Part One - Evil Times 3 - Chapter Nine

Monday – May 18th

The Twenty-Second Precinct – 7:22 a.m.

As with every Monday through Friday, Eddie pulled up in the Hot Do-Nuts wagon, and brought in twelve dozen assorted doughnuts, along with six gallons of milk, one case of individual cereal containers, and six gallons of orange juice and left all of it on the day table in the break room.

Eddie started delivering about five months ago and is well liked by all the police. Eddie has a speech problem, and walks stooped over from an accident that occurred when he was a child, but he gets by, and always seems to have a positive attitude.

Just as he finished laying everything out, Baker walked into the break room.

“Hi, Eddie. Mmmm. I can smell them. Am I the first one here?”

“Yeth, Mithy Baker. I wath about to leave. I have other plath to go.”

“Okay, Eddie. You have a good day.”

“You, too, Mithy Baker.”

Grabbing two doughnuts and a Dixie cup filled with orange juice, she headed up the stairs to the squad room, where she already saw a dozen people sitting around. It was already that time of the day.

As she made her way around everyone to get to the podium, she hurriedly finished off the first doughnut and set the second one on the shelf inside the podium with the orange juice.

Looking around the room once more, it looked to her as if the rest of the shift were finally here. So, she began.

“Jackson, Rodgers, Quinn, Donaldson, and Cooper; study these files I’m handing you before you go to interviews you been assigned. Remember, what is in those files are sensitive information, and if any of this leaks out to anyone, anywhere; you will be asked for your shield and weapon. No if’s, and’s or but’s.

“Are we clear on this?”

A couple replied with a yes, the other two nodded their heads.

“Good. As for the rest of you, there is nothing more to add other than what you already know about these murders. If we get an update, you will get the update as well. Meantime, go out there and stop the bad guys. Do the best you can do. Stay safe and keep our streets safe.

The meeting broke up.

One of the detectives his head in the squad room. “Baker, you got a call on line two.”

“Thanks. Got it.”

She walked into her office, sat down behind her desk, and picked up the receiver and pressed the number two button.

“Baker here. How can I help you?”

Roses are red, violets are dead, you’ll be tied to a chair, and very soon, fucking dead! The words were followed with cackling laughter.

Rodgers had just stepped into her office and was concerned over the look Baker had on her face.

“Baker? You all right? What? Sad news? You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“Listen to this.” Baker put the phone on speaker, and what was a prerecorded message, played over and over.

Snapping out of her mini-panic-attack, she fired off an order to Rodgers. “Get me a trace on where this call is coming from, now.”

Four minutes was all it took.

Squad units were immediately deployed to where the call came from. They now knew who the next victim would be, or already was.

The recorded call came from the mayor’s home.

The Mayor’s Manor – 8:41 a.m.

“Baker, in here.”

As she walked through the four-column poster interior leading to a huge walk-down into an expansive living room, to her left, stood Ed.

Walking past him into another room, a remade den, refurbished into a sewing room, her face blanched.

“He is one sick fuck, pardon my French, Ed. This guy is sick as hell.”

Tied to a chair, her blouse ripped from her body, there sat Mrs. Arlyss Abrams, fifty-four, slightly chubby, eyes opened, and staring at nothing, forever.

No more do-gooder work for her.

Baker closed her eyes.

She saw the rivulets of blood coating her long reddish hair; seeing it had stiffened against her face. Pulling the locks away from her skin, she saw both ears were missing, sliced away “clean as you please”, she remembered hearing her mother say. Otherwise, the throat was slit, and the slicing X was there.

“Look at this part, Baker,” Ed said dryly.

Baker looked at another handwritten note.

I made him watch her die. So delightful he did cry. The fucking wimp!

“Crap! Where is he, Ed?”

“I can answer that,” said Carl as he stuck his head through the doorway. Just follow my skinny butt.”

Follow they did right up fourteen steps, and then to a second room on the right better known as the Master Bedroom. This one looked something akin to something out of ‘Gone with the Wind’. A plantation-style, four-poster bed and so on and so on.

Scarlett would have been proud.

Just not today.

Tied to the bed with his throat slashed and the X imbedded into his rolls upon rolls of fat, was the mayor, a now former all-around favorite of the people.

A note, stained with blood, was stapled to Abram's foot.

LIVE NO RAEH

“Ed, contact the guys doing the interviews and tell them to bring everyone down to the station. You and I will question them ourselves.

“If they won’t go easy, we’ll get warrants based on what we know about their sleazy private lives.”

“Can do. Will do.

“What about you? How are you holding up since you got that call from here? I know it had to creep you out, but if you take my offer, you could sleep a little better.”

“I’m pissed, not creeped out. Should I be scared? Maybe. And what offer are you talking about?”

“I could sleep on your couch a few nights, or until we catch this twisted bastard.”

“Thanks for the offer, Ed, really. I don’t need the neighbors talking for one. Second, if this wacko does come after me, he’ll find himself on the ground looking up after I kick his ass, or on the ground looking up with a third hole for an eye in his head.”

St. Peter’s – 8:09 a.m.

The church was empty.

No movement.

None, save for one sauntering about.

He walked through the always unlocked doors, and as always, knelt to one knee, made the sign of the cross, then got up and briskly walked to the confessional booth.

He opened the door and closed it behind him, sitting on the built-in leather seat, and waited.

… and he waited.

He looked at his watch. 8:12.

He waited a little longer.

8:17.

He stood, opened the door, and retreated to where he first started. Before he reached the huge double doors, he whirled sharply about.

“I know you are here! I can feel you watching me! You hide behind your robes, your religion, like a little girl hiding behind her mother’s skirts.

“I know you are here somewhere, so understand this, you gutless prick for a human being; one day, I will have something special planned for you. That’s a promise.

“And no but’s about that either.”

Then he was gone.