by Lotta Smith
Sometimes, I found myself almost convinced he was born that way, except a scowling newborn baby with an Ivy League haircut in a dark suit seems a little bit out of the norm. Richard Henderson reminded me of Agent K from the Men in Black movies.
He turned to me. “Thank you for a delicious breakfast, Ms. K.”
“My pleasure, Agent Henderson,” I said with a vague smile, which I hoped to be polite. “It’s wonderful for you to join our breakfast.”
But I didn’t invite him for further occasions. I had no problem eating with him. It was sweet how he said nice things about my cooking. Also, he was my employer’s regular client, which made him more like a colleague. However, eating with him showing, explaining, and demonstrating ghastly details about murders didn’t exactly fit my concept of pleasurable dining. Talk about an appetite killer.
He continued. “It’s the best meal I’ve had since I separated from my former wife.”
“You used to be married?” The words slipped out before I recalled concepts such as protocol and etiquette.
“Yes. Now I’m happily divorced.”
Richard Henderson was not someone I could imagine with a significant other, much less a spouse. Still, I managed to add, “You seem to be holding up very well.”
That was the phrase one certain etiquette website had listed in the ‘Do Tell’ section. Before I got divorced myself, there were times I was at the giving end of appropriate comments for newly divorced friends. Then again, when I actually had a divorce, I didn’t hear much of such words. But as unimaginable as Henderson being married was, I knew how it felt when your loved one suddenly lost interest in you and moved on, leaving you wondering what you didn’t do right to keep the relationship fresh and exciting. For me, my ex ditching me and hopping off to the new season of his life with a twenty-one-year-old Brazilian dancer wasn’t a pleasant experience. Anyway, that was so over, and learning Henderson and I shared something in common gave me a sense of closeness with him.
“Thanks,” shaking his head, Henderson said uncertainly. “But actually, I don’t miss her all that much. It’s only the good meals I used to eat with her that I sometimes miss, except she never cooked.”
“So you still miss her company. That’s sad.”
“No way!” He gave a low chuckle, and I found myself wishing to get the heck out of this awkward situation.
“Dining with a crocodile that was kept unfed for a month would have been far more peaceful than eating with her. Our marriage was nothing but a stupid byproduct of a tequila-induced temporal insanity.”
“Oh…”
Now I was confused. Was he trying on a tough-guy attitude, or just being honest?
“She ran away to Oahu, Hawaii with a cook of the deli she frequented,” Archangel interjected. “That’s how he lost his wife and his favorite meals for good.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing stealing my punchline, Michael?” Henderson scowled.
“You know what, Ritchie, in comedy, timing is everything,” Archangel said matter-of-factly, “and you were missing the right moment.”
Henderson humphed and continued. “The deli’s still doing business at the same spot, but without Chad the cook, the food is never the same.”
As I made sympathetic noises, Henderson attacked his food.
“By the way, about the strangulation part—” Archangel raised his fork, completely unconcerned of his client’s annoyance “—is it intentional that the killer choked the victims unconscious but not enough to kill them? Or due to other reasons, such as the killer was not strong enough?”
“That’s yet to be determined.” Henderson shook his head while wolfing down asparagus topped on the Canadian bacon egg benedict. “The Chief Medical Examiner thinks suffocation alone was not the cause of death in either case. He says the death’s multifactorial, including but not limited to being left in the woods and devoured by wild animals.”
“Getting eaten by the residents of the woods—like rats, raccoons, and ravens without exit, hope, sight, or eyeballs—that’s a nightmarish way to go,” Archangel muttered and took a gulp of black coffee. Then he added, “By the way, Ritchie, the second victim has recently divorced or split from her significant other, if it helps to ID her.”
“How can you tell?” Henderson arched an eyebrow.
“From the slight ring-tan on her left ring finger,” he said, pointing at a photograph, to which Henderson leaned forward to take a better look.
While taking a small sip of tea, I impulsively took a glance at the photographs. The images of bloodied women jumped into my eyes and I ended up coughing like a dog with distemper.
“Okay, I’ll take that possibility,” Henderson said to Archangel, then turned to me. “Are you asthmatic or something?”
“No, it’s only that her table manner happens to be taking a sick leave today,” Archangel informed him while I was still coughing and unable to utter a coherent word. “Can you believe she went to one of those fancy finishing schools in Switzerland? No wonder she’s a socialite dropout.”
Between the coughs, I gasped. “Excuse me, but they taught me deaths and murders are not favorable table topics back in Switzerland…”
Sitting at the same table with a fed agent and a private investigator looking at murder scene photographs was really icky. Trying to eat while they simulated the killer’s—and the victim’s—moves using food and utensils was simply nauseating.
“For your information, I didn’t drop out of society. I just got sick of being superficial and I quit it intentionally. See the difference?” I pointed out to Archangel.
“Oh yeah?” He shrugged.
I turned to Henderson. “I wasn’t a Park Avenue Princess, but my faux-dad number six, thought it was a brilliant idea to send his stepdaughter to a finishing school in Switzerland. He really liked the prospect of helping me cultivate my inner elegance and all,” I clarified. I was seeing a ‘fancy finishing school in Switzerland? Seriously?’ expression desperate to creep out from underneath his poker face.
Back then, going to Europe seemed like a fabulous idea. I wasn’t Ivy League Material, and I didn’t have enough passion to drive my heart and soul to dedicate four years in a certain field of study. Besides that, I wanted to give Mom and her new husband some space to enjoy their adults-only quality time. She had a special knack for scoring one rich husband after another, but her marriages tended to be short-lasting. I was feeling a tiny bit responsible for that. Anyway, it was terribly generous of the faux-dad number six to cover all the expenses for my pricey education, especially considering he had already been split from Mom before I finished my education. He even sent me to the Debutante Ball in Paris.
Anyway, going to Switzerland was absolutely life-changing for me. At a party hosted by a real aristocrat classmate, I met Warren, “the king” of the City—I’m talking about the financial district of London. Not everything in this world is about New York, you know. Next came the nuptial and The Days of Decadence, which was beyond divine—huge houses with servants and everything, trotting the world on private jets, appearing in posh lifestyle mags and TV shows, shopping at Bergdorf Goodman, and vacationing in St. Tropez. Ah, memories…
“The inner elegance? Seriously?” As I was indulging myself in my favorite superficial memory, Archangel was laughing his as…I mean, his head off. “Kelly, why do you keep hiding your cultivated elegance? I’d absolutely appreciate if you’d show me some, if any.”
“I’m full of elegance from head to toe. If you can’t see that, it’s your problem. You must be elegance-blind,” I retorted in a very unladylike manner.
“Switzerland is overrated.”
“Says a guy who’s never been there.”
“Actually, I had to spend several summers there when I was a kid.” He snorted.
Henderson, totally blasé with our little feud, cast an expectant glance at my plate of barely touched breakfast. “Are you finished?”
“Oh yes, I don’t have much of an appe
tite this morning,” I said, contemplating about adding “thanks to both of you.”
“That’s too bad. Do you mind if I finish it up for you?”
“Not at all, help yourself.”
“Thank you, Kelly.”
“Wait a minute, Henderson.” Archangel blocked the fed agent’s fork with his knife.
“What the hell?” Henderson raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t even think you can have both pieces of eggs benedict. The one with prosciutto is so mine,” Archangel declared.
“What a shame, Archangel,” quietly replied Henderson, pushing Archangel’s knife away. “I also happen to like the one with prosciutto very much.”
“Challenge me,” Archangel said boldly. “All’s fair in love and war. And it’s a war.”
I watched them open-mouthed as those supposedly grownup men fought over the breakfast leftover. So my employer was fond of my cooking even though he failed to see the elegance in yours truly. I was flattered.
“How about splitting everything in halves and sharing with each other?” I chimed in. Generally, these two men behaved like grownups, but I had read so many online articles about mayhems that rooted in adults fighting over food. I’ve also read somewhere that green has calming effects, so repainting the dining room from pink to green actually crossed my mind. Still, I realized the obvious fact that encouraging them to share took less time and effort than the repainting job.
“Just like they taught us to do back in kindergarten?” Henderson arched one eyebrow.
“I believe so.” I rolled my eyes. I was having a hard time visualizing them in little smocks.
“Deal!”
After a moment’s thought, they hooted in unison and did a high five. As they happily cut everything in two pieces, there was a familiar throb in my temples, and the day had just begun.
Chapter 5
“That’s a murder, not an accident. The victim’s wife did it,” Michael Archangel declared to the person at the other end of the phone.
I was sitting at my desk, tête-à-tête with my employer’s long legs, which went up to join the derriere that was temporarily parked on top of my desk. I found myself pretending I wasn’t bothered at all to see his short skirt moving up and down as he crossed and uncrossed the long legs.
I could have just shoved him off just like Provenza did to Flynn in The Closer episodes, or stood to rearrange the bouquet of flowers in the vase that sat on the coffee table, which needed no rearrangement thanks to Jeremy the florist’s fab job, but I stayed. As an assistant, I couldn’t just push him away and meddle his work, and to tell the truth, I was having a tad bit of a hard time ripping my eyes off his lower body. As much as I wanted to push him out of my sight, I wanted to keep ogling at him. It’s pretty much complicated, but if you take a moment to recall the last time you saw the movie trailer of Fifty Shades of Grey, you’d grasp what I mean. Even if you had minimum interest in mommy porn and all that kinky stuff, you found yourself gaping at it anyway. Except that I was looking at a giant transvestite, not naked Jamie Dornan. Anyway, he had very nice legs—long, tanned, flawless with toned muscles in all the right places.
“It’s impossible? ‘Coz the wife, an astronaut, was in outer space and giving a lecture about life without gravity at the moment the explosion occurred? Uh-huh, so your point is the kids and teachers who attended the lecture are the witnesses to prove her solid alibi. C’mon! That is the critical part of her little scheme, committing a murder while having a solid alibi. Also, don’t forget the woman made it clear her hubby worked in that fireworks factory to create a special firework to welcome her back. Check out her communications; phone, emails, SNS, Craigslist, and her financial transactions. You’ll find out she somehow arranged to call the victim’s cell at the time of the explosion, which was caused by a minor change in static electricity when the phone rang, igniting a little portion of floating ammunition particle and then Kaboom! That’s about it,” Archangel told the client, a captain of a European police force, on the other end of the line.
Then he stood up, handed me the telephone receiver to return it to the cradle on my desk, and walked back to his desk in the far corner of the office, which originally was a large lounge room. It featured floor-to-ceiling windows that lead to the garden and had plenty of sun; however, Archangel’s desk occupied the corner surrounded by two walls with floor-to-ceiling book shelves, just like a vampire avoiding the sun.
An hour later, the phone rang again. This time, the same client had called to notify him his deduction was correct and he greatly appreciated Archangel’s advice. They had found out the astronaut had, indeed, prearranged the phone call to the victim’s cell at the exact time of explosion by hiring a contract killer, who was a college student in the Philippines. This diligent and punctual student made that particular phone call believing she was just making a wakeup call for some lazy guy in Europe.
I managed to transfer the call to the phone on Archangel’s desk before he decided to walk back and sit on top of mine again. Due to the generous size of the room, the distance between our desks far exceeded an arm’s length. Other than that little inconvenience, I was pretty much satisfied with my work arrangements in the office. My workspace was by the doorway, which made each of my trips to the foyer shorter. As the assistant, I was the one responsible for greeting the clients. Did I mention my employer had no flowers in the foyer or the office before I started working there?
“Wow, that was really quick,” I said, amazed.
“Good.” Archangel nodded absently.
He didn’t look so happy or satisfied. I assumed it was because he had yet to nail whoever killed two women by poking their eyes out.
Three days—nearing four, since it was 4:00 PM—had passed since the second eyeless body was discovered. It was a rare occasion for Archangel to take longer than a day to discover the killer. Also, it was the first case of psychopathic serial killing since I had started working for him.
So far, just about everything about these cases was vague at best. The mode of killing, or M.O., the modus operandi—I like to use jargons that helps me seem more professional, don’t you?—was hazily determined as multifactorial; one of the victim’s name, address, and occupation were yet to be identified; and the whereabouts of the eyeballs taken out of the victims—while the victims were still alive and breathing!—were unknown. The killer didn’t leave much evidence.
“I think whoever killed those poor women by strangulating, poking the eyeballs out, and abandoned them in the woods is a monstrous animal,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” he said. “I’m really skeptical about it.”
“Are you saying such actions are not monstrous?”
“No, I’m not saying that. The point is that animals are not necessarily monsters. First of all, they do not hunt and kill the prey just for fun. They only kill when necessary. Only humankind is known to lie, deceive, steal, commit unnecessary killings, and inflict pain and sufferings on others purely out of pleasure.”
“Thanks for a soothing opinion toward the human race.”
“My pleasure,” he said matter-of-factly, totally missing my sarcasm.
“Mr. Archangel,” I said, “do you think the other victim was involved in the same business as Leonie Ganong?”
The victim we saw at the morgue was identified as Leonie Ganong. She had lost her regular office job during the recession, juggled four odd jobs for a while, and then she started a new job as a burlesque dancer at a gentlemen’s club. According to her colleagues, her attitude toward her new job was positive, maybe a tad bit too positive. She started taking “clients” after her shifts to provide her “services” for extra cash. She was heard saying she wanted to make the maximum profit out of her current situation in order to enjoy an early retirement.
“It’s possible,” Archangel said.
“That’s horrible.”
“It is. Falling victim to violence is one of the major risks in that line of work. Not everyone ends up like her,
but it’s still risky. Another risk is being exposed to a smorgasbord of infections, including but not limited to sexually transmitted diseases. Still, many people choose to engage themselves in that profession, and they do so on their own will.”
“That’s horrible, cruel, and just… just so unjust,” I muttered. I knew I wasn’t making much sense, but I couldn’t help it.
“I know. In general, murders are everything you’ve just mentioned.”
“That’s sad,” I muttered.
Suddenly, I got this heavy, depressing feeling in the pit of my stomach. There were times I was called a bitch, slut, whore, and prostitute. It happened as soon as I became a not-so-happy-divorcee. Not that I was engaged in the sex industry, but back in the UK, I was called a bloody bitch. Media, including all tabloids and national TV networks, were busy running ‘hate Kelly’ campaigns. It didn’t take long until total strangers started openly dissing me on TV and in comment sections of news and gossip websites. Seriously, that was a total disaster.
Recalling my past, I realized I was taking a series of brutal murders by this monstrous killer, whom the media called Eyeball Snatcher, more personal than other cases.
I knew it was only by mere luck that I was working in a law enforcement-ish field. I just couldn’t stop thinking about what-ifs. What if Mom was ashamed of the notoriety of her only child, rather than standing up for me? What if Archangel didn’t offer me my current job?
In addition, what if I had ended up working in a dark, vulgar, dirty place that involved bed sheets with suspicious stains, instead of Archangel’s deceptively stylish ivory and beige office with expensive furniture?
Without a doubt, my current lifestyle was a paradise compared to the depressing scenario that could have happened to me.
I could have ended up as one of them—a hard working girl desperate to get out of an unfortunate situation.
Or worse, it could have been me who was choked, deprived of sight, and left in the woods suffering a painful and slow death.