The Last Goodbye (Violent Trial Version)

ONE

The night was dark and damp.

      The woman’s hair was pulled tight in his hand as he pushed her over the hood of the car.

      “Be still,” He hissed. “Or they go next.”

      The woman shuddered as he spoke; he nodded towards two white men just out of view. Their eyes were on her, better to be used by one of them and not all three. He pushed her down harder, her face and hair touching the dirt on the deserted car. His musky scent and that of alcohol was clogging her nostrils; she was crying hard.

      He moved his black hand from her face, while keeping hold of her hair with the other. He traced his fingers around her lower back, toying with her, taunting her. His fingers crawled up her blouse from her waistband and he ran them over her shoulders and spine, he felt her body shiver as she whimpered. The gooseflesh brought a smile to his face.

      He whispered, “I’ve always fancied white meat.”

      She sobbed, she was trembling and choking, but every time she moved he would only press her down harder. He lifted her blouse above her bra and stroked down her back as she arched in fear and repulsion.

      He removed her bra. He entered her roughly.

      She tried to scream but he hit her with a sharp elbow to the back of the head.

      “Be still, I said.”

      He could let her scream, no one would hear, and any who did would not care.

      Not in this part of the city.

      Not in his part of the city.

      The two other men laughed whenever he hit her, violence being their way of life, and this woman was nobody to them.

      He removed himself from inside her and took a switchblade from his jeans pocket. He placed the blade against her sweat soaked skin just below her shoulder blades.

      “This is going to hurt,” He said.

      Then he pushed the blade down and pierced her skin, she screeched and cried and choked all at the same time. He yanked her hair to the side so her face was visible, one cheek still smudged into the dirty hood of the car. She wretched and coughed as he looked at her reddened face, her makeup blotchy and mascara streaked.

      He used his feet to spread her legs farther apart and leaned his weight onto her which caused her back to straighten, and then he began slicing with the knife.

      For the briefest of moments, an instant only, a thought of sharing a bath with her younger sister and drawing on one another’s backs with soapy fingers took her away from the vile act, but as soon as the image faded she was sickened so much so that she coughed up vomit, which mingled with her tattered hair.

      The other two men moved to the back of the car and knelt out of view; they set fire to one of the tyres and scooped it into a bucket as it melted. He continued carving into her back while she screamed louder; he had cut further down into softer skin and fresh nerves.

      He was almost finished. He leaned close to her face and brushed away her soiled hair, then he brought the knife from her back up towards her and smeared blood onto her cheek.

      “It’s over now,” He whispered softly to her, almost peacefully.

      She kept her eyes from looking at him, too afraid and too ashamed.

      The other two stood and returned to the front of the car, one carrying the bucket, and awaiting the command silently. He stepped away and gave them the go ahead, the one holding the bucket raised it up as he stepped closer and poured out the boiling melted rubber.

      She screamed violently as the thick black ooze covered her head and neck. Her skin began to bubble and burst; it melted into her eyeballs and scorched down her throat killing her screams. She jerked and kicked relentlessly until the nerves system shut off and she died.

TWO

Nate Williams rose and broke through the cold body of water.

     He stood beside the bath and steadied his heartbeat, draped a towel about his waist then groggy eyed and half-cut he space-walked into the empty room he called a home. His head and body ached as verbs and nouns conflicted while he bent and removed a bottle from the fridge and took his ritual morning swig. Whiskey had greatly become his fluent tongue. His cell phone chirped away annoyingly on the nightstand.

     “Yeah?” he asked as he rubbed his grey-blue eyes which looked like pebbles.

     His lieutenant, Mike Brett, was on the other end of the line, “We have another one.”

     “Mm, give me twenty minutes,” Nate replied as he rubbed his thick stubble and his unkempt black hair that tickled his ears.

     “Ten,” Brett said and hung up.

     He dried and dressed into the constant grey shirt with black tie and grey trousers he wore like a routine uniform. He clipped the NYPD shield to his belt and slipped his holster over his shoulder and lastly he fitted his scuffed shoes and swung on a navy mac.

     Outside everything was grey. From the gritty Manhattan streets, dull people, and the clouded dawn sky to the dirtied puddles and vacant vehicles and blowing litter. He looked up as blue smoke snaked from his mouth and swirled towards the fading spangle of the moon in the bleakness. Last night was a slight blur, as usual, he often felt like he was standing at a junction as life rushed past him in a haze; flashing lights and buzzing sounds, everything was moving too quickly as he stayed motionless. He knew the night would have consisted of drinking and insomnia, and if any sleep had dared come it would have only cursed him with nightmares, as most did. He blamed the devil for taking his memories and leaving him with only the ones he’d wanted to be rid of.

     Drink was his devil.

     However, it was another devil he was now thinking of, the devil responsible for what he was stood staring at. In front of him a young woman’s body had been hung up to metal railings by barbed wire twisted around her neck, wrists, abdomen and ankles. It was a painful sight. Her clothes were torn and bloodied, her skin damp with dew and crusting blood, and her head – which for Nate was the worst part – was covered in a dried casing of rubber, almost as if it were a mask. In some parts the rubber had run and dripped and dried in place leaving the ugly droops to look like black tears from the mask of the tormented soul.

     A patrolman approached and offered out a slip of paper which Nate took and read aloud.

     “Kathryn Benson, twenty-nine years old, law graduate and lived in Queens. We know why she was out so late in this part of the city?”

     “Afraid not, detective,” the officer said. “We got the name from a bank card inside her purse which was dumped near the body. Nothing else was in it besides lipstick and gum. No ID or contact information.”

     “Who called it in?”

     “I did, sir,” the officer said as he nodded towards a parked up squad car. “My partner and I were on patrol and saw something hanging from the railings from up the street. When we got closer we saw … her.”

     “Every night is the same in this city, somebody gets violent and somebody else is left dead or bleeding.” Nate said to the officer and to himself as a reminder of the cruelness of the species.

     Nate was silent and still staring at the death mask. He wondered what she had actually looked like, pretty he bet, white skin and brunette hair, maybe some pleasant freckles. He was good at profiling.

     “Sir,” the officer beside him called loudly.

     Nate jumped and looked at the young man in blue and mumbled, “Mm?”

     “I said the medical examiner is here, do you want us to take her down, off the fence?”

     The officer was looking Nate over, judging if he was the right guy to be handling a murder case. He’d heard stories of Nate, most on the force had, a shining example of an esteemed homicide detective falling from grace after losing his family and a failed case he’d taken too personally. They all knew he drank; they could see it and smell it. The officer could see pain and misery etched onto Nate’s face, his once athletic build now wasting away like someone who had retired from boxing to become a coach – he’d never been a boxer, but he’d had his fair share of fights growing up. Though Nate was forty, the career combined with drink and smokes and past regrets had aged his features, he was certainly no poster boy for the force but he still held a rugged handsomeness.

     “No, not yet … Give me a minute,” he said.

     He left the officer standing in the road and walked over to the body. He’d seen plenty of bodies over his twenty years on the force, and yet some still had a way of making his skin crawl. He tossed aside his cigarette and crushed it underfoot; the nicotine and whiskey combined in his mouth and left him a taste as if his tongue were rotting.

     Kathryn’s body was worse closer up, her soiled clothing clung to her twisted body tightly after a morning drizzle and blood had dampened them, the barbed wire presented itself like stitches, wound around her and the railings jaggedly to hold her in place a lot less subtle than rope. The red of blood and brown of rust covered both her clothing and the railings with which she was entwined, almost like a crucifixion. Kathryn was sprawled across the fence like a grotesque scarecrow, only it wasn’t birds she was supposed to keep away. Nate slipped through two widened rails to be on the other side. He examined the area, an unused lot were only one car was parked - or ditched more likely – concrete walls giving in to age and smothered in tag signs of local gangs and even the street lights were missing bulbs and were left as tall metal graves for the lost neighbourhood. When had the city given in to ruin? Crime rates were at an all-time low yet so was the beauty of the world. Nate felt as tired as New York City looked.

     He rummaged around the area observing all he could, he assumed he knew who did the deed but he needed just one clue to tie it to them. He discovered palm prints smothered amongst the dirt on the car hood, heel prints in the soil and blood dotted about the ground, he derived an image of what had happened to Kathryn and hoped he was wrong. Something in his mind told him he wasn’t. It was then that he turned to the haunting scarecrow and saw the back of her ruined blouse was torn apart and the menacing art work cut into her bare flesh.

     It was the clue he needed to confirm what he’d already known. Nate gritted his teeth as he stared at the bloody number nine carved into Kathryn’s body.