Chris Carter - An Evil Mind

Hunter left a short message apologizing, but he didn’t go into any details; he would tell her everything when he saw her. But Jessica was also very sensitive, and though he’d tried to conceal it, he was sure that she would pick up the sadness in his voice, the seriousness of it all.

Hunter found it strange that Jessica hadn’t answered the phone. He didn’t believe she’d gone out, not at that time on a Tuesday evening. Maybe tonight, she was just a little more upset than the previous times he’d had to cancel on her right on the last minute. Despite his head being all over the place, he still managed to think straight enough to stop by a 24-hour grocery shop and pick her up some flowers.

He got to Jessica’s place just before 11:00 p.m. and, as he parked on the street outside and looked back at her house, he was overwhelmed by a dread sensation so intense it nauseated him. He’d never felt anything like it before. But then again, he’d never lost a partner before.

Hunter stepped out of the car and approached the house, but with every step, the dread sensation inside of him multiplied itself exponentially.

Sixth sense, premonition, gut feeling, whatever name anyone would like to call it, by the time he got to the door, Hunter’s was screaming at him. Something wasn’t right.

He had a copy of the keys, but he didn’t need them. The front door was unlocked. Jessica never left the front door unlocked.

Hunter pushed the door open, stepped into Jessica’s dark living room, and was immediately hit by a faint, metallic, copper-like smell that practically paralyzed his heart and sent a roller coaster of shivers up and down his spine.

Blood does not have any smell while flowing through one’s body. It’s only when it comes into contact with air that it acquires a very distinctive, non-chemical, metallic smell, very similar to copper. Hunter had been surrounded by that same smell that afternoon.

‘Oh, God, no.’ The terrified words dribbled from his lips.

The flowers hit the floor.

His trembling hand reached for the light switch.

As brightness bathed the room, Hunter’s world was sent into darkness. A darkness so deep he wasn’t sure if he would ever find his way out of it again.

Jessica lay face down in a pool of her own blood by the kitchen door. The living room around him was a mess — broken lamps, tossed furniture, open drawers — distinct signs of a struggle.

‘Jess. . Jess. .’ Hunter ran to her, calling out in a voice that didn’t even seem to belong to him.

He kneeled by her side, his trousers soaking in her blood.

‘Oh, God.’ His voice broke.

He reached for her and turned her over.

Jessica had been stabbed several times. There were lacerations on both of her arms, hands, chest, abdomen and neck.

Hunter looked at her beautiful face and his vision clouded with tears. Her lips had already faded to a pale color. The skin on her face and hands had acquired a peculiar shade of purple. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet, but it was well on its way, which told Hunter that she’d been murdered less than four hours earlier — around the time he was supposed to have picked her up for dinner. That knowledge sent the darkness inside of him plunging into new depths. His soul seemed to abandon him, leaving behind just an empty body, drowning in sorrow.

Gently, Hunter pulled her hair away from her face, kissed her forehead, brought her to his chest and hugged her tight. He could still smell her delicate perfume. He could still feel the softness of her hair.

‘I’m so sorry, Jess.’ A suffocating kind of anguish drowned his words. ‘I’m so terribly sorry.’

He held her in his arms until the tears stopped coming.

If he could’ve exchanged places with her, if he could’ve breathed his life into her body, he would’ve done it. He would’ve given his life for hers without a second thought.

He finally let go of her, and as he turned his head he saw something he had completely missed. Written in blood on one of the living-room walls were the words, cop whore.

As Hunter finally told Lucien about that night, a dark, endless pit, like an old wound that had never really healed, reopened in Hunter’s stomach, dragging his heart down, and bringing back an emptiness inside of him he’d fought for twenty years to leave behind.

Everyone was silent for a long moment.

‘So you lost both of your partners in the same night,’ Lucien said. If Hunter didn’t know better, he could’ve sworn there was a pinch of sorrow in Lucien’s voice.

Hunter blinked once, pushing the memory as far away from his mind as he could. ‘Madeleine, Lucien, where is she?’

‘Wait a second, old friend, not so fast.’

‘What do you mean, not so fast?’ Hunter replied. His eyebrows curved into an angry look. ‘You’ve heard all there is to hear about what happened to Jessica. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’

‘No, that was just part of it.’ Lucien lifted both of his hands in a truce gesture. ‘But since you told me what happened that night, I’ll give you something in return. It’s only fair. Are you listening?’

It took Lucien just two minutes to give them specific directions of how to get to the site by Lake Saltonstall in New Haven, where they’d find Karen Simpson’s remains, together with the four other victims he’d mentioned earlier.

Hunter and Taylor listened to everything very attentively and without interrupting, but they were sure that Adrian Kennedy would be taking notes from the holding cells’ control room, and within minutes he’d have an FBI team from the New Haven field office dispatched to the site.

‘Now,’ Lucien said when he was done, ‘if you want me to give you Madeleine, let’s go back to Jessica and what happened after she was murdered. Was the perpetrator ever caught?’

‘Perpetrators,’ Hunter corrected him. ‘Forensics found two sets of prints in the house, neither of which matched anything in the police archives.’

Lucien’s expression showed surprise. ‘Was it a sexual attack?’

‘No,’ Hunter replied, and his eyes glistened with relief, ‘she wasn’t sexually assaulted. It was a robbery. They took the few items of jewelry she had, including the engagement ring on her finger, her purse, and all the cash she had in the house.’

‘A robbery?’ Lucien found that strange.

So did Taylor.

‘So why kill her?’ Lucien asked.

Hunter paused. Looked away. Looked back at Lucien. ‘Because of me.’

Lucien waited but Hunter didn’t offer any more. ‘What do you mean, because of you? This was a revenge attack? Someone wanting to get back at you?’

‘No,’ Hunter said. ‘Jessica had several photographs of the two of us together scattered around the house. In many of them I was in uniform. Those picture frames had all been smashed. Some had the word “pig” written in blood on them. Some had the words “fuck the police”.’

As things became clearer, Lucien’s head moved sideways slowly. ‘So, once they found out that she was engaged to an LAPD officer, they decided to kill her just for fun.’

Hunter said nothing. He didn’t even blink.

‘I’m not trying to teach an old dog new tricks,’ Lucien said. ‘But have you looked at gang members? Gang members have a never-ending hatred for the police hardwired into their brains, especially in a city like Los Angeles. The only other people who hate police officers as much are ex-cons, but if the fingerprints weren’t on file, then those are clearly ruled out.’

Hunter knew that full well; he and the detectives assigned to the case had hammered every single gang contact they had for information. They got nothing, not even a whisper.