Serial (3 page)

Isaac stood and waved a hand. “I understand.” He made no promises as he headed for the door, but he had all the motivation he needed to rid the city of this new serial killer. The feds were a bull Isaac had no interest in provoking.

On his way back to his office, he passed the breakroom. A different gaggle of officers was on display, but the news was the same. Isaac smothered his smile as Detective James Chapman called for his attention.

“You see this shit, man?”

Isaac leaned inside the room and glanced at the TV, nodding, doing his best to mimic the other detective’s distressed look.

…brutal and barbaric, the unidentified victim left to hang by her neck in a noose made of her own intestines. The po…

“He’s fucking up. We’ll get him,” Isaac told the other detective as he walked away.

He laughed inside as he shut the door to his office, drowning out the angry comments of his fellow officers and the drone of the news report.
Brutal and barbaric.
The words echoed in his head. Karen had hardly been a masterpiece, but Isaac was content with the results. He’d made no mistakes. Better yet, her death had brought the news back full circle to where it belonged. There was no mention of the toothpick killer, only the Desert Ripper, as it should be.

Garcia had been right. The toothpick through the girl’s breast
was
a message—a warning, but it was also a challenge, a marking of his territory. El Paso belonged to Isaac and he’d brook no usurpers in his domain. El Paso’s fear was
his
alone to reap.

Isaac’s hands trembled as he sat before his computer, fury stiffening his knuckles while he accessed the criminal database. He took a moment to calm himself before he went on, his fingers tapping frantically against the keys and fumbling his password. He couldn’t let his anger and excitement get to him. Too much rode upon his professionalism, his certainty in the kill. Novices panicked. Novices found themselves in cuffs facing an empty life in prison or the chair. Isaac was no novice.

With eighteen confirmed kills, nineteen once Karen was credited to that list, and a half dozen more, moldering in the desert sand, that had yet to be found, he was assured of his anonymity as long as he didn’t allow the upstart to draw him out. Isaac had rushed Karen, but he’d taken no chances. The cameras at the intersection he chose had been down for months—TXDOT had yet to even file a work order—and none of the security systems of the neighboring businesses covered the location, given their facing and the distance from the drop point. Even then, Isaac had taken precautions to obscure his features. It made the dump easy.

If anyone had witnessed what happened, there would be nothing more to the story than a homeless couple staggering across the bridge, drunk or high, the pair collapsing on the bridge.
Would anyone even notice that only one walked away shortly thereafter?
He’d set the body to tug against its own weight, tightening the fleshy noose until Karen slipped over the edge to dangle above the morning traffic. There had been at least two blocks between him and Karen before she finally toppled.

Isaac smiled at what must have greeted the first passersby to see Karen hanging in the bright light of morning. The Sun City lived up to its reputation, the day’s brilliant radiance plying its touch early to chase away the desert shadows. He wished he could have been there to see it, but that was the mark of an amateur or fool. Detectives are trained to survey the scene, and it’s the first thing they do. Serial killers don’t leave their victims out in the open unless they want the attention, the visceral thrill of knowing their work has been discovered. The police know this, so they scan the crowd looking for the idiots who stand out and haul them in first—the ones who fidget yet show no expression, the ones lingering in the back with no apparent interest in getting close to take a peek, or those
too
eager to see the ruin of their fellow man. These are the novices whose streaks end short. They might as well wave a flag claiming responsibility, for all their lack of subtlety.

Fortunately, the modern world craves sensationalism just as much as killers do. It’s no longer necessary to hoard trinkets or pieces of the corpse to remember the victims by, furthering the risk of being caught. The Internet and news networks store it all, keeping it nice and organized and out there to be accessed at any time, without a fingerprint to trace. It’s there to be salivated over in high def and full color. One need only to be patient and the scene, in all its glory, will be revealed as a morbid society peels back the layers of necessary secrecy and chases the evidence into the light. All the while, the same society rails at the impotence of police forced to hemorrhage their only clues and give up all hope of bringing a criminal to justice.

God bless America.

Isaac grinned as he put his fingers to work, the shaking in his hands calmed. He wondered about his competition as he opened a file on him, dubbing him the Toothpick Killer, for lack of a better name. Once he was done filling in what little information he had, he set the links to alert the coroner and lab of the file’s creation, and searched their outgoing databases for any new information regarding his case. There was nothing worth mentioning.

Isaac sighed as he refreshed the case, over and over, growing frustrated. He’d have to drive across town to collect the TXDOT videos of the Border Highway, but he knew that would be a waste. The lighting in the area was substandard at the best of times. Even if the killer’s vehicle had been caught on tape, it would be little more than a pair of headlights in the dark, which no amount of technical wizardry could draw into the light.

Not yet ready to abandon the physical evidence he hoped would come in soon, Isaac shifted over to the Ripper case to see if Detective Mendes had made any headway. Isaac grinned, knowing there would be nothing to worry about. Despite the temptation to alter records to cover up his crime, he had never once done anything to the Desert Ripper’s file. Right after hanging around the crime scene, that was the surest way to get caught. Isaac covered his tracks from the start so the record stood pristine. There were no stray hairs or blood to be found, and no way to trace the homemade Rohypnol he used to drug his victims. He didn’t need to adjust the record because there was nothing linking him to the crimes. That was how he’d avoided his brethren for so long, even before he’d been put in charge of the case.

Happy to find the captain hadn’t lied, his password still opening the Ripper’s file, Isaac flipped through the newest entries made by Mendes. It told him nothing he didn’t already know. Mendes was adequate to the job, his notes perfunctory, but he wouldn’t fare any better than anyone else at finding the Ripper. There simply was no trail to follow.

Isaac flipped back to the Toothpick case and growled at the lack of updates. There was nothing left to do but review the traffic tapes until something came in. Isaac set out and steeled himself for the aggravating drive across town in rush hour traffic.

Chapter Six

The machete sunk into the supine girl’s breast, cleaving through until it
thunk
ed against bone. The impact sent vibrations dancing up his arm. Her sightless eyes stared away without knowing the brutality being inflicted upon her husk.

He’d seen the news report of the Desert Ripper’s latest kill, the media defying the police’s mandate to not report on the single toothpick shoved crudely through the girl’s nipple. It was a message to him, and the networks had been more than willing to pass it along. He expected no less. They wanted their pound of flesh from the city.

He had their attention—both the media
and
the Ripper. Now, he just needed to keep it a little longer. Once more he let the machete loose, its blade cutting through the tender stomach of the girl lying on the plastic-sheeted floor. He restrained his enthusiasm, making sure each cut was in its place this time. He needed to be precise. Though it was the toothpicks the media focused on, it was the slashes that told the story he wanted to get across.
Would the Ripper respond?

He hoped so.

Come morning, El Paso would stare into his defiance, the answer to the Ripper’s challenge resting in the dead sack of meat at his feet.

The news had dubbed him the Toothpick Killer, but tomorrow he’d lay claim to a moniker more suited to his purpose. For now, there was flesh to rend. The machete fell again.

Chapter Seven

The night had been a long one for Isaac, full of dead-end videos and a coroner’s report that did nothing more than confirm what he already knew about the victims. Sleep had evaded him in his anxiousness for the inevitable hunt for family members and witnesses. None would shed any light on the killer.

Isaac’s morning was no better. He sat hunched in a ball of fury on the couch, transfixed by the television. He’d received the call from Garcia a little over an hour earlier, telling him about the kill scene that awaited him. The Toothpick Killer had ignored Isaac’s warning, striking once again with a deliberate statement of defiance. He would not be scared away so easily. His feet braced in the proverbial sand of his victim’s corpse, the new killer had shrugged off the media’s label and had staked claim to a name all his own, laying his intentions bare.

This is Jessica Rodriquez with a
News 7
exclusive. The Toothpick Killer has claimed yet another victim in what appears to be an escalating battle of bodies here in the Sun City, but there’s more. The killer has sent Channel 7 a second letter claiming responsibility for the horrific murder of a seventeen-year-old girl whose butchered remains were found in the parking lot of the local high school she attended.

While police won’t release the details of the crime, the scene too horrible to describe, the killer has stated he will continue to murder the citizens of El Paso until his nemesis breathes his last. He did not name this nemesis, but we assume him to be the Desert Ripper, the serial killer responsible for the brutal murder on display at US 54 and Montana yesterday.

Again, we can’t tell you everything disclosed inside the letter, but the killer has decried the Toothpick pseudonym in favor of the name, Bane.

Stay tuned to
News 7
for—

The news report faded away as Isaac thumbed the Volume button. He had fired the first blow of the conflict by the inclusion of the toothpick, but Bane had rallied back with the declaration of his name and the proclamation of his expectations. Bane was looking to be the dominant terror in the city. He wanted the Ripper gone. Isaac snarled as he gathered his things and headed for work, coffee forgotten in the pot.

Bane had outdone himself. While the news had reported the victim had been found in the parking lot of her school, it neglected to mention the condition of her body. His car parked outside the fence, Isaac set his head on swivel as he strode onto the property. No one standing out in the gathering crowd,—not that he’d expected anyone to—Isaac turned his focus to the lot. He saw just how much the news had left to the imagination when he approached the crime scene under the bright morning light.

The girl’s head, earlier identified as that of Patricia Jones, was perched upon a rebar spike driven into the worn, gray asphalt of the lot. Her pretty face was frozen with rigor mortis, its calm expression contrary to the cruelty of her demise. Isaac imagined she had been dead long before the dismemberment had begun, and, just like Bane’s other victims, Patricia’s left eye socket was filled with toothpicks. Their points were hammered in evenly, methodically. Her other eye sat open wide, death too recent for it to sag closed.

A crime tech photographer was recording the head and its surroundings, so Isaac drifted off toward the other body parts. There were five, not counting the head, each pinned to the asphalt. He drew in a deep breath as the vague shape of their arrangement struck him. She had been splayed out as though she were a star, her head and limbs at the five points while her small-breasted torso appeared dead center. It had been mutilated, slices scattered across the pale flesh that seemed less random than the mutilation of the first two bodies.

The advantage was Bane’s. Isaac clenched his fists and felt his cheeks warm at the vile thought. He didn’t even bother to stifle his anger as the captain approached.

“This guy is giving me a fucking headache that starts in my rectum,” Garcia said as he gestured to the lot. “This is nothing more than a game to him.”

“It’s not a game at all.” Isaac shook his head. “What we have is two predators sharing the same hunting ground. It’s simple nature. There’s not enough
food
to go around, so one is trying to push the other out. Bane probably doesn’t even care if the Ripper dies, gets arrested or just plain moves on. They all accomplish the same thing as far as Bane is concerned.”

Even though Isaac could rationalize the logic behind the other killer’s actions, he couldn’t remove
his
emotions from the equation. His jaw ached where his teeth ground together. A constant
thump
drummed against his temples. Bane wanted Isaac gone by whatever means possible; Isaac just wanted Bane gutted.

“Maybe the shitheads will off each other and solve all of our problems.”

Isaac gave the captain a feral grin. He could only wish for the opportunity to get his hands on Bane. His death would be horrible, a fitting finale to the usurper’s attempted rebellion against the natural order in El Paso. “Best case scenario, for sure,” he muttered to Garcia after a moment, remembering to stay in character. He couldn’t tell the captain what he truly thought.