No matter how loud she got, it wasn’t loud
enough for anyone to hear her, after all, it was very late at night in a small
city in which people always went to bed exactly a the same hour. And even if
they didn’t fall asleep, they were inside their homes, unable to help anyone in
need. Some said, days later, that they had heard a scream coming from somewhere
that night. Psychologists said the people that swore by that were just guilty,
saying things that didn’t happen.
She yelled and screamed more than once. She
fought her attacker with everything she had: her purse, her heels, but nothing
worked. And least of all against his knife, which turned the street into a
butcher’s shop. The police had a real problem when discovering the body because
she hadn’t been murdered in alley or by a river. Veronica Slate had been
assassinated two blocks away from her house, the night she was graduating from
a business class.
The killer’s face was known to no one and it
was very possible that none of the town’s inhabitants had ever seen him.
Mainly, because he had never been there before and would never come back. He
had no need to and he was dedicated to what he did so he knew exactly how to do
things, how not to be predictable and silly over such obvious things as location.
People invented his face in their minds, bases on images of killers they had
seen in movies. Of course, they were not accurate.
He moved on to another town and stayed there
for a week in a small hotel by the main square. He had no urge there, no need
to make a move. He just walked around and chilled until he decided it had been
enough. He took another bus and there was a second victim by the end of a very
traumatic week because of the celebrations of the national day and a scandal
involving a senator and his daughter.
The body of Rosa Pérez was found in the middle
of the most used avenue in that town. It was a place filled with people every
single day but, somehow, no one had seen anything. It was a bigger town than
the one before so they were sure a camera would have picked up something. But
it didn’t. There was nothing they could use, no witnesses again. And they
didn’t consider the cases linked but an isolated and strange attack.
Rosa worked near by, in laundry place that
worked all night. She had a bag filled with dirty clothes the night she was
killed. The killer had used a gun with a silencer and many people linked her
death to gang violence or some sort of vengeance killing. Her children had to
bury their mother without a single shadow of understanding above her case. No
one knew anything, again.
That month, another two women were killed by
the same man. One was choked with her own necklace and the other one was run
over by a car at least twice. The scenes were always disgusting and it was difficult
for every policeman to process those cases, as they hated to get their hands to
close to such horrifying situations. The coroners were in charge of everything
and they were the ones telling the people what had happened and why. Yet, they
were still such random acts of violence that no one dared to link one thing to
the other.
As for the killer, he stopped altogether for
several months. He was an unstable person that was obvious. But he was and
amazing actor too. Not that it was his job, but he could anyone believe
whatever he wanted them to believe. Most people loved to think they lived in a
perfect world, filled with magic and love ant only beautiful things. And he
benefited from that, from ignorance and their willingness to simply ignore that
evil was out there, walking the streets.
He had killed people for a long time now and
kept a list of how many he had killed. It was very uncommon, but he knew that
one day he would be the one to go to the police and tell them he had done all
of those murders, all of those noted in that small notebook. He had dates and
sometimes even names. He knew that there would come a time when he wouldn’t be
able to do it as he did it now so he had plans to surrender himself.
In his mind, he would win in that case. He
already had won in any case, because no one knew who he was or that he was the
same attacker of all those women. He had a clear advantage over anyone that
might investigate a little bit too much. He also thought that a very good
detective would actually see clues all over the place. But this was reality and
there were no Sherlock Holmes’ roaming the streets solving crimes.
So he stopped for a few months but began again
some time in the winter. To him, it was fun to do it in different places,
different seasons and to different kind of people. He had even killed a couple
of men but it didn’t feel exactly the same. He preferred women although the
urge might come he would like to overcome someone as strong as him and that
could prove to be interesting.
His strength and with were his weapons, his
most important ones. It didn’t matter what he used to actually killed somehow.
Murder weapons could be anything in the world. But his head, his brain, was a
machine that planned everything to perfection and that was the real weapon to
be protected against. And no one knew it existed.
He always read in the papers, the rare times
his crimes made it there, that killers always had issues with their parents and
had problems during sexual intercourse. The truth was he had always had the
best relationship with his parents. He had always loved them and they had loved
them back. He had the best education and a happy childhood filled with almost
everything a child would love to have, including the unconditional love only
two really good parents could give.
As for the sex thing, he never had intercourse
with his victims. That could prove too obvious to link all crimes, more over if
he had an accident and left his DNA inside the women. No, he wasn’t that stupid
so when he needed to have sexual interaction with someone, he would call a
friend or hire a call girl. And he treated them right, always. He wasn’t too
rough or violent; he was just like any other man. Except he was a murderer.
Sometimes, he loved to imagine them discovering
who he was. He was thrilled by that, the moment someone would notice something
like a blood stained shirt or something similar, not that he would be that
careless. But he always had fun picturing those ridiculous scenes, created out
of movie scenes that always portrayed people’s ingenuity to perfection. But no
one ever asked him anything; no woman ever said a word to him before or after
sex. Nothing.
That winter, he killed at least five women.
One of them was killed in the middle of a road, so she was found several months
later, when the snow began to disappear. Of course, every town and family was
destroyed but he was never there to see or hear anything about it. He tried to
avoid that because he was simply not interested in the result of what he did.
Maybe that was the only thing that made him a little obvious, at least in his
personal concept.
He would love to get away as soon as possible
and analyze his urges in order to know if he wanted to do it again or if he
went back to his place, to his normal life with a job and a pet and friends.
That man was a monster, no doubt. But he was also a neighbor, a coworker, the
man you see walking down the street with a cup of coffee, rushing to the subway
or smiling at something funny.
Killers are people, people that have been
deformed by what’s inside of them which can have several forms and shapes and
interpretations. And this particular beast was one no one ever saw because they
didn’t want to. They had refused to believe someone like them could be capable
of what he was capable. And he like that.
