The Blood Dahlia (The Dark Angel Mysteries Book 1) Page 7

  Gina snickered.

  “Don’t encourage him,” he whispered. “Come back in here and be useful here.”

  Totter entered the room and saw the screens of numbers. “Need me to review that?”

  “Yep, do the usual.”

  “Anything in particular I should be looking out for?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you, now would I?” he snapped.

  “Be nice,” warned Gina.

  “Connections. Similar phones or transactions. You know.”

  Totter didn’t reply. Instead, he pulled down the screens and went on about his way. Lynch knew he was working on it as he went. Similar to a person that thought best while pacing, that was what Totter did. Whether it was an intentional reaction that was programmed to make him appear more human, he didn’t know. At times it comforted him, other times it annoyed him. Much of life was that way, full of comforts and annoyances.

  For the next hour, he read the reports, occasionally asking questions out loud. Sometimes Gina answered with an “I don’t know”, or a “huh”, but her answers eventually became less frequent. Then he heard the snore that explained it. He looked a little more and then had his normal scotch and scotch before he headed upstairs himself. He pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over Gina before he reluctantly headed upstairs. He was tired and hoped sleep came quickly. He was more sober than most nights, which frightened him. Nothing to chase the screams away.

  13

  The screams came, thanks to the lack of chemicals to chase them back. It was Olivia Houston, a thirty three year old housewife that let out a blood-curdling scream that caused his toes to curl, even while he was asleep. Her case was the one and only case involving a serial killer. The beast had done most of its work in the surrounding cities. They all knew it was only a matter of time before he crossed the city line. A task force had been setup with the surrounding agencies. Lucas and Lynch were part of it. Many profiles were established, of both the suspect and his victims, covering a wide spectrum that told Lynch one thing, they were nowhere close to understanding the killer.

  Most cases that involved serial killers were not solved by the cops closing in on a profile. It had happened a few times, but more often than not the suspect slipped up. A piece of evidence left behind, a victim left alive or, as in this case, letting someone see you stalking around your next victim’s house leading to a burglary call to 911.

  Lynch hadn’t responded to a burglary call since he’d left the street beat, but something about this felt different, and it wasn’t far from his place. He was the first one on the scene. For a brief moment, he considered waiting for the black and whites, but the presence of a paranormal gallery forced his hand to pull out his light and look around. The faces of each victim had been burned into his brain by the hours upon hours of task force work. Until now, they were just digital images on a screen. Each now looked on from the sidewalk as Lynch headed toward the house.

  During his search, he almost made the same mistake the suspect did, kicking the garbage cans that roused the neighbors. He walked all around the house and ended up back at those cans. Other than it looked like they had been moved, he saw no sign of forced entry or any footprints. In truth, he would have been surprised to find any. The ground was dry compacted dirt, with the exception of the sliver of cracked concrete that served as a driveway.

  He looked up and found an open window above the cans. At first, he thought it had been left opened on purpose, but he noticed the top of the can depressed in, like something heavy had sat, or stepped on it. He considered attempting to climb up and look in through the window, but didn’t think there was a chance in hell the compressed plastic resin can would hold his girth. That was when he heard it. The sound of pain and suffering that rattled the chords of the universe and sent every sleeping bird in the nearby trees fleeing. His skin crawled as he ran for the backdoor.

  Before he reached it, the darkness had settled in around him, and the world slowed down. His boot kicked the door in. Her slight frame was on the floor. Her raven hair puddled around her, while another puddle formed underneath it and spread out along the floor. The attacker, a balding white prick with tattoos covering both arms, stood there with his pants still down around his knees. He had started to pull them up when the door crashed in. He yelped just moments before Lynch drew his weapon. The finger itched to pull, but Lynch managed to push back the darkness that consumed him. The vibrations of the world told him it was right to take this scum’s life. In how Lynch viewed the world, he was a dark void, one of the darkest he had seen. There was no reason this sorry excuse for a human should be allowed to survive. A single squeeze of his trigger would take care of that. If he felt that was too good for him, he had other tricks he could use too. A few he recently discovered, like his ability to slowly extract the life force out of a person until they were gone. He resisted, and to another path sending the butt of his gun across the perpetrator’s face. The crack of breaking bones was heard above the thud of impact. His body fell limp and splattered in the crimson river that spread from his victim. Lynch returned to his self and landed hard with the realization if he had been seconds faster, he wouldn’t have to deliver the speech to Olivia’s husband.

  Her scream came to him often, it was part of a repeating soundtrack of his life he couldn’t avoid. Each he considered a red mark on his life. Examples of when he failed, no matter how good he was, or how much he gave into it. One time the scream came to him in a dream, but the rest of the details of that event didn’t play out. Instead, it was just the scream and seeing her on the floor, over and over again, with an occasional flash of the expression on her husband’s face.

  What he didn’t remember about that crime scene was, the ringing of a Scroll in the background. It was quiet in the house before and after the scream. Where was that coming from?

  The new intruder was enough to rouse him from his sleep, but not before he heard the familiar voice say, “Grow.”

  Lynch rolled over and answered his Scroll, “Who the fuck is this?”

  “Nice to talk to you, too,” said Lucas. “Sorry to bother you, but I have something I think you need to see.”

  Lynch looked at the time, 3:19 am. “Something you think I need to see, or something you want me to see?”

  “Kind of both.”

  “Where?”

  “Just sent you the location. Can you get here within the hour? CSI will be crawling around after that.”

  “Yeah,” Lynch said and let his Scroll roll back up.

  Luckily for him, he didn’t really get undressed before falling into bed. He had on his pants and undershirt. The white button-up he wore earlier was over the chair in his room. He thew it on and reached for the sports coat he wore. His hand paused just above it, and then stepped to his closet and slipped on the long black duster. It felt like a stranger and an old friend, all at the same time.

  Down the stairs and out the front door, he slipped into the night. It was cooler than it was earlier, so he flipped up the collar to block the chill. It brought on its own chill, but this one almost warmed what was left of his heart.

  Behind him, he heard a familiar sound and stopped in his tracks. “Gina, I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back inside and get some sleep, or go on home.”

  “Not a chance. Where are you heading at this time of night, in that thing?” Gina caught up with him and started to pull on the lapel of the jacket, but stopped before she made contact with it. She almost looked afraid of it.

  “Go home.”

  “You tell me first.”

  Knowing he wasn’t going to get rid of her, he said “I got a call.”

  “From?”

  He groaned. There was no doubt where this was going to end. “Lucas.”

  “I am coming.”

  He knew better than to make an attempt to talk her out of it. He lacked the energy to waste the effort on something that would do no good.

  14

  They arrived at
an abandoned factory on the lower east side. Very cliché, he thought. There were a few black and whites outside with their lights on. Something that made even the quietest scene chaotic. Among the cars was Lucas’ green sedan he had driven for years. Yellow tape stretched around them from one light pole to another at the end of the block.

  He parked just short of the black and whites, outside the tape. He got out and looked around for Lucas, half expecting him to be outside waiting on him. Then he ducked under the tape that, as a civilian, was now a complete no-no, but no one was around to admonish him, or Gina, who followed behind him.

  The front of the brown brick building had several banks for windows, all with broken glass, and only one door which was open, which made the next move obvious. He stepped inside the door and turned to Gina, “You should stay outside, this is a crime scene.”

  She gave him a ‘what about you?’ look and took the first step up on the stoop.

  Together they walked into what used to be the office for whatever business this dilapidated structure used to be. Dust covered the desk and chairs, each nicer than what he had in his office. A detail he took note of for later. A light shone through the next door, leading them in that direction. Lynch walked into a sight he had seen more times than he cared to remember. Cops milled around a broken down old warehouse. Spots of moonlight blasted through collapsed sections of roof. The metallic smell of blood mixed with the damp musky smell of mildew. Gina held a hand over her nose to try to shield herself from the sight and the putrid odor. She stayed plastered against the wall as she slipped inside the room and behind Lynch.

  “Guys, give us a minute,” Lucas said from the shadows. The black and white officers walked out the door. Each passed Lynch and greeted him.

  Lynch greeted them back. “Fellas.”

  “Well, this is a little new,” Lynch said as he walked around the spot of interest on the floor.

  “Yep, never seen that before.”

  “Gina, watch your step,” warned Lynch as she stepped around the scene in her heels. Her hand was now over her mouth to hold back whatever wanted to come up.

  “I have seen circles, ovals, and even squares, but never a pool of blood that matched the shape of a person. Not even sure how you would create one,” Lucas said.

  “No body?”

  “Nope, just what you see here. One of her kind called in hearing a young girl scream,” Lucas said pointing at Gina. “No offense, Gina.”

  “You’re fine, Lucas. I knew what you meant.”

  “The patrol officer found it just like you see it now.”

  Lynch moved away from the blood and bent down close to the ground. A thick layer of dust covered everything, just as you would expect in a building that hadn’t been occupied in the better part of two decades. “Anyone walk back here?”

  “Not a soul while I was here, why?”

  “Just asking. Don’t see any prints.”

  “All you will see is right here around the spot.”

  “Good,” Lynch said as he stood up.

  “Going to do your thing?” Lucas asked.

  “I kind of figured that was why you called me down here.”

  “Gina, maybe we should step out,” Lucas said. He walked toward Gina, trying to usher her toward the door. His close presence, that was getting closer by the step, forced her to take a few awkward steps back. Lynch knew those heels would get her eventually.

  “I want to stay. Don’t worry, I have seen his party tricks a few times,” she said.

  Lucas turned around to Lynch and asked, “Has she?”

  “Yeah, but only you two, nobody else has,” Lynch said, and then he realized his count was off, “Well, obviously, you know.”

  “All right.”

  The night was cool and damp, but Lynch felt none of that anymore. The musky odor was gone, too. Everything was. Lynch had pulled within himself. Deep beyond the layers of perception and expectations that surrounded every aspect of the world around him. The world as he knew it dematerialized around him. The sounds of Gina’s and Lucas’ breathing faded into nothingness. The world that appeared in its place was the true world. Without all the learned shapes and colors.

  He didn’t understand how it worked, or even what it really was. What he was told was that it was a gift. In some ways, it was. In others, it was a curse. It allowed him to see the world as it really was, below the niceties and window dressing. He could exist there, observe, watch, and react. Lucas once told him that to watch it from the outside was the scariest experience of his life. His body blurred and became nothing but a smear of darkness that juked and jived in all directions, at the same time. When it moved, it did so as if picked up and placed in the new spot, never actually moving between two spots. When he was just observing, it was scary enough, but when he was reacting, all Lucas saw were flashes of a muzzle and bodies falling.

  This trip in was just to get observation, a peering into the fabric of time itself to see what had happened, and who had been there. He looked around at the room before him. Full of presences and after images that were left by the world. It was crowded, and dark. A sure sign no one of any goodwill had entered this place in a long time. In this view of the world from the other side, people with good intentions were lighter in presence, those with malicious intent, dark. The worse they were, the darker their presence. A fact that seemed rather obvious when he’d figured it out many years ago. What wasn’t as clear, was that this just represented them at that moment. The same light presence he saw then, he could see later or earlier, that was as dark as the empty vast vacuum of Space. Mixed among those were what he called static. Echoes of events that, if he looked closely enough, he could see them and force them to move backwards to see what had happened.

  The challenge now was working through the after images to see who was there and when. Sometimes that was easy, but this wasn’t going to be one of those times. He would have to put it in motion to get rid of the presences from years ago. It was a headache he wasn’t looking forward to, and wished he had had a few more scotches before he went to bed, and slept right through the phone call. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the image of the room he’d had before he left the ether Gina and Lucas existed in. When he opened them there were only two presences, both light. He was now in the here and now.

  He squeezed his hands and focused on looking past them. A searing pain burned behind his eyes, and slowly the room set into motion. The patrol officers walked in and out as Gina and Lucas walked around a spot. Then he watched Gina enter, as she passed one of the patrol officers turned grey. A fact that Lynch made note of as something to be handled later.

  Lucas entered the room, and then it was empty. It stayed empty for a long time, but he knew it couldn’t have been that long. The blood was still in a liquid state. Then he saw another of the creatures he shared this world with. The spirit of a young girl appeared out of nowhere. She stood there, solemnly looking around. Her long dark hair flew in wind that wasn’t there. It was the effects of the static moving past her. She never moved, not an inch on the floor. Not even when a dark presence emerged up from the center of the pool of blood. Lynch didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t a person, or was it? To him it was just a shadow, almost blocked from him. It emerged up from the center of the pool of blood and then flashed past him to the back of the room, leaving a strong wake in each of the layers Lynch saw. It flashed from the back of the room back to the pool, where it knelt.

  A slight relaxing of his hand slowed the speed of time down. He walked closer to get a good look at what IT was doing. What he saw explained everything, what they found. Who, or what, ever this was had used an ordinary piece of rope to create the outline of a young girl. What he was watching was IT removing it. A few drops dripped from above, sending ripples across the pool. The spirit of the young girl looked. Lynch followed her gaze and saw her, hanging there, draining. He moved to get a better look at their victim, but the shadow filled his view, screamed at him, and pushed him to the f
loor. What he saw next, he couldn’t explain. Lynch had a front-row seat to the death of this young girl. A close up view of every horrifying action and detail. Each scream and plea, right down to the last drop. He wanted to go back and see it again, but the ache in his head throbbed. The world he saw, his world, came in and out of view with each throb. He couldn’t stay here for much longer, and let go.

  In a flash, he was back, and the girl had followed. The color had drained out of both Gina’s and Lucas’ faces. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said as he got up. “If you think watching me do that is a fright, look up.”

  On cue, both Lucas and Gina did. Gina gave a shriek and backed up. While they viewed their victim. Lynch walked over to the far corner where he found exactly what he expected, a blood-stained rope.

  “I would suggest testing this for DNA, but I have a feeling you won’t find anything but the blood of the victim.”

  “What is it?” Lucas asked, his eyes and light still focused on the victim hung from the rafter.

  “How they made the form,” Lynch then corrected himself, “How they made the message.”

  “Yep, it’s a message.”

  “And that is missing girl #6. You didn’t know she was missing, did you?”

  15

  “Nope,” Lucas said. He handed a pill to Lynch, who took it and downed it without delay.

  “Cheryl Hines”

  “How do you know?” questioned Lucas. He and Lynch were standing in the dusty old office while the crime scene team went over the room behind them.

  Over Lucas’ shoulder, Lynch could see the nude body of the twenty-something being lowered down to the ground by the technicians. His eyes watched the body until it contacted the floor and lay on a tarp. This was something personal for him. Some technicians got on his nerves. They treated the body as just something, not a person, but just an object. A complete lack of respect for the dead and who they used to be. To his pleasure, this crew had that and showed it in every action they did. Once she was all the way down and neatly, and respectfully, secured in the tarp, he gave Lucas a look of faux surprise.