Scott Wittenburg - The May Day Murders

Miss Hunt, formerly of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had lived in New York for the past ten years and appeared in a few off-Broadway productions as well as some local television commercials. She was employed part-time as a waitress at a Greenwich Village restaurant at the time of her death. She is survived by her parents, William and Clare Hunt, of Harrisburg.

Sam skimmed over the articles in the Post and the Daily News next. With the exception of the bolder headlines and wordy journalism, neither of the tabloids offered much more information concerning the murder, other than the fact that the police were refusing to release any specific details pertaining to the case at this time.

Out of curiosity, Sam went through and counted up how many homicides had been reported on that particular day and came up with seven, including the execution-style slaying of a notorious Mafia crime boss. Of all the murders, that particular one had by far received the most press coverage. No wonder there had been so little interest in Sara Hunt’s murder, he thought with a wry grin. Not only had she just been one of several other homicide victims in the city that day, she had been upstaged by a more “newsworthy personage” as well.

He shoved the newspapers off to the side and opened the manila folder containing a copy of the police report. Lying on top was the eight-by-ten publicity headshot of Sara Hunt that Mancuso had sent. Sam was surprised at how little she had aged since high school as he stared at the black and white image, wondering skeptically how recently the photo had been taken. Her hair was jet black, in a bob, and her face showed very few lines and wrinkles. Her eyes were large and dark; her smile revealed a set of near-perfect pearly whites. She looked good-in fact, beautiful-and not a day over twenty-five.

He turned the promo shot over and read the resume pasted to its back. Sara had been a theater major at Pitt and there was a list of plays she’d been in while at college. Below was a list of the theatrical productions she had appeared in since moving to New York as well as a handful of television commercials she’d done.

Sam turned to the police report and noted the similarities between Sara’s murder and Marsha Bradley’s. Both women had been raped and strangled. Both were believed to have been strangled to death by a thin cord-like object from behind. And both had been found totally nude with lipstick marks on their breasts, or on only one breast in Sara’s case.

Sam turned to the Xerox copies of the photographs taken at the crime scene and examined them closely. Then something dawned on him. Excitedly, he pulled out the police file copies of Marsha Bradley’s case which he had kept for himself, then set one of the photographs of Marsha beside Sara’s.

It was uncanny. Although the quality of the copies was poor and the camera angles differed somewhat, it was more than obvious that the relative positions of both bodies were virtually identical. Both were lying flat on their backs on the floor, their arms outstretched, their legs spread-eagle, and their eyes opened and frozen in terror…

The body positions were mirror images of each other!

Sam realized that even if the hair and semen samples hadn’t been compared and matched, any idiot could plainly see that both women were murdered by the same person. The pictures were proof positive.

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit up another one. Staring pensively at both photographs, he wondered why the murderer had taken the time and effort to meticulously arrange his victims’ bodies in identical positions. They almost looked as though they were…

Posed.

A light came on in his head.

The murderer had arranged the bodies in this way so he could take pictures of them!

What a sick fuck, he thought.

And what a meticulous son of a bitch!

But why had he done it? As a visual reminder of his escapades? Every picture tells a story?

Or was there more to it than that?

Sam retrieved the copies of the yearbook and stared at the pictures again. Simple logic now told him that none of these men seemed likely suspects, taking everything into account. The murderer was clever and fastidious, carefully thinking through his game plan in advance. He was relentlessly thorough and thus far, hadn’t knowingly been seen by a single solitary soul who could positively identify him. Neither of Sam’s “prime suspects,” Ernie Jones and Clyde Kastings, was bright enough to carry out these two murders without leaving some kind of trail behind…

Sam heaved a heavy sigh of hopelessness. All of a sudden, the whole yearbook angle seemed like a dead-end street-for more reasons than just one. It had dawned on him before that even if the murderer were pictured here, why would he allow such an obvious slip-up to occur? It didn’t fit into his modus operandi at all.

Sam gathered up all the papers, piled them into a haphazard stack and shoved them off to the side. Maybe he was giving this bastard more credit than he deserved. Maybe he really was pictured in the yearbook and had actually fucked up. Maybe Sara Hunt had managed to mark the pages while the prick wasn’t looking and now he was gonna get nailed. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

He took a final drag off his cigarette, coughed, and stubbed it out with a vengeance. Running his hands through his long hair, he listened to the rain pelting down outside and began wondering why he was so caught up in all of this. Granted, he was personally involved and wanted nothing more than to see this asshole caught and fried, but how much was he really contributing? He wasn’t a cop, had no capacity as a cop, so why didn’t he simply just let the police do their jobs instead of sitting here pretending that he was Colombo? Was it because he had nothing else to do in life? Because it helped take his mind off Ann and Amy and how miserable his life had become since he’d lost them?

The answer to all of the above was yes, but there was more to it than that. He didn’t like the uneasy feeling that Ann might somehow be in danger-that she could possibly be involved in this in some way. He had first gotten that feeling when Marsha had been found murdered, but he simply refused to allow himself to get paranoid at the time. But now that Sara Hunt’s murder had cropped up, the feeling had resurfaced. And now that it was confirmed that both women had been killed by the same man, the feeling had suddenly become substantiated. And the fact that several hundred miles didn’t seem to stop this lunatic from killing wasn’t helping much either. Columbus was only ninety miles away…

Sam started to pick up the phone to call Ann but stopped himself. He wanted to hear her voice, to be assured that everything was okay. Then he recalled their conversation earlier-how distant she had sounded at first, as if she were annoyed at him for even calling her in the first place. Her mood had changed somewhat after he had told her about Sara Hunt, but he could still sense more than a trace of detachment in her voice throughout the rest of the conversation. It was as if she would really prefer that he back off and let her live her own life-that his services were no longer needed…

Fuck it, he thought to himself. She’s on her own now, buddy. You’ve lost her forever. And your kid. And as much as you want to pretend that you still have a role in their lives, it just ain’t so. You fucked everything up a while back and now you’re history.

Suddenly the idea of getting sloshed came to mind and it appealed to him in a big way. There really wasn’t anything else to do; his drinking buddy was in New York City doing his thing, his ex-wife and child were in Columbus doing their thing, and here he was in the sticks of southern Ohio with the rain pouring down on a dreary Friday night and a twelve pack of Rock in the fridge.