Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Cutting the crime scene tape off the door, Kevin steps through the door of Diane Crowley’s darkened living room. The stale smell of blood still hangs in the air. There is a moment that hangs over crime scenes. It is that moment just before the violence begins. The tension fills the space and seems to take a lifetime to dissipate. He stands in the doorway cradling the sense, embracing it. Trying desperately to pull it to himself. If only to get a feel for the one he hunts. And that is what this is now. A hunt. The person who did this is an animal. And he deserves no better treatment than that of a dangerous prey. He steps across the floor to the couch and sits down without turning on the lights. Rolling up his sleeves, he sits back into the well worn furniture and tries to reach out with his mind’s eye. Tries to see what only time has removed from sight.

He closes his eyes and begins to feel.

Reaching back in time he begins to get a sense of what brought the chaos into this tiny dwelling. Opening his eyes, he slowly scans the room in the dark. The images begin to creep in slowly. And the sensations still his inner tremor, as he begins to see the unseen. He has always had the ability to feel these things. He isn’t sure what caused this ability. He sees it as a curse at times. Other times, a blessing. Could it be that after the darkness visited his home so many years ago, it left a piece of itself within him?

Thoughts begin to run through his mind. The intruder was already in the apartment when she brought her sleepy children up from the downstairs apartment of her sitter. It was a cool, rainy night. But, he left no clue that he was here. He had to enter without leaving a sense that he had disturbed. So careful in the entrance, yet no concern for leaving the clean up to be left all over the kitchen sink. Why? Not concerned with being caught? A serious sense of self and his importance. He was only concerned with it not happening, not what happened after. Why?

He opens his eyes to scan the room. How did the animal get in? Being on the second floor, with no balcony, excludes the windows which were found sealed shut. No, he came in the door. No marks left behind. He had to have a key. But, how? What gave him access to it or a copy of it? He made sure that his appearance could not be seen before he was ready for his act to begin.

Looking around again, he sees a shadow in the corner. Turning on the lamp on the end table to the left of the couch, he sees a small strong box in the corner. It has a small, inexpensive pad lock on a hatch on the front. No pry marks. The box is now unlocked, tagged with a evidence location number. He pulls his small, black notebook from his back pocket and jots down the note to review the log for the contents of the box. Why wouldn’t he search it? Why wasn’t he concerned with the one piece of secured furniture in the apartment? Robbery was not the motive. He didn’t want for anything other than the act.

He crosses the room to a small closet in the far corner of the room. Opening the door, he finds shelves storing board games and some extra linens. On the floor, a small cardboard box sits filled to the brim with winter boots, gloves, and scarves. No room to hide here.

So, where did he hide?

He had to hide. As Kevin crosses the room, walking towards the kitchen area, he realizes that he must have waited. He waited patiently for Diane to put her daughters to bed and to settle in herself. Self control. Patience. Hiding, coiled and ready to strike, but he waited. He took his time. Through all of it. He researched her. Her comings and goings. He probably sat at Lou’s allowing her to serve him, leaving a tip for a woman that he condemned to death. Cold plotting.

Entering the kitchen, he turns on the overhead light and stands in the doorway taking in all he sees. Blood still splattered across the sink, small areas blotted by crime scene techs who blotted for evidence. Fingerprint dust over all the cabinets and counter tops. The refrigerator door is also covered. On the counter, a bag of bread sits open.

You ate. You cleaned your weapon, your hands, and arms…and then you sat and ate.

Kevin opens the fridge and finds a compartment filled with the necessities. Milk, eggs, a small bag of mixed fruit on the bottom shelf, and half a bottle of wine on the door along with condiments. In the crisper he finds cheeses and lunchmeats. Bologna. Unsealed.

No woman on a fixed budget, working two jobs would leave bread to harden and lunchmeat to spoil by leaving it open, air exposed. Pinching pennies, taking care of these small things would be too important. And, the time of night and the hours worked would suggest that eating would have waited for breakfast. He walks to the counter and finds a small plastic box. Inside are index cards.

Recipes.

Cut from magazines, money saving recipes that a single mother would collect to assist in food budget management. Flipping through the index cards, he feels something strange. A different texture. Going through the cards slowly, he finds a small piece of torn notebook paper. Written in neat handwriting is an address:

129 E. Trotter Ave
Apt. 3

Pulling his phone from his waistband, Kevin calls the station and asks to have the address traced and all LUDS from any phone attached to the address pulled. It’s late, so he knows he won’t see anything until morning.

Continuing his search he steps into the dining area and, again, sees fingerprint dust covering the table and all the chairs. He sits down and looks around the small space. Pictures of apples and oranges decorate the far wall. The side of the fridge is covered with childhood art projects made just for mom. There is a love in this room, but it’s been soiled. The transverse collision of auras slams the room with confusion. He feels him sitting here. He senses the anger dissipating with each bite of the sandwich. And he senses the power.

Leaving the kitchenette, he turns left down the hallway leading to the bedrooms. He pauses outside the bathroom door and turns on the light. Nothing out of place, it seems, for a chaotic bathroom that must have been a very busy place each morning. He can visualize Diane and her daughters, Jennette and Colleen, brushing their teeth as their mother finishes her make-up. Why didn’t he clean up here? Why not use the one room made for what he needed? Germ issues? Afraid of what he may leave behind if he took his cleaning to this level?

He enters the master bedroom and sits down on the edge of the bed in the dark. A small nightlight reflects off the wall sending a stream of light up the wall. There is madness in this room. This was the target area. The children were just collateral damage. What had she done to deserve this? Or is it that she had done nothing but be herself? What about her sent him into this madness?

After sitting for about twenty minutes, he rises from the bed and reaches for the wall light. The overhead comes on bringing the room to view. He makes his way to the double door closet and opens it. Clothes are hung neatly on the right side. The left has them pushed to the far side of the closet. He hid here. He waited here. He stood in this closet waiting for everyone to get where they needed to be. And when all was right, when all were defenseless, he sprang.

He’s a coward.

He’s not a big man. Strong, yes. But, not a big man. And he knows it. He was afraid of a confrontation with her standing. He waited for her to be comfortable, to doze.

He was on her before she knew it. Awaken with the shock of sudden contact, fear poured from her eyes. And he began. Subdue. Silence with threat. And then, as if breaking a promise, he starts his mission. Although no tool was found, ligature marks on her neck show that she had been choked. Just enough to cause her to pass out. Then he revived her. He wanted to see the fear. He mistook it for respect.

The pose is not out of the ordinary. Cliché as anything. But, the wrists. The pain involved with breaking a wrist so cleanly that you can rotate it in it’s crushed socket is more than Kevin can imagine. Once she was completely in his control, he began cutting. His cuts were precise, no hesitation marks indicated. He never thought twice about what he was doing. He thinks of his wife. He closes his eyes and the crime scene images shift back and forth between the two. So similar. Yet so different.

Similar is easy to understand. Different is harder. Although there was no personal catch for Kevin at this scene, the vision of the massacre hit so close to home, as if to be a mirror image. But, wouldn’t he make them different somehow?

Kevin closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The smells in the room bring memories flooding back. He sees both beds in side by side images in his mind’s eye. And he brings them into focus. Like a child’s game of “What’s Different?”, he scans each memory looking for what may have been missed.

Patricia was wearing a wedding band. Diane had a bare hand.

Each had their heads turned to the left, with the chin resting just on the shoulder.

Both sets of hands were twisted and broken grotesquely back.

Each night stand held a lamp and a clock. He could see the clocks. Their faces cleanly in his mind. Both were stopped at 3:32 am. In his mind, a flash went off. Time of death. It doesn’t match. The numbers mean something. Why change the time on the clocks? Why make them the same?

He turns from the bed and begins to study the walls. What is it he can’t see? There has to be a reason for the careful placement of blood on all the walls. He walks the walls from the corner nearest the window, around the room past the closets, over an old thrift store bureau and back again over the bed. He notices the drips that cascade in spots around the room, down the wall, almost to the molding near the floor. Each ends with a pooled residual amount of blood. He turns back over the headboard and sees a single line of a drip going down the wall. He looks at it. Sensing something he is not seeing.

He goes to the foot of the bed and pulls the bed away from the wall. He walks behind the headboard and follows the blood trail down the wall. And there, just before it reaches it’s final resting place, he sees it.

There is a cross line of blood cutting throw the drip. The line is drawn near the bottom. What is it? Why only here, behind the headboard, would this happen? It had to be intentional. There is a reason.

And then his mind’s eye sees.

Near the bottom, with a short top…it appears to be….an upside down cross.

He looks back at the nightstand. The clock.

3:32.

He gets up from behind the bed and scans the room. He can’t find what he is looking for here. There has to be one. He walks around the room, back into the hall, and into the living room. He finds what he is looking for on a shelf above the tv.

The Holy Bible.

Going from book to book, he searches out his idea. Finding meaningless passages, until he gets to Mark Chapter 3, Verse 32:

“And the teachers of law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

Are the demons that are being driven out from his victims? Or do the demons live within him?

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The randomness of his purpose it what keeps him save. The inability for those who would stop him from becoming can’t see the reasoning for his mission. He does nothing to give himself away. He plays their game to keep from standing out. Goes to work, does his job, pays his bills, and then stays out of sight. Causes no waves. Attracts no attention. He wears the mask of the daytime to hide the true nature of his becoming. If they could see, they would understand. But, their ignorance and his cunning keep them blind.

He sits in the parking lot of the Food Lion parking lot. He has loaded the small amount of groceries into his ten year old Jeep. Through the mud splattered windows, the keeps his eye on the cashier who has just gotten out of work and is heading to her car, parked on the east side of the building.

She is heading home to her daughter and her quiet home in the downtown area, across from the police station. How fitting, that he will put this next specimen right in his face. This one closer to home than the last…not just by distance, but because of the connection. She was special to the target of this attack. A little trip into his past. Kevin will feel more in this one.

The potential inside him knows that this makes this mission more dangerous. The great son of Carlton will come stronger after this. He will fully realize that no part of his life is safe.

Just thinking this has him excited. He struggles to control his breathing. Must relax. It’s not time yet. He has to be ready to receive the power. And to be there he needs more knowledge of his offering. He has to know her completely. And when the time is right, he will know. The potential is breathing life into it self within his soul. And it will trigger the time.

Patience is his. Because, timing is just as important as preparation. And he will always be prepared, so when the signal arrives, he will be ready.

As he pulls out of the parking lot, he follows her closely. He needs to continue to know her routine. She will drive down Park Street to Main and make a left. Two blocks, right. She will stop at the Sheetz station on Trotter Ave and pick up a fountain soda and a pack of Salem Lights. Back in her car she will travel the two blocks to her apartment. Sending her babysitter home, she will check on her sleeping daughter, make herself a microwaveable meal of some horrible tasting prepackaged food and settle in front of her television to watch some late night television.

Routines are just that, the norm. And the norm can kill you.

And so can the becoming.

He thinks, just for a moment, that he feels a deep sigh come from his soul.

The power is close.

It’s almost time to play again.