Part One - Evil Times 3 - Chapter Five
May 16th - Saturday Afternoon – 1:05 p.m.
“Thanks, mom. Today was great!”
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I see by how the bag looks, you collected quite a few shells.”
“Today was the best. I found some really cool ones, and some with neat color patterns and….”
Her cell phone rang.
She looked at Stevie.
“Go on mom, answer it. We know what it means.”
She pulled her cell phone from the bottom of her beach bag that held the towels, blanket, and lotion.
“This is Baker, and it better be good.”
“Trust me, Baker, you’ll love this.”
“Hello, Ed. I can tell from the sound of your voice, I won’t. What have you got?”
“Another body, the same way, except this one has all the body parts intact.”
“How long have you been on the scene?”
“Close to sixty. First impressions; he’s been dead according to initial study, three to four hours.
“I’ll fill you in when you get back from the lake. By then I should have more information.
“You and Stevie have a good time?”
She looked over at Stevie, his head bent over the open bag of seashells, and she smiled.
“Yeah, we did. Look, we were just on our way home as it is. We should be back in thirty. Check the victim to see if he was part of the congregation from St. Peter’s."
“Can do, will do. I emailed you the address. Call me when you’re on your way here.”
Baker hung up no sooner than her cell phone rang again.
She sighed. Stevie looked at her and grinned.
“Baker.”
“J.B., Carl here.”
She’d known Carl for several years, and she stopped trying forever ago to get him to quit calling her by her initials. It just wasn’t happening. At least he had the presence of mind not to do it with anyone around.
And no one in the force called her, Janice, or Jan.
“What’s the good word, Carl?”
“I found four different matches. A partial on one; but too smeared to get in Ident, and it appears to have been enclosed in surgical gloves. One set belonged to the vic. The other two sets belong to a Mrs. Josephine Gulatta, and the last one, Marianne Olster. I have their addresses and phone numbers for you.”
“Great, Carl. Stevie and I are on our way home from the lake. I’ll stop by and pick up the report. Just leave it at the front desk for me. Stan is still working there on weekends, right?”
Stan is the weekend guard. A retired cop. Time on his hands and all that rubbish.
“He is. I’ll let him know you’ll be stopping by.”
“Thanks, Carl.”
“Oh, before I forget, the Mattingly murder. One set of prints; hers.”
They disconnected from each other, and she was about to put the key in the ignition when her phone rang again.
“When it rains, it pours, mom.”
“But not in my car. This is so frustrating. This was, supposed to be our day.”
“It still is mom. No sense in getting frustrated. Besides, it’s who you are and what you do. That’s why I’m proud of you.”
She reached out and gave Stevie a quick hug and a smile.
“Grand Central. Baker here.”
“This is Macklin again. I just received the prelim autopsy report on the two vic's from the other night. Seems the general was a busy boy before he went to heaven; or hell, after you hear this.
“The other one; nothing unusual about the cause of death other than the eyes missing. No signs of forced sex or semen stains anywhere in or around the vaginal cavity.”
“All right. So, what have you got on the general?”
“Seems as if he was into passive role-playing. Somewhat of a closet sexual deviant. Upon examination, tears and lacerations were found on his back legs, and buttocks, as well as around and inside the anus and sphincter muscle. No traces of any semen though. I’m thinking more of a penis substitution such as a dildo, or some sort of plastic phallic object was used, and I should know by who in the next few hours.
“I ran a swab over his genitals, and there were traces of dried seminal fluid, both his and his partner. Last night I sent the swab to Albany where they will do a DNA test and hope to have a confirmed report back shortly. You have to love the invention of DNA analysis.”
“The minute you find out, call me, Carl.”
While driving home, all Baker knew at this point is that someone out there was having a field day and wasn’t in a hurry to call it quits anytime soon.
Marianne’s Apartment – 1:17 p.m.
The doorbell rang twice.
Looking through the security eyehole of her front door, she smiled when she saw who it was and opened the door.
“Ben!” she exclaimed. “What a wonderful surprise. I wasn’t expecting you until Monday. Have you missed your mommy?”
He walked in abruptly, turned, and made sure the door was closed. He locked it and put the dead bolt in position.
He quickly spun around, striking out his right fist, connecting flush with Marianne’s mouth. Blood splattered across her lips as four teeth were torn away from her gums. Two others were barely holding on as she teetered backward three steps, and fell over her stepstool to the floor, the back of her head bouncing hard.
A dazed but horrified look came over her. Tears slid down her cheeks from the intense pain, and a look of shock held her from moving off the floor. Her hands, desperately trying to keep the other two teeth from being forever useless.
“Ben, why did you him me?”
“Shut the fuck up, bitch! You didn’t think I didn’t know all the other silly little games you play with other people besides me. Didn’t I tell you, no one else but me! You gave me your word. You lied! Like your playmate, the general; you are going to die.”
Marianne found the energy to crawl toward the kitchen table where her cell phone waited quietly.
He kicked her in the back of the head.
“You will never make it. But I’ve set it up where you can keep doing the general when you meet him in hell. I’m sending you to meet him right now!”
From under his plastic coat, and with hands covered by surgical gloves, he removed a Bowie knife and expertly and efficiently sliced her throat as Marianne looked up at him with a pleading, sobbing cry. “Fir gib me.”
Blood erupted in the air.
He reached down and tore away her dress until it lay limply around her waist and deftly made the crisscrossing X, across her pale white skin.
Then he walked to the table, grabbed her cell phone, but not before he opened her mouth, and sliced her tongue off and placed it next to her left hand, with another message written backward.
LIVE ON KAEPS.
Placing the cell phone in her right hand, he used one of her lifeless fingers to press 911.
Then he hurriedly left her apartment. No one would see him. He always made sure of that, except for the old woman. But who she thought she saw, and who he really is, are two entirely different stories.