“Just because.”
“Aw, that’s so nice.” Without looking inside, he picked up the bag and shook it up and down, saying, “What is it? Can I bounce it? Is it a basketball?”
His son repeated, “Can you bounce it?”
“Oh, stop,” she said as she pulled him from his shirt and kissed him. “No, you can’t bounce it.” She laughed and added quickly, “Please don’t bounce it.”
He reached in the bag and pulled out a small bottle of cologne. After reading the label, he joked, “Oooh…Scent of Luau. Nice!”
She slapped his shoulder, “You’re crazy!”
“I’m just kidding,” he grinned. “So, you saw me try this out the other day. I really like it!”
“Yeah, me too. So, I figured I would get it for you,” she said sweetly.
“That’s so nice.” He kissed one side of her cheek and said softly, “That’s for being so sweet to me.”
Next, he kissed her other cheek, saying, “That’s for loving me so much. And I love you so much.”
Then he kissed her lips and said, “That’s for being my sweet and wonderful wife.”
“You’re welcome,” she said and smiled as she kissed him back.
After a moment, he leaned in close and whispered, “You know, if I saw someone else say what I just said…I would puke. But since I said it…” he paused and grinned, “I’m not minding so much.”
She laughed and hugged him.
He turned to his son and said, “Hey, little man, say thanks to Mommy for me, will ya?”
Standing up on his chair, his son exclaimed, “Thank you, Mommy!” He kissed his mother and hugged her. With his arms still around her neck, he said, “That’s for being my Mommy.”
“Aw, thanks, sweetie!” she responded, “You’re just as smart and sweet as your dad!”
“Thanks, dude. You’re a good son,” he said with a smile, “You’ve fulfilled your important role in making your dad look good.”
He dropped his head down.
For a long while, he couldn’t let go of the memory.
Finally, he raised his head.
As he looked into his eyes through the mirror, he said softly, “Those are good memories, and I should be happy that I was able to have them. But it’s been five years. It’s time I moved on.”
Feeling at peace with his decision, he picked up the cologne and sprayed it on.
* * * * * * *
New York City.
That same day, two FBI agents entered the stairwell of a second-rate hotel.
The first to enter was Katrina Etelson. She was five-feet and six inches tall, with a slim frame, wearing black flats and a black pantsuit. She was in her mid-thirties. As she entered, both of her hands raised to pull back on her long red hair that she preferred to keep braided while on duty. Unbraided, it fell down past to her shoulders with a tight wave. With her hair back, it revealed her large round green eyes and full lips. Her face was also slightly rounded. She once explained that she inherited most of her appearance from her Russian-born mother.
Walking with a slight slouch, her partner of four years, Riley Stevens, followed. He was five-feet and nine inches tall with a medium build. This day he wore a dark suit with a white shirt. Even though he was in his mid-forties, he still had a boyish look to his narrow face.
The heavy metal door through which they entered slammed behind them and the din echoed against the concrete stairs, walls, and the bare metal handrails. They marched slowly upward with their heads down, and their eyes examined the area where each of their steps landed. Their shoes tapped on the concrete stairs and scraped over the layered dirt.
The group of officers that was gathered on the second floor of the stairway heard their cautious march up.
When Agents Etelson and Stevens reached the officers, they introduced themselves and displayed their badges.
An NYPD detective, in his fifties and about twenty pounds overweight, greeted them just a few steps before the second floor. He said, “The markings on the victim’s right and left wrist are similar to the ones found on the victim in that small town in South Carolina.” Then, the detective explained, “And that’s why we notified you.”
The woman around whom they gathered looked as if she had been strangled where she stood at the corner of the landing of the flight of stairs. Then, her lifeless body was allowed to drop. Her head and body leaned on the corner, and her feet were underneath her. Both her arms were laid out with palms up, revealing the markings. She was fully clothed.
The South Carolina victim, to whom the detective referred, was the young woman found strangled in a motel room in Israel, South Carolina. Identification found on her gave her residence as Jerusalem, Indiana. Everyone involved in the murder investigation pointed out the obvious relationship between names of the two cities. But this second woman appeared to have been a resident of New York City. The only overt similarities were that both were women, both were strangled, and that both had identical symbols tattooed on the inside of each wrist.
Stevens bent down to take a look at the tattoo. After using his fingers to comb his short straight blond hair from its part on the left, he called to his partner, “Agent Etelson, take a look.”
Etelson stooped over and peered at the mark. “I’m gonna take a picture of this myself, if you don’t mind, and compare it with the other ones.” Stevens stood back, as Etelson pulled her phone out from the inside of her coat. With its hi-res camera, she began to take pictures of the symbols at several angles.
The symbol on one wrist was a circle within a circle. The outer was a double helix curved into a circle: two intertwined lines, intersecting six times, and about the diameter of the wrist.
Within the double helix circle was another circle. It started from one large dot that looked like a tiny ball of flame, aligned closer to the thumb-side of the wrist. A long tapering tail extended from it, arching in a circle and connecting back to the ball of flame.
The symbol on the other wrist was the exactly the same. However, the ball of flame aligned closer to the side of the wrist opposite the thumb.
The detective pointed at the woman’s wrists and asked, “What do ya make of these things?”
The two agents remained silent.
Then, finally, Stevens squatted back down close to the body and said, “Well, we’re still trying to find out where this kind of tattoo is used by anyone and anywhere.” He looked up at the Detective. “No hits so far.”
There was one more thing the two victims had in common, and Agent Stevens was about to explain it. “But what’s really troubling,” he said, “is that just like the South Carolina victim, this woman’s been drained of all her blood.”
Stevens looked back down and shook his head, as he examined the victim’s face. Its skin was sunken down to the bones of the skull’s eye sockets, cheeks, and teeth. The eyelids were closed, but the skin pulled in tightly to make a small opening that uncovered the shriveled eyes underneath. The neck was dry and wrinkled in, revealing distinct outlines of the windpipe, tendons, and muscles around it. The whole body had a pale blue hue due to the little-remaining coagulated blood.
Then, pointing at the torn, open skin at each forearm, Stevens added, “She was probably drained from those areas…looks like they’ve been ripped open. The skin’s been chewed completely off, and some of the muscle underneath has been bitten away.”
Agent Etelson walked toward the body and bent down over it. As her eyes scanned the victim’s forearms and face, she offered more details to the Detective, “But the one in South Carolina, the body’s blood wasn’t drained at the site where the local police found it. It was drained at the coroner’s office. Someone killed the coroner’s assistant at the parking lot, and then broke in.”
The Detective asked, “How about the assistant’s blood?”
“Left alone spilling out in the parking lot,” Etelson replied.
“Huh,” the Detective thought out loud, “…wonder what’s so special about th
eir blood that they gotta go back for it, after it’s already been in a cold freeze.”
Agent Stevens looked back up at the Detective and mulled over his statement.
At that moment, something caught Etelson’s attention. “Agent Stevens,” she said, “What’s that small reflective object in her ear? It looks curved or maybe even spherical.”
“Hmm,” Stevens replied, as he retrieved a pair of tweezers from inside his coat pocket.
Agent Etelson stepped back, while Stevens moved in closer. He leaned in right over the victim’s ear and positioned his tweezers. Carefully reaching for the object, he said in a whisper, “It looks like it’s just small enough to fit into the lady’s ear canal but large enough so it won’t get lost inside.”
Etelson conjectured, “Maybe the one who put it there wanted it found?”
Stevens cautiously pulled the object out of the ear and held it closely to his face. It was glassy and spherical and inside was contained something deep red in color.
“Congratulations, Agent Etelson,” the Detective commented, “Looks like you’ve found yourself a red pearl.”
* * * * * * *
As the longhaired man closed the door of his apartment on his way for his date with Dancy, he heard the loud rev of a car engine as it raced away out of the apartment complex’s parking lot and down the street.
After getting into his Mustang, he drove out and into the street. At the T-intersection that led out of the neighborhood, he made a right turn to head toward the freeway.
A few seconds after making the turn, he sensed something that told him to turn around. He thought, “I don’t think I forgot anything. I smell good, look decent…I should be all set.”
Immediately, there it was again. It wasn’t a voice. It certainly wasn’t a feeling. But it was a thought, an external thought that was clearly not his. It told him to turn the car around.
He mumbled out loud, “There’s no way I’m turning around, I’m gonna be late.”
There it was again. This time, it was strong and forceful, as if it was a command that required carrying out, demanding that he turn the car around.
“What the hell?!!” he exclaimed in both irritation and puzzlement. Nevertheless, he crossed the painted center divide on the road and made an illegal U-turn.
“What did I forget?”
He drove back to the T-intersection and stayed on the left lane, ready to make a left turn back into his neighborhood. But something to his right caught his attention.
A large section of the concrete wall was crushed into pieces. The metal bars that were once driven into the concrete were torn free and lay as twisted debris next to the concrete remains.
“Whoa,” he said, as he quickly looked to his right, and then steered his car beside the sidewalk. He parked and got out of the car and examined the destroyed area of the wall.
Suddenly, he heard a yell, “Help! Help me! Help!”
Instinctively, he jumped over the lowest part of the debris. His thudding shoes scattered the dust as he landed.
But once on the other side, he immediately stopped and froze. He glanced toward the ravine, and then slowly looked back at his car. He felt a strong desire to race forward, but had an equally strong desire to dismiss the call for help, evade the responsibility, and escape into his car.
There was a time when the choice he would make would have been instantaneous and decisive. He would have unequivocally helped. But he was no longer that person.
As he stood motionless, the wind gently blew across his face. Particles of dust struck his ear.
Time seemed to slow as the internal struggle between his innate nature and his conditioned behavior consumed his heart and mind. His senses dulled to the world around him.
He thought of the time when he snapped at the teenagers behind him at Qiki Food - how foreign it was for him to do that, but how natural it seemed when he did it. He thought of the old man at the side of the freeway. He felt both satisfaction and guilt in leaving him stranded. Many more instances, from over the years, rushed into his mind: all of similar circumstances and all revealing, and clearly portraying, the duality in his soul, forged by the dull yet unrelenting and constant pain of sorrows.
Moments passed.
Maybe he would receive the external thought once more. Maybe it would command and compel him to help.
But he heard nothing.
The decision was now his alone to make.
Another cry pierced the silence that muffled his ears, “Help!”
He made a motion toward his car but then stopped, thinking that maybe he should run to the ravine. However a second later, he took the steps to go back to his car, walking away from the cry for help. Quickly, he reached the damaged wall and hopped over it.
He opened the car door, and then entered. As he started the engine, the cry reached his ears again. He disregarded it.
Shaking his head, he spun the steering wheel, turned the car around, and headed back to the freeway, with his steely eyes conveying his resolve.
As he straightened the Mustang on the road, he put a heavy foot on the gas pedal and raced away to the freeway entrance.
Hurriedly, he rolled down the window to let the air rush in.
With his hand at the top of the steering wheel, he glared at the road ahead.
What was normally a short distance to the freeway seemed to become longer and longer with each passing second.
His thumb began to nervously tap against the wheel.
Quickly, he glanced up behind him, through the rearview mirror. Then, he fixed his gaze straight ahead.
Suddenly, he slammed on the brakes.
The Mustang pasted a pair of long, black rubber tracks on the road. The car rocked back and forth atop the black asphalt, as it halted with its wheels stuck on the road.
His fist pounded down on the steering wheel, and he shouted in protest, “Damn it!”
With his foot sliding back on the gas pedal, he spun the Mustang quickly around to the opposite direction.
Seconds later, he was back at the T-intersection, already parked beside the damaged wall. Losing no time, he jumped over the wall and sped his way in the direction of the cry for help.
With reluctance in his heart, but determination in his eyes, he raced to it.
He ran through the dirt of the slope that led to the edge of the ravine. Further down, he eyed the scene, knowing that he would find an accident just before the ravine where a handful of boulders had been purposefully arranged. During the time when the intersection was being paved and the slope being shaped, the construction team had deliberately placed several small boulders and one large one at the edge of the slope in order to block the ravine. The largest one, rectangular in shape and about the size of a small car, was laid parallel to the edge.
With shards of glass strewn around, he saw a car sprawled upside-down immediately to the right of the largest boulder.
Earlier, Allen, the teenaged neighbor, had once again raced to make the left turn. At the intersection, he saw that the light had already turned red, but determined to run through it, he floored the gas pedal and revved the engine loud. Coming into the intersection, he caught the sight of another car speeding from his left. If he were to step on his brakes, the other car would have collided into him. So, thinking fast, he swerved quickly to one side, giving enough time for the other car to pass behind him.
With the sound of screeching wheels in his ears, Allen watched the other driver jerk away and miss him. Then, he frantically attempted to step on the brake and spin his car to the left, in order to make the turn. But at that point, with little time remaining, the physics of the turn was simply impossible to maneuver.
Everything after that moment happened too quickly for Allen’s panicked eyes.
The front wheel and bumper of the car slammed into the edge of the sidewalk, launching the rear of the car into the air. In horror, Allen watched himself flip upside-down and careen over the protective wall, as the car quickly cata
pulted up high. Whipping around, the trunk slammed down onto the concrete wall, cleaving and ripping apart the wall’s metal bars and pounding the concrete into stone-sized chunks and bits of pebbles.
The car flipped around again. As it spun upside-down toward the ground, Allen saw the center of the hood slam into the corner of the largest boulder, shattering the windshield off of the car. His eyes witnessed the front dashboard fold down, driving the steering column into him and pinning his feet solidly against the floor.
After smashing into the boulder, the car spun around the side of it. A moment later, the car stopped its movement, with its front half on the slope and its rear half teetering over the ravine.
Upside-down, Allen hung dazed for several moments, blankly staring at the side of the large boulder. Then, coming to his senses, he turned and eyed the opposite window. As he saw the horizon, he knew he was at the very edge of the slope.
Frantically, Allen grasped the roof of the car with one hand. With the other hand, he dug his fingers into the ground. Giving substantial effort, he tried to drag himself out of the vehicle. But his pinned-down feet kept him from leaving.
Frightened for his life, Allen screamed for help. For a long while, no one arrived. But then, finally, he saw someone coming down the slope. “Help me!” he yelled, “I can’t get out of here! My feet are stuck.”
The longhaired man ran to the BMW, sliding on his knees between the driver-side window and the boulder. Quickly, he turned his body around, with Allen on his left and the boulder on his right. As his left hand tightly grabbed Allen’s forearm, the teenager clenched onto his. “Can you move?” he asked. His voice was calm but with urgency.
“No, my feet are stuck. I can’t see them!” Allen’s voice was crackling with panic. “I think part of the car’s over the edge!”
“Ok, I’m gonna try to pull you out.” As he pulled Allen’s arm, the car began to slowly rotate, turning the car further over the ravine. They could hear the dirt and stone under the roof of the car begin to scratch and grind against its metal.
“No! No! Don’t!” Allen cried. “The car’s gonna fall!”
“You’re not going anywhere. I’m not letting go!” Quickly, the longhaired man repositioned himself. Sitting up, he placed one foot against the frame of the broken window, and the other foot dug into the dirt. He tugged at Allen once more, but even though Allen tried to wriggle his legs free, there was no movement.
RB 01 Through Flesh & Bone Page 10