I
Emma Hills felt an uncomfortable tuck in her stomach as she held onto her pump pistol with a grave grip. The scene on the porch hadn’t look well. Shattered beer bottles were scattered everywhere, blood stains on the white veranda and a female naked corpse lay in the back of a wheel-less light blue truck. She had multiple cuts in her abdomen, and her legs were in a dismantled position. From the sight of it, Emma knew quickly that she was sedated, raped and murdered. Never had she once in her five years of criminal psychologist career seen anything like this before. Jason Hennings was in front of her, holding up his pistol the same way Emma was. She could feel his pulse which was accelerating as quickly as hers, and it didn’t make her feel any better.
“We’re going in.” Jason said to her, and everyone else who was listening at the receiving end of the pluck in his left ear.
Emma gulped and stared down at the door as Jason opened it carefully. A gush of cold air rushed pass them, sending shivers down Emma’s spine. But that contributed little to the horror she felt in her gut. The whole place was filled with corpses. By the hall, she could see up to 10 women; some sprawled, and some hung with their heads bent in an unusual manner. They all had the same wounds –multiple cuts in the abdomen and dismantled looking legs. The gruesome sight made Emma’s breath hitched and loses her balance.
“Hang in there, Em.” Jason, without losing his alertness, barely whispered to Emma even though they both knew the murderers were long gone. He had to be sure just in case. “You could wait outside for the reinforcements before collecting evidences.”
“I’ll be fine.” Emma tried to regain her balance as she motioned Jason to carry on. Her stomach was so sick; she could even taste vomit in her mouth.
Emma clicked on her ear phone, taking pictures of the crime scene while Jason ventured pass the dead bodies to move to a closed door. Outside, she could hear the sirens of reinforcements and the doctors falling in. Jason reappeared in the hall, and signaled the room was clear; then he gave a wave to Emma telling her that he was going to check the kitchen. Emma, noticing his heightened pulse, nodded in reply and smiled at him, hoping it would make him feel better.
As he disappeared from the hall, Emma bent down and looked closely at the nearest corpse. Her legs were grotesquely dismantled, her abdomen suffered multiple stabs, her neck slashed mercilessly and she had bruises in her stomach, chest and legs. Especially in the ankles where the damage was so great, the skin tore. Emma also noticed that her body was drained of blood. Her flesh was a mixture of green and pink, no sign of red. She looked at the other corpses and found out that they were all the same. Like mannequins, they all died and looked the same.
“Emma! Are you ok?” Jason was suddenly by her side, scarring her out of her trance.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Emma lied as she stood up, feeling a bit faint from the sudden pressure but she was back in full alert again. “Did you notice? They all died the same way.”
Jason started examining the nearest corpse. She had the same injuries.
“They were hanged, raped, and abused before they were killed from the loss of blood.” Jason said matter-of-factly, his face indifferent but his pulse told Emma otherwise and it made her stiff. “They were killed in a slow, torturous way.”
“What about the stab in the abdomen? That probably killed them quickly.” Emma knew she was wrong. There were no blood stains, but just a pile of ripped up flesh.
Jason’s pulse, much like hers, regained a normal rate when reinforcements and doctors flooded into the crime scene. Louis, her boss, was first to step in with Liam and George following closely behind. The latter regarded them with nods before they pulled out their rubber gloves and started examining the corpses, only Louis came over and gave a pat on both their backs.
“Great work team, from your discussion, we can certainly see that these women didn’t die any easy death.” Louis’s voice was booming and replacing the noise in the now crowded house, but his eyes were in a sad dark-brown. His straightforwardness made Emma cringe, indecisive between to laugh or be utterly stupefied. “But that’s enough of work for you two. The doctors will take charge from here, that’s why we hired them! I need both of you to do other things for me.”
Emma glanced at Jason, who was regarding Louis intensely, her face probably in some kind of desperation to return to the safety of her office desk. The only reason she was here was because apart from the mass murder incident in this house, there were three more desolated houses that were classified under mass murders too. The CIA became so understaffed they had to use her, the criminal psychologist, to run the field. Jason on the other hand was a special agent for the CIA.
“We received a call from the local police that they’d seen a white sedan turning into the driveway approximately 11P.M. three nights ago. I want you both to track it down.” Louis pointed his index forward; with each word he uttered, his index jerked, “Jason! You know what to do from here, now go!”
-
That night Emma tossed and turned in her bed unable to get rid of the images she witnessed. Those wounds—they were already embedded in her head against her will, mocking her that she still couldn’t figure any answers to why they were all drained of blood. She had seen many pictures of crime scenes, and it was always easy to take on her role as a psychologist and explain by the wounds inflicted in the corpse the draft personality of the murderer. But this time, she was puzzled and at absolute no clue.
What scared her the most was not because she couldn’t do her job but because she knew that if her years of experience in this field have been ruled out, the chances for the personality of the murderer will be plain cold-blooded; people that killed for leisure…
Emma winced at her thoughts as she curled up into a ball under her comforter. The air was suddenly way too cool for her liking, so she abruptly grabbed the controller and switched the air-conditional off. The ceiling fan will do for tonight.
Moments later, Emma was drifting very soothingly into sleep when her E-mail beeped. The familiar sound jolted her awake and sent her a new found alertness. She jumped out of her queen sized bed, hastily throwing her satin comforter aside letting it glide down to the marble floor, and shook her mouse pad waiting for the hibernating laptop to turn on.
When she read the E-mail, identity of the victims, her eyes widened. She undressed her pajamas, pulled on some jeans and sweater, took her keys and rushed out her apartment.
