“Yes, Detective Jackson, we already searched the garage, and the hammer does not appear to belong to the husband and nor was he around when this happened.”

“Now look!” said the captain.  “You two are working on this thing together! Okay? And I don’t want to hear any more of this bickering.  We have a killer out there and we need to get him.”

Capt. Davis turned to walk out the door.  Burncutt walked out with him.

I looked at the lifeless body of the woman and shook my head.  I saw one of the techs collecting carpet samples.  This was normal, in case we found the suspect and he had trace evidence of this carpet on his clothes.

“Excuse me,” I said to the young man.  Red-haired, he had a freckled face and looked like he was still in high school. A little nerdy.  I saw that the name on his shirt said Chris.  He stood up, smiling as if he was waiting for me to ask him something.

“How can I help you, Detective?”

“What have you got so far?”

“Nothing solid right now, but we will go over every inch of this place with a fine tooth comb if necessary.”

“It is necessary,” I said.  I looked him over from head to toe. When I got down at his feet, I saw something.

“Hold it! Don’t move.”

There was the corner of a sheet of paper was sticking out from under the sofa.  I knelt down to take a closer look.  It had blood on it.

“You have any gloves and a pair of tweezers?”

“Sure.”

He reached in his pocket and brought out a pair of gloves and gave me the pair of tweezers he had been using to get carpet samples.

“What’s up, Detective?”

“I’m--not sure,” I said, examining the paper.

I grabbed the paper with the tweezers.  It was a flyer for a Billy’s Pest Control Company.

I gave it to the tech to have it tagged and bagged.  I took a photo of it with my phone.

“What is that?” asked Burncutt.

The tech started to answer.

“The detective here saw a bloody piece of paper under the sofa and--”

“Never mind, get it to the lab, pronto.  I want it checked for prints, DNA, the whole works.  Got it?”

“Yes sir,” said the tech.

I looked at Burncutt and turned and walked out the front door.

Detective Glass was still consoling the husband and Burncutt was interviewing the neighbor who discovered the body.  I didn’t see Chad.

I noticed all the beautiful houses in the neighborhood and thought how until this these people had felt safe in these homes.  This murder had changed the neighborhood forever.  I imagined that some of them would be gone by the summer, which was only about two months away.  Just move, why not?  They could afford it.

I walked over to the crime scene tape where Charlotte was waiting for me.  Reporters were hurling questions at me from every side.  I told them that the Chief was handling all press conferences and he alone would answer any questions they might have.  Charlotte gestured me to call her.  I nodded as inconspicuously as I could, so the others wouldn’t see. I turned and walked to my car.

I phoned dispatch and told them I would be 10-10 for about an hour.  I called Charlotte and told her I had an hour break and to meet me Johnny’s.  Johnny’s was downtown and a good quiet hangout spot.

“So, what do you want on your hot dog?” I asked.

“The usual,” said Charlotte.

“Two for me and one for her, and make them all the way, Johnny.”

“You got it, Detective,” said Johnny.

Johnny’s Hot Dogs was a small one man diner in the city plaza.  Johnny had been in business for almost 20 years in the same spot when he got out of the army after the Gulf War in ‘91, he decided to open up his own business.  He tried leasing a building for a restaurant, but it fell through within a year because the owners raised the rent when he started to make money. He started bringing a hot dog stand to the plaza.  His hot dogs were such a success, after a couple of years the mayor had a permanent stand built in the city plaza for Johnny.

We got our hot dogs and walked over to a park bench and sat down.

I took a large bite of one of my hot dogs.  Charlotte pinched off a small piece and ate.

“So, what’s up?” I asked trying to chew, swallow, and talk at the same time.

“You need to slow down.  I’m not that good at CPR.”

“Sorry, I was hungry! No--HOWNGRY!”

She smiled.  “So can I get something for the record or what?”

I finished chewing and wiped my mouth with a napkin.

“I wish I could give you something right no, but honestly, we don’t have much to go on ourselves. But--I will tell you this.”  I wiped his mouth again with the napkin.  “The guy calls himself, The Reaper.

“Aren’t you all the ones who give out names to the psychopaths?”

“Not this time. He chose it for us.  I’m thinking it’s a clue as well, but like I said, we don’t have much to go on.”

“Ok, if that is all you got, then that is all you got.  I will do a short column tonight for the morning paper.”

Charlotte stood up.

“You hardly touched your hotdog. Is there something wrong?”

“It’s nothing.”

She turned her face from me.  I thought she was hiding tears.

I got up and held her. She relaxed a little in my arms, but I could feel how tense she was, as if she was holding herself together with sheer will power.

“Whatever it is, I’m here for you,” I said.  Always remember that.”  When she looked at me, her eyes had lost their professional, confident glow. It was as if she was pleading, without saying anything.

The occasion called for me to say it, even though I hadn’t been able to before.

“I love you Charlotte, I love you so very much.”

She looked at me.  Now there were tears in her eyes.

“I love you too Jared. I do.”  She paused a minute.  We both had to let what we were saying sink in.  It had been a long time coming. “I love you very much.”

I almost teared up myself.  I had found the woman of my dreams and I loved her and she loved me.  It was all in the world that mattered right then.  I was so elated, that I felt I could climb Mount Everest and pull a star from the sky and place it in her hands.

I gently kissed her, not caring who saw us or what they thought.  We were two people, in love.

                            Chapter Five

The Reaper lit a cigarette and exhaled a steady stream of smoke.  He picked up the TV remote and flipped through the channels until he found the local news station.  The murder on Lakeview was plastered all over the wide-screen TV.  He watched for a few minutes to see if he would be named.  He wasn’t.  He snarled and threw the remote at the TV.  He looked down at the motionless body of the man tied up on the floor.  The Reaper knelt down and took his knife out.

Dave Robinson’s eyes grew large at the sight of the blade.  He tried to shout for help but the gag suppressed his voice.

“Well Mr. Robinson, it looks like you are going to help me get more famous considering the fact that you and Detective Jackson made me who I am.  You saw me crying in that courtroom. Long time ago.  Too bad you won’t be around for the grand finale—they’re going to call it the trial of the century.”  At that moment, The Reaper swiped the blade across the Assistant District Attorney’s throat.  Blood oozed all over the dead man.  The Reaper wiped his knife on the shirt of the corpse and stood up.

He extinguished his cigarette butt in the ash tray on the coffee table and stepped over the body and headed to the door.  The doorbell rang.  He froze.

He pressed flat against the wall away from the view of the windows and removed the switchblade from his pocket and opened it.  He peered through the open edges of the curtains without touching them.  Standing at the door was a neatly dressed brown-haired man in a uniform.  He noticed a utility truck parked on the curb.

This is all coming apart.  Sorry fella, you have to die!