by Jerold Last
THE END
"NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR"
After you finish "The Matador Murders": Please use a bit of your valuable time to write a review and post it with the dealer where you purchased your copy. Amazon makes this quick and easy on the book's page. Written reviews are important to both readers and authors. A few sentences are all that are necessary. Of course, I hope you will enjoy this novel, but even if you didn’t, please provide a review.
Thank you.
If you want to read Suzanne and Roger's previous South American mystery novels "The Surreal Killer", set in Peru and Northern Chile, "The Ambivalent Corpse", set mostly in Uruguay, and "The Empanada Affair", set in Salta in Northwest Argentina, all three books are available from Amazon, or wherever you bought this book. Excerpts from the two most recent books can be found below. You can learn a lot more about Suzanne, Roger, and the author at their blog site, conveniently located at http://suzanneandrogermysteries.blogspot.com
A Free Excerpt from Chapter 1 of "The Ambivalent Corpse" follows:
We found the corpse on a rocky stretch of beach in Montevideo, about a mile east of the harbor. Pieces of the body were apportioned equally between the Graf Spee Memorial and the Holocaust Memorial, which are side by side on a grassy knoll overlooking the Rio de la Plata shore facing Buenos Aires to the south. Because of her strategic location shared between two antithetical monuments, one to the German warship scuttled near Montevideo Harbor in 1939 and the other to the victims of Nazi genocide in World War II, the Uruguayan press named her “The Ambivalent Corpse” (“El Cadáver Ambivalente”). But I’m getting ahead of myself in telling this story.
Early the morning after Suzanne and I arrived in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, we began a long run to start adjusting to the 4-hour time difference from California. Hopefully, the run would help us make up for only 4 hours of sleep. When dinners end at midnight as is typical for Uruguay, people sleep as late as they can the next morning. Thus the streets were mostly deserted. I better understood why the tradition of the siesta, or noon-3PM nap, became institutionalized in Spain and Latin America hundreds of years earlier.
After walking south and east from the hotel to the Rambla as a warm-up we ran east towards Punta Carreta at a pretty fast pace. Traffic at this hour was light. The Rambla was deserted at this hour except for a few older folks walking their dogs. Since everybody in Montevideo lived in an apartment, the dogs were small. So were most of the people at the end of the leashes.
Our run lasted only as far as the park with the lake on our left and the Maritime Museum, the Graf Spee Memorial, and the Holocaust Memorial on our right. Beyond the Museum was the Rio de la Plata. Far out of sight across the river was Argentina. Suzanne and I were the only live people visible anywhere in this area. It was impossible not to see the pieces of dead body lying by the two Memorials so we stopped and checked things out. Pieces of body were apportioned half and half between the Graf Spee Memorial and the Holocaust Memorial. The victim was a young woman who had almost certainly been murdered.
The Graf Spee Memorial features a six-inch cannon salvaged from the wreck and an explanatory plaque. The body parts were carefully placed around the concrete base the cannon is mounted on. Beside the Memorial was almost half of a dismembered corpse: a jean-covered leg beside an arm covered by the sleeve of a sweater, and the top half of the torso minus its head. The half-body was dressed in what was left of a turtle-necked sweater and obviously had belonged to a woman. She looked to have been young and in pretty good shape. There was very little blood visible, just the body parts.
The Holocaust Memorial is a large inscribed chunk of rock sculpture pulled away from a 350-foot long wall. The rest of the body parts were placed symmetrically around the base of the plaques. Next to the Memorial was the remaining half of the dismembered corpse: the other jean clad leg, the other sleeved arm, and the bottom half of the torso from the waist down to the groin area. This half-body was dressed in what remained of her jeans and matched the top half in gender and size. The parts would fit together like the pieces of a life-sized jigsaw puzzle.
Lying precisely between the two halves of the corpse was its head. The victim had long dark hair and was mid-20s to 30-ish and good looking. From the overkill brutality it seemed that the murderer was really pissed off at her.
Despite my years as a homicide detective in Los Angeles and the many dozens of murder scenes I've investigated the brutality and the cold-blooded theatricality of this murder scene caused my stomach to lurch. Years of training kicked in to make me seem a lot calmer than I actually was.
Suzanne turned a pale shade of green. I turned her gently away until she was no longer looking at the body.
This excerpt is from "The Ambivalent Corpse", available from wherever you downloaded "The Matador Murders".
A free excerpt from Chapter 1 of "The Surreal killer" follows:
Chapter 1. Santiago, Chile, A Year Ago
He always thought of this part as cutting the calf out of the herd. The problem: Pick up the woman somewhere, somehow without any witnesses to the event. The solution this time: he found her hitchhiking late at night on the deserted street in a poorly lit part of town. He stopped the rented car and offered her a ride. She looked at him, decided he was safe, jumped in the car, congratulated herself on her good luck, and asked if he was heading towards the next town.
"Yes, I am. Where can I drop you off?"
"Anywhere near the middle of town would be great."
"You've got it."
The car started off in the right direction.
"Can I offer you a little brandy? It's cold out there," he said.
"I'd love a sip or two."
He removed a flask from his pocket and passed it over.
"Thanks a lot," she replied, and took a long slow swallow. She returned the flask to the driver.
Five minutes later the long-acting drug in the brandy had worked its magic and she was completely helpless. Wide awake, but totally unable to move or speak. She stared at the driver with terrified eyes. The driver steered the car onto a dirt road and drove about half a mile into the woods. After stopping the car, he came around to the passenger side, and pulled her out onto the ground. She noted that there was grass and dirt in the clearing. He pawed her body for a few moments, but didn't seem interested in undressing or sexually assaulting her beyond the unwanted touching. Out came his syringe, and with a few well-coordinated movements he injected a few mL of fluid directly into her jugular vein. The powerful drug did its work and she was now completely paralyzed.
He opened the trunk of the car. Out came a disposable paper coverall and disposable latex rubber gloves, which he donned. Out came a large machete and a protective plastic face shield, which he also put on. He returned to his terrified victim, dragged her about 150 feet from the car, and proceeded to systematically whack away at arms and legs with the machete for several minutes after she had completely bled out. The mutilation of the corpse continued for what seemed to be a long time after she was clearly dead. Finally he dropped the machete, picked up a small stick from the ground nearby, and dipped the end of the stick in one of the many pools of blood around the body. Very carefully, using the blood as ink, he wrote the words "no mas" on the ground near the body. At that point he made a low, throaty growl that might have meant that he was finally satisfied with the result, and the machete overkill came to an end.
The bloodstained and splattered paper coveralls, latex gloves, and face shield came off and were thrown on top of the dismembered body. So was the machete. Careful examination revealed that there was no apparent blood visible anywhere on him or his clothing after the disposables were taken off. Back to the trunk of the car from which he removed a large plastic container of gasoline that he poured over the body and the disposables. One flick of a match and everything went up in flames, which burned long and hot. When nothing remained but charred flesh, teeth, bones, and ashes he returned to the car and went on to his destination, satisfie
d that any forensic evidence had been destroyed in the fire. Nothing remained that could link him to the dead young woman, who was a perfect stranger. He smiled a genuine smile of satisfaction.
This excerpt is from "The Surreal Killer", available from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/The-Surreal-Killer-ebook/dp/B007H21EFO/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330988453&sr=1-2
or wherever you downloaded "The Matador Murders".