15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  “Jesus,” she said, realizing she was having a panic attack.

  It was a regular occurrence for her. It happened many times a day. She didn’t know what set them off, but she knew how to ease herself out of them. She took one deep breath and held it in. In that moment, she caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. Worn-out eyes stared back at her. She could see the cars behind her. All of them looked ominous, one of them in particular. A black sedan was on her tail. She blinked twice, rapidly, and then opened her eyes once more. She saw the sedan again, but this time it was farther away. Something was off, but she knew that her fleeting panic was causing such thoughts. If she was to see a butterfly at that very moment, she would suspect it of being an omen. That was Serena all over. She was a superstitious soul.

  The panic finally settled after a minute or two. She was used to driving while suffering an attack. Her doctor had told her to take meds to ease the symptoms, but she refused to do so. She believed that they would numb her soul, turning her into something, or someone, she wouldn’t recognize.

  She was near her house now. No more than a minute or so to go. The panic hadn’t gone yet. It was still there, nibbling at her insides. But she had it under control. It wasn’t going to beat her. She was adamant of that. She caught another glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. Her eyes looked hollow. They expressed pain and sorrow, while being surrounded by red circles around her pupils. She looked as if she had a fire brewing in her soul. But she was determined to extinguish it. She wouldn’t let it get the better of her. She wouldn’t let it destroy her.

  Then she noticed something. Something that was staring her right in the face. The car behind her. The black sedan was still there. It was tailing her. Edging ever closer. She didn’t know if what she was seeing was a sign, or if it was just a regular car. She wasn’t a paranoid person, but she knew when something didn’t feel right. She put her foot down on the gas. The car sped up. She flicked her eyes between the road and the rearview mirror. With every second that passed, her house grew nearer, and the sedan got farther away. She took a hard left and then a right. She was now on her street. The suburban housing on either side looked welcoming. She was still keeping a watchful eye on her mirror. The car that had spooked her was gone. She felt safe again. She was home, so there wasn’t anything to worry about.

  She saw her house sitting on the corner of the street, right at the end. She smiled. She felt a sense of relief to be back. She flicked her cigarette out of the window and rolled it back up. She pulled into her drive. Her heart sank suddenly. There was a man on her doorstep. He was smiling at her. She didn’t recognize him. But her momentary sense of fear was washed away when she saw the kindness in his eyes. She knew there was nothing to be afraid of.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” she heard him say.

  She nodded and got out of the car. The sounds of birds chirping in the trees and yard work being done in the background comforted her. She noticed that none of her immediate neighbors were home. She was the only one with a car in her driveway. She brought her attention back to the man on her porch. He was tall. He had a dark suit on. His eyes were piercing yet gentle. He was young. Maybe twenty-four to twenty-five. Definitely under thirty.

  “Can I help you?” Serena asked.

  The man nodded. She walked up to him, was just about to fish out her keys when she spotted something in his right hand. It glinted in the sunlight. Her heart thumped in her chest. He had a knife. He saw the fear in her eyes. He covered her mouth with his left hand and struck her with his right. The long nine-inch blade went into her chest. A large popping sound went off. Two of her ribs had cracked. The man took the knife out of her and swung back once more. This time he struck her in the abdomen. Her legs buckled, and she collapsed onto the ground. She was gasping for air, gargling on her own blood. But the man wasn’t finished. She caught him staring at her. He got down onto one knee and grabbed her by the hair, raising her head slightly off the ground. As he did so, he slid the blade across her neck, cutting her throat. She bled out within seconds. He nodded his head solemnly and gently let go of her hair. She looked peaceful. Her eyes were still sparkling as whatever life was left within her escaped into the ether, until there was nothing but blackness in her pupils.

  The man got up. He tucked the knife away in his inside jacket pocket. This time, he noticed he’d managed to get his suit dirty. This wasn’t a clean kill. But it was a kill nonetheless. He took one last glance at his downed damsel in decease and turned to face his car. He had parked across the road, near one of her neighbor’s houses. He walked across the road briskly, ignoring the off chance that somebody could see him covered in blood. He got to his car and quickly got in. Firing up the engine, he took one last glance at his kill. A mesh of red and black infused in his skull at the sight of the carnage he had unleashed. There was still more to come. He was certain of that.

  The killer drove off in his black sedan.

  Six

  We managed to get a couple hours of sleep. I thought it was justified, or we’d be walking corpses investigating dead people. We were at a diner. The anticipation of a job had fired up a hunger in both San and me. It was early in the morning, but not too early.

  “Eggs and bacon?” Santiago asked me as the waiter approached us.

  “Yeah, that’ll do,” I replied.

  He nodded at me and beckoned to the waiter to hurry up. Santiago was always a little rude when it came to meal times. He would usually get sour when his belly was empty. He was the type of guy that you avoid when you know he hasn’t eaten anything. He was like the opposite of a gremlin. You needed to feed him after midnight or he’d tear the house down. Come to think of it, you needed to feed him all the time.

  “Yes, me and my pal here will have eggs and bacon, on the double. I’ll also have a creamy coffee. Frank will have an Irish coffee.”

  The waiter gave Santiago a look. “Sorry, sir, we don’t serve Irish coffee.”

  “Why not?” San asked.

  “We don’t have a liquor license,” the young man replied.

  “That’s unacceptable. What self-respecting place in Boston that calls itself ‘Muddy Mick’s’ wouldn’t serve a damn Irish coffee? That’s false advertising, and we’re cops. We can do you for it!”

  I put my hand on Santiago’s shoulder to try to diffuse the problem.

  “Calm down, Santiago,” I muttered.

  The waiter’s eyes widened. “Santiago? That doesn’t sound too Irish to me,” the young guy teased.

  My face was a picture. I had to respect the whippersnapper for his quick thinking. At twenty years old, I was too drunk to be that fast on my feet.

  “Hey!” Santiago bellowed. “That’s racist, pal!” he said, showing a chink in his armor with a grin. The kid knew the routine. A little back and forth at the table. A little harmless hazing. And then some grub. That was our routine in this place. We loved it. It was a ball-buster’s paradise. Everyone down here was good people. San and I were on the wall of fame. Not because we were cops or anything, but because we held the record for the hot dog eating contest. Every year we’d chow down on thirty-six hot dogs each, with a bucket of beer. We held the record for the amount of time it took to polish it off.

  “Nine minutes and thirty-six seconds!” someone shouted as they walked into Muddy Mick’s. That was how people greeted us. It beat the good old greeting of “fuck you, pig!”

  “What’s happening?” I replied to the mid-morning greeter.

  The waiter went with our order to the back. I could hear the cook in the back, rustling up some eggs or omelettes, judging by the smell. This place was special. It was a cop hangout. Not only did the bottom-of-the-barrel cops come to this place, but so did some of the petty criminals we chased on a daily basis. No murderers or kid snatchers, obviously, just local troublemakers trying to get in “tight” with the fuzz (aka “we brought all the informants down here to rat on their homies”). It was a weird dynamic, but it seemed to wor
k. At that moment, there were no criminals in the place. In fact, there were hardly any cops, either. Just a few dozen men, winding down from their shift.

  “He’ll come back with an Irish coffee, or I’m going to go all Latino heat on him,” I heard Santiago say.

  I was miles away, staring at my reflection in a spoon. Santiago noticed my demeanor and decided to smack me across the face for a laugh.

  “Boo!” he said, the sting of the slap still rippling through my skin. “Lighten up, Frank — it might never happen!” he said.

  I decided to not retaliate. As much as we cared for each other as partners, in Muddy Mick’s, everything went out of the window. Fistfights between the two of us were not uncommon. As I said, a strange dynamic, indeed.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want it to happen,” I replied.

  “You don’t want what to happen?” San asked, as if he had the memory of a goldfish.

  “I don’t want to get the promotion,” I said, staring into his cold brown eyes.

  “Boo-hoo. I’m sure all that extra money will drag your ass down into a deeper state of depression.”

  I sat back in my seat, looking up at the ceiling. “It’s not the money, Santiago. It’s the damn prospect of spending the rest of my days behind a desk, filling out reports and writing down case files.”

  He smiled at me. “You just don’t want to lose me, do ya?”

  “Well, I could do with a little less ‘Latino heat,’ as you put it.”

  Our waiter showed up with our eggs and bacon. He gave us two coffees, then smiled and left.

  San sniffed at my cup. His face lit up. I could see the joy that was contained in his eyes. “The little fucker did it!” he exclaimed, nearly proclaiming it as if he was a preacher.

  “Did what?” I asked.

  He pointed at my coffee. “It’s got a little Irish in it!” he said.

  I laughed. The kid was smart, after all. He knew that what San asked for, San got. He should have been a little smarter about it, though. Serving alcohol in a diner is illegal. If we were asshole cops, we could have tricked the kid into getting fired. Believe it or not, people like that exist. I wasn’t going to say a word. His secret was safe with me.

  “Thanks for the Irish coffee, kid!” Santiago shouted. The whole diner could hear him!

  I buried my face in my palms and shook my head. When I glanced back up at San, he looked puzzled. “What did I do?” he asked.

  Suddenly my phone rang. I answered it. It was work.

  “Yeah, okay. We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I hung up. San’s expression changed from bemusement to anger. He flicked the fork back down onto the plate. It rattled, breaking his egg yolk on contact.

  “Fuck’s sake!” he shouted, getting up and wiping his mouth. “Work, work, work, work!” he muttered.

  I quickly dashed a few large forkfuls of bacon and egg into my mouth. I was still chewing on them by the time we got outside and into my car.

  “Off – to – the – crime – scene – we - go!” I sang in an annoying opera voice.

  “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu-------ckkkkkkkkkkaaaaaaaaaa----youuuuuuuuu!” Santiago bellowed in his best Pavarotti impression.

  I hit the shifter, and we went flying off into the early morning fog, on our way to one of the bloodiest crime scenes I had ever witnessed.

  Seven

  Day One of the Investigation:

  Two minutes in…

  Finding the hotel room was a bigger expedition than I thought possible at first. You’d be surprised, but even the hotel lobby clerk wasn’t sure as to which room the bodies were located in. Uniformed police officers had just arrived. They were as fresh as we were and hadn’t seen the bodies yet. When I asked the hotel clerk to stop jerking us around and just show us to the damn room, she obliged. She made some excuse up about how she just got on shift or some bullshit like that. It wasn’t washing over with me. Something in her eyes told me that she was holding something back. She knew something. She wasn’t willing to tell me what, though.

  “Why do you look so startled?” I asked her as she left her post and began to lead the way toward the maze-like structure of rooms. The place looked smaller on the outside. It was like a labyrinth of doors and floors on the inside.

  “I’m not startled,” she said, turning around momentarily to give San and me, plus our three-man uniformed escort, the once-over.

  “Well, you could have fooled me. Looking at the sweat forming around your eyes and nose, I’d say you’re either close to a catastrophic medical incident, or you know something that you aren’t telling us. So which is it?” I asked, giving Santiago a coy smile as we followed her. We didn’t take the elevator. We took the stairs, which was strange, in my opinion.

  “Out of service?” San asked. There wasn’t any answer from the woman in front of us.

  The hotel hallway was quiet. It was eerie. I’d hear a few doors creaking open once every few seconds. Footsteps above us. Some arguing in the distance, most likely some guy disputing the bill for the services of some down-and-out girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

  “The room in question is just around the corner,” the girl said. I noticed her right hand shaking a little. Low blood sugar? Tension? Nerves?

  She knew something. I was certain. I held my hand out to the others to come to a stop. My men complied. The girl kept walking. I caught up to her. She didn’t realize that San and the uniformed officers had fallen behind on my command. I grabbed her by the arm, immediately realizing that I might have broken my bet with Shaw. Looked like the lieutenant job was mine, like it or not.

  “Ah, let go of me!” she hissed. I could see the terror in her eyes.

  “Tell me what you know! I can see it in your eyes. I can see that you’re holding back on us! Was it you who discovered the bodies?”

  The girl shook her head adamantly. I could see tears forming around her eyes. I was wrong about her face being sweaty. It was residue from her eyes. She had been crying. I wanted to know why.

  “Tell me!” I shouted.

  I noticed Santiago looking a little edgy as he watched me from afar. The rest of the men were unfazed by my outburst. They were used to my way of work. But I knew San was rooting for me to stay on the job, and if anyone knew about the strong-arm tactics I was displaying, I’d be a desk jockey by tomorrow’s clock-in.

  “I don’t know anything!” she cried, breaking down in front of me.

  “I need to know! If you don’t tell me, I’ll have you arrested for obstruction!”

  There was a moment of silence. I could tell she was attempting to collect her thoughts. It was no use, though. I had managed to break into them. She was mine now. The next thing to come out of her mouth would be the truth.

  “Some guy paid me,” she said.

  My heart thumped in my chest. It was a good sign. My gut instinct had paid off once again.

  “Paid you for what?” I asked.

  She darted her eyes from me to the men behind me and then down to the floor. I could see the guilt she was feeling. It was filling her up on the inside. It looked as if it was about to drown her. She was struggling to breathe. I held her hand and told her to calm down. She looked up at me, her eyes all wet and her lips red with flush.

  “He paid me to call him when a couple walked in. He said he was looking for an older couple. A man and a woman who looked as if they didn’t belong here. I figured it was easy money. Not many older couples walk in here. And then when I saw them, I knew they were the couple the guy was looking for. He told me himself that he was a friend of theirs. Who was I to judge? Maybe they were into threesomes. He was rather young, after all. Maybe twenty-five. I’m not one to deprive a group of people of having a good time. So I accepted his offer and called him straight away. He was here within ten minutes of my call. He left five minutes after. That’s what raised the alarm bells. He left me the cash on the counter and went. I had a gut feeling that something had gone wrong. There was just someth
ing about the way he looked at me when he walked out. Something that struck a deep fear in the pit of my stomach.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe how gullible the woman was. “You’re telling me that the alarm bells only sounded off when he left? Surely a man who was fixing to fuck his friend and his wife would show up together in the group? Not pay off some check-in girl to phone him when they showed up.”

  The girl started to sob. “It’s all my fault!” she yelled. “I went to their room and saw the carnage. The woman was dead, and so was the man. Both were cut up. I’ve never seen anything so horrific in my life.”

  “How much did he pay you?” I asked

  “Fifty bucks.”

  I patted her on the shoulder and said, “Well, at least you did the right thing in calling us. I’m going to need a description of the assailant and any video footage from your security cameras, plus the phone number he called on.”

  The woman shook her head. “The security cameras are broken. Manager took them down to protect the identity of our customers. The guy phoned me on an unlisted number.”

  I shrugged. “Perfect! I wouldn’t expect anything else. You said the door is around the corner?”

  “Yes,” she replied, sniffing a little.

  “Okay. You make your way downstairs and give the police as much information as possible. We’ll take it from here,” I said, whistling at Santiago to come with me. “Two of you uniforms, take her downstairs and get down everything she just said. And the one left behind can tag along. What’s your name?” I asked, looking at the female police officer.

  “Janet,” she replied.

  “Okay, Janet. Come with me and Santiago. The rest of you, go downstairs. I don’t want to see your faces until we have a lead on ‘Mr. Pays for Meetings With Old Friend’s and Then Kills Them.’”