by Luis Samways
She waved a taxi down and got in.
“Back Bay, Newbery, please,” she said.
The taxi driver nodded and then drove off.
Home couldn’t come any quicker.
Forty-Two
The Mexican had decided against taking the shot. He didn’t want to be held responsible for killing an officer of the law, even if they were a detective on his case. He continued to watch his two new best friends make their way into the crime scene.
Mr. Laggy, the one behind the guy The Mexican wanted to shoot, was his favorite. He had nicknamed them both. Mr. Laggy, and Mr. Grumpy. Playful names for two dire characters. They weren’t part of the show, and in his mind they still weren’t, but every show needed its leading men. Even if both men were subpar humans. Maybe he could let them in on the fun. That was why he didn’t kill them. He could have, but something stopped him. Was it the coats? Was it the lack of empathy the two detectives held in their eyes? Whatever it was, it had saved their lives. He would make sure they knew that. He would make sure the whole world knew that The Mexican had spared two souls.
He got to scanning the rest of the park with his rifle. Boston Common was a nice area. He liked it a lot. He had walked his dog there a few times. That was before he had to put the dog down. Ralfy was a bad dog. Bad dogs don’t go to heaven. The Mexican made sure Ralfy was sent straight to hell, where he would be able to meet him after all of this was done with.
“Ralfy, Ralfy, Ralfy,” he muttered. “Oh, how an owner misses his dog,” he whined to himself.
He stopped scanning the park with his rifle and decided to rest a little. His eye was straining after all the rifle sightseeing he had been doing. He rested the rifle on the ledge and got to eating a sandwich he had packed for himself. He bit into it and smiled.
“Yum,” he said out loud, nearly rubbing his stomach for emphasis.
He continued to eat his sandwich and surveyed his domain through the window. He had the curtains draped over the pane, but had a little gap for looking through. He tweaked the gap a little, making it bigger. He wasn’t really afraid of anyone spotting him. He was way up high, and they were all way below him, in more ways than he cared to think.
After he had finished eating his sandwich, he decided it was time to get the ball rolling on his show. He reached for his phone. It was a landline; he didn’t really care for cellular technology. He dialed the number and waited. He wiped the crumbs off his goatee and relished the sandwich’s aftertaste.
“God, I make a good sandwich,” he said to himself.
Someone answered on the other end. He cleared his throat.
“Hello, is this CNN news? Yeah, I have a story for you…. Actually, I not only have a story but a damn scoop! Put me on the phone with the station manager. He’ll be pleased to hear from me…. My name…the Devil,” he said as he licked his lips dry of mayonnaise.
Forty-Three
When I saw the piñata I nearly tripped on my own words. In the ten years I had served as a detective, it was safe to say that this was the first time I had been rendered speechless. The same could be said for my now-mute partner Santiago.
The life-size party trick was beyond anything comprehensible. I felt my throat clenching up. Chief Shaw had graced us with his presence. He too was glum-faced. The piñata/statue was close to battered. Obviously someone had swung at it hard. Bits of masking tape were on the ground. Shards of humanity were plastered around the scene. A few holes existed in the plaster, showing a corpse inside. All I could see was the corpse’s fingers and a bit of its jaw. The rest of the mummy-like corpse was covered in white tape. The police had already cordoned off the area, and we were under a white tent. The inside of the tent was strobed with lighting. A few forensics were dusting off the area. I saw Shaw give me a grimacing look.
“What the hell happened here?” he asked himself.
I knew it was more of a rhetorical question. I knew what he meant anyway. He was thinking what we were all thinking. What had humanity come to? What would possess someone to batter a dead corpse with a bat?
“Why is the corpse battered? Who did this?” I asked.
Shaw shook his head in disappointment.
“Kids, Frank — kids did this. They saw the piñata and decided to swing at it. The killer left a baseball bat and a placard saying whoever broke it would win a damn prize. He listed some possible prizes. An Xbox, a holiday in the Bahamas, or tickets to the Red Sox. Unbelievable, if you ask me,” he said.
I nodded. I saw the piñata hanging in its place, fastened by some clasps. I saw what looked like a stand. It had something written on it.
Party Essentials, essential life-size piñata, it read.
I saw the balloons surrounding the piñata. I could sense the style the killer was going for. He wanted to shock people. He wanted people to remember him. Not only was he willing to take someone’s life, he was willing to destroy children’s innocence. I couldn’t imagine what the kids were thinking, the ones who found the piñata and thought it was a game. I couldn’t imagine the sort of dreams they would be having tonight. I just couldn’t bring myself to understand what they would be going through. No one should see the things I get to see. No one.
“This is pretty messed up,” Santiago finally said, running his eyes around the crime scene.
“He had party music to accompany the piñata stand. We turned it off. The boom box is over there, though, if anyone wants to have a look,” Shaw said.
I smiled. I knew it wasn’t the time or the place for it, but I felt good. We might have a chance now.
“He left us a load of clues. Not only is the body here, but he brought props. Maybe these props can be traced. Maybe we can find him,” I said.
A slurry of silence broke through the crime scene. No one really had the enthusiasm that I was showing. I couldn’t blame them, really. I hardly had much left myself, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. And I was certain I was going to get my way.
Forty-Four
Olivia Cormack got out of the taxi and paid the driver her fare. It came to a measly four bucks, but she tipped him handsomely. He smiled at her as if she had made his day. She always wanted to make a difference, even if that meant spending five bucks more on a fare than she had to. It’s the little things in life that count — don’t let anyone tell you different. That was what her mother had always told her, and that was the code of ethics she lived by, till death.
She opened up her umbrella and soaked in the rain. The rain droplets were hitting her mascara. She didn’t bother wiping her face. She didn’t have a long walk to her apartment. She strolled down the Back Bay streets of Boston. She could see the high-rise buildings above her glisten in the rain. She could feel the cold of the night sky hit her face as it froze the rain in midair, or that was how it looked to her.
It was a special evening. There was something magical about it. Something off about it. She didn’t know what it was, but it was as if Christmas had come and she had been transported back to her childhood. Nights indoors, drinking cold milk, eating cookies, jumping out of her skin anytime she heard a noise. Nights of wishing Santa Claus would come into her room and whisk her away to a faraway land of fun and dreams.
She smiled to herself as she walked by the first signs of Christmas showing itself in Boston. A small shop had put up a tiny Christmas tree in its window. She stopped for a minute or two and watched as she marveled at its beauty. She loved this time of year. Even more so now that she was done with her job, and could move onto bigger and better things. Thankfully her severance pay was pretty large, so she could wait on getting a new job until after Christmas. She could finally have some time for herself. Maybe she could get one of those boyfriends everyone swears by!
She caught a glimpse of her tired eyes in the Boston storefront and decided to carry on toward her apartment. Her bed was calling her. She would have to wait for her quest for love. She needed sleep, not sex…well, she could have done with both, but she was a realistic woman.
She’d settle for what was easiest to obtain, and at the minute, sleep was the only thing she wanted to be doing in a bed.
She crossed the wide-open street that overlooked her apartment block. A few cars had beeped their horns at her. She didn’t know whether it was in anger or just men being men. Either way, she wasn’t in the mood. She got to her door; it was covered in rainy residue. She could see the reflection of the streetlights bouncing off its finish. She got her key out and opened it. She quickly rushed in, still holding the umbrella wide open. That wasn’t like her, you see — she wouldn’t have dreamed of opening an umbrella indoors, let alone going in with one already opened.
She immediately realized her mistake and cursed. She was a superstitious gal. She stomped her foot in anger.
“Great, Olivia, that’s all you need, bad luck,” she said as she walked up the stairwell toward her apartment in a huff.
Forty-Five
“Do I think I’m a bad guy? Well…I could probably answer that question, but I fear it could seem as if I was biased. Now, I appreciate your interest in my personal life, but I feel we have more pressing issues at hand…. Yes…that’s it…. The rifle I’m holding in my hand is a rather pressing issue, wouldn’t you agree?… Will I use it? …Sure I will. If you don’t stop asking these ridiculous questions, I might be forced to make someone pay…dearly,” The Mexican said as he wiped down the barrel of his rifle.
He continued to hold the house phone to his ear. He pressed it against his shoulder like a well-trained housewife attending to four things at once. He was attending to a lot of things; in his mind he was multitasking at a rate of a million miles a second. It was hard work being a mastermind, after all. He had to look over his masterpiece while communicating with idiot reporters. It was all part of the plan. He had wanted it that way and wouldn’t have it any other. He was adamant that the press needed to know, or his plan wouldn’t work.
Luckily, they had already heard rumblings of a killer in Boston. His work had already broken ground, and he was excited about that. That was the whole reasoning behind him giving a press conference. He wanted the newspapers to print what he wanted them to write. He didn’t want anyone to second-guess his motives — he wanted them to be as clear as day.
“That’s right. This evening. I want this to go out this evening. The six o’clock news starts in ten minutes. Make it happen, or these officers won’t last the rest of the night.”
He hung up the phone and left it off the hook. He immediately ripped the phone line off the wall and threw the phone across the room. It shattered against the hard bare wall, splintering into many pieces.
“Cheap fucking plastic,” he said as he shook his head and turned his attention back to the officers at Boston Common.
“Work, my pretties. Work,” he snarled as he scoped his rifle once more, this time landing a perfect visual shot at his targets.
“Come six o’clock, boys, you won’t know what hit you,” he said as he started to hum a familiar tune.
Forty-Six
It was a quarter to six when the coroner arrived on the scene. He had a stern look on his face. He looked as if he had already had enough. He didn’t need to see the whole scene to know it was a bad one. He greeted me at the tent’s entrance and gave me a slight coy smile. He was masking his uncertainty; I could tell by the sorry look he had in his eyes.
“Perfect,” he said as he saw the piñata.
He walked over to the piñata and placed his briefcase down on the ground. He had a cheap suit on and combed-back hair. He looked around fifty years old and had a bit of a gut. I didn’t understand how people in his field of work could have a gut, seeing how this job put me off eating a long time ago. I walked up to him and watched as he got to work.
“Victim was burnt pretty badly,” he said as he got his scissors out.
“Yeah, looks that way, you can tell by the moisture seeping through the wrapping,” I said.
The coroner gave me a wink as he got to cutting the bandaged-up victim.
“Someone knows their stuff,” he said as he carried on with his work.
“Yeah, I guess I do. Burning people has always been a fantasy of mine,” I joked.
There was some silence for a long while. It was just me and him in the tent. Santiago and the rest of the attending officers had gone off for some dinner. I had declined my invitation to eat. As I said, murder didn’t exactly make me hungry.
“Third-degree burns, all the way down to the bones. Excessive heat marks on the torso, eyes, head, nose, mouth, and legs. This man was severely burnt. He died of shock. I’d have to do an autopsy, but I’m pretty sure it was shock. His eyes are melted into the back of his skull. I don’t know what burned him, but whoever burned him sure wanted this man to suffer,” the coroner said as he examined the now-unwrapped corpse.
The body lay on the ground over some tarp that had been put there for the corpse. It was vital we didn’t contaminate the corpse. It was risky freeing the victim from his costume of death, but Chief Shaw had insisted that the body be examined so we could know more about the person’s death, and obviously try to ID the poor bastard.
“His teeth have been knocked out of his mouth. No dental records….” the coroner said.
“DNA?” I asked.
“That’s the beauty of modern science, my boy — DNA always comes through. Let’s just hope this guy is on the database, or we could have some problems,” the man said as he stood up straight and stretched out his back.
“Surely there will be a break,” I reassured myself.
The coroner turned around and faced me. I could see the expression on his face painted a different story. I could tell he wasn’t overly excited about the prospects of this case.
“Frank, the victim has been toasted beyond recognition. Fingerprints aren’t intact. Teeth aren’t there. Skin is matted plastic at the moment. We’ll be lucky if we can secure a time of death on this poor bastard, let alone a damn name. But hey, weirder things have happened, I guess,” the coroner said as he picked up his suitcase and stretched out once more. “Been a long day. I’m off home. Don’t call me if there are any more murders. I can’t be bothered right now.”
The coroner nodded at me and left through the tent entrance. It was just me and the corpse now, all by ourselves. The rest of the world had gone to dinner and bed, while evil still remained at large.
“Fuck them,” I cursed to myself.
I decided to take a seat on the mushy park floor. They hadn’t put any chairs inside the tent; after all, they wanted to keep the crime scene as free from contaminants as possible. They would have to grit and bear my ass cheeks being imprinted on the floor from now on.
“I’ll find your killer, pal. Don’t you worry,” I whispered as I watched the victim stare up into the void. I sat there for a long while contemplating everything I knew about the case. I sat there thinking for the better part of forty-five minutes, and then they came back from dinner, and all hell had broken lose.
Forty-Seven
Officer Mullins was standing outside a big black door with his firearm out. He was leaning against the wall adjacent to the door. He had a rush of adrenaline running through his body as he switched on his radio and called in his position.
“Police, put your damn hands up!” he shouted as he stormed through the door.
He stopped dead in his tracks and relaxed his grip on his gun. Standing in front of him were two older gentleman, about fifty to sixty years old. They had a look of shock on their faces. It was immediately apparent to Mullins that the two men standing in front of him were not a threat. He lowered his weapon and walked toward them with an apologetic look on his face.
“I’m sorry to have barged in like that. I had reports of excessive blood spatter at an office. I was just treating it like a possible murder. Didn’t know you two would be here,” he said as he stopped in front of the men and got to snooping around.
Sal Smith and Roger Smith graciously smiled as they stepped aside for t
he officer.
“No problem, Officer. It’s just we had to call the police, you see. We were expecting to meet someone here at the office and found this mess,” Roger Smith explained.
Mullins nodded as he noticed the overturned tables and rummaged-through office equipment. He’d realized that the office was a crime scene when he spotted the state of the scene through the gap in the door. He had immediately drawn his weapon, suspecting the perpetrators were still in the building. He was going to confront the perpetrators but instead met the two men who had called it in.
He felt silly and wanted to forget about the fact that he had jumped the gun, so to speak, and ended up frightening the life out of two respectable businessmen. It was either that or shoot them, and he was glad he didn’t end up being trigger-happy and capping both tycoons.
“So you two gentlemen are…?” Mullins asked as he came full circle back to both men after sweeping the room.
“My name is Sal, and this here is my longtime friend and partner, Roger. We both go by the surnames Smith, but are unrelated by blood, but related by business. We both own a union down here, you see, and we were here to meet up with the CEO of this company before he jumped ship to Mexico. We were trying to secure a deal with him, you know, a last-minute sort of thing. And then we came across this. His whole office trashed and a copious amount of blood on the carpets. We immediately suspected the worst, hence us calling you. And by God is it good to see such a strong young man coming to our rescue,” Sal said as he nudged his partner.
“Yes, yes, definitely,” Roger replied, agreeing with his partner wholeheartedly.
Mullins felt the creases of his mouth widen. He had never come across two such gentleman-like men before in his time. It was as if both of them were old-time Englishmen who carried pocket watches and went to the races. It was a delight. Mullins liked them immediately. It sure beat pimps and working girls as his only form of social interaction on the streets of Boston.