Creatures of Habit

Two serial killers, one from the past and one from the present, haunt an old Lieutenant and his young protégé on the day of his retirement.

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”

-         Albert Camus

 

Wednesday 7:45 A.M.

Ashby was a heavy man to begin with, but it was more than just the pecan pies and Burger King dinners he ate that contributed to his 247 pounds. It was also the thirty-eight years spent at bloodied crime scenes, studying cork boards that were covered in photographed horrors, and conversing with psychopaths who took lives despite the consequence he represented that added weight to his scale. At seventy-one years old, the homicide lieutenant had a conscious that was as full as his stomach, but even on the day of his retirement, the weight in the steps that he took toward his next and last crime scene were as heavy as they’d ever been in his entire career. He felt no weightlessness in the idea of retirement, no burden lifted off his shoulders, because in nearly four-decades in the profession, he had seen too much for it to all end in one day. For Lieutenant Ken Ashby to truly retire from the job, he supposed that, ultimately, it would require his complete demise and maybe even an extra foot of dirt shoveled on top of his coffin to ensure that he remained dead and buried.

          The day Ashby had woken up to was cold and gray, but even the ones with sun in it had been tainted that same temperature and color by the circumstances of the job. As he crossed the street (the ground wet from an overnight rain), wearing a black trench coat that swayed just above his thick ankles, he looked up at the one-story murder house to find its lawn rampant with police officers and forensics. A block down, the passengers of a Channel 2 news van were jogging towards the caution tape that a police officer was beginning to unspool around the driveway. The way squad cars and news vans were left parked in the middle of the street, reminded Ashby of how his son, Ryan, used to leave his toys out in the yard whenever his mother called him in for supper. Despite the triple bypass, the diabetes, and the line of work, Ashby had managed to outlive them both.

          As the officers at the scene began to acknowledge his arrival, Ashby shook his head. He hated how when he arrived at a crime scene it was like he’d walked into a neighborhood pub where everyone knew his name. If only there were a drink waiting for him on the other side of this, instead of some poor naked woman whose dead, mutilated body lie in a tub of water. Maybe then, he wouldn’t have minded all the neighborly attention he was getting. But that’s how it was and all the years on the force hadn’t made it any easier for him.

          “Lieutenant,” one of the officers said as they crossed paths.

          The Lieutenant tried to say hello, but the word was trapped in a throat still clogged with the syrup from the pancakes he’d scarfed down when he got the call. He knew he should have washed it down with the cup of coffee he deserted at the diner. By the time he’d cleared his throat to manage a word, however, the officer who had greeted him had already disappeared and probably with the impression that Ashby was a grumpy a*****e. Not entirely wrong, Ashby thought to himself.

          “Lieutenant, glad you could join us for yet another episode of Serial Killer Bubble Bath,” Detective Andrew Mayerson said to him at the threshold.

          Andrew was a baby in Ashby’s eyes. He was thirty, same age Ashby was when he made detective, athletic, and full of energy. So much energy, in fact, that Ashby imagined Red Bull coursing through the kid’s veins"at least enough for one of the guys at the precinct to save three dollars on a drink if Mayerson had been generous enough to put his blood on tap.

          “We got a match?” Ashby asked, bulldozing Mayerson back into the house with his wide frame.

          “We do. Victim’s name is Jessica Martinez. Has an account on OLS under the username Hush111,” Mayerson said, reciting the notes he’d taken from a pocket book.

          “Number six and counting,” Ashby said, entering a hallway with Mayerson in tow.

          OLS was an abbreviation for Our Little Secret, a dating website for those who were already involved in a relationship. Several months ago, a list containing the identities of over a thousand members had leaked out to the public and become the targets of a serial killer that the press had dubbed “The Bubble Bath Killer.” ‘Bubble Bath’ because the last five, now six, victims had been given a bubble bath after their murder, and left to be found in their tubs. By this point, only three of those women had been sexually assaulted (each with objects that the killer had found lying around in their own homes) and all three of them were blondes. Since three of the six murders took place in Cook County, Mayerson believed that the killer was from there and a significant other of one of the blondes from the website.

          “How far are we on that list, Mayerson?”

          Ashby was following flashes of light that were illuminating the dark hallway both he and Mayerson were walking down. Camera bulbs were exploding in the bathroom for Jessica Martinez’s photo shoot.

          “Of those who will actually talk to us? I have two people left that live within a twenty-mile radius. The rest are either way out of our jurisdiction or they’re asking for us to respect their privacy.”

          When Ashby turned into the bathroom he could see Jessica Martinez slouched in the bathtub. Her skin was bright red from the piping hot water the killer had started the bath with. What bubbles remained of the bath had drifted to the sides of the tub, leaving Jessica’s naked body as exposed as her online identity.

          “Respect,” Ashby said, nodding for the photographer to leave the room. “There’s no time for it. More women are going to die if we don’t find this guy. Tell them if they wanted respect they should’ve started by honoring their wedding vows.”

          Ashby took a knee and looked into the victim’s eyes. They were bugged out and frozen in terror.

          Mayerson smiled, “Not sure if me making comments like that is gonna get them to open their doors for me, Lieutenant.”

          “It won’t,” Ashby agreed. “So, have them meet you someplace. Privately, away from the homes that they’re so worried about disrespecting. The station, the park, the diner, where ever, I don’t care. Unless this guy left something of his behind for us to I.D. him, which he hasn’t so far and I doubt he has now… combing through that list and interviewing those people is going to be our best chance at putting an end to all this.”

          Mayerson nodded and helped Ashby up from his kneel. He was smiling still.

          “The f**k are you smiling at?” Ashby asked.

          “What? Nothing. No, I’m just… surprised.”

          “Surprised? Surprised at what?”

          “Nothing. I’m just… it doesn’t seem like you’re retiring. All that piss and vinegar you got left in you.”

          Ashby’s wide frame got to pushing Mayerson out of the bathroom doorway again. He frowned as he made his way into the hall.

          “Yeah, well, I am.”

          “Doesn’t seem like it to me.”

          Ashby turned around, creating a road block in the hallway that brought Mayerson in for impact.

“I am,” Ashby said with a finger pointed in between Mayerson’s eyes. “And if I hear one more word out of you about it, you’ll be out of a job before I am. You got it?”

Mayerson had his arms up in surrender. “Yeah, okay. Jesus.”

“Do your job and I’ll continue to try and stop doing mine.” Ashby turned himself around again, which was no easy task as the hallway was narrow, and made his way out of the murder house.

“See you at the pub later, then?” Mayerson shouted.

“Thought I was already there,” Ashby replied, but in a volume too low for Mayerson to hear.

#

Andrew Mayerson was the eldest of three boys and the most handsome too. That wasn’t just something his fiancé, Mayra, would say to him before he left for work each day either. His mother had insisted on the same thing even after she’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. There had been days where, when she couldn’t recall Andrew’s name, she’d call him “good looking” instead. Proof, Andrew would tell his brothers, that he was better looking than all of them because Alzheimer’s had made their own mother say it to his face without bias. They laughed about it then because they needed to and because when things were about to get real dark, Andrew was responsible for bringing the light. As their older brother that had been his job. Matter of fact, that was still his job now as a detective for the Cook County Police Department"to bring the light and to shine it where ever he could.

          Before moving to Cook County, Andrew had lived with Mayra in an apartment in Los Angeles. In his six years with the LAPD, Andrew had made 101 arrests, fired his weapon six times, and been injured more. And even though Mayra was practicing psychology at the time, she was still finding it difficult to psyche herself into a good night’s sleep when Andrew was out patrolling the streets.

          “At this point,” she’d said to him, “I’m not sure if I’d rather you come home to me smelling like gun powder or another woman.”

          His response to her then had been, “Actually, I had another woman open fire at me today, so I guess you could put a check down in both columns tonight, babe.”

          Again, Andrew had brought the light and though she did surrender to him with her laughter that time, he could only do that so much before it stopped working. And when it finally did one day, they’d decided to move up north, about 400 miles, to Cook County"a quiet town with a less impressive crime rate than L.A., but one that they both agreed would be more appropriate to raise a family in, which had been the idea… up until Mayra had a miscarriage two weeks into the move.

          Nearly a month later and Andrew was still carefully navigating around the incident, trying ever so gently to bring his fiancé back from a grief she’d fallen deep into. Even after ensuring her that they could try again, that he was willing to do whatever it takes, all Mayra could seem to do was communicate with him in a language that consisted mostly of fake smiles and nods. She’d grown distant and it wasn’t until a dinner they had the night before, the one that kept replaying in his mind whenever the Bubble Bath Killer wasn’t on it, that she’d broken her silence.

          “Maybe it’s a sign,” she’d said to him.

          “What? That we’re not supposed to have any kids? That’s ridiculous. You heard what Dr. Tam said. There’s no reason for us to think that we can’t-

          “That we’re not meant… to be…”

          Mayra stopped herself so that she could turn away from Andrew and wipe a tear from her eye. When she turned back to meet Andrew’s face, she’d failed to finish her statement.

          “To be? To be parents? Right? Mayra? Right? I hope that’s what you meant, Mayra, because… because I didn’t sign up for this just so I could be a Dad, okay? I would… I would love to-to start a family with you, but that’s… that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I love you. Even if that means it’s just us for the rest of our lives.”

          Mayra’s breaking down had kept her from answering his question, but Andrew was still insistent that she did.

          “Can you say that? Can you say the same,” Andrew had asked and when Mayra had continued to answer him with her sobs, he could feel himself getting angry. Furious, spiteful words were waiting in the wings for Andrew to open the door and unleash. Fortunately, that night, he’d only decided to let a few of those dogs out instead of the whole kennel.

          “You know, it’s funny… you’re the psychologist here and I’m the only one talking,” he’d said to her before leaving the house. He had imagined more than that coming out of his mouth and had he stayed a second longer, more probably would have, but in truth, he had felt pretty bad about saying as much as he did to her then. The entire time he was waiting for her to answer him, he’d noticed her mouth opening, but instead of producing words, all she’d done was create a delta for her tears to stream into.

          Later that evening, after she’d stopped crying, Mayra had left him a few messages on his voicemail that he wouldn’t listen to until the following morning. In them, she had apologized, confessed that she did love him, and pleaded for him to come back home. Andrew wouldn’t return home until the next day though because he’d fallen asleep in his car, about two blocks away from Emily Strauss’ place; a woman whose name had been on the bottom of the OLS list of leaked identities. “Work’s a fine chaser for the emotional stresses at home,” his old partner used to say and it was a saying that had become Andrew’s motto"at least for that night.

          When he knocked on the door of the single-story, Spanish-style home, at about 9:30 that evening, a man answered. He was six foot, about the same height as Andrew, had dark hair, and piercing green eyes that were simultaneously aware and weary. Without introducing himself, he stared at Andrew, waiting for a reaction of some sort.

          “Hi, there,” Andrew began with the flash of his badge. “Detective Andrew Mayerson. I’m with the Cook County Police Department. I was wondering if I could speak with a Mrs. Emily-

          “Miss Emily-

          “Strauss?”

          “Green. We’re no longer married.”

          “Oh… I’m sorry. I didn’t realize-

          “Yeah, well… it’s not official yet or anything, but uh... I’m working on it. Sooner the better… as I’m sure you can imagine.”

          Andrew could sense the bitterness in Mr. Strauss’ voice. The investigation that had taken place once the bath tub murders were linked to each other had rocked the boat for many of the relationships that were already sinking because of the Our Little Secret website leak.

“Divorce is not the collateral damage caused by this investigation, Mayerson. Their infidelity is. It’ll do you good to remember that if you find yourself going soft on them,” Ashby had said to him at the beginning of it all.

          “Yes,” Andrew said. “It’s been a… difficult process trying to-

          “A relentless hell, yeah. Look, if you want to speak with Emily, I don’t know where you’ll find her, but it’s not here. She moved out a couple weeks ago.”

          Andrew nodded. “Well, you wouldn’t happen to know where she-

          “No,” Mr. Strauss said. “I don’t know where she’s staying.”

          “Okay. Listen, I know it’s late, so I won’t disturb your evening any more than I already have, but if you wouldn’t mind giving me a call tomorrow?”

          Andrew handed Mr. Strauss his business card, which he accepted without giving it a single glance. Instead, Andrew noticed him rubbing on the print as if he were reading by brail.

          “I’d like to go over anything the two of you might have talked about prior to her moving.”

          “I have a lot going on"

          “I’m sure you do and with all due respect, Mr. Strauss, so do I. I’m not sure if you’ve been following the news, but there’s been a string of murders that we’re investigating. Victims who’ve all been linked to the website your wife was a member of.”

          “The women in the bath tubs.”

          “Yes. We don’t want anyone else falling prey to this, so… time is of the essence.”

          “Sure. I’ll… tomorrow, then.”

          “Appreciate that,” Andrew said. If he’d worn a hat there, he might have tipped it then, just before bowing off his porch. Instead, Andrew shared a parting smile with Mr. Strauss that was quick to disappear from his face as soon as he’d turned his back to him. There was something about the guy Andrew didn’t like.

          “Detective Mayerson?”

          “Yes?”

          “I really do have a lot on my plate tomorrow. Why don’t we just get this over with tonight? I’ll answer whatever questions you’ve got for me now,” Mr. Strauss said, opening his door wider to expose a dimly lit living room.

          “No,” Andrew decided after a second’s contemplation. He’d left his gun in the glove box of the car. “No, I’ll be in touch with you. If we can’t speak tomorrow, we’ll… talk again, eventually. I’m sure.”

          Mr. Strauss nodded and stood in the doorway to watch Andrew continue his trip across the dead lawn. Andrew could feel the man’s eyes on his back, even after he’d turned around to see that Mr. Strauss had gone back inside. The presence of those piercing green eyes had still been out there and on him. He could feel them watching… even as he moved his car a block further from the spot he’d parked in… even as he’d fallen asleep in his car with the driver seat-back reclined… even as he looked into Jessica Martinez’s eyes, who lay lifeless in a tub before him now…

Andrew could not get Strauss’ eyes out of his head.

#

Wednesday, 9:08 A.M.

          Mayra was doing an injustice to her clients by introverting so deep in to her own head that morning. Her job, after all, had been to get inside the heads of other people. She’d sat through her last appointment without ever hearing anything of merit to comment on. Luckily, her last client had been an atheist who sought her consultation in place of what Catholics got from confessions and was more interested in hearing what he had to say aloud, than what she thought about it.

  Even though what had transpired between Andrew and her the night before was too one-sided to be considered a fight, Andrew didn’t come home afterward. Mayra woke up alone in their bed with only a single message from Andrew that he’d texted to her phone hours after she’d left him dozens of her own.

          Andrew: I know. There was another murder. I’ll be home tonight.

          Her text back to him? Ok.

          She hadn’t meant to express that she’d been doubtful of their relationship to Andrew. In reality, their relationship had been the one thing in her life that she’d ever felt sure about. Bringing a child into it, however, was something that she was beginning to question, particularly when she miscarried. Mayra thought that had been God’s way of saying, “Do not bring another life into this world to worry about Andrew’s.” If she was going to start a family, Mayra was going to have to protect it. Maybe not starting a family was the best way to do that. To not introduce a child to the possibility and maybe even the premature eventuality of his or her father not coming home because of his profession. Had she wanted to have a baby to not be alone in that worry? To have another life a part of hers in consolation of her husband-to-be’s? After she lost the baby, Mayra wasn’t sure any more.

          “Dr. Kilmer?” the man sitting across from her asked.

          Mayra had let her gaze drill into the painting behind him. It was of a cottage whose light inside had shone through the windows to illuminate a perimeter of forest that had taken a purple tint from a distant setting sun. When the man had regained Mayra’s attention, she couldn’t sweep the fact that she hadn’t been present under the rug.

          “Yes,” she said, half question, half statement.

          The man studied Mayra’s face for a break, then, when he caught it, shook his head, and laughed.

          “Look, I know I didn’t have an appointment. It’s my fault,” he said, getting up from his chair.

          “No, Ben,” Mayra objected. She set her pen down and waved for him to stay. “Don’t be silly. I’m sorry. I- I’m just waiting for an important call and not hearing my phone ring is distracting me. Please, sit.”

          Ben’s green eyes looked at the door, then returned to Mayra, then to Mayra’s legs. She’d always elected to wear slacks during their sessions, but Ben imagined her having legs that deserved the skirt-treatment. Mayra had been too embarrassed of her own behavior to notice Ben’s at that moment. Once his eyes slid off Mayra’s legs, they went to the floor, and he sat down. 

          “Would it distract you any less if it did ring?” Ben asked.

          “Oddly enough, no,” she’d said, while tucking a strand of her brown hair behind her left ear. “So, you were say-

          “Must be pretty important.”

          “I’m sorry?”

          “The phone call you’re waiting for?”

          Mayra smiled and moved on, “You were saying? About Emily?”

          “I was saying that she told me she was done with him.”

          “And you don’t believe her?”

          “No.”

          “But what about when she caught you?”

          “What about it?”

          “You told her the same thing, didn’t you?”

          “Yeah, but I did. I didn’t cheat on her after that. I mean, Christ, I have no reason to lie to you about that, do I?”

          Mayra nodded. “Finding truth in anything your partner says after they’ve lied to you is hard. It should be, but love… love is often not an emotion that we choose to feel for someone. It’s a force that once it gets its hooks into us, drives us to… to accept apology, to forgive, and to trust.”

          “What are you trying to say?”

          “I’m saying, if it feels like you’re choosing to love Emily instead of leaving her"that it’s a decision you’re constantly at war with yourself over… maybe you’re not in love with her anymore.”

          “Of course I love her-

          “I’m not saying you don’t have feelings for her, Ben. What I am saying is that maybe it’s not love. Maybe it’s evolved into something less and maybe letting go of the choice to love her will be healthier for you in the long run.”

          “Maybe it is over between them. I mean, what do you think? You’re a woman. What’s she thinking-

          “Maybe it is over between them. What worries me though is that, if it is, why did she cheat on you in the first place? To even up the scoreboard? It would be one thing if she were inebriated and they had sex or if she were characteristically sexual, but she’s not"not from what you’ve told me and she reached out to someone online? They’ve talked to each other, numerous times before ever meeting in person… sometimes when someone gets hurt, they lash out in the same behavior that hurt them in the first place, but no one does that if they’re still in love with the other person. If someone is in love, they won’t wish that kind of hurt on their partner. Thinking it, even-

          “No, you don’t know Emily. She’s not-

          “You’re right. I only know what you’ve told me about her. So, why don’t you bring her with you to next week’s appointment?”

          “What?”

          “Bring her. If you feel that you really-

          “No, I… I can’t. She won’t, she… she barely condones me going to therapy,” Ben said, his eyes moving everywhere around the room, but avoiding to land on Mayra.

          “Why? Why would she barely condone it?”

          “She’s saying… she says that therapy is for weak people. People who trick themselves into thinking they’re not strong enough to handle their own problems.”

          “That’s not true. At all. Seeing someone"a complete stranger? Takes a lot of-

          “Her mother was a psychiatrist. She lost her father early on and… yeah, there’s reasons for her not liking shrinks. Maternal rooted stuff.”

          “I see,” Mayra said.

          “Besides… I’m not sure I’ll make it to next week’s appointment.”

          “What do you mean?”

          “That’s why I wanted to see you today. Why I emailed you so early this morning and showed up so… so, impromptu. I’m gonna be going out of town tomorrow.”

          “Oh? For work?”

          “Yeah. Work stuff,” Ben said. Mayra noticed him tapping his foot.

          “Did something happen?”

          “Speaking of which, I gotta get back there,” Ben said as he checked his watch. He lifted himself out of the chair"a tall man. Maybe Andrew’s height.

          “Ben? Are you all right?”

          As Ben walked over to the door, he stopped at where Mayra was sitting. She stood up, then took her glasses off. Ben smiled.

          “Of course not, but I feel better about that after I talk to you. It’s why I… that’s why I come,” Ben said, lingering closely to Mayra’s face. Afraid that his lips would touch hers, Mayra turned her head to the side, and cleared her throat. Ben didn’t budge and when her iPhone rang on her desk, he had been the only one to notice.

          “Your phone is ringing, Doc,” Ben said, the words slithering out from behind a smile. It was if he were taking pleasure in her discomfort.

          Mayra had fallen prey to Ben’s eyes for a moment. Not in a lustful or romantic kind of way; at least that’s what she’d hoped. After her fight with Andrew though, Mayra was a little too unsure of herself, and the prospect of really feeling those things frightened her.

No, there had been something in the color of his eyes that had hypnotized her. They were green, but looking into them had been like looking down from an aerial view into crystal clear waters where the real green came from the coral underneath. If eyes really were windows to the soul than his lied at the bottom of an ocean and after eight sessions together, Mayra wasn’t sure if any of them had taken her past the shallow end of who Ben Strauss really was.

#

Wednesday 2:45 P.M.

          To Andrew’s surprise, Ben Strauss had a clean record. There had been an incident of domestic disturbance reported a year and a half ago by the neighbors of the house that Andrew now sat, parked in front of, but no charges were ever filed. Dispatch had received a call from Janet Brown wherein she expressed concern over the yelling she’d heard coming from her next-door neighbors. The statement she gave claimed that she’d heard yelling next door while inside her own home and that when she went outside to take out the trash, the yelling had escalated to breaking glass. Once police arrived, Emily had been crying over an argument she wouldn’t go into detail about other than to say that her and Ben were fighting over a personal matter. Ben said the same and both apologized for the inconvenience.

          Other than that, Mr. Strauss had been an adjuster for Trinity Insurance for nine years, Mrs. Strauss worked as a financial consultant at Golden Coast Bank for three years, and the two of them had been married, without children, for four. Andrew had put a call in to the bank to see if he could speak with Emily, but a supervisor claimed she’d taken a leave of absence due to a death in the family and had not spoken to her in almost a week. Similarly, when Andrew called Mr. Strauss’ job, the receptionist had been unable to connect him because he was “out in the field.” And, just as it had been when he’d woken up a few blocks down the street that morning, the driveway was deprived of Mr. Strauss’ red Nissan Altima. Andrew wondered if Ben had driven past him while he slept… driven past him to Jessica Martinez’s home so that he could murder and leave her in a tub of hot water.

          There had been instances when Andrew’s gut was wrong and he was hoping he was about Ben Strauss… because if he wasn’t and Ben Strauss had driven past him to commit murder last night… than the fact of the matter was, it happened on his watch and Andrew was an accomplice. And under what circumstances? Exhaustion? Emotional exhaustion that had him fleeing his own home in the middle of the night like some pre-teen kid who couldn’t deal with how unfair life was under his parents’ roof? Andrew shook his head at the thought and tossed the Strauss file beside him onto the passenger seat cushion. He gave his phone a quick glance to see if Mayra had called him back yet, but there were no missed calls or texts.

          Just as his eyes returned to the Strauss home, Andrew noticed a car pulling into the neighbor’s driveway. It was a black Pontiac and the woman that emerged from the driver seat once the car had parked, was an elderly woman in her late 60’s. Janet, Andrew thought.

          Janet popped the trunk open and shuffled her little feet over to the back of the car. Even though she was wearing a couple of sweaters over her sun dress, the layers of wardrobe had still been unsuccessful in disguising her frail build. A few steps in to his approach and Janet had taken notice-- Andrew could tell that she was looking at him from the corner of her eye. As he drew in, she began to rummage through her trunk a little more slowly.

          “Mrs. Brown?” Andrew asked, casting the question out like a fishing line.

          Janet’s head turned completely to face Andrew. When she stepped away from the trunk of her car, she’d done so with a gun in hand, and pointed it at Andrew.

          “Whoa! Mrs. Brown?” Andrew said, throwing his hands up in the air.

          “Who the hell are you and what do you want?” she asked the question with a white brow lifting folds of leathery-brown skin up towards a receding hair line. Judging by the way her arm was shaking, Andrew figured the weapon had been too heavy for her to carry, and that she’d just as soon shoot him by accident than on purpose.

          “Mrs. Brown, my name is Detective Andrew Mayerson. I’m with the Cook County Police Department. Do you mind lowering your weapon for me so that I can ask you a couple questions?” Andrew asked his question from a paused stance.

          Janet’s lip lifted then"a facial expression that Andrew thought Clint Eastwood would have made after finding s**t on his boot. “Let’s see some I.D. Detective Mayerson,” she said, waving the gun around as if it were nothing more than a laser pointer.

          Andrew nodded, “That’s gonna require me to bring one of my hands down to reach into my coat pocket. Is that okay?”

          She nodded. “Get on with it, then.”

          Andrew couldn’t help but smirk at the stick-up. He pulled his badge out and held it up for her, along with his picture I.D. With five yards in between them, Janet removed the glasses off from the top of her head and pushed them up the bridge of her nose. Even with the glasses on, Janet was squinting hard enough to promote a stroke.

          “Bring that in closer. I can’t see that from here,” she said, waving the gun towards her.

          Andrew obeyed and once he crossed the finish line to arrive at Janet’s side, she took the I.D. from his hand, to give them both a look-over.

          “Well, now. I think you should know, Detective Mayerson, that this here is a water pistol,” she told him as she handed him back his credentials. “Not enough water in it to drown you. Maybe not enough water in it to quench your thirst.”

          Andrew accepted his credentials back and smiled. “Looked pretty heavy to me.”

          “It is, but not as heavy as these groceries. You mind helping me get these in the house? Left my fork lift in the garage.”

          Andrew laughed, while slipping his fingers in through the rings of some plastic bags. “Sure. Are you… always this welcoming to men of the law?”

          “I do apologize for that, Detective Mayerson, but as president of the neighborhood watch, I don’t take strangers approaching me or the homes on my street very lightly. Especially with all the home invasions that are going around.”

          Andrew nodded as he wound up grabbing all five bags of groceries. Janet struggled to slam the trunk shut and escorted the help up the driveway.

          “Home invasions?”

          “Yes, home invasions. What kind of man of the law is you if you don’t know ‘bout those?”

          “Well, I know what they are, Mrs. Brown, but I don’t know about them occurring here in my backyard. Have you reported this to anyone at the station?”

          “No. Ain’t none of that happenin’ here… yet, but I saw a news report last week about a spike in home invasions out there in Garson? Well, now, that’s just twenty-five miles away from here. Crooks posing as construction workers and police officers. Knocking on your door, breaking in, stealin’ your thangs. What I ‘ought to do is get me a real gun. Either that or another husband, but I’m too old for that kinda nonsense. You can leave those there, that’s fine. Thank you.”

          Andrew set the groceries down on the porch. “And what’s wrong with the husband you have now?”

          “With Joe? He’s dead,” Janet said, sticking her key into the door and pushing it open.

          “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. That must’ve been recent. Within the last year?”

          “Four months and three days. What’s it to you?”

          Janet began transferring the bags of groceries, one by one, into the threshold of her home. When Andrew tried to help once more, Janet slapped his hand away.

          “Oh, well… that’s kind of why I’m here. Both you and your husband gave statements to one of our officers almost a couple years ago now? About a domestic disturbance next door?”

          Janet shook her head, “Yeah. Joe kept tellin’ me to mind my own business ‘bout that. No need to get the police involved, he said. I was oversteppin’ my bounds, he said. Sound like a divorce goin’ on every night in that house.”

          “You mean that one night you reported it wasn’t the only incident?”

          “Oh, Heaven’s no. That night was the beginning of it, but Joe kept on insistin’ that I keep out of it. That if the neighbor’s relationship was on the rocks, we had no business being on those rocks with ‘em. So, I kept to myself about it. I figured it’s when the noise stop over there is when I should be worryin’, but… so far, so good.”

          Andrew looked over at the Strauss home, then back at Janet.

          “How do you mean?” Andrew asked.

          “They still go at it. Every other night.”

          “What about last night,” Andrew asked. He could feel his guts sink to his feet like an anchor.

          “Last night was no different. Matter of fact, I think Mrs. Strauss won that argument. Whatever she said to him had Mr. Strauss leavin’ the house in the middle of the night.”   

#

Wednesday, 7:30 P.M.

          Ashby was late to his own retirement party. He’d told everyone at the station to meet at Murray’s Pub at 7:00 P.M. and even though he’d gotten there at 6:45, Ashby lacked the will to open the driver side door and go inside. Instead, he sat in his car, with his desk in a box sitting beside him in the passenger seat and watched everyone trail in from a block away.

          “Come on then, you old fat a*s,” Ashby told off the reflection in the rearview mirror.

          For a second, Ashby could see the baby-faced, amateur Detective he once was staring right back at him in the mirror. A younger, much more better looking fellow whose cheeks used to dimple up every time he smiled. He rarely smiled now, but even when he did, those dimples (the one’s his ex-wife, Mary, said she’d want full custody of if they ever got divorced"oh, how cruel hindsight could be) barely made a dent in his cheeks that now hung from either side of his jaw-line. He ran his fingers over his face, pulling the skin of it down so that he could see the skeletal features that were trapped beneath all the fat. You look like an English Bulldog, he thought.

          Ashby sighed, but before he could pull the key out from the ignition, a song came on the radio that froze him in place. It was a Sam Cooke tune. He turned the volume dial up so that he could feel the bass of it in his bones. “Wonderful World” was pouring into his ears by the gallon and before long, the song had made its way into Ashby’s brain, where a memory began to splice itself into the film that was unspooling through his mind’s projector.

          It had been a warm summer day in 1982. Ashby was thirty-six years old, about sixty pounds lighter than he was now, in the thick of his divorce from Mary, and standing outside the door of the man who’d had a hand in it. Behind that door, on the second floor of the Safari Inn was 72-year-old Albert Nichols"the serial killing pedophile papers had called “The Boogey Man of Cook County.” It was what a five-year-old boy had called the man in his testimony of Ryan O’Malley’s abduction whose remains wouldn’t be found until after Nichols’ interrogation.

          Ashby’s partner at the time was one August Walker. Everyone called him Tank and when it came time to bust Albert’s door down after he’d failed to answer their knocks, August Walker demonstrated why he’d been given the nickname. One kick of his had caused the door to splinter open at the knob, allowing him and eight others to enter Albert’s motel room with their guns drawn. Sam Cooke’s song was playing loudly on a radio that sat beside a bed on a nightstand. Ashby recalled the suit case laying on top of the bed with clothes spilling out of it. The orange curtains that were drawn over the room’s one window had kept the bulk of the outside sunlight from coming in, but still managed to filter through them so that the room glowed a soft amber. There was an episode of “Cheers” playing on the television whose laugh track got muffled under Sam Cooke’s lyrics to “Wonderful World.” He could remember calling out Albert Nichols’ name and the lack of response. The feeling of resolution to a four-yearlong investigation that had torn Ashby’s family a part. The adrenaline he’d felt leading up to the moment where he saw the reflection of Albert Nichols’ backside in the bathroom mirror, through a crack in the door. How a leather belt, tied to the shower curtain rod, was wrapped around the old man’s neck as he masturbated, stark naked, into the tub. How he continued to even as his privacy had been intruded upon by a whole SWAT team.

          It was right at that moment when Ashby pulled the key out of the ignition and killed the radio. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to erase the images of that day from his mind. Rain drops were slowly beginning to make their way on to his windshield"like the first few steps taken by a couple who were bashful of being the first to take on an empty dance floor" coming hesitantly at first, before more joined it for a more confident, steadier rhythm. The taps of rain aided Ashby in removing himself from the hot climate of his flashback and returning him to the colder one of his present.

By the time Ashby opened his eyes, his thoughts had been replaced with Mayerson and his pursuit of the Bubble Bath Killer. A young man, about to start a family, just like he had been when jumping into his first high profile murder case. Ashby wondered where he would have been in his own life had he given up his pursuit of Albert Nichols in exchange for spending more time with his family… in exchange for another career. Of course, it had been comforting to know that a pedophile like Nichols was off the streets"that his son, who was four years old at the time of his capture"would be free of falling prey to Nichols. But as Ashby spent more years on the force, he realized that all he’d done was clear the earth of an undying weed. As soon as he pulled one out from the ground, another had been there to take its place. He’d stuck with law enforcement because he thought he’d be better suited to protect his family, but what had that done to protect his son of the car accident that took his life a decade ago? Or the breast cancer that took Mary’s a decade prior to that? Nothing. There was no protecting life from death. There was only the attempt to live it as happily-ever-after as possible.

Ashby shook his head and finally decided to exit the car. As he was making his way towards Murray’s, the retired Lieutenant found himself humming in the rain.

“What a wonderful world this would be,” he sang under his breath. The lyrics left his lips like a burlesque prayer to a god he believed had abandoned the director’s chair for one out in the audience instead.

#

Murray’s was an old English pub that had become the department’s unofficial watering hole on account of its location"just four blocks down the street from the station. Half of the building was a dimly lit bar, complete with dart boards, a pool table, and a jukebox, while the other half was a small little banquette hall that looked only slightly less like a dive bar than the other side had. Even though Christmas had already come and gone, there were still lights and paper snowflakes strung to the walls and pillars of the place. Matt, the owner, would likely keep those decorations up for as long as Ashby’s retirement party balloons stayed afloat.

The drinking marathon had begun as soon as Ashby walked through the door. Guys were buying him drinks left and right, but few could match what would have normally been on his tab by the end of the evening. As far as he was concerned, Ashby had been running a department full of light weights all these years, which was fine by him. It just meant that his guys were not as seasoned as he was at drinking and that maybe they were even less driven to drink. He couldn’t see how, but there were other poisons for them to choose from to help cope with the aftermath of the job. Ashby just couldn’t imagine there being a better one than whiskey. He’d been on his seventh glass by the time Mayerson joined him at the bar.

“Bar tender! Let me get another one for the Lieutenant over here,” Andrew said, taking command of the stool beside him.

Ashby raised an eyebrow over his glass and held a hand up at Jimmy the bar tender. “No, don’t listen to him Jimmy. Lest you want to turn my retirement toast into a eulogy tonight, you’ll wait until this glass is empty before handin’ me another one, huh?”

Jimmy, busy serving another patron at the other end of the counter, waved his hand at Ashby. “Glass looks empty from where I’m standin’, Ashby. Quit suckin’ on those ice cubes so you can get on with the next one, will ya? What can I get for you, Detective?”

Andrew laughed, stretching a congratulatory arm over Ashby’s wide shoulders.

“Black and tan, Jimmy,” he replied.

“Christ. You know, I am still Lieutenant for another couple hours, right?”

“Oh yeah? Then what happens? You turn into the great big pumpkin I’ve always known you to be at the stroke of midnight?” Jimmy retaliated as he finished Andrew’s Black and Tan pour. He slid the glass over to Andrew with a smirk.

Andrew laughed while tossing two twenty dollar bills onto the counter as if Jimmy had given him the best lap dance of the evening. “Jimmy, this goes towards our tab over here and the rest is yours, my friend.”

“Then I guess I won’t be charging you fellas a penny,” Jimmy said, folding the bills into his shirt pocket. He gave them both a wink, then returned to the other end of the counter where a line was beginning to form.

          “Wow. No respect,” Ashby said with wide eyes. They were mostly wide due to a surprising lack of care over the remark, but also, because he was a bit buzzed. Truth of the matter was, Ashby had usually been the one to deliver the barbed insults to Jimmy, but because he’d been particularly reflective of his career then, he’d surrendered into the role of punching bag.

          “Aww, come on. You’ll always be Lieutenant… here. In this dive bar. Next to the Coin Laundry,” Andrew said, giving Ashby a pat on the back as he swallowed half his glass of Black and Tan.

          “You seem overly jovial. You catch our serial bubble bath-giver yet?”

          “Ah, no. No, but we’re close. Closer than we’ve ever been. Put an APB out for the husband as soon as we found the wife’s body chained inside his house, which"I owe you more than just a drink for, by the way, for getting me that warrant so quickly. Davis thinks her TOD was less than 48 hours ago, which checks out with what the neighbor was telling me. I think he might be our guy.”

          “Hmm. Well, the guy responsible for his wife’s murder, definitely… but, so… then he runs off and kills Jessica Martinez right afterward? There’s always been a gap of at least a week between these murders. Now he’s picking up speed all of a sudden? If he is your guy, then something set him off to get him to work faster.”

          Andrew thought back to his late-night visit to the Strauss home, then downed the rest of his beer. “They’re going through his computer right now to see if they can find anything that links him to the others.”

          “The idea of consequence can be a terrible nightmare for the human being that deserves it,” Andrew said, unsure of whether he was referring to Ben Strauss or himself.

          “Bah!” Ashby scoffed. “I’ve always hated that term.”

          “What’s that?” Mayerson asked. He didn’t realize it fast enough, but he was smiling then. Whenever Ashby talked, particularly when he was off-the-clock inebriated, the retired Lieutenant had a habit of telling stories that Andrew always seemed to get high off of. He could tell Ashby was about to diverge into one of them now just by the tone of his voice and the look in his face"a wrinkled old map of roads that led to all the places rookies like Andrew had yet to go. It was why he was smiling; why he was so eager to hear what Ashby had to say.

          “Because it suggests that people were human at some point. You get to be my age, Andrew, and you’ve seen what I’ve seen"well, you get to this place of absolute certainty that there is no humanity left in this world… that we’re born into it as something less than human… like creatures. Someone I used to know had told me that once… that we’re all just creatures of habit and that our job… well, your job, now, I guess… is to keep those creatures from committing their worst ones.”

          Andrew nodded. “Any other last words you want to leave me with, Lieutenant?”

          “Yeah… get the f**k out of this business,” Ashby replied, crunching on the ice cubes from his glass.

          Andrew laughed.

          “No, I’m being serious Andrew. You know, the past few months that I’ve gotten to know you, I thought you reminded me of"well, I thought you reminded me of myself when I was your age, but that’s not… that wasn’t it. You actually remind me a lot of my son. Lord knows I wasn’t the father to him that I should have been because of… because of this job, so my advice, Andrew? My best, fatherly advice to you is to do something else that allows you to enjoy your family and that allows for them to enjoy you.”

          “Yeah, well… maybe I can bar tend over here since the one they’ve got isn’t any good at keeping glasses full,” Andrew said, loud enough for Jimmy the bar tender to hear. Jimmy looked over at Andrew and gave him the bird.

          “All due respect, f**k you, Andy. Have you ever tried walking our friend over here to a cab after he’s blasted himself to eternity? Getting’ him into an Uber is like trying to fit a house in a car.”

          “Guilty as charged,” Ashby said, throwing his hands up into the air.

          Andrew laughed as Jimmy took Ashby’s glass away from him.

          “You, I can carry, no problem. You want another Black and Tan, Andy,” Jimmy asked, as he scooped more ice into Ashby’s glass.

          “No, I’m good. I have to get back,” Andrew said, checking his phone to see what time it was. When he pulled his phone out from his coat pocket, he saw that he’d had two missed calls from Eddie, his partner. Then, just as he was about to call him back, the keyboard on Andrew’s phone gave way to an incoming call from Eddie. Andrew held a finger up to Ashby and excused himself from the bar.

          “Eddie, sorry. I’m with the Lieutenant. Just buying him a-

          “Andy, have you spoken to Mayra at all today?”

          “What?”

          “When was the last time you spoke with Mayra?”

          “This morning? Why? What’s going on? Is she calling you-

          “Not since this morning,” Eddie said, away from the receiver to someone else he was with. Andrew could hear that someone else say “s**t.”

          “Eddie? Hello? What the hell’s going on-”

          “Andy, listen to me. You need to try and get a hold of her. See if-

          “Eddie? I will do that as soon as you tell me why you want me to. What’s-

          “We found an email. It’s addressed to Mayra, sent at 5:51 this morning. Ben Strauss was a patient of hers, Andy. We think-

          Andrew hung up before Eddie could finish and within the three seconds that Ashby had taken his eyes off Andrew, he was gone. The door beneath the Exit sign that he’d been standing beside when he took the call was just beginning to close on its own. When it finally shut, the Christmas wreath that was nailed to it fell to the ground.

          Ashby wouldn’t see Andrew again, until two weeks later. At Mayra’s funeral.

#

          The night of the retirement party saw most of Ashby’s guests leaving early once word got around that Mayra’s body had been found in the backseat of her own car. Ashby had been too drunk himself to leave Murray’s, but was kept apprised of the situation via phone calls from Andrew’s partner, Eddie. According to her secretary, Mayra had left the office at around Four o’clock that day, but would never make it out of the building’s underground parking garage because Ben Strauss had been waiting for her there. Security camera footage showed Strauss letting himself into the passenger seat of Mayra’s car just as she’d taken the driver seat. Due to the camera’s position, that had been about all that could be seen of the altercation, aside from Strauss exiting the vehicle at around the 29^th minute of recorded footage. An autopsy would later reveal that Strauss had snapped Mayra’s neck as he raped her. They would find skin from his face underneath her fingernails.

          As for Strauss, once reports came in that his red Nissan Altima was heading South on Highway-99, police gave chase in a televised pursuit that lasted nearly two hours, and ended with Strauss’ live suicide. Helicopter cameras had caught Ben blowing his brains out in the driver seat of his Nissan. Though he’d been on his way over to it, Andrew never made it to the scene of his capture. Ashby suspected he’d driven there with the intent to kill Strauss himself, but Andrew had been too late even for vengeance.

          The investigation would unfold to find that Strauss was part of an online group comprised of “victims” of the OLS scandal that encouraged violent retaliation against those who cheated on them. Strauss had even eluded to some of his own murders in comments he’d made on an online message board for the broken hearted. It was later hypothesized that it was Ben’s killing of those six women that had kept his wife, Emily, alive for as long as she was"beaten and chained up to their marital bed, until the night Andrew had paid a visit. It was that visit that had rattled Ben’s cage and caused him to move so quickly and so carelessly. It wasn’t suspected that Ben knew of Mayra’s connection to Andrew. That, in fact, had all been consequence of the world being so small… and so unfair.

          “We’d had a fight the night before… she’d called me so many times, but I let… I just let them go straight to my voicemail. Because I was… because I was mad? How f*****g childish, right?” Andrew had said to Ashby after the funeral. “There’s not a second that goes by that I don’t think about what would have happened if I’d… if I’d just reached out. Invited her to lunch. Gotten her out of there.”

          “You couldn’t have known, Andrew. Of course, the situation would have been different if you’d known certain things going into it, but you didn’t. None of us do. In the grand scheme of things, we know nothing. Truth of the matter is, we go into this life blind. Every experience we have is just… just a brail letter we feel to help us spell things out. Can go our whole lives sometimes without ever getting the whole story, but if you let that bother you… all of it’s going to disappoint you because it’ll all have just added up to a bunch of… failed predictions,” he’d told him.

          Despite Ashby’s advice for Andrew to leave the department and the job in general, he remained on the force. Mayra’s murder had motivated Andrew to become the cop that crime would fear most. The fire he’d seen in Andrew’s eyes was unmistakable in that message.

          As for Ashby, he imagined that his retirement would lead him towards a slow death"one that the obituary would blame on too much Daytime Television and bottles of whiskey. It didn’t take Ashby more than a few days to wonder what the purpose of his life was, then. In fact, he wasn’t even sure if he could ever fully retire from the job. Indeed, he’d seen too much in his years as a detective and lieutenant to be able to exist out in the world and for him to be able to trust it. All the maniacs he’d locked up were often seamlessly so, which made his occasional interactions with people in the outside world more suspect than pedestrian.

          For the regular Joe, seeing an old man watch a kid’s baseball game might harbor a sense of All-American innocence, but for Ashby, all he saw was Albert Nichols.

Strangers rarely looked like anything less to him now.

#

 

August 7^th, 1982

Without the rap sheet, Ashby might have pegged Albert Nichols for harmless. A seventy-five-year-old man who surprisingly still had some height to him, sat in the interrogation room before Ashby, frail and hunched over. What was left of the guy’s gray hair stood up on his head as if it had just been rubbed by a balloon and the bags that hung underneath Nichols’ light blue eyes seemed packed and ready for the morgue. The truth about Albert Nichols though was that he was more than just capable of harm. The truth was that he’d been capable of abducting, molesting, and murdering twelve children; all of whom had been under the age of nine. Even more disturbing was that Nichols had eaten most of them afterward.

It wasn’t until Nichols had written a letter to the parents of Ryan O’Malley, detailing the cannibalism, that they’d finally been able to apprehend him. The stationary Nichols had used to write the letter had come from the same motel he was arrested in. In the letter, Nichols had revealed to the O’Malley’s that they had once opened their door for him to hear his sales pitch for kitchen appliances and that it was at that moment, when he’d made the decision to eat their little boy. The letter had been the most repulsive piece of writing Ashby had ever read and now, he had to speak with the author of it.

Nichols wouldn’t give Ashby his attention until a few words into their interview.

“What? You feeling shy all of a sudden because we all walked in on you masturbating? I think you and I can both agree that you’ve done much worse for you to be ashamed of,” Ashby said, tossing his letter to the O’Malley’s onto the table before them.

Nichols’ eyes rose up to meet Ashby’s with a ghoulish smirk.

          “You’re a cocky one, aren’t you?” Nichols asked. His eyes were studying Ashby.

          “Do you read your own stuff? My cockiness doesn’t hold a candle to yours.”

          The smile disappeared from Nichols’ face. He brought his handcuffed hands up to the table and set them down"long talon-like fingers that belonged to The Boogey Man of Cook County.

          “You know, when I saw that baby face of yours in the mirror. It helped me to finish. So, thank you, Detective, for that or should I write a letter to your parents? Thanking them for having fucked each other so that I could have the pleasure of sitting across from such a handsome boy?”

          Ashby smiled to hide his disgust. “Speaking of which, did you… did you realize that the stationary had Safari Inn letter head at the top? Or was that just… a lapsed observation?”

          “I know how… I must look to you, Detective. Old and senile-

          “No. Not at all. Not at all, Albert. No, I think you’re a smart, sick, f**k who was looking to get caught. I’m just curious as to why you felt now was the time?”

          “Been doin’ this for a long time now, Detective. For more than thirty-five years… just after my wife and I divorced. Been thinking about doing what I’ve done for even longer than that though. The first of ‘em were… kids from neighborhoods no one really seemed to give a s**t about. Neighborhoods where, if they went missing, no one would even know or care to look. Black kids… but, truth be told, after a while, I wasn’t… I wasn’t too fond of how they tasted. There was something… bitter about them. Maybe I hadn’t cooked them well enough or… maybe it was just history I was tasting instead of blood"whatever it was, I gave them up. Moved on to white kids, but kept under the radar with them too. Only went for the retarded ones"oops, sorry, I meant mentally challenged. And they did, they tasted much… much sweeter, but damn were they strong. What God didn’t give them in brains, he gave them in brawn, let me tell you. The fights they’d put up,” Nichols said, pausing a moment to reflect and shake his head.

“Well,” he continued. “Eventually they got to be too much. So, I started taking chances. I got a little riskier with my choices. Started after the healthy ones. The ones from nice-looking homes. Nicer neighborhoods, but you know what’s sad, Detective? What’s sad was that even then"even then"it was too easy. Sure, it had a lot to do with the fact that, no matter where they’re from, kids are naturally naïve, but they were too trusting… they trusted me right up until the millisecond they realized they shouldn’t have… by the time it was too late. That betrayal of trust would just paralyze them. Make them weak. Defenseless against me. I mean, what kind of education did these kids get to be so trusting of complete strangers anyway? What kind of law allows that?”

“No law allows that, Albert. That’s why you’re here,” Ashby reminded him.

“Oh, really? I don’t think so, Detective. I don’t think so.”

“Well, then, maybe I was wrong earlier about you being smart. Maybe all you are is just a sick f**k, Albert.”

“Come on. I killed Ryan O’Malley three years ago, and for three years, you guys got not one mile near me. Not even close. It took me having to write a God damn letter, with my f*****g address on it, to his parents, for you pricks to even get a whiff of me. What was the hold up? What do you guys do all day?”

Ashby wanted to slam the old man’s face into the table. He imagined that when he did, Nichols’ teeth would spray across the table like the coins from a dropped ceramic piggy bank. The thought had been graphic enough for Ashby to keep his retaliation imaginary.

“You think you’re so special? You think no one else has done what you’ve done? Well, here’s some news for you, Albert: there’s more than just one of you out there. Yeah, that’s right. You’re not unique. You’re not one of a kind. You’re just a sorry excuse for a human being and frankly, there’s too many of those for us to keep up with,” Ashby replied, red-faced.

Nichols slid his lanky arms off the table and put them between his legs. He smiled at Ashby, then leaned in.

“You know… a human being is not something that I’ve ever strived to be, Detective, and the problem is… the problem is people like you who think we all start off that way. As human beings that all just sort of… descend from there. We’re not. See, my father left when I was a young boy. I think I was three years old at the time"not old enough to give a rat’s a*s one way or the other about it because I had no real memory of him… but when he left, he left my mother to raise me and when she couldn’t do it, she’d decided to give me up to a foster house. Now, that I do remember. Place was like a monster factory. The way they beat us, it was no wonder why so many of us stayed there for so long. No one wanted us.”

“Yeah? Is the foster home where the new you was born?”

“I wouldn’t say the new me… it is where I realized who I already was. Who I had been… too afraid to be.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, whenever any of us would do something bad"usually it was for something small, something like talking during bedtime"they would strip our pants down in front of everybody and spank us… with these long, flat, wooden paddles until our cheeks were bright red. It would hurt so bad… sometimes the wood would be splintered and make us bleed. And the way the air would graze our asses afterwards… really, stung like hell, but I came to enjoy it. The pain got me off.”

“So, that belt around your neck earlier today? That wasn’t you trying to commit suicide then, I take it?”

Nichols smiled. The orange jump suit he was wearing hung off his skeletal body like a maternity gown.

“No. That was me living, Detective. And that’s the point. You sit there, judging me based on how far I’ve fallen from the rest of humanity. That I’m the lowest of the low, but the truth is, is that I’m the only one in this room who has ever really embraced their true self.”

“Which is what?”

“A creature of habit. That’s what we all start off as. Then, as we go along, we get introduced to things. Things that we’re told by others to like and dislike… things that we’re taught to believe are right and wrong. We all evolve into our habits, eventually… it’s just that mine are my own instincts. Mine are my own deepest, darkest desires and yours? Yours are just to be… human… like everyone else.”

“You actually believe that you’re above the rest of us, don’t you?”

“No,” Nichols said. “But I do believe that I’m the only one who knows we’re all the same. One way or another. Some people are just better at lying to themselves about what they want and… who they really are.”

          The way Nichols stared into Ashby’s eyes after he’d said that made it seem like he was trying to see for himself, what was truly inside the young Detective’s soul. Had he been successful in doing it, Nichols would have witnessed his own murder by Ashby himself"an end that Nichols would eventually meet, two years later, by lethal injection.

 

THE END

Copyright © 2017 by Devin DaGraca

Reviews

[Jessi]

This is really good. I really enjoyed it. Keep it up!