Atropos

Atropos

Royce Wilson

Copyright © 2011 by Royce Wilson

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

Smashwords Edition: May 2011

Contents

Tampa, Florida

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Preview: The Cameo

Tampa, Florida

Tuesday, March 23rd

One thirty-five in the Morning

He knew the thoughts would come, and he was right. Along with the images of how she might have died, and the sounds of death—the screams, the shallow, labored fight for air, followed by her final gasps of breath, the sounds were there. Perhaps the most haunting sound in his head was the sound of blood, in an otherwise silent room, dripping like a leaky faucet into a growing puddle—the sounds and the images came. They always came. His therapist said that he was too empathetic. He could see the look of ineffable horror that he knew was on her face as she fought for her life, and the fear that choked her at the moment she realized that what she was feeling was the life leaving her body, and she knew she would die alone.

He could hear her pleading for her attacker to stop, and then, in an ironic twist, pleading again for him to call for help. Sometimes, like tonight, he could hear her call out for her mother or father, like a child, to stop the pain, to stop the madness, to save her from the evil falling upon her, and sending her to the dark chasm that was beginning to swallow her. He always believed that the human body would go into a state of shock, confusion, and denial at those moments when the incomprehensible was happening—when they were being murdered. He wondered if her attacker sneered at her pleas, deriving some sick pleasure from her dying gasps and helplessness, or if he got a thrill from taunting her, knowing that he was both the instrument of her nightmare, and her only hope.

Totally enveloped in his thoughts and the darkness of the night, which had only been interrupted by the flash of the overhead streetlamps bouncing across his windshield as he drove beneath them, he jumped when his cell phone rang. He could see on the screen that it was his partner, Marti Tompkins.

Hey, Marti. You out there yet?

Yeah, I just got here. Forensics is heading into the apartment now. I’m going to start rounding up witnesses, if there are any, and see what I can find out before we get too far into this. The Patrol Officer that found the body in the apartment said something about a neighbor maybe seeing or hearing something, but that’s not clear at this point, but I’ll track ‘em down and see who saw, or heard, what.

Great, I’ll see you in a few. I’m about ten minutes away.

Before putting his phone back in its pouch, he placed it on vibrate. He knew from experience that he would be getting several calls as the investigation unfolded. The brass always wanted to know what was going on, and they were not shy about calling—even if it interrupted an investigation.

As he continued his drive to the scene, he was again besieged by the images and sounds that came to him unbidden, and he tried to block them out by wondering to himself how else she might have died. Did she come home and surprise a burglar? Was it a rape that she fought back on that escalated to murder? He knew the chances were greatest that it was neither. If statistics had any meaning, he knew the odds were that it was a domestic—boyfriend killing girlfriend; husband killing wife—odds were it was something like that, but he always tried to anticipate what he would find when he arrived at the scene, just in case it was like the images he fought to suppress. He liked to be prepared.

The only information that Dispatch had when they called him at home was that a female, who appeared to be shot, was dead in her apartment, and there was no sign of a weapon near the body, so a self-inflicted gunshot was ruled out at the preliminary stage of the investigation. The one thing he was certain of was that the victim had been murdered, or else he and his team would not have been called out. He also surmised that his Lieutenant believed that this death might be linked to the other two homicides that he had been working on for the past two weeks, or else Dispatch would have been told to call a different team from Homicide. If his Lieutenant was right and the three deaths were connected, then it had just become a serial murder investigation.

As he pulled into the parking lot of the apartment complex, he flipped the toggle switch on the underside of his dashboard to quickly flash his blue and red lights so the officers working the outside perimeter would know he was a detective and not a reporter. Some members of the press purposely had vehicles that looked a lot like those driven by detectives in the hopes that they would be waived through a crime scene barrier by an officer not paying close enough attention to who was driving up, giving them an inside, close-up look at the crime scene. A reporter’s dream.

Are you the one taking names? Scott asked, lowering his window to speak to the officer standing by the entranceway.

That’d be me, the man in uniform answered. How’ve you been Scotty?

Good, man, how ‘bout you? Scott replied, feigning a look of recognition. He always hated it when someone knew his name and he couldn’t remember theirs. He also hated it when someone called him Scotty, but he let it go. He was used to it by now.

Can’t complain. What’s your unit number? the officer asked as he wrote Scott’s name and then number in the crime scene log.

Six-O-Eight, he answered.

Scott recognized the officer, but couldn’t remember from where, and certainly could not recall his name. He knew that he had probably seen him around the office, maybe at another crime scene, but couldn’t be sure. Besides, there were too many patrolmen to keep up with now, not at all like when Scott started and there were less than three hundred in the entire police department, before the big hiring boom in the nineties when the department swelled to nearly a thousand in a little under a decade. The officer looked tired, and he leaned against Scott’s car as he wrote. His grey temples made him look like he could have retired some years ago, but Scott figured that he was probably waiting for his pension percentage to get high enough that he could leave and not have to get another job somewhere else as a security guard or night watchman, or teaching criminology classes at a community college.

Which apartment is it? Scott asked.

Top one on the left, number twenty-four-B, the officer answered, gesturing with his extended thumb over his shoulder. I’ve got your arrival time as one thirty-five. I have to warn you, Scotty. It’s a gruesome scene.

Thanks, Scott answered distantly, staring up at the apartment, as the uniformed officer with the graying temples, walking like he had a hurting hip, lifted the yellow plastic tape with the words POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS running its length, to allow Scott to drive underneath. One end of the tape was wrapped around a sabal palm tree, with lush, green fronds spreading outward from its stubby, rough-textured trunk, which was planted in the center of the lawn area of the apartment building, and the other end of the tape was wrapped around the spotlight on the driver’s door of the patrolman’s car. On the other side of the officer’s car, a second piece of crime scene tape was wound around the passenger’s door side mirror, with its other end tied about thirty feet away from the car to a bank of galvanized metal mailboxes that Scott had seen in almost every apartment complex he had been in over the course of his career. The two sections of crime scene tape stretched far enough across the parking lot to keep the press, onlookers and residents from wandering too close to the scene.

Were you one of the first responders on the scene, he asked the patrolman.

Yeah, I was the one that found the body. I left everything like I found it, though. Didn’t move or touch anything.

I spoke to Detective Tompkins on my way over here, and she said something about a neighbor possibly seeing or hearing something. Do you know anything about that? Scott asked.

Yeah, it was her downstairs neighbor who called it in. Said he saw her door open while he was out walking his dog. I think your partner, the female detective, is talking to him now.

Great. Thanks. I’ll get back with you after I go inside if I need any more information.

Taking his notebook from his rear pocket, he cradled his flashlight in his left armpit and wrote his arrival time on the first page while he walked toward the stairs leading up to apartment twenty-four B. Even though the officer at the front of the building kept a running log with everyone’s name and number that entered the crime scene, along with the times of their comings and goings, Scott liked to have his own records of his arrival and departure times for himself. He then wrote apartment 24-B, Hidden River Apartments, signal five, on the same page. He thought for a second about why he always wrote signal five in his notebook, since homicides were the only type of calls he ever worked, and he started to scratch through it, but decided against it. While he wrote, he held his paper coffee cup clenched between his teeth until he returned his notebook to his pocket, freeing up his non-flashlight hand. Night scenes always reminded him that in a perfect world, every detective would have three hands.

The weather was seasonably cool outside, and Scott could see his breath when he exhaled. His friends up north always called him during the winter months and asked if he was going to the beach. Every northerner, it seemed to him, assumed the weather in Tampa was always above eighty degrees, sunny, and beach weather. In reality, Scott looked forward to the months of November, December, March, and April, since they were the only months that gave real relief from the summer’s sweltering heat without being too cold, like January and February, months in which Scott would have to wear a sweater, an overcoat, and often a pair of gloves on outdoor scenes. He would always gauge the approaching end of winter by when the Yankees baseball team left their spring training facility at Legends Field on Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa at the beginning of April, and began the regular baseball season. For him, it signaled that there were but a couple of weeks left to enjoy the cooler temperatures before they skyrocketed into the eighties and then into the upper nineties.

As he walked up the concrete steps to the second floor apartment, he kept the beam of his flashlight fixed on the steps in front of him, searching for any kind of evidence; a drop of blood, a hair, a foot print, anything. He saw none. He was also cautious not to touch the black, wrought iron handrails, as they might have to be dusted for prints or swabbed for DNA. At the top of the stairs, a bamboo wind chime swung softly with the breeze, making a hollow clanking sound as the flat wood disc suspended in its center raked against the long tubes strung by wires from the top disc.

We got this one solved yet? he called out to no one in particular as he stuck his head through the open doorway leading into the apartment.

Hey, Scott, we’re back here. Wait there ‘till I can show you where it’s safe to step.

He recognized the voice as Phil Miles, one of the Crime Scene Investigators from Forensics. Usually they arrived at the scene after the detectives, but night scenes, like this one, were different. The Crime Scene Investigators were staffed around the clock and had only to jump in their van and drive to the crime scene. Scott, on the other hand, like all of the Homicide detectives, worked the day shift, Monday through Friday, and for night scenes, had to wake up, shave, take a quick shower, and get to the scene…after he got his coffee.

The front door of the apartment opened up into the living room. The floor was completely carpeted, except for a three-foot wide path of ceramic tile that separated the carpet, creating a walkway from the hallway to the front door. Scott had not seen that in any other apartments or houses, but assumed the apartment owners had done it to keep the wear and tear on the carpet to a minimum. The carpet was a thick-piled beige, and Scott could see the yellow, tent-shaped plastic evidence markers, standing about six inches high, placed along the living room floor, indicating that Forensics had discovered a piece of evidence at that location. Next to the yellow marker with the number one printed on it, he could see pieces of metal in the plush fabric of the carpet. He turned the beam of his flashlight on the doorjamb where fresh wood splinters stuck out around the screw holes where a security chain had once been. He shifted the beam of light back to the metal pieces in the carpet, and then back to the locking mechanism on the door. He noticed that the deadbolt was still receded into the door. The doorknob was broken, and appeared to be the point where the intruder made contact with the door when kicking it in. He then stepped back to look at the face of the door. Seeing the peephole, he looked through it to confirm that it was in working order.

Door was kicked in…probably after she cracked it open to see who was outside, Miles said as he stepped from the hallway into the living room, seeing what Scott was looking at. Walk around the south side of the room to get over here. We’ve already gone over that area, and there’s nothing of interest over there. The body’s back here in the bedroom.

More out of habit than of need, Scott shined the beam of his flashlight along the path Miles pointed out for him to walk along to get from the front door across the living room without stepping on any evidence. The apartment was well lit, at least in the living room, and was clean and well decorated. An inexpensive chandelier-style light was suspended from the ceiling above the round dining table with four chairs placed around it. All four chairs were pushed in place under the table, and he knew that no one had been sitting at the table before the murder occurred. Scott could see more yellow evidence markers, about two feet from the pieces of metal, and next to them were small, bright red drops on the tile walkway that led from the hall into the living room. Judging by the brightness of the red, he knew that the blood had not fallen there more than a couple of hours earlier. He made a mental note to get back to those once he was briefed on the scene. He could see a purse on the floor in front of the couch. Some of the contents were lying in front of it, but it did not look like a purse that had been gone through after a murder. In scenes where robbery was a motive, the entire contents were usually dumped out and whatever the suspect was going to take was simply grabbed. But the contents were not all dumped from this purse, just some of them. He would get back to that as well.

This is a weird one, Miles said, as the two stepped into the dark bedroom. Want the light on?

Not yet. I want to look at it just like the killer saw it. Did we turn any of the other lights on in the living room, or were they already on?

Miles furled his eyebrows and gave him a ‘you’ve got to be joking’ look and shook his head. I can’t speak for the first officers on the scene, but I didn’t touch any of them after I got here. This is exactly how the scene looked when I arrived.

Scott stood in the doorway of the bedroom, taking in the scene. He started to say something to Miles to let him know that he didn’t mean it the way he obviously took it, but decided against it. Miles had thick skin and would get over any feelings of an affront that he might have had. He shifted his focus back to the scene in the bedroom.

The victim was a white female, and in the ambient light that crept into the bedroom from the living room, it appeared that she was in her bedclothes. Around her neck was a dark, black, sticky-looking substance. Scott knew that once they turned the lights on, the black, sticky substance would be crimson. He had seen enough blood at night to know that. He could see the same black, sticky-looking substance radiating outward from the body, covering the mattress, and knew it was pooling blood. It was that same blood that gave the room the metallic, copper-like smell that permeated the air. Whenever an acquaintance found out what he did for a living and wanted the gruesome details, he would try to put them off and change the subject by describing the smell, which was the worst part of the job, other than the physical suffering that he had to witness and try to comprehend. Other than decomposing flesh, the blood-filled air was the worst odor. The blood always gave the air the unforgettable smell of death that any investigator would recognize.

Want the light on yet? Miles asked.

In a sec, Scott answered. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness and he continued to scan the room. He could see something by the lamp on the night table. Is that a gun?

Yeah, Miles said. We haven’t looked at anything closely in here yet, so I can’t tell you anything about it. We were looking outside for shoe prints, and came inside just a few minutes before you got here. We’ve been in the dark in this room the whole time.

Satisfied with what he had seen so far, Scott turned his flashlight on, turning it first to the woman on the bed with the black sticky substance on her neck. Her throat had been cut, but he didn’t need the light to tell him that. Her carotid artery had been severed, and there were red stains from arterial spurts, forming a high arc along the wall by the bed, which told him that the murder had occurred right there. The body had not been moved from one room to this one post mortem. If it had been, the arterial bloodstains would have been elsewhere; along the hallway walls, the couch in the living room, wherever her throat had been cut.

I thought the Comm Center said she had been shot.

That’s what the first officer on the scene thought, with all the blood and the gun on the night stand, Miles answered.

Scott’s light now drifted to the gun on the night table. Is it loaded?

I’m not sure, but I hope there are fingerprints on it, Miles answered, as he crouched down and shined his flashlight on the gun.

There probably are, Scott answered matter-of-factly. But I’ll bet that they’re going to be hers. I’ll bet the gun is registered either to her, or her father. Whoever did this had no interest in the gun. If they handled it because they wanted to steal it, it would be gone. If they touched it to use it on her, she would be shot instead of stabbed. There would be no other reason for the killer to touch the gun, so I wouldn’t expect to find his prints on it—but let’s process it for prints and DNA just to be certain.

Don’t be too sure of that, Miles said, now down at eye level with the end table, holding the beam of his flashlight intently on the gun.

What’ve you got? Scott asked, stepping closer.

Take a close look at the gun. Notice anything?

Scott hated getting into a guess-what-I-can-see game with Miles. He had known him for several years now and knew that he didn’t miss many details; details that even a seasoned detective like himself would not see right away. He got within inches of the gun and inhaled with his nose.

It doesn’t smell like it’s been fired, Scott said. What are you looking at?

Look at the dust beneath the gun.

The beam of light, held at an angle across the end table, made the small particles of dust that covered the table top stand out against the smooth, dark, wood grain finish.

The gun was recently placed here, Scott said, standing up straight.

Miles nodded his agreement.

If you look close, Miles added, there’s no dust at all on the surface of the gun that’s facing up. I think it was placed here very recently, like within a couple of hours.

I think you’re right, Phil. I think you’re right.

Scott’s cell phone began to vibrate. He looked down at the number but didn’t recognize it. He hit ignore on the screen. He could tell by the prefix that it was a number from the office, but knew that no one he needed, or wanted, to talk to would be in at this early hour. As he slid it back into its pouch, the phone began vibrating again. It was the same number.

Detective Scott, he said into the phone, with obvious agitation in his voice at the interruption.

Scott, this is Major Terretta. Are you on the scene of the homicide yet?

Yes, I’m here. What can I do for you, Major?

Does this murder look like it could be connected to the other two you’ve been working on? Any similarities yet?

I just got here, Major. You probably know as much about it as I do, Scott answered, irritated that he would be questioned in the middle of an investigation, especially from someone who had never worked a homicide scene in his life.

Do not presume yourself to take that tone with me detective, Terretta said sharply. Not that I feel the need to explain anything I do to you or any other detective, but I will be briefing the Chief on this case the first thing this morning. The Chief is very concerned that this homicide may be related to the other two, and he will want an answer to that question as soon as he arrives at his office. As soon as you have any information whatsoever, I am expecting a call from you forthwith. If I do not hear from you in an acceptable time, I will call you. Do yourself a favor detective, call me before I have to call you.