Tainted Pictures

  “And I will have the Reef & Beef Burger with sweet potato fries and ice water, no lemon please.” Kate folded up her menu and handed it to the waiter. He scribbled down everything they said and then nodded and left. Lenny folded his arms onto the table and looked at Kate.

  “Alright, little Katey, I’ve known you since you were just a picture on a screen in your momma’s belly. I practically raised you and Annie the last half of your life after your Daddy passed. I know you and I know there is something going on. I haven’t pushed because I figured you would come and tell me about it on your own eventually. But, damn it, now it’s affecting a lot more than just your mood. Tell me what’s going on. I can handle it, Katey.” Lenny said to her firmly but with a kindness in his voice.

  She looked up at him and sighed, she knew that he was right and that she owed him the truth about everything. He had always been there for her, was like a father to him, and she felt comforted every time he called her his little Katey. She leaned against the table and folded her arms onto it as well.

  “I lied to you, Uncle Lenny. I wasn’t in a car crash last month. You know when I missed work for two weeks? Annie told you I had a car accident but that’s not true.” She looked up at him, biting the inside of her cheek nervously and wondering how he was going to react. He didn’t say anything and just waited for her to continue the story.

  “The truth is someone attacked me. Remember when I went away for the weekend with Derrick? Well later on when I was home after Derrick had already left, a stranger with a ski mask barged into my apartment and attacked me.” She paused and looked up at him.

  “Son of a bitch. Do they know who this asshole is?” Lenny cussed angrily, immediately upset upon hearing the news. She had never heard Lenny curse before and was a bit surprised but then also comforted to see him angry. She wished Derrick had reacted that way. Lenny’s first instinct was defending her and it just added to the many reasons why she adored him.

  “No, but they think that they are close. I’ve been working with the detectives on my case. I’ve actually become really good friends with this one woman named Liz, she has been so nice to me and I don’t have a lot of friends so it’s been really nice, Uncle Lenny.” Kate plastered a smile on her face to try to appear less upset but nothing about telling this story made her happy.

  “Kate, did he...uhm, you know, did he hurt you, uhm... privately?” Lenny asked uncomfortably trying to side step the actual words. Thankfully, the waiter picked that moment to interrupt them as he brought their drinks and burgers, filling the table with the smell of perfectly cooked meat on a savory burger. They both silently agreed to take a pause from their conversation to salt their food and take the first bite, eager to have something in their starving bellies.

  “Yes.” Kate said in between bites, quickly and in a low volume almost hoping that her uncle wouldn’t hear her response. He paused mid-bite, startled, but didn’t look up at her, then went back to eating as if in order to absorb the information he had to swallow it down with his food and allow it to swirl in his stomach. Sit with the full sensation of information that’s too hard to think about and picture, so you just feel it. You feel that swelling in your heart and the queasiness in your stomach and that’s all the information you need. The sickening thoughts and graphic images can be erased as each bite of food is slowly digested until it disappears.

  “I don’t know what to say, Katey. I feel helpless. I want to be able to stop it from ever happening or find the guy and murder him, but I can’t. You never should have gone through that, Katey. You didn’t deserve it, no one deserves that.” Lenny said softly as he sipped his ale. His entire face was contorted with pain for her. He had raised her as his own and had been trusted with her care. He felt like a failure that she had experienced this and he had not been able to protect her.

  “I know, Uncle Lenny. It’s not your fault, don’t burden yourself with this. Life just isn’t fair sometimes. I was telling the detective the other day that maybe some good will come out of this. Maybe in order to find my future, I needed something to jolt me out of the past. I’ve been stuck in a rut, stuck in a life I didn’t want and still dwelling on pains from my childhood, from dad’s death, from all these things that I need to let go of. Maybe this whole ordeal can become a catalyst for a new life, a better life, a better me.” Kate explained to him but also to herself. She believed what she was saying but the tiny shred of doubt needed reassurance.

  “That’s very mature, Katey. You really have grown up over all these years. Your father would be proud.” Uncle Lenny said to her with a smile even though his eyes were filled with sadness. Kate held onto the last sentence about her father as if it was a piece of him that she could have back. After all the bad blood between them, he was still her father and she had loved him deeply. Aside from Annie, he had been her only family for a long time and she cherished that.

  The two sat in a comfortable silence as they finished their meals. It was a gentle break of knowing that words couldn’t fix what had happened but that the closeness of a loved one could. The power of his presence was enough to sooth her for the time being and she didn’t need to talk it out further or go into details, all she needed was for her uncle to be there for her and with her.

  After a while, they finished their food and parted ways. Lenny made her promise to keep him updated on the case and she said she would. She told him Annie was visiting this weekend and they made plans to all have brunch together. Things were seemingly back to normal, the weight of hiding this part of her new life from her uncle was gone and she felt more like herself again. She hadn’t even realized how much stress and anxiety she had been harboring over withholding this from her uncle until it was finally unbridled and she was breathing fresh air again.

  ~~~~

  “Liz, this isn’t adding up. We have been over everything time and time again but I don’t see it. What the hell are we missing?” Liz’s partner, Mike, shoved his hand roughly through his hair, trying to stifle his frustration. Both of them were in the same clothes as yesterday, huddled into a back room with papers and files laid out on every open surface.

  The trash can was piled high with vending machine snack bags and paper coffee cups and both detectives looked like someone had taken a black marker and drawn semi circles under their eyes.

  “I don’t know, Mike. We know he is in sales, right? Or is he a customer that just happened to go to the same place as all these different women?” Liz pointed to the array of victims that they had found. Overnight and with hours of more research, they had unearthed four more victims that fit the pattern and the pressure of the case was weighing heavier on them. Not only were they responsible for helping bring closure to almost a dozen families now, but they were taking on the task of ending any future victimization. All this was on their shoulders and yet they were clueless as to how to solve it.

  “Liz, we have to take a step back. We are too close to this.” Mike said to her, as he stood up and stretched his arms attempting to shake the stiffness from hours of sitting down. She nodded, her hands in her head as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Alright, let’s pack it in for the night. Maybe a few hours of sleep will bring a new perspective.” Liz said, standing up and following him to the door.

  “First thing in the morning, we are going to talk to that son of a bitch coffee kid from the mugshot photo.” Mike said.

  “Craig? Yeah, I agree. There is more there that we haven’t pulled out of him yet. I know that jackass knows something.” Liz pulled on her jacket and followed her partner out of the precinct. The two didn’t even say goodbye because their thoughts were so deeply buried in traveling the maze of this case, as if they were attempting to find their way out with a blindfold on.

  This is one fucked up case, Liz thought as she got into her car and headed home for a good night’s sleep.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Liz walked down the steps of her Washington, DC apartment towards her car parked on th
e street the next morning. It was chilly so she was bundled up tight in her coat but was feeling a lot better after a few hours asleep. It was only seven in the morning, so she certainly hadn’t slept in but she knew her partner would probably still beat her to the precinct. Neither of them was going to get much sleep until this case was solved.

  As she approached her car she mentally reminded herself that she really needed to concentrate more on her parallel parking, especially since she had been tired last night. The back half of her car was practically out in the street and Liz was a lifelong DC resident so that was just not acceptable. Knowing how to parallel park was one of those things that made you a Washingtonian and those who couldn’t were easily judged and shunned as if they were standing on the wrong side of a metro escalator. Mistakes that you did not make twice in this town.

  She yanked open her car door rather forcefully, irritated with herself and something fell out from the crack between her car door and the frame. She reached down to pick it up off the ground and examined it. Her face suddenly clenched up as she felt anger swarm through her body, starting from her heart and slithering through her nerves into every inch of her body. She didn’t even think through the repercussions as she slammed her hand down on the hood of her small car. The sound was so loud, it echoed on the still morning streets of her neighborhood.

  “Shit! I’m so done with this shit!!” Liz cussed as she pulled her hand into her chest, holding it with her other hand. Her hand was throbbing and there was a large dent in the hood of her car. She shook her head at herself and climbed into her car. She shoved the object into the visor of her car, refusing to look at yet another picture left to torment her.

  The Photographer had been there again.

  She couldn’t believe that he had been this close and that he knew where she lived. She continued to ruminate on her anger as she drove to the precinct and hit her already throbbing hand into the steering wheel a few times.

  It was only a few minutes later when she pulled into her normal parking spot at the police station and hopped out of her car quickly, grabbing the photograph to take with her. Mike walked up to her, apparently waiting outside for her to show up. She just shoved the photograph into his hand and walked past him into the building. Mike looked down and it was a small instant photograph of Liz standing in front of her apartment door, putting the key in the lock. It looked like it was taken last night as she was arriving home based on the clothes she was wearing and the street light’s glow in the photograph.

  Mike clenched his jaw and exhaled very slowly, trying to maintain his calm. If Liz was flying off the handle, he knew he had to keep it together or this whole operation was going down. He had been partners with Liz for years and loved her like a sister so the thought that a psychotic serial killer had been only a few feet away from her without her knowledge last night immediately brought out the protective older brother in him. This wasn’t just a case at work anymore, this was personal. This was their lives that The Photographer was messing with.

  Mike trudged into the building behind her pounding his anger into the ground with each stomp. They headed straight back to the room where all their case files and papers will spread out from the night before. Jackets off and coffee made, the duo grabbed some photographs and other papers that they needed and started flipping through papers.

  “These have been reviewed to death, Mike. We are not going to find anything else here until we find the connecting piece that brings all of these loose ends together.” Liz sighed about two hours later, rubbing her eyes and feeling the exhaustion catching up to her.

  “We need to talk to that kid. That’s got to be where the answer is going to come from. Let’s go now and get lunch on the way back.” Mike said standing up.

  “I’m not hungry, but yeah let’s go.” Liz followed him. She felt nauseous over the entire case. The Photographer was watching her and Kate seemingly at all times. Who knows who else he was watching or where he was but he had the upper hand and Liz did not like that.

  ~~~~

  Kate yawned and stretched in their bed then turned over to look at Derrick dozing beside her. She loved that they were going to be living together and even though she wasn’t fully moved in yet, she already felt more at home here than she had ever felt in her own apartment. With Derrick here, there was a reason to come home and a reason to smile every time she heard the front door open.

  It had been quite some time since she had been able to smile like that. It had been several weeks since her attack and she knew her case was still top priority, but Kate lost a little more hope every day that went by. She was getting to the point where she wasn’t sure it would ever be solved and now that The Photographer was tracking her around, she clung to Derrick’s side for protection.

  The odd thing is that she was able to push it out of her mind, pretend that it wasn’t happening. She was able to pretend that threatening pictures weren’t showing up in her dresser or on her car. She was even pretending that there was not a murdering psychopath following her around.

  Kate was so emotionally tired from her harrowing few weeks, she just couldn’t think about it anymore. She focused on Derrick instead and how excited she was to move in together and to be engaged. A secret engagement, the thought of it excited her. There was something clandestine and taboo about it that made it that much more appealing. Her life had been laid bare for the world to see but now Derrick had given her something private, something that was just theirs. It was the greatest gift that he could have given her.

  She was suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to have him that she couldn’t help herself and had to wake him up. With a few small kisses to his cheek and down his jaw, she softly roused him as she curled herself up against his side and slid her hand down his smooth, muscular chest. She easily found what she was looking for and with only a little teasing, Derrick was wide awake and flipping her over, grinning at her.

  Already having stripped off each others’ clothes, Derrick kissed her fiercely but passionately as he pressed his body down on top of her and she pulled him into her. Their lips locked and her hands slipped around his back, pulling him against her, wanting him to be as much a part of her as possible. She wanted to breathe him, feel him, and be one with him. He was eager to please and followed her lead as she pushed him off her and took control. She climbed onto his firm body and took what she wanted, which was exactly what he wanted too.

  After some time, Kate fell down onto the mattress next to Derrick and exhaled, attempting to slow her ragged breath. Derrick couldn’t move, his eyes closed, as he just focused on everything his body was feeling and every delicious pulsing sensation. He reached one hand over and grabbed hers and the couple just lay there, naked and sweaty, holding hands.

  “You should definitely wake me up that way every morning.” Derrick said to her, flashing his boyish grin at her as he turned his head to the side to look at her. She smiled and rolled her eyes at him, playfully swatting him on his chest as she finally sat up and climbed out of bed to start her day.

  “Where are you going?” Derrick asked her, leaning up on his elbows.

  “I have to get ready for work, silly. You should too, don’t you think?” Kate said to him as she pulled some clothes out of her dresser.

  “Uhm, babe, you quit your job yesterday.” Derrick looked at her with a puzzled look. She turned around and looked at him, realizing he was right. She didn’t know why she had completely forgotten. She wondered what that meant, maybe she was just feeling so normal again that work seemed like the natural fit.

  “Well, looks like I don’t have a reason to get out of bed today then. You better call in sick.” She smiled at him, pulled her shirt off over her head and bounced back into bed, tackling him. He grabbed her and rolled with her so she was in his arms and he was leaning over her.

  “Oh, yeah, I can definitely feel a nasty fever coming on. It’s going to get really hot in here.” Derrick smiled at her, chuckling and then kissing her gently, soft pecks
down her neck. Quickly, he turned to nibbling and slightly firmer pressure, pulling her against him and leaving no room for imagination. She was his and he was hers and they were open books that only the other one knew the key to open.

  ~~~~

  Liz and Mike walked into the coffee shop and immediately saw Craig behind the counter, assisting a customer and handing the woman a cup of coffee. He was just as slimy now as he was the last time that they had seen him. They walked over towards the counter and watched him scope out the rear end of the woman he had just served coffee to. Liz clenched her jaw in irritation, this kid was so smug and she couldn’t wait to slap the attitude right out of him.

  “Craig McDermott.” Mike said, walking up to the counter firmly, ignoring the three people that were standing in line waiting for Craig to take their order.

  “Shit, what do you two want? Don’t you think you shook me down enough the other day?” Craig leaned over the counter threateningly, squinting his eyes at them.

  “Mr. McDermott, we can either go talk somewhere private and then let you get back to work or we can drag you out of here on your ass in front of all your coworkers. The choice is yours, I suggest you pick wisely.” Mike lowered his volume and spoke in such a way that even Liz could feel the anger seeping out of him.

  Mike pushed his coat to the side to put his hand on the top of his gun, an act of intimidation but also a gesture to flash everyone in the room the shiny badge attached to his belt. Craig rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated groan, then pulled his work apron over his head. He handed it to a barista working the espresso machine, pretending not to watch the interaction but straining to look out of the corner of her eye.

  Craig came around the counter and Liz walked ahead of him out the front door while Mike made sure to box him in around back. The two escorted him onto the sidewalk and walked around the corner to the alley that was one shop over from the coffee store. They were purposefully making him uncomfortable and acting just threatening enough to get the information that they wanted, but not enough to cast disrepute upon their jobs.