Inside By ME

SNIPPET FROM MY FUTURE NOVEL

“So what do we have now?” asked Detective Bianca Hardy, as she walked into a gruesome crime scene.

“White male, beat several times with a blunt objective…” says one of the crime scene investigators.

“Was that the cause of death?” inquired Hardy.

“No, he was beat just before being strangled to death” says the csi.

“And the murder weapon?” asks the Detective, who was slowly losing patience.

“A thin rope. You can see the rope burns stretching from ear to ear. You can tell there was some sort of struggle; as there are multiple rope burns on top of one another.”

“Yea but where is it? Never mind. Where’s Calhoune?”

“In the bedroom, the victim wasn’t beat out here in the living room, so they’re investigating in there.”

Hardy walked down the short corridor to reach the bedroom. The crime scene seemed to get more gruesome the further into the apartment she went. There was blood splatter everywhere. It seemed unreal for the blood was a dark burgundy color and oozed in clumps. So much so, the walls looked like they were bleeding. A painting, previously hung on the wall, was knocked to the floor with a deep foot print dead in its center. The rug was stained with vomit, probably belonging to victim. Only if she were lucky would she find DNA from the perp. Right outside the bedroom door sat a broken vase.

“There goes our blunt object” says Hardy to herself.

“Desmond, please tell me you’ve got something for me” asks Hardy.

“Looks like the murderer was really into the news… We’ve got a copy cat on our hands” says Desmond Calhoune, Hardy’s partner.

Desmond, unlike Bianca, was a veteran to the force and slowly climbed his way up to Detective. At first there was some resentment towards the rookie cop who was awarded the title after serving only a year on the job, but after five years of being partners he began to realize her gift. There was no other officer, or woman for that matter, that Calhoune trusted more with his life.

“Same M.O. as the others. The victim knew the perp. Seemed like they were being intimate or was about when the attack happened” explained Calhoune.

“Why do you say that?” asked a puzzled Hardy.

“They victim was found in his underwear. There’s semen present. His. No traces of a condom. We’re backed into a corner, just like before.”

“How is this possible? Four murders. Four Perpetrators. All in jail!” her patience was just about nonexistent at this point. She took a deep sigh before asking for the rest of the details.

“See, this is where the copy cat angle ends… The victim’s teeth were knocked out and placed under the pillow along with his wallet.”

“Yea? Just like the four ‘Tooth Fairy Murders’. How does this not signal to you that we have a copy cat on our hands?” inquired Hardy.

“You and I both know that we left out certain details from the press so that we could catch the bastard who was committing those murders” said Calhoune, “We got so wrapped up in the ‘Tooth Fairy Murderer’ that we just wanted to convict whoever seemed guilty. And when the murders kept happening, we had to act swiftly and not so much accurately. If you catch my drift…”

“Spit it out, my patience is long gone. Could you just get to the point?”

Calhoune dragged Hardy into the bathroom, the only place in this Manhattan loft apartment where they could have no eyes and ears around the two and then he began to whisper.

“What if? Now hear me out, but what if all four of those guys were innocent? I mean all the evidence was circumstantial. Those guys all knew the victims but haven’t seem them in ages.”

“So they claim!” interrupted Bianca.

“Their prints and hair fibers could have been there for God knows how long. The jury’s heads were filled with the whole ‘Tooth Fairy Murderer’ frenzy that they all could of just convicted these people just off of the mass hysteria the newspapers created!” pleaded Desmond.

“I use to think like that, but then the murders stopped for a while.”

“I think we need to explore other options” says Calhoune.

“Such as?” sasses Hardy.

“We never completely explained what tied those four guys together. Four boroughs didn’t necessarily mean four killers.”

“So how would you explain this?”

“Maybe the Tooth Fairy wasn’t a male. All those convicted were heterosexuals. Think about it, who was our victim actively being intimate with?”

“I don’t know who, right now. But that’s exactly our job; to find out!”

The frustrated beauty left the scene aggravated and jaded. She walked just down the block to

W 83^rd Street

and

5^th Avenue

where her coop was parked. As she walked the sound of her Giuseppe pumps clit clacked against the pavement. It was a talent of hers to focus in on the most overlooked, insignificant- details, like the sound of her shoes as she walked, and to find their relevance. It was her ability to do this that got her the job in the first place. She got in her car and gave herself a pep talk, as she stared in the rear view mirror she noticed a navy blue Volks Wagen Passat parked on the corner. The street was cut off due to the crime scene. She let it go, she had no time to be a meter maid and issue tickets; she had enough on her plate. She started the car and turned up the music, it would be a long drive back to the north Bronx and she was already tired.

Bianca was born and raised in the Bronx, and once she became successful she vowed to never leave. Her quaint brownstone home was located just off of

241^st Street

and

White Plains Road

. Though it small, it was more than enough space for one person to live comfortably. She was only 20 minutes away from her childhood home, over by

Fordham Road

, and definitely had come up in the world. She grew up in a grubby four floor apartment building, along with her parents and four siblings. Crowded in a two bed room apartment, she enjoyed every moment of her childhood until she hit puberty.

She was a very voluptuous 12-year-old. She had the curves of women twice her age and tried constantly to hide it. She received much unwanted attention; her friends gave into the pressure that their new bodies put on them, but not her. The unwanted attention and perverse cat calls she got when she was just an adolescent conditioned her to hate older men. In many cases she had to fight this bias to find the correct killer.

With the support of her family she stuck with her studies and “made it out”. She resides in the better part of the Bronx so she can ride through her old neighborhood, as if she was saying “Yup. Look at me! I made it! Even when you thought I wouldn’t or couldn’t!” These childhood memories haunt her everyday and are one of the reason she wanted to become a detective, to get these child predators off the street. Her year on the force lead her to wanting to take all scum off the streets.

She pulled into her drive way and parked. As she walked into her house she silently vowed that she was going to crack this case wide open. She quickly changed and headed to her bedroom, she had a long day. Just as she climbed in to bed she noticed the same navy blue Passat parked across the street from her home. She shrugged it off, just another day of her bringing her work home with her.