228. The letter broke off abruptly after the words ‘I love you’

The letter broke off abruptly after the words ‘I love you’, depriving detective Snodgrass of his only clue in the grisly murder case.

Sarah Pembrooke had been slaughtered, there was no other word for it. Not a drop of blood was left in her mangled body. The crimson liquid had oozed from her wounds, seeping into the Australian chestnut of her bedroom floor. The stickiness reminded Snodgrass of the time he had spilt a bottle of maple syrup on the kitchen floor as a boy. Her blood almost smelt as sweet as well, he thought.

The police photographer’s flash evoked images of what had happened here. Sarah Pembroke, a high-class prostitute had brought a client to her apartment. They had fucked. He had cummed in her every orifice. And then he had butchered her with a hacksaw. Bluntly, yet meticulously, like a toddler removing pieces from a wooden puzzle.

Every trace had been carefully expunged. Fingerprint were wiped and there wasn’t a hair follicle to be found in the entire apartment. As for the semen he had dumped in his victim, he had poured bleach all over it, assuring no DNA would be uncovered. The whole crime scene was one giant ‘fuck you’ to the police.

Which made it all the more puzzling that he had left the letter, written by a woman in love to one of her clients. A person she named, but whose identity was removed by a frustrating rip in the paper. Snodgrass grazed the rip but was surprised by its sharpness, which extracted a drop of blood from his thumb. The drop clung to the edges of the rip for a second, then rolled along the paper.

Right to left.

Snodgrass smiled.

Fuck the killer’s games. There always was a clue.

He was left-handed.

 

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168. The zebra rodeo

The zebra rodeo had reached Armadillo County, where over a thousand people were already lining up to buy tickets. Its reputation as the most unexpected entertainment of summer had preceded the show, exploding throughout August as the rodeo company traversed a diversion-starved Deep South.

He’d made stars out of his troupe. They adorned the covers of every tiny circulation newspaper in every god-fearing town they passed, accompanied  by bold-faced headlines that oversold sensationalism. And no matter how down on their luck the inhabitants were, each of them would gladly pay a week’s wages to witness the zebra rodeo.

But Caleb Blankenship knew they did not pay to watch the riders.

They paid to see the blood.

 

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136. Blood spurted by the gallon

Blood spurted by the gallon from the gaping wound in the peasant’s throat. He tried foolishly to stem the red current by putting his hands on the wound. As if that would succeed when the cut had been inflicted by a razor-sharp blade forged from the finest steel in Japan.

 

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