The Perfect Woman

by Abundis, Jesse

  “ You make me proud, son.” The Prophet tossed the rope down. “ Climb and free yourself from the darkness.”

  Chapter 53

  Evil Is His Name

  “ What should I name my first born, mom?“ Maggie could feel the warmth of her daughter as they nestled together, laughing, being themselves. “ I want a real good strong name, how does Evan sound?” This was the internal happiness that escaped her life in the past months, happiness that shine so brightly years before, having it back was a welcome sight. “ Or what if it’s a girl, what should I name her then?”

  “ You can name her whatever you want, honey.” Maggie knew this wasn’t real, yet, it didn’t bother her, she could make this Lisa real in her mind, apart of her wished she would die here and now, so she would never leave her daughter. But the sound of someone pounding on her front door was enough to awaken her, she stood up to listen, wondering if it was just one of the meth heads banging at random doors, but the pounding grew louder with each second that passed. “ Who is it!?” Maggie screamed from the bedroom, grabbing her steel wrench that she kept under her pillow, in case for these situations. “ Go away!” She warned whoever was knocking.

  “ You have to open up,” Said a youthful voice to her. “ this is about your daughter!”

  Maggie could feel her heart wrench, flashes of the worst pounded into her mind, she jumped out of bed, stumbling as she raced over to the door. “ Who are you?” She asked as she neared the door.

  “ My name is Officer Harold Carter, ma’am.” He said to her. “ This is very important, we need you to open the door.”

  “ Just be honest officer, she‘s dead isn‘t she, they found my little girl dead!?” Maggie couldn’t hold back her fears, she knew the longer she went missing, the more the worst case scenario would be the outcome, at least now the officers could start looking for her killer.

  “ Ma’am this would be easier if you opened the door.” The Officer pleaded with her.

  “ Just tell me please.” Maggie pleaded in tears. “ I have a right to know.”

  “ Ma’am,” He paused for a second, which seemed to last for an eternity for dear old Maggie. “We found her, she’s alive.” Maggie gasped for air as she heard the news. “ We’ve called your husband and family, we’re here to drive you to her.”

  Maggie couldn’t hold back the tears of joy that ran down her face, her sweet Lisa would be back in her arms, they could finally go back to Los Angeles together. “ Thank you, thank you.” Maggie repeated as she undid the chains on the door. “ Did she ask about me?” Maggie pulled open the door, only to find not an Officer standing there, but the killer of her daughter greeting her with a smile. “ Who are you?” She said out of breath, wondering where the officer was.

  “ Gerard.” He spat out quickly, before storming into Maggie’s apartment, throwing her down onto the ground and closing the door behind them.

  Chapter 54

  SIX ANGRY MEN

  “ You’re telling me you still don’t have jack squat on Pardo?” Everyone in the room was on edge, six angry detectives all wanting to bite the heads off each other. “ How the fuck is that even possible, guy hacks the head off your fucking hooker.” Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was just life, but if someone didn’t make the peace soon, there would be blood all over the walls.

  “ You watch your God damn mouth with what you say, Briggs!” Rita slammed her fist on the table, both detective staring each other eye to eye from afar, Klecko was smack in the middle of this argument, though he had no attention in breaking the war of words, deep inside he was craving for them to blow their heads off, take off one little pain that was Rita and the other just to satisfy that itch that kept him up at night.

  “ Knock it off!” Harkness barked at them, sending the rile up dogs back home with their tails between their legs.

  “ Feels like the end of days.” Another detective Kelly Rollins said as she fanned herself with a police report.

  “ Maybe it is.” Klecko chuckled, getting the odd stares that questioned his sanity, little did they know that had been long gone days ago.

  Harkness banged his bulky arm on the table, trying to get everything back on track. “ Vazquez, you mine sharing with the group what we have so far.” One of the detectives chuckled. “ Have something to say, Wilson? “

  “ Sharing isn’t her pet peeve.” He said. “ This dame isn’t giving us anything to go on, the only people she trust is you and Klecko, so why the hell are we here?” The others began to join in the mob war.

  “ Enough!” Harkness yelled once more. “ The Captain wants us to lend our assistance, so we're going to do as told. Last I remember, you were doing nothing but scratching your ass, Wilson. So enough of this bullshit cat fights, It’s time we start going the extra mile.”

  “ Don’t see that happening.” Rollins said under her breath.

  “ Vazquez, share what you have with the group.” Harkness tone wasn’t asking, he was demanding.

  “ Denise Hillshire's death,” Klecko wonder what her relationship was with her C.I, every time she mentioned her name, or someone called her a hooker, Rita was always ready to cave their face in. “ is without a doubt Pardo’s work, but we can’t prove this without having hardcore evidence or if someone come’s forward.”

  “ Why not make someone come forward?” Rollins suggested a very unorthodox method and down right illegal, if it blew up in your face, but it helped officers jump through so many loop holes in the system.

  “ Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind,” She admitted to the group. “ but there’s no one brave enough or stupid enough to accept, even with a shattered nose.” That earned some looks around the table.

  “ So, where does that leave us?” Klecko finally spoke out.

  “ I’m running one of my contacts right now, he’s promised to bring something solid back.” She kept her words directed at the five other detectives, but refuse to look Klecko in the face.

  “ Who might that be?” Klecko pressed on.

  “ That’s none of your concern.” She fired back at him. “ He’s mine contact, not yours.” Everyone in the room stood shock at the outburst.

  Klecko wasn’t sure what brought this on, but he refused to let it get to him. “ Easy now, Vazquez, we’re all on the same team.”

  She hesitated for a moment to say anything, but she knew she was on the hot seat, if she refused to play nice, she would be out of here faster than she could blink. “ Bobby Weaving.”

  Klecko snorted as he heard the name. “ Bobby is your contact, wow.” He shook his head. “ He won’t be one for long.”

  Rita seemed ready to leap at Klecko for that remark. “ What the hell does that mean?”

  “ What he means is that Bobby is a two-face liar, he’ll say anything to make himself feel important. Someone like that, it won’t be too long until he’s found dead in a pool of his own blood.” Wilson added to the fire.

  “ I know Bobby, we’ve been running him for leads at VICE.” Rita fired back.

  “ Then maybe you guys should rethink your job career.” Rollins mocked her.

  “ What else you got?” Harkness asked her, gesturing to keep the ball rolling.

  “ Heading over the coroners right now, to get his input on the death.” Rita said.

  “ I think the cutting her head off might have killed her.” Wilson laughed under his breath.

  “ Fuck you!” Rita shouted.

  “ Anything else?” Harkness asked.

  “ That’s all I have.” Her shoulders slumped as she spoke.

  “ Wilson, Rollins,” Klecko voice awoke the room. “ You two hit the streets, find out where Hillshire went and what she did with her free time, Harkness you and Joey run down some other useful contacts that can shine some light, Vazquez and I will head over the coroners.” That analyst report didn’t intrigue him one bit, he was more interested in to find out what was crawling up Rita’s ass.

  “ No, I go alone.” She said to him.
>
  “ Pardon?” Klecko was halfway up, only to come back down.

  “ I don’t need you with me on this,” Rita wanted no part of Klecko near her right now, after his last lie, he was far from the trusting type. For all she knew he could be in Pardo's pocket, she wasn’t about to put her trust in him. “ I think your time is better spent else where.” She covered up her lie, trying to mask her true emotions. “ I can handle this one solo.”

  “ No argument there.” Klecko smiled at her. “ Alright, Captain wants this done right, lets get to work.” Klecko was the first out of the door, with Harkness right behind him. Rita was left with Wilson, Rollins and Joey.

  “ Is it me or does Klecko look out of it?” Rollins asked her colleagues.

  “ If you ask me, the bastard hasn’t been the same since that Casey Miller investigation.” Rita ignored their gossip, she had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

  Chapter 55

  Piecing Together Perfection

  The fan was blowing at full blast in Karen‘s apartment, but it did little to end this heat wave that refused to leave. Peewee laid on the living room floor as he read Cindy‘s diary, Karen was at the kitchen table, with every transcript of all the victims, going over them for the hundredth time.“ Man, these pages keep getting more depressing than the other, can’t we just skip to the end?” Karen kept her eyes on the photos of each victim, trying her best to spot the clue that was missing, something to get them closer into the mind of their killer. “ Would it be that bad?”

  “ Peewee, you can’t just skip to the end, you need to see everything, from start to finish, see where all the madness started.” Karen moved the photos around, began to set each one like a human doll. “ It’s the only way to understand the monster, see what he see’s, think what he thinks.”

  “ Do I really want to think like he thinks?” Peewee asked.

  “ Maybe, buddy, maybe.” She bit on her finger nails as her mind began to speed up, it was dissecting what it could from each photo, from all the information that had been gather, hoping to find some sort of answer to all this blood and death. Finally from the darkness, she could hear thunder. “ What if he’s collecting them.” She said out loud, grabbing the attention of Peewee.

  “ What do you mean?” He lurched his long neck to her direction.

  “ For a serial killer, this guy hunts like crazy, it’s almost none stop.” Her eyes ran down each photo once more. “ What does he get from it?

  “ He likes killing, duh!” Peewee boinked his head.

  “ Then why not move on, why stay in one place for so long, he’s not an idiot, he’s proven that much.” Karen began to tap her finger nails on the table, knowing she was on to something. “ What if…” She stopped herself, it was too far fetched, even she knew it.

  “ What if, say it!” Peewee was on the edge of his seat.

  “ What if he’s collecting them,” Peewee was still lost, she needed to be blunt. “ harvesting them,” He was still lost. “ He’s making his own meat puppet.” That was clear enough for him

  “ What the hell!” His stomach lurched at the mere theory. “ Why would you say that?” He asked.

  “You said it yourself, these women were perfect in every other way.” She said to him. “ What if that’s his big plan.”

  “ So, what he’s cutting them up and putting them in jars?” Peewee tried his best not to paint a visual picture of body parts in jars, it reminded him too much of the old Carnivals that had the human freak shows, like the baby in the jar, floating in the old murky water, looking like an old dead pig, the first time he saw that as a child he crapped his pants, literally.

  “ Maybe,” Karen said. “ I’m racking my brain over this, but what other reason would he get so close to them, if he wanted to kill them, he could do it anytime. For him this isn’t a game, or he would display the bodies for all to see, trying to make a name for himself. Instead he does everything in silence, all this is more personal to him.” Karen could see the pale look on Peewee’s face, she knew it was time to stop and change gears. “ So, you’ve seen Maggie?”

  That seem to take the edge off. “ Yeah, saw her two nights ago.”

  “ How's she holding up?” Karen put took her eyes off the photos.

  “ Don’t know how much she can take,” Peewee said to her. “ The longer this goes, the worst she gets.” No part of him wanted to visit her without bringing something new or at least an end to the whole misery. “ We have to find something, Karen, I can’t keep looking her in the eye and lying to her.”

  Karen rose from her seat to take a gander outside the kitchen window, down below the streets were packed with angry New Yorkers trying to find some relief from heat, all ready to stab one another if they got in their way. “ All we got is theories.” She said as she scanned the streets for one four eyed man that might happen to be out there, watching her every move, looking for a moment of weakness. easy now, keep your mind on the here and now. Karen thought to herself. “ But that’s the best I can offer.” She took her sights off the window and brought it back to Peewee.

  “ Well, it’s something.” He admitted. “ Collecting the girls puts a new spin on things, now we all we have to do is put a face to this cock sucker and the rest is easy.” So he hoped.

  Chapter 56

  DIFFERENT PATTERN

  Rita felt the need for a hot shower, with enough boiling water to peel the skin off, after being locked in a room with Klecko, she couldn’t help it. She’d seen corruption before, good cops taking a bribe here and there, all with the same excuse, they had family to feed, hospital bills to pay, debts that needed to be washed away and habits to feed. All wanting an easy out to their woes, even if it meant selling their souls.

  Not once did she think Klecko could be one of the fallen when she turned to her fathers old friends, she begged them to pull all the strings to allow her to work beside him. She’d seen his record, the praise he garner from his time with Boston P.D, the stories everyone would recount about him, it was impressive. Rita would sell her soul to be half the detective he was. But the lie spoken by him rang only the worst for Rita. “ Is that why you left Boston, to be somebody’s errand boy.” Rita spoke to herself in the empty elevator as it descended down to the morgue.

  She wasn’t ready to see Denise cold headless body laid out on the table. She could barely hold it together when she saw her in the park. “ Get your shit together?” Marcus Irving was the forensics expert in charge of conducting the autopsy.

  The elevator doors opened into a cold breeze, you would of thought death had just past you by , then again maybe it did, this was were all victims came to pay a last visit. She stepped out and hurried down the hallway, keeping her eyes to the floor, counting slowly with each step she took, trying her hardest to calm her nerves.

  Rita walked into Marcus butcher shop, where he was busy looking over slides of a crime scene, trying to figure out where the elephant in the room was hiding, while lying in the middle of the room was Denise body.

  Rita vision blacked out for a quick second, she covered her eyes and took a deep breath, she waited a good few seconds to compose herself before clearing her throat to let him know she was here.

  “ Oh, hi?” He looked at her, unsure who she was. “ Can I help you ?”

  “ I’m detective Rita Vazquez, I was told.”

  Before she could say more, Marcus interrupted her. “ You’re here for the headless woman.” He paused for a moment trying to remember the name on the case file. “ Denise Hillshire, yes, please come in, make yourself at home.”

  Rita felt uneasy with the dim lighting in the room, she was ready to have a panic attack. “ So, what do you have for me?” She quickly spat out the words, wanting to leave here as soon as possible.

  Marcus slapped on his rubber gloves before touching the body, the whole action made Rita’s stomach turn. “ You ok? “ Marcus asked her. “ You look pale.”

  “ Just tell me what you got.” She covered her mouth, feeli
ng her breakfast slowly crawl up her throat. She gestured to Marcus to hurry it up.

  “ Well, the body is spotless. No hair, not a fiber of dead skin from the killer, who ever did this was a pro. The cut that chopped off the head was clean, done nice and neat, no hesitation, I‘m sure as hell this was done with some sort of an electric saw, just to neatly done.” It almost seem Marcus was praising the handy work of a maniac.

  “ Time of death?” She muttered through her hand.

  “ That’s the kicker,” He flashed his yellow teeth at her. “ The time you discovered the body, she had been dead a good day before.”

  “ What?” Rita managed to say.

  “ I found frost bites on her body,” He pointed to her legs, thigh and inner thigh. “ Last I looked, we were in a heat wave, heat doesn’t do this to the body.” Rita took her hand away from her mouth as she examined the body as well.

  “ So, Pardo kills Denise, saws her head off,” She could feel the strength in her legs go from under her as she stood closer to the body, she wanted to stop talking and find a place to cry, but she needed to keep her emotions in check, she needed to act professional. “ Puts her in a freezer to keep her body persevered, then dumps it out in the park. But she wasn’t frozen when we found her.” Marcus flashed his yellow teeth as his smile grew wider. “ He defrosts her?”

  “ My thoughts exactly,” Marcus hand probe around the dead corpse. “ another reason to frost her was probably to keep her blood spilling all over the room,” Rita was fighting to stay in with each image that crept into her head. “ a body is frozen to stop the blood flow and he’s able to work his artistic hands all over her.” Rita glared angrily at the forensic who bit his tongue from saying more.

  “ Pardo has never done that before, has he?” She looked to Marcus for an answer.

  “ No he hasn’t, neither has he done this before.” He pointed down to her chest.

  “ What is that?” Rita asked.