by H. B. Rae
I was shocked at how well he spoke. It was like it was scripted and rehearsed, everything he said. Perhaps he had prepared what he was going to say before he’d come.
"Is there anything else you'd like to add to that one?" I asked him.
"No, except I had to leave him in the street because I knew that someone in the houses opposite had probably been watching."
"That's strange," I said out loud, unintentionally.
"What is?" he asked.
"Are you sure nobody saw you?" I asked him, quite puzzled by what he’d said.
"I don't think so," he said. "But I don't know."
"Was this a quiet street?"
"Yes. It was really quiet, actually. I couldn't see anyone in their houses, so maybe it was just luck."
"And the fourth murder?"
"This was the final one," he said, rather enthusiastically. "And in this one, I had to set a trap for him."
"Go on," I said, interested to discover what he had to say.
"Well," he replied, "I had seen Richard flirting with another girl, so I wrote a fake love note asking for him to meet up in the woods,"
"How did you get it to him?" I asked, feeling like I was on top of the case.
"I slipped it through the vent in his locker, when no-one else was there. There was no closed-circuit TV at the time, either, so I was very lucky."
"O.k.," I said, "and then what happened?"
"You'll know the rest, really. After school finished, I watched him walk into the woods, where he expected to meet his crush. I then stabbed him about eight times, like the rest of them."
"You stabbed each of them eight times?"
"Roughly," he replied. He looked like he was being honest about the whole thing. As time went on and he spoke more and more, it was becoming less and less likely that he was making the whole thing up. I was half-expecting him at any moment to jump up and say, "Ha ha! This whole thing was just a joke!" but he didn't.
"So, there is nothing you want to add about any of the murders?" I asked him, ready to take more notes.
"If I think of anything else, I’ll tell you."
"O.k. Let's move on to the motive," I said, ready to finish the interview. "Why did you choose to do this to those people?"
"Well, Josh, Daniel, Steven and Richard were always making fun of us."
"Us?" I asked, intrigued by the possibility that this man had friends.
"Me and my friend, Laura. I don't see much of her now."
"Alright. What things did they do?"
"They used to play little pranks on us, but on me in particular. About a week before the first murder, the group of them grabbed hold of me in the woods and threw me in the river!"
It was then when I clicked. I had established a connection between the places where three of the four bodies were found, and the motive for murder.
"They sound very immature," I said, trying to keep him talking.
"Yes, and I had this all of the time."
"Well, that's about everything I have to say to you at this moment in time, but I will definitely come back to you later. What's going to happen now, is you are going to be charged, and we'll look at this in a bit more detail. Do you understand?"
He nodded.
"There is one more thing I would like to ask you," I said.
"Fire away," he said, clearly trying to make light of the whole situation.
"Do you take medication for anything?"
"Yes," he replied, "because I am schizophrenic."
"Alright," I said, knowing that my suspicions had been confirmed. "So does anyone look after you?"
"My cousin. Her name is Monica."
"Does she know you are here?"
"No."
This was very interesting. I now wanted to talk to Monica to see what she had to say about the whole thing. I left the room and talked to my colleagues. Graham and Patricia had returned with the news we’d all been waiting for.
"He's not making it up!" cried Graham.
"Right," I said, getting very excited.
The five of us gathered round in a circle, looking at all of the evidence collected at the crime scenes. In the witness statement of the first murder, it was written that Josh Davis did a chicken dance before he left the building. That was exactly what “John” said. In fact, everything that “John” said matched the details of the murders. The number of stab wounds matched, as well as the places the bodies were found and times of death.
"Furthermore," said Patricia, "None of these details were released to the press. I triple checked."
"You know what this means?" said Miranda. "The man in that room is the Minot Hacker!"
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***
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Chapter 1
June, 1974
The Green family were similar to any typical family living in a rough housing project in the town of Minot, North Dakota. They were unemployed, had little money and overall, were experiencing a tough time during economic depression. During this time, many people turned to alcohol, and no-one cared about anyone else but themselves and their own families. Times were hard, and many did not see a way out of it. No-one knew if they were ever going to experience happiness again. The country was going through a terrible time, and that was that.
Ian Green was like any other child going through these times. He was eight years of age, and often had little to eat outside of school hours. He was an innocent child who was always making people laugh. He had no idea of the situation the country was in, as he was too young to understand, and was too occupied with his own childhood to even try to. He had grown up in one house in a housing project, as did his elder sister and elder brother. His brother, Evan, was six years of age, while his sister, Alison, was almost seventeen.
Evan was known as a geek, or a nerd. He wore square glasses and had two teeth at the front of his mouth that stuck out. Very few people talked to him in those days. He was always in the background, though a target for bullies, and Ian could not do anything but sit back and watch, as he was powerless against large groups of them. Evan did not fit in at all with the rest of the family – he was too intelligent, though none of the other members of the family seemed to notice.
Alison, on the other hand, was a typical teenage girl. She was the complete opposite of Evan in some ways, as she spent most of her time going out and dressing her hair.
One night, on an afternoon in 1984, was a completely typical night. It was quiet outside, and there was no-one around, no-one except the entire Green family, excluding the one who did not bother to speak to any of them.
"Bitch, I asked for a steak pie, not a pork one!" cried Thomas, the patriarch of the family.
"Do I care?" asked Iris, drinking a large glass of wine. Iris was the matriarch of the family, and most of the time she did not care about anything.
"You will in a moment if you don't keep your trap shut!" screamed an enraged Thomas.
The entire family was watching in the background of the living room, knowing what was about to happen next. Iris' parents, Margaret and Fred, who lived next door to the family, were watching, not caring much, while all three children were there. The two boys watched in fear, while Alison did not care at all. She was too busy putting on makeup for her night out. Iris' sister, Alison, was also there. Alison and Iris were nothing at all alike: Iris had short, brown hair and was a plump woman, while Alison was a skinny blonde.
"Here they go again!" laughed Margaret. Fred laughed with her.
"And if you don't shut up I'll ram your head into that door!" yelled Thomas, even more angry. Those threats were not at all empty, as the entire family knew the extent of his violent behavior.
"Don't talk to her like that!" Iris cried, getting up to attack Thomas. She stood up, but could barely walk. She was obviously drunk, as usual. The rest of the family had no idea where she got those amounts
of alcohol from. Maybe there was a secret supplier, they thought. Iris half-limped over to Thomas and as she tried to hit him, Thomas jumped up and punched her repeatedly in the mouth. Two of her teeth fell out, and her face turned red. She screamed to stop but he didn't listen, and neither did anyone. Nobody cared anymore.
"You go, girl!" cried Iris' father, enjoying the action.
Iris then picked up a knife and cut into Thomas's hand. Thomas then screamed.
"I'm gonna kill you!" he cried.
Iris tried to run away, but he grabbed her hair and yanked it. She screamed for someone to help her.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Ian got up heroically and tried to stop the fight. He could not bear to see his mother abused like this; it was becoming more and more frequent.
"Let go of her now!" Ian cried.
Everyone in the room was bewildered by this. Thomas let go of his wife.
"What did you just say?" he said, in complete shock.
"I hate you! I'm gonna tell the police!"
This made Thomas even more angry. He grabbed hold of little Ian and smacked his head against the wall. He forced him onto the wall, and then repeatedly punched Ian in the stomach. Poor little Evan was screaming in fear, but Alison was laughing, crying, "Go on, Dad! Kick the shit out of him!"
Thomas eventually finished beating his child. He collapsed to the floor, covered in bruises, bleeding in places. He almost coughed up blood.
"And don't you ever, ever stand up to me again!" he screamed, kicking the child a few more times.
Alison, who was still there in the background, stood next to her parents who were watching as if they were watching a television program. She decided enough was enough.
"Right, I'd best be off," she said, her voice trembling.
"See ya, love!" said Margaret, kissing her on the hand. Alison left, telling herself that she had not witnessed any of what she had just seen.
Alison then got up.
"Right, I'm ready," she said.
"And where are you going?" Thomas asked.
"I'm going to my friend's party," she replied. "Isn't it obvious? I'm wearing a pink dress!"
"Well, go on then," said Thomas.
Alison left, leaving the rest of the house in tatters. Evan was hiding under a table, while Ian was still in shock about the whole thing. He was still in agony. He had been hit a couple of times before, but this was the worst by far. Iris carried on drinking, and Thomas sat down to eat his pork pie.
It was a cold night, actually early hours in the morning, and there was a person out in the middle of a field, digging. The person dug a hole, and they placed something into that hole. That thing was a person. A woman. A young woman. A young woman wearing a pink dress.
Chapter 2
It was one week after the Minot hacker murders case, and I was still receiving vast amounts of media attention, although there was now little attention left to receive. To me, it was done, in the past, and I focused all of my energy on the next murder case that I was assigned to, even if that was going back to the gang killings.
"Has everything settled down now?" asked Miranda, my colleague and somewhat friend.
I thought that Miranda was perhaps jealous of my amazing achievement, since I knew that she had not used that sort of deductive power in her life, and even if she was assigned to the Minot case, she would not solve it, and the true murderer would have gotten away with it, sending an innocent person to prison. Although I was very proud of what I had done to help those families I did not brag about it, nor did I mention it once to hint to the others that I was pleased with my huge success.
To my bewilderment, there was still a newspaper article about me pinned up on the boss's wall when I entered the room, even though seven days had gone by. I was very pleased that Clive Mitchell had thought so much of me – that was something else for Miranda to be jealous of.
"Well, to be honest, Miranda," I'm glad the whole thing is over with," I replied to her before I went into the boss's office, ready to be assigned to my next murder case. I assumed it was another gang killing, because that was what they generally were; the gang violence in North Dakota was at the highest ever rate in 2012, which made me tired sometimes. However, I knew I should never assume anything that I thought might not be true, and indeed I was about to be proven wrong, when Mitchell assigned me to the case.
"Williams," he begun, smiling slightly as I entered the room, "I have a new case for you, and I think you'll like it."
"Alright," I replied, waiting for more information and eager to discover what the man had in store for me. Inside, I was honest with myself that not much could be trickier than solving the Minot murders, but I knew I could be surprised.
"Well," said Mitchell, "this morning, we, or should I say, a dog, found a body of an unidentified victim. There is not much left but bones, and they appear to be a female. I'll let you look at this person and you'll see the rest. It's obvious that this person died decades ago. I've chosen you for this case because I trust you. I have faith that you will find the killer of this person, no matter how hard it will be. You have already demonstrated your amazing skills to me, so this should be no problem to you."
I was quite annoyed at Mitchell's assumption, because he should not have put that much pressure on me. Sometimes murders are unsolvable, especially cold cases, since there are no leads from the start. It's sad, but unfortunately, Mitchell did not see it like that. He saw me as the God of criminal catching, and I knew I wasn't. Although I was talented at what I did, I could not make any deductions about things if I did not have anything to deduce from, and this case seemed just like that. On the other hand, it was worth a shot, and it was better than working on all of the gang killings all the time, so I was ready for the challenge, leaving others to work on the gang killings for a second time. I predicted they would now be very annoying, but now I had more important things to focus on than whether I was right about that.
I arrived at the crime scene: it was an empty field in the middle of nowhere, seemingly. There was nothing else around except Nature. There were no houses and no public facilities. It was just an empty field. A few hundred feet away, in the distance, I could see several small hills which were clumped together, but that was literally all there was to see. There were no roads around, as the field was connected to other abandoned fields. It was only then that the local forest could be seen.
I approached the forensics team, knowing that the body would still be there. As a matter of fact, what the boss said was right – it was not actually a body, only bones. However, there was something on the body that I noticed quite quickly: a pink dress. The person who was killed obviously wore a pink dress that night, so anybody could deduce that they were out at a social event of some sort.
"Have you got any DNA on this person?" I asked a forensic scientist.
"Unfortunately, we've looked around the area, and there are no fingerprints on the victim's dress, and obviously, any fingerprints that would have been on the victim are gone now, and there are no hairs anywhere on the body, aside from her own. So no, there is no DNA evidence, I'm afraid," he replied.
That was a huge drawback for me. DNA was the easy way out, but it looked to me as though this case was going to be a tough one.
"Do you know how the victim was killed?" I asked the forensic scientist.
"The scratch marks on the bones suggest that the victim was stabbed at least nine times," he replied. "But it is possible that they were stabbed many more times than that."
Inside, I felt sick. How could somebody do this to another human being? I asked myself, although it was no more horrific than any other case I’d worked on.
I took another look at the bones, especially the facial expression. Although there was nothing left except bones, I could clearly see that the victim died in pain. The mouth was open, but there were no teeth.
"There's no teeth!" I cried.
"Yes. That's one of the most horrific parts. The person who did this probably pu
lled this woman's teeth out, from what I can tell by looking at the mouth," replied the forensic scientist.
I thought I was going to throw up. Why would somebody do that? Perhaps it was to make sure the body was not identified. That was the only explanation I could think of right now. Other than that, torture. Now that the victim had no teeth, I could not even compare the victim's teeth with any dental records. This was going to be a very hard case for me, but I felt a strong connection with the victim, for some reason. I made it my new personal goal to make sure that the person who did this would be caught, dead or alive.
Chapter 3
My first step was to conduct some door-to-door research around the area, to see if anyone knew anything about this mysterious unidentified woman. I hoped and prayed there would be someone old enough to remember the disappearance of a woman in the area. I was not completely certain that the dumping ground was in fact anywhere near the place where this woman lived, but the killer obviously knew the area well, or else they would not be able to find this place, since it was in the middle of nowhere, and it would be virtually impossible to discover this place by accident when looking for a place to dump a body. This murder was planned, and I was sure of that. Somebody wanted this woman dead for whatever reason, and so I desperately needed to establish the woman's name or identity, and I could work from there.
I started with the door-to-door enquiries, but, to my great misfortune, no-one knew a thing about it. For years people had been walking their dogs through this field, completely ignorant of the fact that they were walking over a dead body. It was a shame that no-one had tried to regenerate the field, because if a farmer had found her years before, we would have had perhaps half a chance of identifying this woman. Since the door-to-door enquiries did no good at all, I decided to return to the station, to wait for the post-mortem.