“Careful, calculated, cold and meticulous…” the man said while standing over the ice-cold body of Angela Forestein. He brandished a bone saw in front of her face as if she could see what is going on and quickly laughed into the enclosed space of the room. “…they are 4 things that I strive to be.” He laughed again, this time more maniacally than the last.
His face morphed into a menacingly blank stare as he looked at the body. His hands got sweaty under his latex gloves and he inched closer with the bone-saw. “O’ Angela, O’ Angela! How I deeply adored you. But now the chatting must end, my love.” He smiled and turned the bone-saw on, touching it to her skin and laughing again.
**
Trotley lay in bed, but it was not on a duly proficient appointment. He wondered why criminals do the things they do and why on God’s green Earth could a murderer even live with themselves—the usual detective thought in the agency. His alarm clock went off and he reached over to hit the snooze button. Immediately after he pressed the button his phone began to ring. He picked it up and looked at the number: Foler.
“Hey Foler, what are you doing calling me?” the medical examiner does not usually call the detectives in, but Foler is a friend of Trotley.
“Detective Trotley…I need you to move your ass. There’s a crime scene that I’m sure you’ll be itching to get to immediately.” His voice was coarse and disgusted.
“What kind of crime scene?” Trotley asked.
“One whole body found and…” his voice trailed off and Trotley could hear a sigh made over the phone. “…Just get here Trot. We’re under a bridge on Arnold Mill Road. It’s in Woodstock so you might want to get moving now.” The phone hung up.
“Woodstock?” he thought. “Somewhere in a quiet suburb…there was a murder?” he didn’t buy it, but he knew nothing until he could examine the crime scene.
No time for a shower, Trotley threw on his work suit, fixed his hair and went out the door. He laid out food for his dog and cat then got in his Intrepid. After the usual fitting into the car, he sped away towards the crime scene.
**
“You’re going to absolutely love this house.” An eccentric woman was about to sell another house and could not wait. “Now it’s 3 stories, has 3 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, a nice basement and attic although the basement needs a little bit of work. It also has a wonderful view.” She pointed out to the hills past the two cliffs southeast of the house.
“It’s perfect.” The man looked at her and gave her a charming smile.
“Well, if that is a buy then I just need you to sign some papers and I’ll be on my way.” She handed the man three papers and pointed where he needed to sign.
“I noticed some police on the drive in. Is there some sort of mafia goings on here? There were many cars.” He gave her a sinister smile this time and he could see it made her uncomfortable.
“Well, I’ve no idea about why they’re here but, sir, I can assure you there aren’t any sort of mafia crime rings around here.” She took the signed papers from him and quickly ushered herself out of the house, leaving the man behind.
The man walked outside and pulled a large radio out of his car. He carried it halfway up the stairs and turned around to look at the hills. After shaking his head he walked into the house and set the radio down. He pulled batteries out of his pocket and put them in the radio and smiled. After a second of calm, he turned it on and played the CD: Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. His calm composure turned into a masquerade of beauty as he danced around the room and moved his hands as if directing the song himself.
**
Trotley was trying to drive and think at the same time. He had his hands sternly on the wheel as he tried to wake himself up more than the call had.
“Now…” he paused. “A body found…no…a hole body found. Hole? That doesn’t make sense…maybe whole?” he frequently spoke to himself while on a case. “A whole body…? Why would Foler say that?” his mind receded as he stared at the road ahead. The crime scene is at least an hour away from him now.
**
The man’s doorbell rang and he quickly shut the music off. He set the radio on the floor and yawned.
“Who could that be?” he asked himself.
As he walked down the stairs to the front entrance he could see a police officer standing on his front porch. A sinister smile crossed his face and he chuckled.
“Oh, hello officer.” He said as he opened the door.
“Hello, sir, I’m here to ask you a couple questions if that’s alright?” the officer is fat and looks like he’s been on the force for a while with his gray hair and mustache. The man noticed the officer’s gun was ready to take out of the holster.
“An amateur?” he thought. “Strange, but a man of his age is either getting to old to do anything other than questioning or he just decided to join the force at the age of 50.” Another smile crossed his face while he turned away from the officer.
“Come in, please,” he walked up the stairs and went towards the only chair in the house and sat. “What kind of questions?”
The officer looked around in confusion. “Are you moving?”
“Yes,” the man replied, “I’m moving in actually…officer…” he wanted to know the officers name.
“Barnes…and you are?” A difficult question for the man, but an alias is always easy to concoct.
“The name’s Ricter Hone. And you still haven’t answered my first question…what kind of questions are you here to ask? I noticed a lot of police vehicles on my commute into this humble abode of mine.”
“We’re investigating a double-homicide. I won’t be—“ the officer was interrupted.
“Murder?” Ricter shouted. “I’ll do whatever I can to help, officer. My god…I just do not understand people these days. However, in my profession I see one or two bad-eggs.”
“Your…profession? May I ask what you do Ricter?”
“I’m a psychiatrist. I graduated from Harvard Medical 8 years ago and have been studying under several other psychiatrists before I came here.” The perfect lie is a lie that you’ve never practiced. Any observant person will no when you’re calculating…one fault of many liars.
“Well, Dr. Hone, I think that’s all I need.” The officer turned and started walking towards the door. He noticed the radio and turned towards Ricter. “Playing anything good? I heard violins when I rang the doorbell.
“Only the best, officer, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Only a fool would find disgust in that piece of music for even a deaf man could dance to the soothing reverberations of the drums and violins.”
“Before I leave…how long have you been living in here Dr. Hone?” the persistence began to annoy Ricter.
“Funny you should ask. I moved in about 2 hours ago…just finished signing the papers when I went out to get my radio.”
“So you’ve a car?” the officer asked.
“Did you not—“ Ricter paused for a moment. “Oh, that’s right. I moved the car into the garage…is there something you needed?”
“Nothing, sir, it’s alright.”
The officer descended the stairs and walked out the front door, stopping occasionally as he walked down the steep driveway to his car. Ricter smiled again as he watched the officer get into his car and leave.
“Officer Barnes,” he said to himself. “I’ll have to remember that name.”
**
“Finally!” Trotley shouted as he stopped his car. “I’m here.”
Two officers in uniform went up to the car to inspect his badge and assisted him out of his car.
“The scenes down…here,” the young officer looked as if he were about to vomit.
“If you’ve no stomach for this than I suggest you vomit somewhere that isn’t the crime scene, officer, and begin to grow a stomach for it.” He recalled his first body. It was a young girl with a slit throat and her feet and hands were bound with rope. He did not vomit nor did he get nauseas. For some people it is a sickness and for others it’s a memory that stays with them for years and on into their nightmares.
He jumped over a small barrier of large boulders and caught a foul smell in his nostrils.
“There you are!” Foler shouted. “We’ve got two bodies.” He led Trotley to a large black duffle bag sitting next to a tree with crime scene tape surrounding the vicinity of it.
“That can’t be—“ Trotley was interrupted.
“Well it isn’t.” Foler opened the duffle bag wider, revealing two legs, two arms and, one eye and a few organs that Trotley couldn’t identify. Trotley put his hand to his head and covered his mouth in shock.
“Two legs, two arms, an eye, a liver, a spleen and a stomach. From what I can tell it looks to be a young woman…maybe 16 or 17. There is no head yet so there is no ideal identification of this body unless we can match the blood with someone in the system.”
Trotley stared into the duffle bag then looked around the surrounding forest. There were crime scene markers everywhere. “What are those out there for?”
Foler looked over and nodded. “Ahhh, yes. There are footprints. We might get lucky, but I very much doubt it. Some kids ride their four-wheelers through here every other day. I suspect one of them called this in and fled but probably not in fear of being caught, just wanted to get away from the smell. They’re tracing the phone call and that’s all I know.”
“Can you tell the cause of death from these parts of the body?”
“Well I can tell you she was dead when this happened. And I can tell you that a bone saw must have done this. The edges are very clean, you don’t see that in a normal saw or any other instrument I’ve seen used to do this.”
“You’ve seen this before?” Trotley asked.
“I’ve seen this twice before. Both of the guys were caught. One of them used a hammer and screwdriver while the other used a normal saw.”
“You said there were two bodies?” Trotley was suspicious, but he noticed officers gathered passed some brush under the bridge.
Foler got up from his crouched position and walked passed the brush. Trotley followed, almost in fear of what is next. Instead of terror, though, he became intrigued.
“After 30 years of looking at countless crime scenes…I’ve never seen this before.” Foler pointed at a body duct taped onto the bottom side of the bridge.
“Dear god,” Trotley said. “And the two deaths, they’re related?”
“Well, I can see why you would say that. Different MO entirely. If someone was dumping body parts into the woods and noticed this…they probably wouldn’t call the police. I can’t tell you more than that, though, you’re the detective Trot. However, the young man is also 16 or 17, that’s something in common.”
The officers under the bridge were just standing around looking at the body. Trotley became angry and began to yell.
“Alright, everyone get out of this place right now! I need you all to go up to the street and give the kind crime scene investigators your shoes. You’re now wearing possible evidence that you decided to compromise by coming in here without the proper footwear!” Trotley turned around and walked back up to the street. He went into his car and searched around for wrapping footwear that would cover his shoes as he investigated. He put them on and gave some to Foler.
“Alright, let’s do this,” Trotley said. They both walked back down to the bridge and looked up at the body.
“Any idea on how to get it down?” Foler asked.
“Right now I want to know how someone got it up there. He looks about 6’1”…180 pounds. Could a woman do that?”
“Well, maybe a woman with a good amount of upper body strength…but I would have to say it is probably a man that did it. Fewer limits in upper body strength and this looks pretty gruesome. You don’t get these types of homicides in a Georgia town like this.”
“Correct. This is out of the ordinary, so we can’t negate any possibilities.” Trotley looked around at the ground. He inspected the dirt and rummaged through some leaves, trying to keep the dirt in the same position. He moved some leaves under the body and noticed four indentions in the dirt. “Here!” he said. “The killer must have used a ladder.” He looked around and found four more indentions. “Or maybe two ladders. They’re tall ladders also, the indentions are in wide separation to allow more weight atop them.”
“That would still require a large amount of upper body strength. It isn’t easy to place a body on the bottom side of a bridge and—“ Foler was interrupted.
“Wait! There was a block here in between the ladders. A large block.” Trotley rubbed his temples in thought. After a few seconds it hit him. “The killer placed a block here, probably three or four blocks. He—which means I agree with your theory—dragged the body up one ladder and place it on top of the top block.”
“Then what?” Foler asked.
Trotley ran to the side of the bridge. “It looks easy to place a long rope around the bridge. He must’ve put it around the body, tightened…two of three ropes and had the body stuck to the bridge. Then he had to be quick in case a passing driver noticed the rope—hence the reason the duct tape was so erratic. He duct taped the body to the bottom side of the bridge and undid the ropes. It’s a theory that I’ll run with for now, but I doubt the killer put him up there alive.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Foler said with hesitance. “The kids throat is slit and there is blood on top of the dirt where it would’ve landed. Some of the blood seeped into the ground. The kid was put up there while alive and killed once it was done. There is a slash on the duct tape around his neck.
Trotley stared at the face of the young man and breathed deeply. The face of the young girl in his first case flashed into his head and his jaw began to vibrate…he couldn’t lose it here.
“Get the body down and call me when you’re done with the examination.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Long read, I know...it isn't TOO long. What do people think? The places in the chapter are actually real..I live near them and run under the bridge everyday but obviously the murders are fiction
I'll fix any grammatical errors, etc. later on. If you find any, tell me so it's a little easier. Thanks.
Chapter 2 will be done sooner or later.
