Too Close To Home - (A Mystery Suspense Thriller)

Chapter 5: The Girl in the Photograph

Melissa was lying on her belly looking down at Jake's smiling face on the screen of her smartphone. She had her satin pajamas on, a scarlet-colored top and bottoms set that her mother had gotten her for her last birthday.

"How was work today?" she asked him. He had just gotten home from his part-time job at a convenience store near his house.

"It was work," he replied. "Same shit, different day, you know how it is."

Missy giggled at his comment.

"Anything exciting happen? Any cute girls hit on you?" she asked, playfully.

"Oh yeah, a few. But there was this one cougar who came in for her weekly carton of cigarettes-- she had a totally hot bod for a 40-year-old," he joked.

"That's not funny, you slime ball!" Missy replied, with faked anger in her tone. She pouted into the phone and crossed her arms, pretending to be offended by his joke. He chuckled at the sight of her pouty pink lips.

"I can't help it. You just look so cute when you're pretending to be pissed at me," he told her, flashing her one of the sweetest, most innocent smiles he could muster up. Missy giggled into the phone again.

"So what are you doing calling me so late, anyway? Your mom out on a date or something?" he asked, as he took off his work shirt, revealing the white tee-shirt he was wearing beneath it.

"No, she got a call after we went for ice cream," she told him.

"Oh wow! Somebody got killed?" he inquired.

"Yeah, apparently. She said it was a woman," Missy stated.

Just then, Melissa heard her mother's voice outside her bedroom door.

**

Sheila arrived home pretty late and Missy had already eaten, showered and gotten ready for bed. She could hear music playing and Missy laughing and chatting on her cell phone with one of her friends from behind the closed door of her bedroom as she climbed the stairs to the second floor. She knocked lightly on Missy's door before entering.

"Missy? Honey, I'm back," Sheila said, raising her voice slightly so that she could be heard over the music.

"Let me call you back," Missy said into her phone as her mother slowly opened her bedroom door.

"Hey, sweetie," Sheila said, walking over and sitting down on the edge of Missy's full-sized bed.

"Hi, mom. How'd it go?" she asked, sitting up and looking at her mother's slightly-paled face.

Sheila sighed long and deep before answering. Missy braced herself for the news.

"It was a woman. We haven't identified her yet, but she look pretty young," Sheila replied in an exasperated tone. "I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry we didn't get to eat dinner together like we'd planned. Tomorrow night, though, I thought we could do that Asian buffet you like so much." Sheila offered a tired-looking smile to her daughter.

Missy  could tell that her mother was both stressed out and emotionally drained. Whatever she had encountered at her crime scene had obviously taken a lot out of her. Missy decided not to pry, at least not right now, anyway.

"That sounds great, mom," Missy replied, returning her mother's smile with one of her own. Sheila hugged her daughter tight and bid her good night before heading down the stairs for some leftover pizza.

That night, Sheila found it hard to get to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the face of the pretty young redhead lying naked and dead on the ground. Out of all of her years as a homicide detective, once again, she had only come across two serial killers, and one of them had killed three people in one night. They had caught him within a week. The other serial killer had raped and murdered four prostitutes before they'd finally caught him two months into the investigation. But this new case, Sheila had never seen anything quite like this before, and she had a devastating feeling that it was going to be one of the most challenging and disturbing cases of her entire career.

What kind of killer had the balls to walk up into the police station and deliver an envelope with a photo of his victim to the homicide detective who would be working the case? The part about the whole situation that bothered Sheila the most, however, was the fact that whoever this person was, they knew that she was the city's homicide detective and would be the one working the case. This likely meant one of two things, both of them being equally disturbing:

a) The killer had some type of connection or vendetta against her, specifically, or

b) The killer was a sadistic, deranged degenerate making a sick, twisted cat and mouse game out of raping and murdering young women.

Sheila tossed and turned in her bed for what seemed like hours. Her tan satin sheets offered no real comfort to her as she tried to relax her mind and get some rest. Every time she would finally drift off, her dreams were invaded with visions of the cold, limp body of the nameless redheaded young woman.

**

The next morning, Sheila had to drag herself into the shower after her alarm went off at 6:00 a.m. She usually looked forward to Fridays, like pretty much every human being on the face of the earth who worked a Monday thru Friday schedule, but this particular Friday morning, Sheila found herself filled with a combination of anxiety and dread. Even though she was anxious to get to the station and start her investigation into the deceased Jane Doe from the night before, she just couldn't seem to shake the overwhelming dread that this young woman's murder was just the beginning.

Melissa sprinted down the stairs in a form-fitting pink and blue long-sleeved blouse and a pair of skinny blue jeans. She had her hair up in a neat little blonde ponytail and she was wearing what looked like a new shade of shiny pink lip gloss.

"You look nice, today, hon," Sheila told her, putting on a tired-looking smile as her daughter entered the kitchen.

"Thanks, mom," Missy said as she opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice.

"Don't you dare drink that from the carton, Missy. You now how I feel about that," Sheila stated in a dry, authoritative tone of voice.

"I wasn't going to mom, I swear," Melissa replied, trying to sound convincing. She set the carton of juice down on the table and then reached up to grab a clean cup out of the cabinet above the sink.

"Mm hm," Sheila, retorted, teasingly. She was trying to keep the mood light so that her daughter wouldn't notice how upset and stressed out she was actually feeling.