15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  “What do you mean by ‘he doesn’t have much of an imagination’?” I asked. I could feel Santiago looking at me. And sure enough, he was. I smiled at him, but he didn’t offer one back. I guess he knew what I was up to.

  “It’s nothing!” the passenger-side police officer insisted. He wasn’t looking at us anymore. He had craned his neck and body back toward the windshield and was looking out at the oncoming traffic.

  “Oh, it’s something,” the driver said, continuing to smile as he drove the car.

  “Come on, tell us! We’d love to know!” I said. Santiago was still giving me his look that he was famous for, but I couldn’t really care less. I was bored and Christmas was ruined, so I thought I’d at least get a little fun out of this shitty holiday.

  “Well, captain shy pants over here is a budding author,” the driver said.

  I shrugged and relaxed into the back seat. The suspense wasn’t worth the payoff.

  “Oh, I thought it was something cool for a second,” I offered as I continued to sink into the back seat, attempting to ignore the blaring sirens above us.

  “But it is cool! He writes, er….”

  The driver was interrupted by the passenger, “Fuck off, Phil! You don’t need to tell every bastard south of Boston, now, do you?”

  “Come on ,Phil, tell us!” I said, my eyes still shut.

  “He writes erotic fiction!” the driver blurted out really fast, as if he was afraid his partner would catch the words before they left his mouth.

  My eyes widened, and I sat up. I looked at Santiago, who was now smiling. I guessed even Mr. Grumpy could have a little fun sometimes.

  “Do tell more,” I said. The passenger was mortified. I could tell that he wanted to be anywhere but there. But, unfortunately for him, we had around four minutes before we reached the supposed crime scene. That was plenty of time to squeeze every last morsel out of this particular development.

  “Well, he self-publishes his work on the Internet,” the driver offered.

  “Self-publish? Sounds like a promising career,” Santiago said.

  “Actually, it isn’t too bad. He pays off his mortgage every month with the money he gets from his sleaze!” the driver said.

  “So what’s so embarrassing about it, then? I say, good on you, pal. If you can make a little money writing sex books for soccer moms, then why not?” I said.

  “That’s the thing, it’s not for soccer moms,” the driver said.

  I sat there for a few seconds and tried to decipher what the guy was trying to say. And then it hit me.

  “Gay porn?” I said, a smile etched across my face.

  “It’s not porn!” the passenger said, turning back to face me. He was livid, and I was in heaven. Nothing against gay men and all that — they’re free to do what they please with each other’s willies — but a police officer for the Boston Police Department who wrote gay erotic novels and paid his bills with the proceeds deserved both praise and ribbing. Lots and lots of ribbing.

  “But aren’t you married?” Santiago asked.

  “Yeah, to a woman,” the passenger replied.

  We all sat in silence for a while, trying to digest what had been said. And then I remembered what had started all of this.

  “But you said he didn’t have much of an imagination. Surely someone who writes erotic novels that happen to be about man-on-man fun, and pays his bills with the royalties, has a pretty fucking amazing imagination – plus, he’s straight! Am I missing something?”

  There was a second or two of silence, and then the driver said something I didn’t think the erotic novelist passenger would ever live down.

  “His wife said he no imagination when it comes to man-on-man action. So she ghost-writes the sex scenes!” the driver finally let out.

  And then I released the longest, hardest laugh that I thought could ever leave this decrepit, deranged, and broken-down sack of organic mass that I call a body.

  Santiago laughed a little, too.

  But the laughing had to come to an end at some point, and that point was now. We pulled up to the supposed crime scene. A block of apartment buildings stretched into the sky a little. Seven floors. Nice enough neighbourhood. Usually nothing to worry about. But I couldn’t shake off that feeling of time wasting. This didn’t look like the scene of a crime. It looked like the outside of a nice building with Christmas lights spread across every window. If a machete-wielding psycho had been through here, we’d have gotten a lot more than a call about a bad smell.

  But duty called, and we were obligated by law to keep this town safe, even if wasn’t always from psychotic murderous simpletons.

  Six

  The crimson light was still beaming off the fixture on the wall in the cellar. The ambience of the room seemed dark, yet clear in its energy. The energy being murder. Murder and justice. The Machete Man had just gotten back from his exhibition. He was tired and bloody. Covered in human matter. He looked the part. He had the eyes of a killer. The smile of a madman.

  He was still holding his weapon. It gleamed in the low light. Red and gray. Blood and metal. The last thing they ever saw. But he was adamant that it wouldn’t be the last thing he saw. There was no way that he was going to be killed this time. Not again. He wasn’t willing to make the same mistakes he did last time. He had been too cocky. Too sure of himself. In fact, you could argue that he had lost himself. Lost himself in the madness. The justice. Seeking the death of all those pretty women. But he took some of them away with him. He had dragged them to their death, kicking and screaming. Not quite sure if he’d return. But he did. Not even Hell itself could contain him.

  “Some things just don’t die,” he let out as he sat down on a stool propped just under his work bench. He released the grip he had on his machete. It dropped onto the bench with a thud. He sat there for a long while and stared at the spatter sprayed across the blade of his weapon. He tried to decipher who the spatter belonged to. Was it the first girl he’d killed at the station, or her two other friends? In reality, it was from all three of them, but he wanted to know which droplet of blood belonged to whom. He was meticulous like that. The not knowing grated him. He needed to relive every slash of his weapon. He needed to see their faces one last time.

  So he ran his large, oafish finger across the blade. He lapped up a digit of blood and put it in his mouth. He sucked down hard. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. It tasted great to him. Like a well-deserved meal. Hot to the touch, but just right in his mouth. Melting away like butter. Drizzling like oil. Tasting like success.

  “I take it you enjoyed yourself, then?” a voice sounded off within the shadows. The Machete Man opened his eyes quickly and was met with his partner’s gaze. He was standing across the room from him, smoking a cigar. The orange tinge at the end of the cigar momentarily illuminated his partner’s face. But after one large drag on the cigar, his face disappeared as he exhaled the smoke.

  “I was just tasting what it felt like again. It’s been so long,” the Machete Man said.

  “I know what you were doing.”

  His partner stepped closer to him. The shadows no longer engulfed him. The end of the cigar still burning bright, he reached the Machete Man and put his hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s okay to be curious, my boy,” his partner said, gripping the Machete Man’s broad, muscular shoulder.

  “I wasn’t curious. Just mournful.”

  The grip on the Machete Man’s shoulder loosened as his partner contemplated what he meant.

  “Mournful about what exactly?” he asked.

  The Machete Man got up from his work bench and stretched. The sound of his neck cracking filled the air. He turned to face his partner, who looked both bemused and frightened. It wasn’t the Machete Man’s intentions to frighten his partner. But sometimes, the mere sight of himself would make his partner feel uneasy. He didn’t like being who he was. The big scary guy. The killer. But we can’t choose who we are. So the Machete Man accepted h
is role on this earth.

  “I was mournful about death. I wanted to taste it again.”

  His partner smiled at him. All the while, the basement they were in remained cold and dark, the only light emanating from the red beam on the wall. It was a horrid place. But it was their home.

  “You don’t need to be mournful, my boy. You’ll get plenty of death. So much of it, you’ll most likely get sick. Like a boy at the fun fair. He wants ice cream. He wants slush puppies. He sees the big fast rides. The spinning ones. The gyrating ones. The haunted house. The duck shoot. And at the end of it all, after a long day of fun, he feels sick. It happens to everybody, my boy. No matter how much we may enjoy something, too much of it will make us sick.”

  The Machete Man put his hand on his partner’s shoulder. He smiled. It made his partner feel uncomfortable. The psycho killer who stood in front of him wasn’t known for being tactile. This was the first time the Machete Man had ever touched somebody he wasn’t in the midst of killing.

  “I could never get sick of death. No matter how much I have of it, I’ll never grow weary of their screams.”

  His partner nodded and said, “But you’re only human.”

  The Machete Man let his partner’s shoulder go free. It was like a weight off his partner’s back. He felt relieved.

  “But you’re forgetting something,” the Machete Man said, turning his back on his partner and reaching for his weapon on the work bench. “Unlike the boy at the fair, I’ll pace myself. Slow and steady wins this race.”

  The Machete Man raised the weapon high and forcefully struck the work bench. The bladed weapon pinged and warped a little. It was stuck. The Machete Man released his grip on the weapon and watched as it vibrated a little. And then he turned to face his partner once again. A new look appeared on his partner’s face. He couldn’t make it out. It was between a look of fear and excitement.

  “Are you ready for seconds?” his partner asked.

  The Machete Man nodded and said, “I’m always hungry.”

  Seven

  As we walked up the stairwell, it became obvious that the smell that had been reported was a foul one. I could smell it from two flights down. Santiago was holding his breath, and the two uniformed officers that had escorted us to the callout on the ride-along were also attempting not to barf. But it was no use. We all nearly did when we reached the third floor. That was where we were headed, and, unfortunately for us, that was where the smell was worse.

  “Good God, I don’t think I’ve ever smelled anything like this before,” the erotic novel writing officer said as he nearly gagged in the entrance to the hallway.

  “Doesn’t smell right,” I said under my breath. It was easier that way. Easier on my stomach.

  “Something doesn’t feel right,” was all Santiago managed to say before he had to stop, fearing the worst. But luckily for him, he didn’t puke. And luckily for us, we didn’t, either.

  All four of us walked down the hallway, hands over our mouths, breathing through our sleeves. I was searching for door number eighteen. That was where the callout desk suggested the smell was coming from, according to the person who phoned it in. And the closer we got to door number eighteen, the more sure I became of that fact.

  “There it is,” Santiago huffed as he pointed to a door to our left. I clocked the number on the wooden frame and nodded. This was it. And the smell was awful.

  “Jesus, it smells like someone’s cooking shit in there!” the driver who’d gotten us there said.

  I was the one who knocked on the door. The other three men beside me had their weapons drawn. It was standard procedure when stumbling upon certain rancid smells that you couldn’t mistake for anything other than death. My fist smashed against the wooden door. The number eighteen nailed on the door bounced a little in reaction to my knock. I could hear scurrying footsteps on the inside. A few angry voices. One male. The other female.

  “You fucking answer it, woman! Can’t you see I’m busy?” I heard someone say.

  “Shove it up your ass, Larry! That’s how bad it smells anyway! Smells like shit in here!” another voice spat behind the door. I could tell that whoever had said that was walking toward the door as they spoke. Their words started out muffled, but now they were getting clearer. I was just about to tell my associates to holster their weapons, but it was too late. The door opened, and an older woman stood in front of me. At first she looked annoyed, but then her annoyance turned to fear when she spotted the weapons pointing at her.

  “Jesus Christ. The Mob is here for you, Larry!” was all she could say. I would have laughed, but she seemed dead certain that we were about to whack this Larry character, which made me suspicious as to why she would think that sort of thing at all. But before I could delve into her curious outburst, I immediately holstered my weapon, as did the other three men beside me. I heard Santiago sniggering under his breath. Asshole always found shit funny. Thought of himself as a comedian or something. But this wasn’t a time for laughing. This was a serious situation. There was a rancid smell in the air, and an old woman feared the Mob was after her. Surely it doesn’t get much more serious than that?

  “Mam, we’re the police. We were called here because of complaints about a strong smell coming from your apartment,” I said.

  The woman’s face dropped. I could see that she was relieved. We weren’t here to kill Larry after all!

  “So you’re not the Mob?” she asked, her white combed-back “old lady” hair bobbing as she spoke.

  “No, we aren’t the Mob. Why would you think we are? And, come to think of it, who’s Larry?” Santiago asked.

  “Oh, you know, you can’t be too careful these days. They’re everywhere,” the old lady said, her hair still bobbing as she spoke.

  “They?” I asked. By now, we were all feeling a little silly, cramped up in a hallway on Christmas Eve talking to an old bat that we had guns aimed at seconds before.

  “The Mob. They’re everywhere,” she said.

  “Okay,” was all I could manage.

  “And Larry is?” Santiago butted in.

  “Ah,” the old lady said, her eyes calm and her face a little more rosy. As far as I could tell, she was starting to get used to the idea of four armed men knocking on her door and interrogating her. I knew immediately that we were on a wild goose chase. There were no dead bodies here. That, or she was a stone-cold killer who wouldn’t blink twice at being questioned by scary Boston P.D. nuts like ourselves.

  “Larry is my husband. He’s the one causing the stink. Come on in and see for yourself.”

  She stepped aside and let us in. We went in single file. I was the leader. So technically if this was all a ruse, I’d be the first to get a bullet in the head. But luckily for me and my head, it wasn’t a ruse. It was Christmas fucking dinner.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I said as she led all four of us into her kitchen, where her husband was taking a severely pale, oversized turkey out of the microwave. I held my breath. It was horrible.

  “You see, Larry bought that turkey you see in his hands from a guy off the back of a truck. He bought it last week. What he didn’t bother to check was the bird was fifteen days past its ‘use by’ date a week ago, let alone today. So what does he do? He sticks the damn bird in the microwave thinking that the radiation will, and I quote ‘kill the mold off.’”

  I heard Santiago curse. I held my disappointment in.

  “At least you’re not the Mob!” the old lady said, offering me a baked cookie. I took it and turned to my team.

  “Looks like we’re back off to the precinct.”

  Eight

  “Glazed donut?” I heard Santiago ask. I turned my head a little to the left and saw my partner standing beside my desk. He was holding out a pink carton of donuts. I noticed the letter scribbled on the box. Whenever we got donuts in, we always marked down the day so there was no confusion as to whether they were fresh or not. They were brought in on Friday, the 19th of December. Si
nce it was now Wednesday the 24th, I figured I’d skip these particular treats today.

  “You have them, San,” I said, turning my attention back to the paperwork on my desk. I was sifting through case notes I had on the last time somebody went swinging a machete around Boston. And, to be quite frank, it wasn’t really helping much. All I knew was the guy died, but now, supposedly, the guy was alive, or somebody like him had taken his place. I’d called the coroner’s officer four times in the space of two hours about this Machete Man character. Nobody seemed to have a lead on where this guy was buried or whether they even had him in the first place!

  “Call me old-fashioned,” I said, staring at my computer screen. “Old-fashioned,” I heard Santiago say from across me. He was now sitting behind his desk. “But don’t you think it’s strange that a psycho killer who went around severing pretty girls’ arms and legs is buried in an unmarked grave and nobody knows where it is? Or if the bastard is in it?”

  Santiago took a sip of some coffee and a bite out of the near-week-old donut. I watched his face go a little crinkled as he chewed down on the glazed treat. He held in his disgust and leaned forward in his chair a little. I heard his weight shift, and he beckoned me to come closer, as if he was going to whisper something in my ear. So I, too, leaned in.

  “These donuts suck,” he said, leaning back into his chair.

  I felt the blood rushing to my head a little. I was angry with Santiago’s lack of enthusiasm. Something was going on. Something I didn’t understand. And that pissed me off.

  “FUCK THIS CASE AND EVERYBODY ON IT!” the voice in my head sounded off. It was back. I had to take my medication, or I’d be putting up with a narrator inside my dome for the rest of the day. And unfortunately for me, it wasn’t Morgan Freeman doing the job. So I reached into my desk drawer and pulled out my prescription. I undid the lid and popped three tabs into my cupped hand. I chucked the pill container back into the drawer and swallowed the medication dry. Tilting my head back, I closed my eyes. A wash of colors danced around me as the blackness turned into purple. Then yellow. A little orange. And then green. Suddenly, I opened my eyes in shock.