14. Jace Holloway

Chapter 14

Jace Holloway

There was another murder, this one slightly different from the last few.

It was a woman, for starters, so the killer didn’t appear to have a preference when it came to targeting genders. And this one wasn’t discovered in her bedroom. Instead, she was in the living room, on the floor, the carpet underneath her crusted in blood but her body mostly clean of it. A gash across her neck was the cause of death. Her head hung limp, her dark black hair falling down over her lifeless face like a curtain.

And then there were the wings. Those were the same as before. Large, sprouting out from her shoulders, appearing as though they were already in flight. They glimmered underneath the white lights of her living room.

She didn’t have roommates, and the neighbors hadn’t heard any kind of struggles, nor did they spot anyone that raised red flags.

It was a clean kill with a clean getaway.

This time, though, there wasn’t a camera. At least none that were apparent.

“When was the time of death?” I asked Officer Caleb. He had a scruffy blond beard and heavy eyelids. It was like he’d aged ten years in three weeks ever since he started working the case.

I understood that feeling.

“Forensics puts it at sometime around eleven last night.”

The yellow crime scene tape that closed off her apartment door flitted in the wind from an open window. The sounds of the city filtered in. Honks, shouts, talking, busses. So many people walking by, minding their own business, enveloped in their own lives, completely unaware someone’s life had ended just feet away from them.

“Do we have her cell phone? Laptop?”

“It’s with the FBI right now.”

“Damn,” I said. I knew them getting involved would complicate things for me, but that was fine. The ultimate goal here was uncovering Nevermore. If they did it first, then so be it. This wasn’t a race.

Although I did want to win.

“I do have a contact for you. I think they’ll play ball. Her name is Angela Wolf.”

“Perfect,” I said, taking the contact info in my phone. I’d give her a ring later. But first, I wanted to turn this place inside out, inch by inch.

I started with her bedroom, searching for anything that could help. Why was it that the others were dead and poised on their beds, but she was in the living room? I looked through her closet. Found a book bag with textbooks about psychology and a class schedule. Damn. She was likely a college student, younger than the other murders.

What kind of sick fuck was behind this? Luring innocent people into having sex with them and then killing them at their most vulnerable?

And why wasn’t a signature—besides the wings—left at this crime scene? No poem?

I checked around her bed stand, looked around her wardrobe. She had modest clothing mixed with more risqué outfits. Leather and lingerie. There was a crop leaning against the wall. Furry pink handcuffs by the floor.

I went back to the living room. She had a large apartment. Must have cost upward of two thousand dollars a month in rent.

“All of these victims lived alone, and they’ve all been pretty set up. But none have had lucrative jobs that we know of, huh?”

Caleb shook his head. He had a hand gently resting on the gun at his belt, as if worried the killer would burst in to finish off the ones that were hot on their trail. “The first two were both bartenders, and Julie worked as a dental hygienist. Although we did find a large supply of drugs in her closet. She may have been a dealer, but if she was, she wasn’t very lucrative. None of them were exactly rolling in money.”

“Yet they had it…”

“Rich parents? ”

“Maybe for Julie, but definitely not for Ricky. His family hated him. Basically cut him off.”

“Someone else? Rich boyfriend? Sugar daddy? Or some side hustles.”

“All possibilities,” I said, moving over to the TV stand. There were a few thin vases with fake flowers on the entertainment console, along with a couple of books that were coated in a thin layer of dust. There was one book standing upright that didn’t have a speck of dust on it. It had a thick black spine. Almost metallic.

I almost moved on, almost left it alone.

I picked it up. Opened it.

“Fuck,” I said.

The book was hollow. Inside it was a thin GoPro-style camera. It was aimed directly at Julie’s body. The spine of the book appeared to be similar to a two-way mirror, clearly see-through. I already knew what I’d find when I powered up the camera.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and chained Raven wandering from the Nightly shore?—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore. ”

“Holy shit,” Caleb said, reading the poem over my shoulder.

Except this wasn’t the only thing that was on the camera. Nevermore appeared to have forgotten to erase the memory before they took the photo of the poem. Sloppy? Were they rushed?

Regardless, I scrolled over and pressed Play.

My jaw dropped. Caleb gasped.

It was a sex tape of Julie, but it wasn’t just Julie and some random guy she was fucking. The other face on camera, the one currently with his head thrown back and hands tangled in her hair as she blew him, was a very recognizable face.

“That’s the fucking mayor of New York,” Caleb said. “Fuck.”

He was right. The guy being blown on camera was Ashton Torres, the recently elected mayor of New York City. A man who had based his entire campaign on his pristine family values, on his atomic family unit, on his pregnant wife and two daughters. They’d been at all the campaign events, almost like props. Their smiling, pristine faces had been plastered on all the campaign ads, all the fliers, all the commercials.

And here he was, blowing his load down a dead sex worker’s throat.

“I think we figured out how these victims were making their money.”

“Prostitution?”

“Blackmail,” I said. “They were involved with something. Someone out there is having these people draw in rich and connected clients, secretly filming them, then profiting from it. That has to be why Ricky had that camera hidden away in his closet, positioned in perfect alignment to film whatever was happening on the bed.”

“Could it be Nevermore?”

“Maybe… maybe they’re leading these people to their victims first. That way, they can kill and get paid all at the same time.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“But then what’s with the poems and the wings?”

“Could it have to do with some Edgar Allen Poe obsession? Maybe they just want to be creepy.”

“That’s a lot of work to just ‘be creepy.’ No, something else has to be happening here.”

Caleb let out a heavy sigh. “You’re right. You’re right. Damn.” He turned his gaze toward Julie.

“One of the victims, Ricky, he was involved with someone named Gio. It sounded like he may have been the head of some dark shit. Maybe he’s the one running this blackmail ring. I think I need to talk to Ashton first. Find out if he’s been in touch with anyone asking for money in return for this tape. That could lead us in the right direction.”

“Think Ashton will even talk? He probably wants this buried deep.”

I shrugged. “Interesting choice of words.”

“Hah. Imagine the mayor being a serial killer… actually… what if he fucked all three of these victims, found out about it, and killed them for revenge?”

“Crazier things have happened,” I answered. Another breeze drifted in through the window. The wings on Julie’s back rustled in a wave of soft black velvet. Something about it was so graceful. Morbid and dark, but somehow beautiful.

Fuck. This job could get so damn twisted. No wonder it changed people. I thought of my father, how different he was after a few years on the force. Witnessing some of the worst society had to offer. Being there on the front lines, just like this. Hell, even Caleb was changing right in front of my eyes.

I had to stay grounded. Had to stay focused. There’d been a lot that had me distracted lately.

Well, mainly one thing. One man.

Theo.

God, Theo.

He infiltrated my thoughts at every hour of every day. Even now, I found myself thinking of him as I stood in the middle of a cyclone of death. Even with a cold corpse only a couple of feet away from me, my thoughts still circled back to the man who had captured my entire attention and commanded every inch of my body, of my desire.

He had a hold on me that shouldn’t have been possible.

We had fucked until the sun came up, but we had also talked, gotten to know each other in one of the grimiest and most hopeless places in the city. That was the power Theo Glass had over me. He helped me forget everything. Whether I was in a dirty bathhouse didn’t matter. It was as if we were somewhere else. He had the power to transform time itself, make it crawl to a stop and push away all kinds of anxieties and worries and thoughts .

When I was with him, it was only him.

Only Theo.

Which was exactly why I had to let him go. I’d never fallen so hard, so fast for a man. I didn’t like that feeling. Giving him complete control of my heart, my emotions.

I wanted to test that. Wanted to try and find someone else who was able to pull me out of whatever spell this man had cast on me.

That would come later tonight, though. I had a random Tinder date who wanted to meet up for drinks in an hour. Maybe he’d be the fix to this sudden obsession I was developing. I wanted to keep it loose, wanted to keep my heart from getting involved. Random hookups were a way to do that. It kept me from getting hurt.

“Alright,” I said. “I’m going to try and get in touch with the mayor. Then, I’ll reach out to the FBI contact. Something here is beginning to crack. We’re getting closer.”

“I hope so,” Caleb said. “If you need anything from me, you’ve got my number.”

I couldn’t help but feel another subtext under that. Maybe I was just too focused on men, thinking anyone with a dick was hitting on me. That’s the kind of effect Theo had on me. Turned me into a wild, hormonal teenager all over again.

Had to cut it out. Couldn’t get so lost in Theo that I forgot about everything else.

No. That’d be no good.

No good at all.