15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  RANDOM RICK got out of the car. He had different clothes on. He was back to his “homeless man” look, minus the alcohol. He knew that he couldn’t look like he usually did. They would never give him a room in a place like this if he walked in with a suit.

  Hotels were out of the question. They’d look for him in places like that.

  Sometimes you needed to blend in with the scum to go unnoticed.

  But come tomorrow, RICK wasn’t planning on doing any more blending in. He was ready for some serious action. The type of action that would shake the city to its core. But first, he needed some rest.

  Being a ruthless killer made him very sleepy.

  Thirty

  “Looks like the victim was having sex when she died.”

  I looked at the CSI guy and smiled. “And how did you come to that conclusion, exactly?”

  “The semen running down her leg is a giveaway, plus the fact that she has half her clothes ripped off and no panties on. We’ll do a rape kit test on her. But my gut feeling says that she was a willing party.”

  Santiago butted in. “Willing for her life to be ended?”

  The CSI guy gave me and San a look as we all stood over the body. We were trying not to look at the corpse all that much. There was just something about the scene that made it seem a little spooky. I know I felt that way about pretty much every murder we attended in the last couple of days, but this scene in particular was different. It could be a good sign, or, knowing our luck, it was unrelated to our guy.

  “I can’t say whether she knew who the killer was or what he was planning to do, but as far as the scene is concerned, this murder was a quick in-and-out job.”

  I couldn’t help myself. “Literally in and out.”

  It didn’t do me any favors with the CSI people. A few of them stopped what they were doing and gave me a disapproving look. I decided not to rise to the challenge and remained calm. The “old me” would have told them to get a backbone and get on with the job. But I figured that I had pissed off enough people today to last a lifetime. So diplomacy it was.

  “Anything else you can tell us?” Santiago asked.

  The crime scene guy shook his head apologetically and walked away. We immediately felt the pressure of this case tumble down upon us.

  “No fucking murder weapon. No leads. Nothing,” I said as I sat down on an office chair that was next to a computer terminal. There were at least fifteen to twenty computer terminals in the café. They were all switched off. The black screens showed a skewed reflection of our murder scene. Flashing bulbs from the CSI guys bounced off the screen, and silhouettes of people moving around warped on the monitors. I buried my head in defeat as I thought about this case.

  In all my years working as a detective, it was safe to say that I had never had a spree like this. I’d only worked a couple of spree killers. But none on this level. There were now eight victims. Seven adults. One child. An attempted murder on a ninth person. She got away. I wished they all had gotten away. Would have made this a lot easier. But unfortunately, they were killed. Stabbed. Sliced. Cut open. Drained of blood and their lives. All gone within a blink of an eye.

  I reached for my pills and pulled them out. I dropped two little round tabs of happiness into my mouth and swallowed dry. I blinked a few times.

  WITHIN A BLINK OF AN EYE.

  My voices were returning. I wasn’t listening. But they were shouting now.

  BLINK. BLINK. BLINK.

  Something caught my eye. It flashed. And then it was gone. A little orange light. There it was again. I got out of my seat as fast as was humanly possible. The little orange light blinked once more.

  “The computer terminal, over there!” I yelled, pointing to a computer that sat neatly behind the supposed murder scene. At first glance, you’d think it was off. But the screen was dimmed. It was a screen saver. Energy saving and all.

  Santiago rushed over to the terminal and rattled the mouse, moving the scroll wheel up and down.

  …..

  And then there was light!

  The screen came to life, revealing a webpage. On the right side, snapped to the corner, was a command window with what looked like computer code on it. It was a website builder. Whoever was using that computer last, was building a presence for themselves on the Web. I got closer to the computer terminal. The computer was now making some noise. The fans were going. The keyboard was lit up. We were all systems go. And then I stopped dead in my tracks. The header of the website flashed before me, ingraining itself in my vision.

  Boston Spree Killer

  We finally had something to run with. But then the tides changed. After what seemed like two days of nonstop sour luck, we got another break.

  “We have security camera footage of the murder!” I heard a voice say from behind me. I turned around. It was Officer Mullins.

  “Can you see the killer? Have we finally got a fit on our guy?” I asked, my hands trembling at my sides. Not from nerves, just good old-fashioned withdrawal.

  “Crystal clear. Couldn’t get a better shot of the killer if we asked for one.”

  Thirty-One

  “There it is, right there!” Santiago said, nearly spitting out the water he had just put in his mouth. I watched him as he screwed the bottle cap on tight. Truth was, I was trying not to look at the monitors in front of us. It’s not like I was squeamish, but when it comes to human sacrifice, I tend to get a little ill. Especially when the person being stuck in the video seemed to enjoy it.

  “Look at what she’s doing!” Mullins said, noticing the way she was egging the killer on to stick her with the knife.

  We all gasped in horror as we saw what happened next. The killer stabbed her in the neck. The expression on her face was one of delight. She smiled, for Christ’s sake! I had never seen something like this in my life before. A victim who wanted to be killed. During sex, of all things.

  “She orgasms, and then asks him to stick her with the knife,” Santiago offered as he took another sip of water.

  “I don’t know. It just doesn’t add up,” I said, feeling a little sick to my stomach. The hairs on my arms were standing on end. I swear I could feel pain all over me, extending all the way up to the tips of my individual hairs. I didn’t know if it was withdrawal from my pills – I had been taking less of them – or whether the case was making my body ache. Severe stress can cause all sorts of symptoms. One of my recurring symptoms of stress was usually waking up half buzzed in a back alley somewhere, covered in vomit. But that’s a whole other story.

  “What’s there not to get, Frank?” Mullins asked.

  “I just don’t get what this has to do with the case.”

  I watched as Santiago shrugged.

  “Our guy is involved, so it has everything to do with the case,” he said.

  I nodded and understood what he meant. But I just didn’t see this murder victim as a lead. If anything, it just confused the hell out of me even more. And I didn’t need any more confusing. I was confused enough.

  “Look, guys, I’m just saying, this could be a curve ball. We know nothing about this chick. Checked her address on her driver’s license, and it comes back as negative. She’s obviously some sort of weirdo. She liked our guy and even knew about his kills. It turned her on. She wanted to be part of it, so he obliged. Classic groupie murder case.”

  They all looked at me as if I’d just punched a baby in the face. Disgust, that’s the word for it.

  “You can’t just make assumptions like that, Frank, and you certainly can’t decide which leads to follow and who is more important. As far as we’re concerned, all victims we find dead have the exact same rights as the ones before them,” Santiago said.

  “I’m not arguing against that. I’m just saying that this particular girl is a curve ball. She won’t tell us anything about our guy. She has no permanent address. She has no friends. No phone contacts in her cell. Nothing. She is a nobody. The only thing we can tell from the footage in front of us
is that she was a horndog who enjoyed the idea of being murdered by a guy as she rode him. That to me doesn’t sound like anything other than an interesting side case for the criminal psychology guys. Wasting time on this broad won’t bring us any closer to our main target, and that is the killer…. Who, by the way, we know nothing about! So let’s concentrate on finding prints and examining why he was here and what he was doing.”

  They were all still staring at me. I decided to get away from the security terminal around the back and make my way to the killer’s computer. I quickly turned my head back, and saw San and Mullins staring at me.

  “I’ll be doing some actual police work now, if you don’t mind?” I said, sitting down at the computer, ready to examine exactly what our guy had been up to.

  Thirty-Two

  RICK walked into the halfway house, a rucksack on his back and a tired expression on his face. There was a large desk in the foyer. It looked like a homeless shelter from the inside, which it practically was. The place catered to ex-cons coming out of the penitentiary. It also housed the homeless and travelers on a small budget.

  RANDOM RICK wasn’t any of those things. He was a ruthless killer, ready to strike at any moment. He didn’t care for lives, nor did he care for the people he affected. He planned on affecting loads of people. He wanted his name to be etched on the end of their tongues for years to come. Like Jack the Ripper, he wanted to be synonymous with the city in which his dastardly deeds took place. It would take him time, but he was willing to pay that price.

  The price being patience.

  The clerk behind the desk greeted him. She was an older lady, looked like the mother hen of the establishment. She had kind eyes and an everlasting smile. The desk was surrounded by miniature owls. She must have liked to collect them. RANDOM RICK found them a little creepy, but he knew that only thing in that building that they should fear was him. So with that in mind, he approached the desk and put both his hands on it. They were weathered, with dirt under his fingernails, his hands covered by fingerless gloves.

  “Hello, I don’t supposed you have a spare room for a guy down on his luck?” he said, turning on the charm.

  The woman smiled at him and nodded. “We have rooms for everybody. Our aim is to not let a single soul freeze on the streets,” she said.

  RICK forced a smile back at the older lady. He was feeling angry about the conversation already. He knew that the woman didn’t do it out of the kindness of her heart. The price list board behind her confirmed that money talks, and homeless people sleep under a bridge. It made him feel sick. Even though he was a ruthless human being, he still felt a little compassion for the men and women who didn’t have the means to provide a roof over their heads. Not everybody was born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Most were born with a wooden one up their ass. Nobody chose where they were born, which side of the tracks they grew up on, or whether their mommy & daddy loved them.

  For that, RANDOM RICK admired the courage of those men and women. But the people who owned this halfway house did it out of greed — well, that was how RICK saw it. But he wouldn’t say anything. He might pay her a visit before he left.

  Even it out a little.

  “I’ll take a bed for the night,” RICK said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a twenty. He put it down on the counter.

  The woman looked at him and smiled once again. “We only have the big bunk bedroom left. There are eight bunk beds in total in that room. I’m afraid all the private accommodations are gone.”

  RANDOM RICK felt the blood boiling in his skull, but he calmed himself down. He’d have to settle for a bunk in a room full of strangers. In his mind, he was thinking that maybe it would be for the best. A whole room full of strangers was the perfect cover for a man on the run like himself.

  “That’s not a worry. I’ll be fine in a bunk!” he said, turning on his charm again, the charm that he once used on a daily basis. But since starting this endeavor to rid Boston of happiness, he hadn’t found himself using that trait often. He was too used to using his aggression now. In fact, he had nearly forgotten to turn it off when he walked into the halfway house. Luckily for him, an alarm bell rang off in his head, warning him that he was about to blow the whole thing. So he had stuck on a fake smile, the sort of smile that hurt the ends of your teeth and dug deep dimples into your cheeks, making them feel numb. He was the picture of politeness. A changed man, even. But only until the sun rose that next day. That’s when the fun really began.

  Ten more random doors. One street. Maximum impact. It was time that they tried that little bit harder to catch him. He was starting to feel bored by the whole thing.

  “Here’s six dollars in change, and please enjoy your stay. Room number 8. It’s around the corner, just behind me. We have a free meal in an hour or so. Chicken soup. Good for the soul.”

  RICK suffered another smile and bid the woman farewell as he followed the signs on the walls toward his room.

  Chicken soup wouldn’t do anything for his tar-black soul.

  Thirty-Three

  “There’s a video on the website of the family-of-four murder. He caught it on tape and uploaded it to his blog,” I said, sifting through the root folder of the website builder.

  The website was incomplete. It looked as if he hadn’t published the changes he made to it when he was in the café. I guess the girl had distracted him. On the security camera footage, I saw her sneak up behind him. It looked as if it startled him, but she then went on to flirt with the guy. They ended up having sex right next to his terminal. He then planted the blade in her neck and hightailed it out of here. In his haste, he had left a few vital clues. He left us access to his website and some prints in the surrounding area of his PC. We dusted for prints on the mouse, keyboard, and the power buttons on the monitor and the computer tower. We came up trumps on all of those spots. Our CSI guys went off to process them. We could have a hit in a few hours. It sometimes took that long, especially if we had to use out-of-state databases to search for matches.

  But for me, I found that the computer held more than met the eye. I just had a gut feeling we were missing something, so I called in an associate of mine. He was a computer technician. He was well served in the field of hacking and database manipulation. He was a bit of a nerd, but by God was he forward. My sort of guy.

  “Lathan is here,” somebody said behind me. I ignored it and continued to trawl through the data files on the website builder. I found a couple of blog posts, and they read like some sort of confessional. I had no feelings toward our killer. In most cases, the cops would discover some sort of deep-rooted respect for whoever they were chasing. Not admiration, which would be unprofessional. But a respect. A respect for the art of being unhinged and ready to kill on command. Not many men would admit to having those sorts of feelings toward a serial killer, but I would.

  There has to be some sort of respect for your prey. In the wild, an animal will always be wary of its enemy. You need to respect it to be able to defeat it. Confidence won’t do you any favors in a fight for your life.

  Fear, on the other hand may set you free from the jaws of death.

  “Frank, my boy!” I heard a familiar voice say as somebody grabbed my shoulder. I swiveled around in my office chair and gave the man I saw a smile. It was my associate and longtime drinking buddy, Lathan Girds.

  “Man, you look more beat than a cotton picker in the 1800s,” Lathan said.

  I told you the guy was forward. Most of the stuff that found its way out of his mouth could be construed as racist. I wasn’t one to partake in such offbeat comments, but who was I to tell another man he couldn’t? Freedom of speech and all.

  “This case has been running me and the boys into the ground. As you can tell by the serious amount of blood on the floor, this little scene has become a break. But I need your help, Lathan. This computer here holds secrets. I need to know what they are.”

  Lathan looked around and then looked back at me. The body of the
girl had been taken away by the morgue guys. I could see the disappointment on his face.

  “You wanted to see some skin, did you?” I asked.

  “A body would have been nice. Believe it or not, in the world of computer science, we rarely see dead bodies lying around. I was intrigued.”

  I turned to face the computer and started searching for a video file. I pressed “play” and turned the volume on the speakers up.

  “You want skin? Here’s some skin,” I said.

  I watched as Lathan’s face grew paler by the second. After a few more minutes, he turned away and refused to look.

  “Turn it off, man! I don’t want to see that.”

  I paused the video and then turned to face him, grabbing him by the wrist. “Listen here, Lathan. We’re paying you to do a job. My name is on the line when I contract somebody. I don’t want any damn mistakes. If you can’t stick this sort of job out, then leave. You’ll see plenty of worse things on this case. If you don’t have the stomach to handle it, then tell me now.”

  Lathan nodded his head and wiped his mouth. “I’ll be fine. Just let me help. Anybody who does that to a little girl deserves to be caught.”

  So I let him be. Lathan got to work on the computer. He was only on the thing for ten minutes before he busted the case wide open.

  Thirty-Four

  Sandra Austin stood outside the cyber café on Avenue Street. She had just gotten out of her news van. Her new cameraman, Jimmy Sway, was setting up the tripod. They called him “Sway” because he was always drunk, or seemed it. But in actual fact, he’d been sober for fifteen years. It was more of a constant rib than a nickname. Irony played a big part in nicknames, so Sway had no issues with being called such names. He found it to be comforting, that people would call him by a name that stood for everything he’d accomplished after being a no-good drunk for so long.