fingers of her mother, your loaded pistol useless by your side the entire time, it was hard not to chew your teeth in anger.

“I’m so tired, Julie,”

“You could get off the case, Evelyn.” Julie responded as though she had scripted that reply.

“The thing about cases are that they are like your children crying to be fed. Sure you can ignore them, even watch them slump and die of exhaustion, but you would forever be haunted by their faces. If I leave the case now without the satisfaction of digging up this son of a bitch, I would never sleep another day without the faces of his victims shaping my nights for years to come.”

Julie heaved heavily and took her weight off my shoulders. She rose as though to go; “It will come to you eventually,”

Julie tried to be good emotional comfort. But something big was gnawing at her, something Julie and her love for pink cradles could never comprehend. Now her blank plans and empty words of encouragement sounded overbearing and annoying. I did not blame her anyway.