No Remorse No Regret Page 10

  “Mark Nelson. Got drunk and fell off his balcony, eleven floors to his death.”

  “And what does another one mean?” Jackie asks.

  The other detective smirks tiredly. “He was a parolee. Went to prison for manslaughter in the death of his wife. Rumors were he molested his foster daughters.”

  Mitchell and Jackie jump up from their desks and walk over to his.

  “Sure it was an accident?” they both ask at once.

  “Well, yeah. Tox screens came back with alcohol upwards of three times the legal limit. Broken posts on his banister and beer spilled out over his balcony.”

  “Did they check the security cameras?” Jackie asks

  “To what end?”

  “We got a vigilante on the loose,” Mitchell says. “Go back and check to see if there was any flash on the security cameras.”

  The other detective waves both his hands as he leans back in his chair. “Fine. I’ll get on that.” He gets on the phone and calls the superintendent for the apartment building requesting security camera footage.

  Mitchell turns to Jackie, “Care to go back under cover?”

  “Yeah. Nelson was mentioned.”

  “We might get a little more intelligence that could help with both cases.”

  “You’re thinking that this Celine Charlebois might be there?”

  Mitchell nods. “Possibly.”

  Jackie sits back down at her computer. Checking through the local cases of rapists who have not died natural deaths, the number amounts to thirty-nine. As a woman, Jackie does feel that poetic justice has been served in some small way. Mitchell walks up behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders.

  “You alright, kiddo?” he asks

  She shrugs one shoulder. While having little sympathy for a rapist who gets killed, the cop in her knows that people can’t take the law into their own hands.

  “Yeah, it’s just that…”

  “I know.”

  As partners for three years, each knows what the other is thinking, almost like they’ve been married for five times as many years. Mitchell spins her chair around and crouches down facing her.

  “I will do an interview with Melissa Vance and Arlene Benoit. You’ll be outside in the van to gauge any reaction from them.”

  Jackie bites her lower lip.

  “When you’re in the meeting, I, along with three others, will be outside in the van to gather license plates and names if there are any new ones from the first meeting.”

  Jackie nods.

  “I have misgivings about this too,” Mitchell says.

  “There’s something else I’m thinking, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The day Gary Taylor died there was a junkie who died from cyanide poisoning and a suspected child rapist who was murdered,” Jackie says.

  “No coincidence.”

  “No, not at all. I’m thinking the same person killed all three,” Jackie says.

  “Most likely.”

  “Our vigilante is also a contract killer.”

  “What else are you thinking?’ Mitchell asks.

  “A rape victim, from the center, somehow got attached to a member of the Russian mafia.”

  “How long you been a cop again?” Mitchell asks.

  “Nine years. Went to the academy right out of high school.”

  “It’s really been that long?”

  “Yeah, it’s been that long. I got inspired by you to get into policing to help protect women. But I never thought I’d investigate women who’ve been raped,” Jackie says

  “With thirty-nine rapists killed locally, do a VICAP search on anything across the country.”

  Jackie turns to her computer and opens the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and enters her code. She types in the search for murdered rapists. She lets out a slow whistle.

  “Holy shit,” she says.

  “Yeah, my thoughts exactly,” Mitchell says.

  The number reads sixty in the state of Florida and another twenty-one in Georgia for a total of eighty-one.

  “That’s interesting,” Jackie points to the dates of deaths. “All of them seemed to happen in groups of three.”

  Ten minutes later, the detective investigating the Mark Nelson death receives a call. He writes in his notebook and then hangs up.

  “There is no security camera footage in the hallways. The only camera they have connects to tenants’ TVs to check visitors and it doesn’t record,” he says.

  Another file is dropped on Mitchell’s desk by a uniformed officer. “The license plates from the Max House shooting,” the uniformed cop says.

  “Thanks. Anything in there?” Mitchell asks.

  “All except one were Florida plates.”

  “The one that wasn’t?”

  “Alberta plate from a Tahoe. It came up clean.”

  Mitchell looks over at Jackie, “That’s the shooter’s car.”

  “Not a tourist?” she asks.

  Mitchell shakes his head. “This time of year, it’s as hot in Alberta as it is down here. Canadians travel to Florida during the winter. And the Tahoe is a big SUV.”

  “The shooter hid in the back then, probably heard the police radios.” She turns to the detective investigating the Mark Nelson death.

  “Pull up any street cameras from the area.”

  He opens the program that allows for police to check the city’s street cameras for the time of the Max House shooting. They fast forward through several hours until they find a part where the picture freezes.

  “Same thing we saw at the Mike Cairn killing,” Mitchell says.

  Detective Saunders sits down at his desk. “The DNA results came back from the Cara McIsaac and Charlotte Forbes murders. They were both too degraded to get any match.”

  Chapter 25

  P arking her Tahoe in her garage, Melissa turns the vehicle off and presses the back of her head into the car seat as she waits for the garage door to close fully. She breathes out slowly as she remembers a time playing with her childhood dog. For the sake of my eternal soul, the priest said. What about the sake of current sanity?

  The clunk of the garage door on the concrete snaps her out of her daydream. She presses the button to open the cargo hold of the truck and then she steps out. The license plate now shows the state of Florida. Opening her hidden compartment for her guns, she puts the STAR 21 and go bag back.

  After pulling her handgun out of her pocket, she closes the compartment and heads inside, scanning the living room with her handgun. Take a personal day to recharge. Workers at a regular job get them, so will she. Besides, he told me not to come back until the work is done. Watch TV, have some drinks, order pizza; a perfect girl’s night alone.

  First things first, make sure she is alone. From her living room, she enters her kitchen and scans around with her handgun. No one there. Walking down the hallway, she turns right to the front entrance of her house and opens the closet in the foyer. Nothing.

  Turning around, her gun in front of her, she makes her way down another hall and opens the door to a spare bedroom, scanning the room. Nothing there. She checks under the bed and then the closet. No one.

  Her final search is her own bedroom. She checks around the room, under the bed, then in the closet. Nothing.

  Letting out a long breath, she puts her gun in the back of her pants and makes her way to her bathroom. After turning on the hot water tap, she puts her gun on the toilet tank and undresses putting her clothes in the laundry hamper. Turning on the cold water tap she gets the temperature just right and steps into the shower. Next to the shampoo and body wash sits a half full bottle of blended whisky. Letting the water wash over her she opens the liquor bottle and takes a long drag.

  After putting the bottle down, Melissa rubs her eyes then presses her head to the shower wall. After massaging her scar and doing the shoulder circles, she stretches out her arms then puts a glob of shampoo in her hand and lathers up her hair. While the water rins
es the suds off her, she takes another drink of whisky. Bracing herself with one hand against the wall and her back to the shower, she squirts a line of body wash over her breasts. Massaging the gel into her chest, stomach, neck and face, she thinks, one day I’ll treat myself to a full spa treatment.

  Finishing off the whisky, she stands facing the water flow as the dirt washes off her. On her shower wall hangs a laminated picture of Eddie Stiles, an actor in a new sitcom “You’ve Got Mail” – based on the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan movie. She runs her finger down the face in the picture and mouths the words I’m sorry I broke your heart. What strange twists our lives can take. What would you think of me now? One hit is equal to one episode in income earned.

  How broken-hearted he was when she dumped him. Part of her payment to Danil for rescuing her was she belongs to him. He can have her whenever he wants her. She couldn’t deny him at first. With his contacts, she still can’t defy or deny him. Maybe there will be an escape one day. She keeps a log of Danil’s activities in a safe place even he doesn’t know about. But she doesn’t dare to let the authorities know yet. Some of it might be information he only gave her to test her loyalty.

  As the hot water runs out, she turns off the shower and leaves the bathroom to go to the phone while she dries herself off. Taped to the wall next to the phone there are four take out menus for different restaurants. She dials the number for Barry’s Pizza and orders a medium works pizza to be delivered.

  Hanging up the phone, she lets the towel fall to the floor and then dons a pink bathrobe; a new one to replace the one Danil had torn off her. When the pizza guy gets here she wants to look like a normal woman, at least what is stereotypical of what women should be wearing—pink, her hair tied back in a ponytail. To further the ruse of being a meek woman, she takes a bottle of red nail polish from the medicine cabinet and paints her nails. When she finishes her nails, she leaves the bathroom and makes her way to the kitchen.

  The curtains are closed in her living room as she staggers in from the kitchen carrying a full bottle of rum and a glass. She has a twenty-seven-inch TV set and a black cloth chesterfield, a simple set up to maintain her cover as a rape crisis counselor; what you would expect a single woman’s house to be. No mess, everything looks to be in a perfect setting, her meticulous attention to detail.

  Filling her glass almost to the brim, she downs the drink in five seconds. Pouring another drink, she looks up to the pictures on her wall, the family portrait with her parents and her brother along with his wife and children and her. Danil couldn’t be there, just in case the police were to ask her about a woman in her group. An attentive detective might recognize the head of the Russian Mafia with her in his arms. They have come to her center in the past to try to get her to convince rape victims to testify. Many didn’t want to out of shame, which made it easier for her to kill the man if he wasn’t in prison.

  Melissa turns on the TV as the doorbell rings. Pretty fast service. As a regular customer, they must want to keep me happy. From a drawer in the TV cabinet, she takes out an envelope with ten twenty-dollar bills and pulls out one.

  She looks through the peephole on the door and sees a pimple-faced kid, about nineteen years old, holding her pizza. She opens the door with the chain still on.

  “That’s fifteen thirty-three, miss,” the boy says.

  She hands him the twenty. “Keep the change, kiddo, and just put the food through the door crack.”

  He has to make the pizza vertical to give her the food.

  “Thanks, miss.”

  Melissa closes the door and makes her way back to the living room. As she sits down, the newscast starts with a story about the killing of Marcus Taylor.

  “In another gangland slaying, Marcus Taylor, reputed leader of a gang that calls themselves The Black Roses, was killed along with two associates. This is less than a month after the killing of his brother Gary. Police are keeping quiet as to what leads they have in the case. Some sources say that it is in retaliation for the attempt on the life of Danil Burlomov, rumored head of the Russian Mafia.”

  Melissa takes a slice of pizza and starts eating as she turns on the channel guide. She takes another drink as the newscaster continues.

  “Other crime news has reports of a second young woman found dead in a sports gear bag. This station has received a letter claiming that the serial killer once known as The Drowner is back.”

  Melissa slams down her drink and sits up straight with her hand over her mouth.

  * * *

  Relaxing on his couch, Colton Harris watches the same newscast. Smiling with his beer in one hand and a cold pizza slice in the other from Barry’s Pizza. He raises the beer to the TV. “Here’s to you and here’s to me. If by chance we should disagree, fuck you and here’s to me.”

  “There are anonymous sources that have told us that there is one survivor from his first rampage ten years ago.”

  He sits up straight as he slams his beer down on his coffee table, some of it shooting out of the top of the bottle, and yells at the TV.

  “A survivor? How is that even possible? Every little bitch went under the water! No way any lived!” Could it be the one that no report was filed on? What was her name?

  Like many serial killers, Colton kept trophies of his crimes to relive them. He could not do anything productive so he chose to do this. Like others, he knows it is wrong. But who cares? Other people’s feelings are of no consequence. Everything that went wrong is someone else’s fault.

  What better way to retaliate against the world; let all the little bitches feel fear. He raises his beer to the TV, “Here’s to my revenge,” then looks at his watch and yells at the TV. “When the hell is my food coming?” Five seconds later the doorbell rings.

  He storms to the front door as he pulls his wallet out of his back pocket. Opening the door, he sees a pimple-faced nineteen-year-old with a Barry’s Pizza hat and jacket.

  “Nine fifty for the small pizza, sir,” the kid says.

  Colton pulls a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet. “Keep the change kid.”

  The delivery boy says, “Thank you so much.”

  Colton shuts the door. Too bad that wasn’t a girl. Could have had some fun, but unfortunately the cops would be able to track the last known whereabouts to me.

  He switches the channel to watch a movie. The End of The World, another one of the doomsday scenario movies. Drinking his beer and eating his food, he thinks about how someone could survive. This should be fun. Search for the one that got away at the same time as taking out others. Get my souvenirs of the girls from my storage unit. I got her once, I can get her again.

  * * *

  Melissa trembles as tears form in her eyes and roll down her cheek. A second one. How long has he been back for?

  She slams back her drink and pours another one. Her hand trembles as she drops the glass on the table, shattering it on impact. Her heartbeat pounds in her temples. Grabbing the liquor bottle, she stands up from the couch and bangs her knee on the coffee table. “Ow! Damn it to hell.”

  Tears start flowing unchecked as she staggers around the living room. After a five-second swig of alcohol, she screams out, “No, no, no! This can’t be happening. How can he be back?”

  From the top of her TV, set she grabs her childhood teddy bear. “Just for today, I’ll be my Daddy’s little girl again.”

  Sitting back down on the couch, she brings her knees to her chest while clutching the toy and buries her face in the chest of the bear.

  “You remember, don’t you, Mookie? Daddy always made everything right. Remember, Mookie, when I was five and you were in the basket of my tricycle and I fell off and I skinned my knees? Daddy picked me up and then you and then he held us both. Then he sat me on his lap and he kissed my knees to make it feel better. Remember, don’t you, Mookie?”

  She pauses to take another swig of alcohol. “I wish you were here now, Daddy. But it’s a little worse than a skinned knee and, Daddy, it’s going to take a l
ittle more than a kiss to make things better. Dear Lord can you let Daddy come back and make things better now? I need my Daddy now.

  “Why did you let those men take me, Lord? How can you make men like The Drowner and Danil? Why didn’t your lightning save me? I was begging for you to save me but my prayers went unanswered.”

  With another swig of alcohol that lasts ten seconds, Melissa falls to the floor, still clinging to her teddy bear. The bottle smashes on the table.

  Chapter 26

  A ray of sunlight shines through a crack in Melissa’s curtains. The TV is still blaring and, still in her bathrobe, Melissa lies face down on the floor clutching her teddy bear. The pizza has one slice missing and shards of glass are scattered over the coffee table. Rum has stained her carpet.

  Melissa grabs her head groaning out as she tries to sit up. Unsuccessful at that, she crawls over to a garbage can next to the TV and makes it just in time to vomit into it, heaving so hard she feels like her ribs are going to shatter. Once finished, she wipes her mouth on the sleeve of her bathrobe and kisses the teddy bear, the only one in the world who would have any sympathy for her and what she’s become.

  A soft shoulder to cry on… The water works start again with her tears seem like a sprinkler head that blew, “Again today I can be my Daddy’s little girl. He told me I can do anything any boy can. Don’t think he ever meant become a contract killer. If only he could have been there when the bastard serial killer had grabbed me. He would have ripped his lungs out.”

  In that way, it might have been good he died without knowing what his little girl really did. If only there was someone I could turn to.

  She kisses the teddy bear on the head then buries her face into its chest. Almost as good as it was to kiss Eddie. Is there any hope for me now? I’ve got a serial killer after me, if he knows I survived. The cops might be on to me. But the serial killer will be their priority. And then there’s my rescuer, mentor, and lover. I’m a kept woman. I’ll be his forever. Must be great to know what love really is. It used to be that a woman’s goal was to find a man to take care of and protect her. I have that, sort of. Any other man dared make a move on me and he was there, well, that would be his misfortune. But how much did he really appreciate my work?