Maybe it’s because I just studied their portraits, but for a moment, I’m transported to that horrible night in the alleyway outside the theater, the smoke of gunfire hanging over my mother and father’s prone bodies.One minute we were laughing and talking, the next, they were dead.Leaving me with nothing but the echo of gunshots and the loss I would carry for the rest of my life.
Inara is in danger.She could die, just like my parents.She would’ve died last night if the killer had found her.
Only I can keep her safe.And I will do anything.There’s no law I won’t break, no boundary I won’t obliterate.
Nothing matters but protecting her.
Inara
The Bondage Killerhas struck again.This time, instead of a family, it’s a single woman.She was alone in her apartment when he broke in.I feel a flash of terror and anguish, and I don’t know if it’s mine or a psychic response to the victim.
They show a picture of her when she was alive, smiling, with her arms around her dog.The mention of a dog tugs at my memory.The detail matches my dream last night, where I was a grown woman lying in bed, hoping the sounds outside my room were made by the dog and not an intruder.
Dear gods.It wasn’t a dream.
“Pardon, ma’am?”Hamish mutes the TV and cranes his head as if to hear me better.
“Nothing.”I didn’t mean to say that aloud.No one knows the truth about the visions I see of victims before they die, and no one ever will.It’s a secret I’ll take to the grave.
I shake off the sick feeling of psychic horror and try to focus on the facts of the case.There’s no time for me to collapse, not now.
“Are there any more details?”I ask.On the muted TV, the news broadcast has switched to images of Chief Jordan waving away microphones.The chyron announces an upcoming police press conference.
“I did make a few inquiries and learned a detail left out of the press reports,” Hamish says.“There was a note left on the latest scene.Much like the ones sent to you, Detective Ramos.”
I jolt.Of course.The letters.“What happened to the letters?”All I remember is gripping them while getting into the backseat of Ivan’s town car.“I need to get them to the precinct.They’re evidence.”
“We have them,” Rex says.“They’re in my lab.We took the opportunity to run some forensic testing.”
“You did what?”It’s bad enough that Hamish so easily uncovered sensitive details of the case, but tampering with evidence?He’s gone too far.I channel my shock into anger and round on him.“There are rules about the chain of custody for a reason.The letters are our best hope of finding the killer, and now they’re tainted?—”
“Because evidence is never tainted in police custody.”Rex doesn’t bother to hide his sarcasm.
“I guess you would know.”I remember how easily Rex made evidence disappear in the Martin case, and my face and chest grow hot.“You have no right?—”
“Do you want to know what we found?”Rex interrupts.
I pause with my mouth open.If he compromised the evidence, I might shoot him.Not anywhere fatal, but maybe in the leg or something.He’s lucky I’m not armed now.
But I do want to know what he found.
I nod, and he beckons.“Come see for yourself.”
We end up back in his HQ or, as Hamish calls it, his “lair.”Beyond the illuminated workspaces, the place is as dark and forbidding as ever.Rex leads me across a metal bridge to a large glass cube, a makeshift room filled with lab equipment.There are stainless steel counters and a hanging array of computer screens.
“This can’t be sterile,” I mutter.
“Alfie?”Rex asks, and the computer answers in a cheerful, artificial voice.“We maintain the strictest sanitation levels and disinfect all surfaces regularly.Would you like a decontamination report?”
“That won’t be necessary.”I roll my eyes.
“Here.”Rex guides me to a long plastic case that holds each letter.“We hoped for fingerprints, but there are only yours.The writer must have worn gloves.The paper is aged, but it’s common card stock, a brand that’s been sold in craft stores across the nation for over twenty years.We’re analyzing for mold spores, bacteria, anything that can give us a hint of the writer’s location.”
I lean over the case, studying each letter.I didn’t have to read the ravings of the madman to know it was the Bondage Killer.I feel it like a dark cloud hovering over my senses.A poison spreading through my psyche, making me want to rip at my skin to shed the suffocating feeling.
“Most interesting was the handwriting analysis,” Hamish says.He’s pecking on a computer, pulling up toxicology reports that would rival the best forensic lab.“The signature matches that of the Bondage Killer.”A picture of a similar letter, written on cream card stock, appears on the screen nearest to me.“This is a letter sent to the Elyria police station sixteen years ago, around the time the Bondage Killer was active in that area.”By ‘active,’ Hamish means murdering people.Families like mine.
“I remember,” I say.I’ve seen photocopies of the Bondage Killer’s letters in my mentor’s files.“He was confident.Baiting the police.It helped them catch him.”
