They Never Die Quietly

by D. M. Annechino

  An air of silence descended upon the room. Diaz grabbed Sami’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “Could he be a woman hater?” Diaz offered. “Maybe he’s pissed off at his ex-wife and taking it out on other women.”

  “That’s unlikely, detective,” Whitman said. “Woman haters typically defeminize their victims by cutting off their breasts or sticking objects in their vaginas. Granted, he did have intercourse with each victim, but I’m thinking that the sex was part of some warped ritual.”

  “Any idea why he would cut out their hearts?” Diaz asked.

  Whitman fixed her eyes on the detective. “He probably collects them. Keeps them as trophies.”

  “What about the children?” Sami asked. “Why weren’t they harmed?”

  “In his twisted mind they served some purpose,” Whitman said, “but I can only speculate.” She studied the photograph. “Maybe he used the children as pawns to get what he wanted.”

  “I’m not following you,” Diaz said. “We’ve already established that the killer is a big man. Surely he could overpower these women. Why did he need the kids?”

  Whitman adjusted her glasses. “Control. Maybe he doesn’t want them to fight.”

  Ordinarily, Sami could manage her emotions, but as a single parent of a soon-to-be three-year-old daughter, she could not help feeling great anguish. Careful not to expose her mental state to the captain, she tried not to make eye contact with him.

  “What really bothers me,” Whitman continued, “is that the killer is a sociopath.”

  Her eyes focused on something afar. “In some instances, victims are mutilated after death. But this is not the case with these women. They were alive, perhaps conscious when he crucified them.”

  With that statement, the room was as quiet as a mortuary. Davison lit another cigarette, and Diaz coughed into his hand. Sami wanted to be anywhere but in that office.

  “Ms. Whitman, could you give me a moment with the detectives?” Davison said.

  Sally Whitman placed the folder in her brown leather briefcase, eyeballed Sami, and quietly left the office. Sami knew what came next. She’d seen this metamorphosis before.

  The minute Whitman closed the door, Captain Davison stood up and wagged his finger at the two detectives. “You know how I hate to be a hard-ass, but the mayor is chewing on my nuts. You two will still lead the investigation, but I’m assigning a special task force to assist you.” The captain swiped his hand across his moist forehead. “You’ve got to find this psycho.”

  “He’s a shrewd one, captain,” Diaz said, “carefully covered his tracks.”

  The veins on Davison’s neck were pulsing. “Don’t tell me that this fucking fanatic can crucify women, dump their bodies on the front steps of local churches, and drop their kids off at department stores without somebody seeing something.”

  Davison sucked on the cigarette and exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “Get your butts to La Mesa and talk to the priest who found—”

  The telephone rang. The captain snatched the receiver. “Davison. Yeah. When? Where?” He scribbled on a yellow pad. “Okay, thanks.”

  Sami could see the captain’s face change. Like a violent storm subdued by some mysterious wonder of nature, the captain lost his thunder.

  “They found the kid.” His voice softened. “The victim’s name is…” He glanced at his notes. “…Molly Singer, thirty-two years old.”

  “Did he hurt the kid?” Diaz asked.

  “Just like the other two: not a scratch on him.” The captain removed his glasses and massaged his temples. “Please find this fucking wacko.”

  After cleansing a sinner, Simon had difficulty falling asleep. Neither guilt nor regret kept him awake. Why should he feel remorse after saving a soul from certain damnation? His restlessness resulted from a bitter reality: How could he possibly cleanse a world so infested with doomed women? One man, no matter how committed, could not tackle such a formidable task.

  He sat up in bed and pulled his knees to his chest, wondering if his mother felt pride for her only son. Perhaps she sat beside God, watching down from the heavens, pleased with the path he followed. Had it not been for her stern hand and love-driven discipline, Simon might himself be a hopeless sinner. How many hours had he spent punished in that dark, claustrophobic closet, atoning for his misdeeds?

  As a child, Simon had often broken the commandments of God. His mother never scolded him. She pointed to the closet without uttering a word, and he knew exactly what to do. The cubbyhole had no light. He was allowed neither food nor water. Just plenty of time to reflect on his unholy behavior. He had to urinate and defecate in the corner of the cramped closet. The area, so confined, caused him to gag and vomit from the foul smell. Often his clothing would be soaked with his bodily discharge.

  In the summer, when the Texas temperatures flirted with triple digits and the humidity felt unbearable, Simon sometimes believed he would suffocate in that closet; die a sinner, unredeemed and sentenced to eternal punishment. This inflicted greater torture than his physical pain. There were moments of sheer terror, a helpless belief that God would never absolve his sins. The period of time in which his mother incarcerated him depended upon the severity of his waywardness. There were sins that required only an hour’s punishment. Others confined him to the closet for more than a day.

  Once, shortly after celebrating his eleventh birthday, when his budding sexual awareness reached a new level, he’d borrowed a Playboy magazine from a schoolmate—the same young lad who introduced Simon to the joy of self-gratification. While sitting in bed one rainy afternoon, gawking at the blonde centerfold with enormous breasts and neatly trimmed pubic hair, thinking that his mother was busy with her daily chores, Simon stimulated himself with unwavering enthusiasm. So preoccupied with his intended goal, he hadn’t noticed his mother standing in the doorway.

  “The lips of an immoral woman are as sweet as honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil. But the result is as bitter as poison, sharp as a double-edged sword.”

  That day, in mid-August, Simon felt certain he would surely die in the closet.

  An eerie feeling of hollowness, a void of excruciating proportions crashed over Simon. He clutched his stomach with both hands, feeling as though he were impaled with a sword. The desperation was like the panic a drug addict might experience when the exhilaration from his chemical-induced euphoria plunges to the depths of despair and need, when all sense of reason disappears. Simon rocked back and forth on the bed, moaning, feeling the profound impact of withdrawal. The only medicine to ease his pain was to cleanse another soul. The redhead he’d been watching would soon occupy the Room of Redemption.

  At six-thirty, Detective Sami Rizzo swung by the precinct, dropped off Diaz, and headed for her mother’s home in North Park. She wasn’t in the mood to face Captain Davison. Their trip to La Mesa hadn’t yielded anything close to a lead; the priest offered little help, and the neighbors they’d interviewed hadn’t witnessed anything worthwhile.

  She pulled into the driveway and parked the Taurus next to her mother’s worn-out Buick. As soon as Sami stepped into the living room, Angelina came charging out of the kitchen with that awkward gait of a not-yet-nimble toddler, and gave Sami’s knees a bear hug. “Mommy, Mommy, me and Grandma made brownies!”

  Sami sniffed the air, but the smell of spaghetti sauce masked the scent of chocolate. She picked up her two-year-old and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll bet they’re yummy. How many have you eaten?”

  Angelina held up two fingers.

  “You didn’t spoil your dinner, did you?” Sami glanced at her mother, who was leaning against the doorjamb leading to the kitchen, her arms folded across her chest.

  “She has her grandpa’s hollow leg. Rest his soul. No need to worry about her appetite.”

  Josephine Rizzo, a portly woman with beefy arms and a round shiny face, stood barely five feet tall. Her mostly gray hair, with a hint of black still surviving a trying life and de
cades of hard work, was twisted into a neat bun. At night, just before bedtime, she’d let her hair hang freely to the small of her back and stroke it a hundred times.

  “The sauce is almost done,” Josephine said. “Want to stay for dinner? I made gnocchi.”

  Sami wanted to go home and spend some time alone with Angelina, away from her mother and shopworn stories about how things might have been had Sami’s father not died of lung cancer before his forty-fifth birthday. Besides, Sami had not been pleased with her figure of late—nothing new of course—and her mother’s delicious gnocchi, packed with complex carbs, were the last thing her body needed. Her father, in his charming way, had often reminded Sami of her less-than-Barbie-Doll figure. Coming from anyone else, she would have been monumentally insulted. But she adored her dad. She had spent her life trying to be the son he never had.

  Since surviving the awkward years of puberty, Sami had blossomed into a strikingly attractive woman, often catching the attention of an admiring eye. In spite of her in-home aerobics and three-times-a-week jog through Balboa Park, her nemesis had always been her hips. The bottom half of her hourglass figure was slightly out of proportion with her torso. She was probably the only one who noticed this. In fact, most men preferred women with hips. At least that’s what she’d heard. Still, Sami would have been much happier if God had been a little less generous in the hip area.

  About to decline her mother’s offer, Sami could see the neediness in Josephine Rizzo’s eyes. “Sure, Mom, we’d love to join you.”

  Holding her soundly sleeping daughter like a sack of flour, Sami struggled to turn the key in the front-door lock. She’d never been a fastidious housekeeper, but lately her house looked like a tribe of party-loving teenagers hung out there. With the exception of her mother, who had no reservations about condemning Sami’s untidy domain, and Diaz, her true buddy, she rarely had company. The condition of the house didn’t bother Angelina, so why live like the Vanderbilts?

  She dropped her briefcase on the cluttered coffee table, kicked her way past toys, magazines, and an assortment of obstacles, negotiated her way up the stairs, and set her daughter on the bed. Careful not to wake her, Sami undressed Angelina, tucked her in, kissed her on the forehead, and flipped on the Cookie Monster night-light. Before leaving, Sami stood over her daughter and watched her peacefully sleeping. That little face, lovely as it was, resembled Angelina’s father. Asswipe Extraordinaire is what Sami called him. Not in front of Angelina, of course. But she didn’t mind sharing that pet name with the rest of the free world. Just thinking about the non-child-support-paying bum infuriated her.

  Sami went into the kitchen and snagged an ice-cold Corona from the almost-empty refrigerator. She could smell leftover Chinese food three days past its destiny with the garbage disposal. The only lime in the fridge had more fuzz growing on it than a baby chick, so she opted to enjoy the beer without its usual complement. She found a vacant spot on the sofa and plopped on the badly worn cushion. She kicked off her shoes and took a long swig of the beer. Sami had intended to preserve her much-needed quiet time and forget about the investigation, but her briefcase beckoned. She flipped it open and reluctantly removed the inch-thick file.

  Each of the three brutally murdered young women had been in their early thirties. And they all had been abducted along with their young children. The children, interviewed under the careful supervision of a child psychologist, had not been visibly injured. This confused Sami. Why would a barbaric killer kidnap the kids and let them go unharmed? Not even Sally Whitman, a professional profiler, could answer this question.

  The children offered several significant details: One said that his mother and he stayed in the basement of a home in the country, and that a nice man let them play with all kinds of fun toys in this special room. One boy said the man stood a foot taller than his dad, and remembered that the man drove a big black truck. Another girl said he was white with blue eyes and light brown hair and that he was handsome.

  Sami set down the file and cleared a space on the cocktail table. She placed the graphic photos of the three victims side by side and examined them carefully, observing the similarities. The women—at least based on several assumptions—had been murdered the same way. There were round holes, one-half inch in diameter through both wrists, just above the palms, and identical holes through both feet, right at the instep. The women’s hearts had been cut out of their chest cavities with surgical precision that did not look like the work of an unskilled hack. Obviously, the perp had some formal medical training.

  Looking at the gaping wounds in the victims’ ribs, Sami recoiled in anger and fear at the gruesome photographs. She set down the photos and guzzled the remaining beer. She’d witnessed her share of savagery, a part of the human condition beyond her ability to understand, but these murders aroused a terror in her like never before. How she wished her father was still alive. A firm hug from him could change her world.

  Angelo Rizzo had been a policeman for eighteen years, and for Sami to become a homicide detective was her father’s dying wish. “Sami,” he’d whispered, lying in a hospital bed, barely ninety pounds. “Do it for me, for your padre.”

  He had dreamed of a promotion to detective status, but never made it out of the blue uniform. Sami, an only child, had aspired to the role of the son her father desperately longed for. How could any daughter deny her father’s last request? At times, Sami believed she’d been held accountable for her father’s inability to follow Italian tradition by producing a son. He had never accused her, but the undertone hung in the air every time her mother reminded Sami that since her birth, she simply could no longer conceive.

  Not knowing how much pressure he had placed on his only daughter to play the role as his son, Angelo Rizzo shortened his daughter’s name from Samantha to Sami before her first birthday. Sami had no memories of dance lessons or trips to Peterson’s Department Store shopping for pretty Easter dresses. Instead she’d been the neighborhood tomboy, her father’s fishing companion. When she’d announced that she wanted to be a social worker, her father gave her “the look,” and she knew her aspiration would never come to pass. Her father’s lofty expectations had been important to Sami. He wanted her to become a cop, ultimately a detective. She had honored his request, but to do so she had to suppress her own desires.

  Samantha Rizzo’s life had been neatly planned long before her birth. And although detective work did not truly suit her character, Sami found solace in the utopian belief that she could make a difference. She approached police work with an ironic blend of undaunted courage and naïve expectation. Her efforts and performance as a detective were neither diluted nor compromised by the fact that her father’s relentless crusade had forced her into a career she’d not chosen. In the wake of these feelings of displacement, and the ever-present regret that she hadn’t followed her heart’s ambition, was a woman well respected by her male comrades. Teasing and sexual harassment aside, no one would argue that Samantha Rizzo wasn’t one hell of a cop.

  At this particular moment, however, she was hypnotized by the bitter reality that these pictures represented a world beyond redemption. And this helpless desperation caused her to feel less effective than ever before. She turned over the photographs and forced herself to continue reading the written report.

  There were no visible signs of throat or neck trauma, yet the victims died from asphyxiation, which is the cause of death with crucified victims who do not succumb from blood loss. Semen had been detected in their vaginas, but there was no physical evidence that any of the women had been raped. Normally, with forcible intercourse the tissue is bruised or noticeably damaged. It didn’t seem possible that these women would have agreed to consensual sex with their assailant, but there existed no basis to prove otherwise.

  Sami examined the photographs again.

  Wrist wounds. Just above the palms.

  Foot wounds. Right at the instep.

  Sami glanced at the crucifix hanging on the wall a
cross from her, an essential embellishment her mother insisted upon. A cold fist closed around her heart. Until now she had not clearly understood the magnitude of this investigation. Alone with her menacing thoughts, a million miles away from serenity, she understood why her feelings had been so fiercely roused. The mere thought of these women being crucified paralyzed her, assaulted her senses with unimaginable images. She’d been born and raised a Roman Catholic, familiar with the dynamics of the church and the teachings of the Bible. At this particular moment, she wished she were a heathen. The killer’s motives were beyond the realm of human comprehension. And if Sami didn’t find a way to stop him soon, perhaps before the sun peeked over the eastern horizon another innocent woman would be nailed to a cross.

  THREE

  On Thanksgiving morning, a gloomy, chilly day by San Diego standards, Sami bundled up Angelina and drove to her mother’s house. For the past five years Sami had volunteered at Katie’s Kitchen, where she served hearty Thanksgiving dinners to the less fortunate. It had been a tradition in her family to begin holiday dinners in the midafternoon, so Sami’s benevolence did not conflict with this practice. She had plenty of time to offer her services and then enjoy dinner with her mother and daughter.

  “When are you coming back, Mommy?” Angelina sat securely in the car seat.

  Sami pulled into her mother’s driveway and turned off the ignition. “In a couple of hours, honey.”

  “Is Grandma cooking turkey and smashed potatoes and punkin pie?”

  Sami nodded, unable to suppress the chuckle. “That’s mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, sweetheart.”