15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  He was just about to knock on a random door when he saw a sign from the heavens. He saw a door that was painted black. It looked as if it was well looked after compared to the other doors. The excitement in RICK returned. He’d found his kill. He was ready to strike.

  RICK quickly jogged down the hallway toward the black door. It sat at the end, all by itself. In total, there were about ten doors on either side of the hallway. The projects building was a large one. He was impressed by how many lives were cramped up in this particular sardine can. He thought to himself about knocking on every door and killing every person in the building, but he knew that it would be risky. Somebody would fight back. So he’d have to settle for the black door. He’d have to settle for whoever was behind it.

  He reached the door and breathed in a few deep breaths. He noticed that the spyhole on the door was broken, which was a good sign. Nobody would answer the door for him dressed like that. He knew he wouldn’t be willing to open his door to a crackhead. But maybe things were different around here. Maybe crackheads were the least of people’s worries. He knew that whoever was behind that door had bigger problems than panhandlers.

  RICK knocked on the big black door. He slowly took his knife out. He could hear somebody running up to the door. The person sounded young. RICK had never killed a kid before. He felt his heart thump in his chest. He was nervous about this one. But nonetheless, the job needed to be done. No matter who was behind the door, they wouldn’t be breathing after this.

  The door opened. He braced himself. He saw the fear in her eyes. She screamed. He struck.

  Sixteen

  “So we have nothing, then?” Shaw asked as he sat behind his desk, twiddling his thumbs.

  The mayor had joined us once again. This time there was no talk about making me a desk jockey. The talk was all about the spree that seemed to be taking place around the city. It caught us all off guard. Spree killings were rare, but this particular spree seemed to be coordinated. That in in itself made it even rarer. You don’t tend to get many murder sprees that have a pattern. They are usually heat of the moment. But to my thinking, this spree killer was meticulous. He seemed to have a grasp on things. I couldn’t work out if his victims were randomly chosen or if he had a list and was crossing off victims one by one.

  But there was one thing that stuck out in our minds. The first victims. The governor-to-be, Roger Bulscelli, and his wife Mandy.

  Those two deaths on their own would be enough to convince us that something untoward was going on. But I personally think they were killed randomly. I don’t think the killer knew who they were. But Shaw, on the other hand, disagreed with me.

  “I just don’t see it. You can’t possibly think that Mandy and Roger were killed randomly. No one just kills the governor-elect by accident. It doesn’t happen. When a politician dies, it’s because somebody wanted them dead. Not because of coincidence. It just doesn’t happen,” Shaw rambled.

  I noticed the mayor agreeing with the chief of police.

  “Look, I’m not saying I have the answers here, but I think we should concentrate on all the victims, not just the governor-elect and his wife,” I said, cracking my fingers under pressure.

  I saw Shaw’s face go red. He didn’t like my suggestion. “Now, hold on a damn minute,” he blurted out, standing up and pouring himself a drink. “We can’t just dismiss the murder of a public official as an act of random homicide until we confirm it. I know you’re trying to be impartial and fair, Frank, but, like it or not, this case will turn into a shit storm. We have an official dead. We have his beautiful fundraising wife also dead. We have a mother of two dead. I see a pattern here.”

  I looked at San and then back at the mayor and Shaw, who were both giving us their serious faces. The mayor hadn’t spoken yet. He was the type of guy to just let Shaw rant and rave while he observed.

  “What pattern are you seeing exactly?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’d love to know what Frank and I are missing,” Santiago butted in.

  The tension in the room grew ever tighter.

  “We have two women dead. We have a man dead. I’d say the killer hates women,” Shaw said.

  I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. I knew it wasn’t helping me in my quest to not get the lieutenant job, but I was under a lot of stress. Watching my boss trying to play detective was funny. Sure, he was once a detective, ten years back, but things have changed. He couldn’t detect a damn Internet troll, let alone an intricate mass killer. Nothing against the guy, but he’s just a little behind the times. Hence the “killer kills women” angle he’s playing. That would make sense in the ’70s or even the ’80s, but I’m afraid the gender of the victim isn’t much help these days. It’s usually something to do with the views that the victim holds or even their race.

  Believe it or not, race is still a big deal.

  “What makes you think the killer has something against women?” Santiago asked.

  Shaw took another sip of his whiskey. His office was small and smelled of alcohol as it was. The fact that he was drinking a strong malt made the place smell like an Irish pub. As I said, Shaw was stuck in the past. You couldn’t drink on duty anymore. But he got away with it somehow. But when I did it, all hell broke loose.

  The double standards of the people in charge.

  “The guy kills two women and one man, and you’re not seeing that as a pattern?” Shaw said.

  “Hold on a sec!” I said, getting up to stretch my legs. We’d been sitting and talking for thirty minutes. Call it a crisis meeting, if you will. “You just referred to the killer as a ‘he.’ Is there any factual evidence to support your claim, other than the fact that two women are dead, and that’s proof enough to assume we are looking for a man and not a woman?” I said, clicking my neck and sitting back down. San had a look of glee on his face. He liked it when I became all lawyer-like and started thinking rationally. Made a change from my usual self.

  “Why wouldn’t it not be a man?” Shaw asked, taking another sip.

  “Because it could be a woman!” I said.

  It was no use. We all began to bicker about the particulars of this case. The debate was going just fine when somebody decided to throw a wrench in the works.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Shaw said, sitting back down. He had gotten up to pace the room as he was listening to all of us argue about the case.

  A man came through the door. He was holding a clipboard and wore a uniform.

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said.

  Shaw butted in. “Get on with it — we’re busy arguing!” he snapped.

  The officer looked a little overwhelmed but then informed us that there had been another murder. This time down in Charlestown.

  “Four dead. Three adults and an eight-year-old girl.”

  My heart sank.

  Shaw looked close to suicide at receiving the news.

  San shed yet another tear, his second of the day. I was wondering what was up with his emotions, but decided it was not the time or place to ask.

  “Linked to our case?” I finally asked.

  The officer nodded solemnly. “Appears so, but we’d obviously need to investigate further. Murder weapon was a knife. All of the victims were stabbed repeatedly.”

  Seventeen

  To end the day’s events, RANDOM RICK decided to bestow his wisdom upon the world once again. He logged into his terminal at the cyber café. He was careful as to not draw too much attention to himself. Days before he decided to set his spree in motion, he did a little surveillance on the building. He realized that in total, three people worked there every day, two women in the mornings and a dude he didn’t really care for in the evenings. He mapped out their working hours and made sure that he never showed up twice when either the women or the man were working. He figured that if he kept to his routine of ducking and diving the workers at the café, then there was no reason for them to grow suspicious of his daily visits.

/>   He was aware that he needed to keep a low profile. But he was also aware that he needed the world to know about his deeds. So he had to weigh the two dilemmas on a metaphorical scale. Both problems weighed on him heavily, but at the end of the day, he knew that his plan was nearly foolproof. The only way he would get caught out at the Internet café was if they spotted the Web traffic he was generating through their servers. He was a clever guy. He knew that the police would find his website and blog, and put two and two together. It was only a matter of time. And when they did, they would do an IP search on where the website was being hosted from. He was careful to make sure that he used a European server service to host his site. As for the login details and the position from which the website was updated, it wouldn’t take much to figure out that it was being run from downtown Boston. But he had a diversion for the police.

  When he was scouting the place out before he started his spree, he knew that he would need to remain anonymous and that the location he was updating his website from would need to be kept secret. There were plenty of ways to do such a thing, but the easiest way for him to do so was with a little black box that he attached to the café’s exchange box. Within that little black box was a device that pinged the phone line through which the cyber café got its Internet service. The device would triangulate the IP address of the building and mask it in the eventuality that somebody would go looking for the IP address from which RANDOM RICK posted pictures and essays on his murders.

  He knew that they would bypass the little black box and find the Internet café. But by then it would be too late, and he would be glad to see the police. In fact, it was all part of the plan. He wanted to be caught. Just not right now.

  Right now, RANDOM RICK needed more time to work.

  More time to make the streets of Boston run red with blood.

  More time to kill.

  RICK typed in his login credentials and moved on to updating his website. The analytics section of his website builder allowed him to see how many hits his site had gotten. Upon investigating the tab, his mouth creased into a smile and his heart fluttered in his chest. The number that flashed on the screen was one he didn’t expect. But he appreciated it nonetheless.

  Unique visitors:

  2733

  It was far from setting the world on fire, but RANDOM RICK knew those numbers would grow exponentially in the next couple of days.

  Especially with what he was about to upload to the website.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and fished for his memory stick. By then he’d obviously bathed and gotten into new clothes. He wasn’t in his homeless getup anymore. That would draw too much attention, attention that wasn’t needed at that moment. He was only interested in getting the attention of his adoring public. They didn’t know it yet, but they would crave frequent updates on his website. They would lust over more pictures of his victims. They would contact him through email and tell him what a wonderful inspiration he was to the free thinkers of this planet.

  That was the reaction he envisioned on a nightly basis before his weary head would hit his pillow. He would dream vivid dreams of accomplishing such a feat. But now that it was becoming a reality, it still felt as hollow as a dream. RICK thought that maybe the hollow feeling he was experiencing would disappear, but he’d need to kill many more people before that hole was filled.

  The memory stick he pulled out of his jacket pocket was now attached to the USB port on the Dell computer that sat in front of him. A loading bar popped up on the screen. RICK gave his surroundings once last glance. The café was empty. The young skater dude who did the late shifts was reading a Walking Dead comic book behind the counter. RANDOM RICK put his earbuds in and turned up the volume.

  He was about to watch the video footage that he’d taken of himself killing the family of four. Unbeknownst to them, when they were being stabbed to death, he had a mini camera attached to his breast pocket.

  Homeless men don’t tend to have cameras attached to their person. But that was what made it so beautiful to him. They didn’t even know it, but he was about to make them famous.

  He watched with delight as he saw the point-of-view camera shot of him nailing the victims with blow after blow. The video quality was impeccable. The sound quality could be better, but you could hear them choking on their blood just fine. So it was a win-win. RANDOM RICK felt good about the video footage. He wasn’t one to edit out anything. He felt the world deserved the unbridled version of his spree. He planned on capturing more kills, but he thought that he should only upload the best ones online.

  He pondered for a second or two whether he should cut out the footage of him cutting the little girl’s throat. Even for a cold-blooded man like himself, he found it hard to watch. But before he could even contemplate it at length, he found his fingers making his mind up for him.

  He pressed “enter.” The screen flashed.

  Uploading video file “family of four get brutalized by RANDOM RICK”.

  Another smile crept across his face.

  “Upload complete,” he uttered under his breath as he prepared to log off and rest up for the evening. His work for the day was done. Tomorrow brought a whole new day of opportunity and death.

  Eighteen

  San and I pulled into the Charlestown projects building. The area we were in was a little rough around the edges, but the teenager in me had enjoyed many good nights around these parts back in the day.

  Santiago put the car in park and sighed loudly. He was still sulking over something. The thing was, he was reluctant to tell me what was wrong. I had all the time in the world for him. He was a good man, a man of great character and impeccable judgment. Yet I found it hard to break through his emotional barriers. I guess I was the same, though. He never did me the courtesy of attempting to break through my barriers, so I guess I understood his apprehensiveness over me attempting to do so to him.

  “Lighten up, Santiago. It’s just another murder scene. I’m sure this one won’t be as bad as we think,” I said, getting out of the car. I slammed the Capri’s passenger-side door shut and listened to the echo reverberate off the cold Boston night sky. We were coming to the end of a long day. It was the first time we’d ever been called to three homicide scenes in twenty-two hours or less. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t half intrigued to see where this case was going. But I’d also be lying if I said I was enjoying myself. I felt just as bad as San, although I was holding up a lot better than he was. At least on the surface. Deep down, my soul was rattled and my core was being corroded by the evils I had witnessed.

  It was only going to get worse from here.

  “I think I’ll stay in the car,” I heard Santiago say as he wound up my window.

  I stood there, dumbfounded by his statement. Detectives don’t “stay in the car.” They get out and face the music. In all my years, I had never seen Santiago so rattled.

  “You can’t stay in the fucking car. We have a case. Get off your damn behind and get to work, Detective!” I snapped. That was the first time in a very long time that I’d shouted at my partner. But on that day, he was acting like a prima donna. And I didn’t have the patience to tolerate his inept behavior. Plus, I was the lead detective. I had rank over him. Not that it had stopped him in the past. That was why I was surprised when he got out of the car without saying another word. It was the first time he’d ever obeyed orders that I had given him without as much as a peep.

  I guess he was worse than I thought. But I didn’t bother consoling him. We had three adults dead. And one child dead. A mother, a father, and an older brother. Plus an eight-year-old girl. Santiago’s mood would have to wait. Justice was in the cards. I didn’t have time to see to my partner’s whims.

  “Get your damn head in the game,” I said as we walked into the project building. There was a uniformed policeman on the door. He nodded us in. We made our way up the stairs.

  “Where my head’s at is of no concern to you, Frank.”

 
I stopped on the staircase and turned to face San, who was a few steps behind me, staring at the floor as he walked. I put my hand out and nudged his chest. If I had done it any harder, he would have tripped and fallen down the stairs.

  “Hey! Dipshit, watch it!” he said as he caught his balance. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pushed him against the wall.

  “Now listen here, San!” I said as I gritted my teeth when I spoke. “You are going to cost us this damn case if you carry on like this. This isn’t a game, Santiago. Up those stairs, a little girl and her family are dead. It’s up to us to bring them the justice they deserve. It’s also down to us to bring justice to Roger and Mandy Bulscelli and Serena Brody.”

  Santiago pushed me off him and brushed his collar off as he straightened himself out. I could see the anger flowing through him. I was ready to defend myself if need be. As I said earlier, he and I would fight on occasion. Like brothers, it was expected that we’d have a few scraps once every blue moon.

  “You don’t know the half of it, Frank! Just let me be, and let’s get this over and done with.”

  “You don’t just get cases over and done with, San! You work them. Sometimes to the bone. Until there’s nothing left but dust. And then you pick yourself back up, brushing the blood and sweat off you. Ready to work yourself to dust once again, until you get your man. Until the streets are safe. And then the victims can rest.”

  I saw the glint in San’s eyes. I could see he was emotional. “And then what, Frank? We move onto the next case and work ourselves stupid just so another killer can take that little bit more of us away with him? I don’t know how much you have left, Frank. But I’m nearly done. I don’t have an ounce left to give. That was taken away from me. If I could give more, I would. But it’s out of my hands.”

  I got closer to him and grabbed his wrist. I gripped it gently, yet firm. “What are you talking about? What’s out of your hands?”