Cruising through town, a smile cut across
his lips as if he’d slashed them with a knife—harsh, cold, and calculated.
Angela’s request to make sure his last victims had a proper burial had given
him a brilliantly conniving idea. Nothing
like mocking the local police, he sneered. I’ll make them look like idiots. He’d been performing his ‘public
service’ as he called it, for a long time. Gerald Rhymes bore the blame most
recently but before that, it had been another. He’d come to learn, over the
years, certain routines that made it easy for him to thumb his nose at the
police. If they had any sense, they would
have functional cameras in the back of their building, he told himself. They
think no one would dare do anything on police property.
He pulled into the station’s lot and
circled his SUV around to the back of the building. The camera on the roof’s
edge still had a severed cable from when he’d cut it months ago. The idea had
come when he’d noticed a group of juvenile delinquents goofing off in the back
lot. After they’d jumped a homeless man, just for fun, not a single cop came
out to address the situation. The wicked wheels of his mind churned up the idea
to sever the cable, just to see if that would bring anyone running. In the end,
he’d learned that the cameras were decoys which fed into his plan perfectly.
Before exiting his vehicle, he pulled a hat
down over his eyebrows and gloves on his hands. The bag carrying Jill and Marie’s
mangled remains had been resting inside a tub in the back. Hefting the plastic
coffin, he dropped it by the dumpster and sliced it open with a pocketknife.
Gore-cover chunks of flesh, bone, and hair spilled out onto the macadam. He
fought the urge to admire his work, instead, he hopped back into his vehicle
and drove away.
vvvv
At
6:45 a.m. Seth’s cell phone rang. Groaning, he rolled over to apologize to Mel
but she was already in the shower. Just as he was turning off the ringer,
another call came through followed by two text messages.
“Ugh! Why would anyone call me at
this ungodly hour?” Seth muttered before answering the phone. Since the Caller
ID showed it was Kim, he answered it. “Hey, Kim. What’s going on?”
Hearing
her husband’s voice, Mel opened the bathroom door and peeked into the bedroom.
“Wait, what? What do you mean she’s
missing? Yeah, I’ll be there in a bit. Let me just grab a quick shower and I’ll
be there,” Seth promised before he hit end. “Holy crap!”
“Seth, sweetie, what’s wrong? You
look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Mel said.
“It’s Angela…she’s missing.”
Within thirty minutes, Seth was showered,
shaved, dressed, and sitting in Kim’s morgue. His lone Angel of Death’s eyes were
bloodshot and puffy against her pale skin. Completely out of character, Seth
gave her a hug. As if hoping to reassure himself as well as Kim, he whispered
over and over, “It’ll be okay”.
“Angela was supposed to meet me last
night. A bunch of us were getting together for a girl’s night.” Kim’s voice
sounded weak and exhausted. “We called and texted…hell, we even stopped by her
house but her car was gone. I thought maybe something came up so we all went
out without her. They found her abandoned car but she was gone. When Bill
realized it was Angela’s car, he called me. I’m sorry; I don’t even know why I
called you.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m glad you called
me. I was—”
Seth’s
sentence was cut off when Detective Crash entered the room.
“More bodies have been found. Agent
Dictator has ordered all of us to the crime scene. C’mon, I’ll drive,” said Bill.
“I’ll see you two later, then,” Seth
told them as his head toward the door. “Let me know how—”
“No,” Bill interrupted. “All of us.”
The
ride to the crime scene was silent. None of them spoke a word. When they pulled
into the police station, there was already a crowd present: FBI, police, and crime
scene investigators.
Kim pulled on her gloves and ran to the
scene, terrified that she would find her dear friend. Seth started after her
but Detective Crash grabbed him by the arm.
“Did Kim call you this morning?”
Bill asked. When Seth shook his head yes, the detective sighed. “Listen, you be
careful around her…Agent dictator told me he thinks she’s the killer.”
***Please return Monday, October 27th
for the next installment of SERIAL***
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