Greek Island Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-2-3): Gripping, psychological mystery/thrillers destined to shock you!

by Luke Christodoulou

  The party of three came out from the underground holding hands, letting the love flow through us. Little Gaby was ecstatically happy, having played all sorts of games, eaten a bunch of junk food mama would not have allowed on a normal day and she had her face painted as a fairy princess.

  The tires of the car racing round the corner and down the street made us jump and as I turned, I saw the barrels of their guns sticking out from behind the slightly opened tinted windows of a black Lincoln MKS.

  ‘‘Get down,’’ I yelled as I pushed Tracy to the ground behind a parked yellow Chevrolet and fell upon my daughter to roll with her behind a rusty dumpster. The sound of multiple and constant firing penetrated the air and it only took one bullet, out of the one hundred and sixteen bullets fired, to penetrate young Gabriella’s left lung. Blood started oozing out pretty quick and soon her white dress had turned dark red.

  ‘‘Long live Sanchez, asshole,’’ a shrill voice was heard and the car sped away to oblivion.

  I kneeled next to my baby girl and held her close in my arms and that’s where little Gabriella ‘Gaby’ Papacosta left her last breath.

  Tracy was screaming erratically for help and an ambulance, but I knew that it was too late. I closed my baby’s eyes and kissed her gently on the forehead. As her heart stopped beating I could feel mine break and all I could do was to cry. I held on to Gaby until the paramedics pulled me off, having already given a strong sedative to Tracy who was curled up behind the Chevrolet’s wheel, repeating, ‘‘no, no… Costa, say it isn’t so.”

  We did not speak to each other again, not even at the funeral and one fine, sizzling N.Y. August evening, Tracy came out of the master bedroom, suitcases in hand. She walked over to me as I was on the couch not watching the news on TV.

  ‘‘I always hated your job. I told you to accept a desk job, now we have a child. This is all your fault,’’ she cried with no more tears left in her eyes.

  ‘‘I know.’’

  ‘‘Bye, Costa.’’

  I found the strength to look up and watch Tracy as she walked out the door and out of my life. As the door slammed behind her, I whispered a silent ‘‘goodbye, Tracy.” Over the next few days, my phone never stopped ringing so I threw it right out the apartment window. I really hate stupid cell phones. I had no intention to accept condolences and life-goes-on speeches by relatives and co-workers. My mother Maria came twice a day, knocking on the door, begging me to answer her and leaving food outside the door. One day, without her needing to yell, I opened the rusty hinged door and calmly said, ‘‘Mama, I’m leaving for Greece… today. For good.”

  *****

  Chapter 9

  The grass was so green. The sky was so clear. Everything was so vivid.

  The sun was sending down its bright rays, making Gaby’s hair glow as we both ran through the park before falling down to the ground and laughing out loud. She was in her white dress with her face painted like a fairy princess and she looked magical.

  ‘‘I love you, daddy,’’ she yelled happily and kissed me on my shaved cheek.

  The air was filled with children laughing, dogs barking, birds flying above and squeaking and the telephone ringing… the telephone ringing?

  I sat up in my hotel room bed trying to open both eyes. So far only my left eye obeyed and I watched as the alarm clock change to 07:52. The pale-grey hotel telephone was still ringing. That is when I realised I had turned my cell phone off last night after reporting back to the chief and receiving a ‘‘get me results’’ in that threatening, charming way of his. I stretched and reached out to pick up the telephone and put an end to that awful, uproarious noise.

  ‘‘Hello?’’ I said in my hoarse morning voice.

  ‘‘Costa, good morning,’’ Ioli said.

  ‘‘I’m down at the reception. Get down here quick. There has been another murder.”

  My thoughts were all over the place as I rushed to get dressed. ‘Another murder related to Mr and Mrs Blair?’ The killer had now killed three people. That’s the magic number to be admitted to the hall of fame for serial killers. I hoped for clues. Any clues. Not another clean murder scene. ‘Another victim. Where? How?’

  I could not wait for time to pass in the hotel’s ancient elevator that you could feel dying with every screech as it lowered me from the 5th floor to the reception area. ‘I should have taken the stairs.’ My palms started to sweat and when the elevator doors opened, more sweat formed at the top of my forehead. Another hot Greek summer day combined with my anxiety to solve this case.

  ‘‘Good morning, boss…’’

  ‘‘Morning. Where you parked?’’ I asked as I walked in a hurry right pass her and headed to the hotel’s glass front door.

  ‘‘Breakfast?’’ she asked as I exited the building.

  ‘‘Screw it,’’ I shouted back and gained myself a disapproving stare from a forty-something woman that was passing by carrying groceries in her hand. I bet at this time and hour she must have chosen and bought the freshest vegetables and fruit. I missed my wife’s cooking. I missed watching her prepare it. I missed her. ‘Concetrate, Costa!’

  ‘‘Find me a good coffee on the way and tell me where are we going?’’ I demanded to know as I placed myself in the passenger’s seat.

  ‘‘To the airport,’’ she said with no emotion in her voice and gave no further details, prolonging the revelation of our destination, possibly amused by my anxiety.

  ‘‘The airport? Where was the murder?’’ I asked in no mood for guessing games.

  ‘‘Cyprus,’’ she replied monolectically.

  ‘‘Cyprus? That’s another country! How did this come to our attention? Are we sure it is the same killer?’’ I said, trying to control my confused thoughts.

  ‘‘Well, first officer on site called our labs in Athens as soon as he saw the naked body with its arms cut off. You see, our case was quite the news and was familiar to him. He photographed the cuttings and the stabbings and emailed them to our lab guy who confirmed the similar markings. To cut a long story short –no pun intended-the chief arranged for us to work with the Greek-Cypriot police. They will be picking us up from the airport. Paphos airport is only twenty minutes away from the scene. The body is still there, having only been found an hour ago.”

  The one-hour-something flight went by pretty quick as Ioli and I never stopped talking about the new direction of our case.

  The fact that our newest victim -suspected to be one Alicia Robinson from the UK-had as it seemed no connection to the previous victims, was puzzling. As the first two victims were married, we had both thought that the murderer knew them and for his own reasons wanted them dead.

  ‘‘Maybe she was one of Eric’s girlfriends,’’ Ioli suggested.

  ‘‘Could be,’’ I replied bluntly. It annoyed me that my theory of the murderer knowing the victims and moving around by boat was blown out of the water. There was no way he could have sailed all this distance through international waters on a one-man crew boat and entered Cyprus without anyone noticing.

  ‘‘So what’s your story, Cara?’’ I asked, trying to tear my mind away from all the unanswered questions that surrounded our case.

  ‘‘Nothing special really,’’ she said and went silent.

  I gave her the anything-better-to-do look and with my hand urged her to go on. ‘‘Come on, family, brothers and sisters? Where did you grow up?’’ I asked.

  She took on a movie narrator kind of voice and said, ‘‘our story today begins in Epanochori. It’s a small, traditional village, southwest of Chania town if you have never heard of it. 1980. Twenty year old farmer Giannis Cara first laid eyes upon a seventeen year old farm girl from the nearby village of Prases, named Anna Tzanoulaki. Love was in the air and soon wedding bells were ringing at Saint George’s church. As they didn’t have a TV in the beginning at their farmhouse, Anna was pregnant within the month.”

  ‘‘You?’’ I asked enjoying her semi comedic, semi soap opera tone.

/>   ‘‘Yep! But, you see, little Ioli did not want to come out to the world and caused many complications to her poor mother. She was in surgery for hours and Gianni nearly lost his beloved Anna that day. A healthy baby was finally born; however, something overshadowed their joy. Anna was told that due to extensive damage to her uterus, she would not be able to bear any more children. Anna’s dreams of having a large family were shattered, as was Gianni’s dream of having a son. They got over it quickly though, as they realised what a beautiful and talented kid they had,’’ Ioli said laughing.

  ‘‘That’s true,’’ I responded.

  ‘‘Hey, I wasn’t fishing for compliments,’’ she said while giving me a nudge on the shoulder.

  ‘‘I always worked hard to make them proud and helped mama in the kitchen and papa with the land. I guess, I did not want them to ever feel the lack of more children. Dad always used to joke that I was twice the man any son could have been.”

  ‘‘Do you want kids of your own one day?’’ I asked as she was being this honest with me. It felt nice to get to know my partner a bit better and I had not been interested in getting to know anyone since arriving in Greece two years ago.

  ‘‘I say I do, mostly to save poor Gianni and Anna from a stroke and a couple of heart attacks, but marriage and kids just doesn’t seem to ring a bell with me,’’ she replied.

  ‘‘Yet,’’ I added. ‘‘Never say never, Cara.”

  ‘‘Please fasten your seat belts and remain seated…’’ the air stewardess started announcing over the speakers, interrupting our conversation. Soon we would be landing in Cyprus. I always wanted to come to Cyprus, but not as Captain Papacosta, just plain American short trouser, flower shirt, cheap sandals tourist Costa. Cyprus, I had heard, was an amazing vacation destination. An exotic island with luxurious hotels, great food, sandy beaches, sunny nearly all year round and the clearest waters you could wish to swim in.

  As the plane touched down, Ioli turned and said, ‘‘I always wonder what fucked up shit happens to these people during their lives and they turn out so… so wrong, you know?’’

  I nodded and thought ‘‘Ok, no more chit chat, focus back on the killer and heads back in the game.”

  *****

  Chapter 10

  Dayton, Ohio 1972

  ‘‘Boys are bad. Boys are bad,’’ seventeen year old Katie kept repeating inside her head as she hastily walked down her school corridor, trying hard to keep her eyes away from all the boys’ crotches. The devil was sending her images of her touching them up while they kissed her passionately and roughly up and down her neck, unbuttoning her blouse. Not that such a thing was likely to happen anytime soon. Katie was a devout Catholic, raised to know that before marriage, no unholy boy should touch her.

  ‘‘Anyway, who would want to touch me?’’ she thought as she looked at her reflection in her locker’s glued-on oval mirror. She had nice green eyes, but they were hidden behind her thick, brown, granny reading glasses. No sinful make-up touched her pale skin and her dull black hair was pulled right back in a tight ponytail. Katie knew that she looked like a spinster librarian and was used to being an outcast. She had grown used to her fellow pupils calling her a freak and all the other cliché, unoriginal names the deprived-of-an-imagination teens of Dayton High whispered behind her back and sometimes even uttered right to her face.

  High school was hell. Home was worse.

  Her only joy came late at night when, after an inner fight of good and evil, she would masturbate. Katie longed to feel someone deep inside her.

  After biology class and a C-on the latest test, Katie headed to the toilets, entered one of the many white cubicles, sat down on the toilet seat, pulled up her old-fashioned, hand-me-down, plain blue dress and lowered her white underwear to her ankles. ‘‘Daddy is gonna be so mad with this C,’’ she thought as she licked her fingers and started to caress herself down below. Soon her fingers were inside her and she tried hard to keep quiet as her much-needed release was near.

  Suddenly, the door opened.

  ‘‘Oh… my… God! She’s masturbating!’’

  Katie looked up to see a stunned Gillian White staring at her in disgust.

  ‘‘Shit, I didn’t lock the door,’’ Katie thought and rushed to pull up her underwear.

  More girls gathered behind Gillian whispering to each other as they all gave her dirty, disapproving looks.

  ‘‘At school?’’

  ‘‘Horny bitch!’’

  ‘‘Get a room.’’

  ‘‘Get a life, more like it.’’

  Their laughter only got louder and louder as Katie rushed by them, opened the bathroom’s ruby red door and ran down the long hallway. Red-faced, she felt sheepish as she ran and sobbed to herself ‘‘I’m so embarrassed, I could die. What if mother and father found out?’’

  Her heart was about to burst and the girls’ laughter kept on echoing in her head.

  She finally reached her sanctuary. The school’s west wing had been closed off the entire school year as it was being renovated. She ducked under the do-not-enter yellow tape, skillfully climbed over some sand barrels, raced down the long corridor and turned left. She quickly entered one of the small rooms that used to be offices and closed the door behind her.

  ‘‘What the fuck?’’ Chris shouted as all four boys stood up at once. The room stunk of marijuana.

  ‘‘Sorry,’’ she said quickly and turned to leave.

  Jonathan, the captain of the basketball team, at 6”2 had no problem slamming the door shut with his left hand as she tried to leave. With his right hand, he vigorously yanked Katie back into the center of the room.

  The boys surrounded her.

  ‘‘This geek is going to rat on us,’’ Andrew yelled in a paranoid state.

  ‘‘Not if she stays and has a smoke with us,’’ John said, stepping closer to her, joint in hand.

  ‘‘Please let me go. I won’t say anything, trust me,’’ Katie said in a panic.

  ‘‘If you want us to trust you, come sit down with us,’’ Jonathan said and pushed her down to the line of pillows that the boys had placed on the floor to chill back on.

  ‘‘I’ll have a smoke and then I’ll go,’’ Katie said scared. As she released the smoke and coughed hard, she felt Jonathan’s hand journey on her thigh and go up her dress.

  ‘‘Dude, she is soaking wet!’’ he declared enthusiastically and all the boys smiled in union.

  ‘‘Bitch fancies us,’’ Chris proudly announced.

  ‘‘Wanna fuck us, cunt?’’ John said and gracelessly placed his hand on her right breast.

  Katie instinctively slapped his hand away and John slapped her back, hard on her face. So hard, her whole body turned.

  Before she knew it, two boys were holding her arms, forcefully keeping her down. She could feel another lifting up her dress and pulling down her underwear. She saw a belt fall to the ground as Jonathan pulled down his jeans and laid on top of her. Seconds later, he slowly entered her and all Katie could do was to scream. That is when she felt the cold blade on her neck.

  ‘‘Listen, bitch,’’ Chris said, holding a knife to her throat.

  ‘‘You are going to be very, very quiet while my boy Jonathan has his way with you. You should feel grateful; he is doing you a favour. He has fucked half the cheerleaders in this school and none has ever complained.”

  Jonathan started to pound away even harder, encouraged by his friend’s pep talk.

  ‘‘And now,’’ Chris continued in his creepy, calm voice ‘‘you are going to open your mouth and suck my cock. You are going to suck me real good. If you are a bad girl, you will be punished,’’ he hissed and pressed the knife harder up against her skin. ‘‘This is an Imperial Bowie knife and it can cut you up real good. Understand, whore?’’ he demanded to know.

  Katie shook her head in agreement as they pulled her up on all fours. Jonathan let out a small groan, asked ‘‘who’s next?’’ and switched places with a delighte
d-looking John. After a few minutes, Chris and Andrew switched places too. As the boys took turns with her, they thought they must have scared her real good as Katie cooperated well in pleasing them. What they could not have guessed, is that Katie was enjoying herself. Her insides down below were going wild and those four, long, hard penises were driving her crazy. Just looking at them, turned her on. She had no idea they could be so big. The only penises Katie had ever seen were on Greek/Roman statues in the park and they were nothing like these.

  After all of them exploded with joy –Katie included-they quickly started to get dressed. Lessons had started a good twenty minutes ago. That’s when Chris suddenly grabbed Katie by the throat and pushed her with force up against the musty wall.

  ‘‘Now listen here, whore…’’ he started to yell not realising that Katie was holding his knife.

  ‘‘Go call your mama a whore, you fucking prick,’’ Katie yelled back and slightly cut him on his arm, forcing him to release her. Chris pulled back in evident pain while Katie waved the knife in front of all four boys.

  ‘‘Now you listen here you fuckers, we had a good time and that’s it. I won’t be telling on you so let’s all just forget this ever happened.”

  The boys stood there stunned and amazed that she would not be giving them any trouble. The thrill of the moment along with the marijuana’s effect were wearing off and guilt and fear of being reported to the school and the police were kicking in.

  ‘‘Oh, and I’m keeping the knife,’’ she said, closing the door behind her.

  Katie never went home that day or any other day for that matter. After school and with a smile upon her face, Katie boarded the white and blue bus that was headed from Dayton to New York. A brand new chapter was starting for her.

  Two days later, her parents received a letter in the post. It was short, but to the punch.

  Mother, please quit your drama-crying

  and your worthless prays, I am fine.