The Monster Within (7 page)

I turn away from the living room and step into the kitchen. It’s clean, just like I expected. There isn’t a dirty dish on the counter or in the sink. The dishwasher is full, but they’ve been washed. I prop open a few of the cupboards, looking at the dishes and then the neatly organized containers of dry ingredients and then the spices, then the work out powders. This girl had everything she needed in its place. Looking at the fridge, I’m given a collage of everything that’s happened in her life since college. She has pictures from everywhere she’s been to, or at least a portion of the places. There are pictures from photo booths, parties, ceremonies, events, and excursions with friends. She keeps a hundred different pictures on the fridge as a sort of honorary board for everyone she’s ever known or gone anywhere with.

She’s Mexican or Hispanic or whatever you want to call it. Latina, I think they’ve changed it to now. She’s got bright, big eyes and a smile that could charm the hardest heart. She looks like she’s got the kind of smile that has been taught, the kind they teach baristas and bank tellers. I don’t trust the smile. She’s definitely been taught by someone how to do her make-up because she has plenty of it on. As for her body, she’s gone through a sort of metamorphosis over the years and I have to admit that I’d pay my share for a lap dance from her. Hell, I’d pay to do a little bit more with her. She’s beautiful and I don’t understand why someone who is gorgeous would consider killing herself. That’s another mark. She’s socially active and outgoing. She has friends. You don’t think you’re alone in the world and kill yourself if you’re constantly out and about with people.

The only remarkable thing about the fridge is that there are several pictures of her with a man whose face has been removed from existence. I look at the pictures and study the scribbles, trying to get some sort of semblance of who the man is that has been so permanently taken out of her life’s moments with a Sharpie. That’s a major mark in the suicide box. Lots of people who have their lives together break up with their beloved, perfect soul mates and decide that life’s not worth living. I look at the pictures of her and her vacant man and decide that Waters and Evans are already constructing the suicide case. It’s a compelling argument.

Opening the fridge, I look at the contents within and look at nothing that doesn’t look like it was brought up from the earth. There’s milk and cottage cheese, a container of plain Greek yogurt, and that’s about it. Everything else in the fridge is either chicken or the bounty of the garden. Carrots, leafy greens, radishes, asparagus, green beans, and cucumbers. I close the fridge and look at the freezer, hoping to find the depression food or at least the break up food. But the freezer is full of smoothie kits that she’s assembled herself, and the only thing unhealthy that I can find is a pint of Hagen Daas that has only sparingly been picked at. I shake my head. This isn’t the fridge and freezer of someone who has just gone through a break up. I watch the freezer door close and search the surrounding cupboards and the pantry. Again, there’s nothing here outside of some half drunk bottles of alcohol that would indicate that there was even a break up happening here.

Flipping open the garbage can, I take a look at the contents within, hoping to find a chip bag or take out containers, but there’s nothing here. There’s absolutely nothing here to make me think that there is a suicide case living inside this house. I shake my head and turn back toward the living room, listening to the voices coming from the bedroom. I think that they’re the only other people inside this apartment with me.

In the tiny hallway there’s the bathroom and the bedroom tucked away off of the living room. The bathroom is immaculate, no pills on the sink, nothing tucked away that isn’t expected. She’s taking medication for acne and that’s it. Other than that, she has a whole bunch of vitamins and supplements that she must take in the morning after she showers. I open the cupboards under the sink to check, just in case there’s some dark secrets tucked away, but there’s nothing except for stock for her toiletries if she runs out. I don’t understand. Why would this girl commit suicide? At this point, I’m desperately trying to see it from Evans and Waters’s point of view.

When I finally leave the bathroom and head for the bedroom, it’s the first time that I actually see anything that would make me think that this is actually a crime scene. The layout of the room is slightly strange to me. It’s built like any other room with a large closet tucked onto the side. The one thing that makes it strange to me is that there’s a pair of glass long doors that open up directly into a railing. It’s not even a small balcony, just a wrought iron railing. I get the idea behind it, that it’s supposed to open up the room and make it feel larger, but it’s just strange to me. The queen-sized bed has been pulled from its position against the wall and dragged all the way over to the pair of glass doors that have been flung open. The corner of the bed is jammed against the railing and the bed post has a set of kinky handcuffs attached to each other. One is fuzzy and pink, the other is leather and studded. Well, she was definitely getting some.

There are two uniforms in the room, one of them looks up at me as I enter, giving me a slight nod, while the other discusses the events of the crime scene with Detective Waters. Waters is the kind of woman who thinks that hair only exists to be strung up in a bun or a ponytail. In fact, I’m surprised after the years that she hasn’t just shaved it all off, going butchy lesbian. She has a sort of distinct, peculiar way of making everything look dire and important. She carries around a ledger notebook in a portfolio that you expect businessmen to carry to their meetings. She’s not particularly tall, nor is she exceptionally beautiful. She’s about as plain Jane as they come because Waters doesn’t give a shit about her appearance or how other see her. She’s here to do a job and she makes that amply clear when she works. Her big green eyes look from the other uniform to me. Unlike Evans, she knows how to mask what she’s thinking. That probably pisses off whoever her current failing beau is.

“King? What are you doing here?” Waters looks at me with eyes that are almost concerned.

“I was in the area,” I lie to her as easily as I had lied to her partner. “I thought I’d stop by and see if you guys need any help. Evans looked busy down there in the common area.”

“What were you doing over here?” Waters looks back at her enormous ledger, making some sort of note. I bet she’s drawing dicks or something. “I thought you weren’t catching anymore.” Does everyone know about the arrangement? Why would Mendez release that to the bull pen? Why not push it a little farther and let the media know about it? Maybe I could hear about it while I’m eating dinner tonight.

“Well, that’s already starting to get old,” I tell her and she give a weak, sort of half assed laugh that makes me feel like I just told a joke, but that wasn’t what she found funny. Fuck her. I don’t think there’s a person in the precinct that actually thinks of Waters when they hear the name ‘detective’. “So what do we have here?”

“Jenny Martinez,” Waters answers. “Twenty three years old, graduated from OSU with a degree in business management a year early after working her ass off, apparently. She hasn’t been putting that to use over the past two years since she’s been home. She’s worked at a gym for the past year and hasn’t shown any signs of moving on, according to her employer. Other than that, all we know about her is that she committed suicide this morning.”

“Hanged herself?” I look at the scarves that are tied together, disappearing beneath the railing of the double doors. That fall doesn’t look like it was enough to actually kill her. She must have strangled out there.

“Well she wanted to make sure she wasn’t coming back,” Waters says, pointing out the window. “She shoved a hair pin into each of her wrists, severing both arteries and veins. If someone cut her down, they would have probably ripped out those pins and she would have bled to death. Good thing the hanging did the work for her. Hate to imagine what it would feel like for whoever tried to rescue her.”

“Seems like overkill.” I shake my head, putting my hands on my hips. “Did anyone see her commit the act?”

“No,” Waters shakes her head. “One of the neighbors across the street saw her hanging there dead, called the cops. The neighbors say that she’s been out all week, coming home with a different guy every night. Apparently she was noisy about her business.”

“So we’re certain that this was a suicide?” I lift an eyebrow, working Owens’s angle. After all, where the fuck is Owens? I have yet to see him since I got here. He would be proud that I’m subserviently slithering his ideas into the minds of others.

Waters looks up at me with a confused look in her eyes. “Why would you think that?” Waters’s voice is slipping into my mind now.

“If she’s home with someone new every night,” I shrug, “maybe she brought home the wrong guy.”

“Why would a murderer leave a suicide note that matches her handwriting?” Waters pulls a plastic bag off the dresser behind her and hands it to me. I take the piece of paper and look at it, holding it between my fingers and feeling the paper beneath. I read over the writing and can’t help but picture the cheap, pathetic messages that I’d read through the files last night. Some of them were oddly specific, worded strangely, or completely vague. Whoever this killer was, he wasn’t too good at detail. I hold the letter in my hands and read over it again.

“Sorry for being greedy,” I read aloud. “I just wanted the attention. Jenny.”

I look up at Waters with a doubtful look on my face. “You’re not convinced?” She looks at me with a doubtful expression of her own.

“I’ve already walked through this apartment and doesn’t it strike you as odd that a woman who is this clean and takes care of her apartment this well would just decide to kill herself?” I look at Waters, expecting her to answer or accuse me of not seeing the facts, but she doesn’t answer so I continue. “I mean, the only thing I can find in this apartment that could hint at the fact that she might have been depressed are the pictures on her fridge with her ex or whoever the guy is she’s scribbled out. Other than that, I’m not seeing a reason here that she would kill herself, especially leaving something so cryptic and vague. Why wouldn’t she apologize to whoever it was that she felt she’d offended. Also, where are her friends and family?”

“We have notified her family and I’ve sent uniforms to their homes to speak with them,” Waters looks at me with a growing sense of doubt. “People don’t always leave suicide notes when they go and get themselves killed, King.”

“She didn’t ‘get herself killed’,” I proclaim. “She intentionally stabbed two pins into her wrists and jumped out a window after tying together a rope of scarves and sex toys. If you put that much thought into your mode of execution, you’re not going to leave two vague sentences.”

“Maybe it means more to her family,” Waters argues.

“Bullshit.” I shake my head. “Are you declaring this a suicide, Waters?”

“It seems cut and dry to me.” She shakes her head.

“So you’re not going to investigate the losers she brought home with her?” I press her, not willing to let her hide from this.

“There’s nothing here to point to a homicide,” Waters argues.

“It’s everything that’s not here that points to homicide,” I argue. She looks at me and has her doubts, I know it, but something about this makes her too scared to call it what it is.

“You’ve been talking to Owens,” she mutters to me, shooting a look at the uniforms around us. Is she scared of them? Or is she scared that they might report back to Owens and tell him that we’re talking about him and the conspiracy? She looks at me with those big green eyes of hers and I nod silently to her. “It’s a fucked up conspiracy, King.”

“I know,” I say. Part of me wants to go explode all over Owens that I wasn’t his first choice to come to with this insanity, but I already suspected as much. I can’t hold it against him. I’m retiring in less than a month now, so why get me involved if I couldn’t commit entirely to the cause? Waters looks back at the rope of scarves. They’ve erected a screen outside to keep others who aren’t a part of the investigation from gawking and getting pictures of her. I want to go outside and get a look at her. I want to commandeer this whole operation. “If you’re too afraid to declare it, I’ll take over from here, Waters,” I say to her with all seriousness. “I’ve looked at the files and they have a compelling argument. I think it’s compelling enough to have another look at it.”

“The Chief is going to rip you apart if you waste resources on a suicide case.” Waters shakes her head. I know that she’s right. This is the kind of shit that ruins detectives. It’s the kind of mistake that sends them to the archives with all the other screw-ups to rot and turn into dust before everyone forgets that they even exist. She looks at me for a moment. I know that she wants to hand it over, but she’s scared that Mendez is going to rip her apart if he hears that I’ve taken over and am declaring a cut and dry suicide as a homicide.

“I’ll take full responsibility,” I tell her, trying to convince her to come out into the light of all of this. She is, after all, one of the evidence junkies like all the other young academics. “Evans will back you up, saying I hijacked the entire operation.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” one of the uniforms says. Clearly he’s working for Owens and the other conspirators.

I look at Waters and she looks at me with those dull green eyes of hers and she slowly nods. I nod back to her and look at the two uniforms in the room who immediately set to work. This is now a homicide. It doesn’t even need to be said.

I’ve known
of
Courtney for most of my life, but I can’t say that I’ve ever actually known her. Truth be told, I can’t think of a reason why I never spent the time to get to know her, or at least be a sort of guardian angel for her. After all this time, I wish that I could just go back in time and tell myself that I should keep an eye on her, that she might be worth my attention later on in life, because right now, God, I wish I knew her better. I look across the store to where she’s walking slowly past the coolers, looking at the beverages inside. I want to call her over and kiss her, to feel her, to taste her.