Your Most Deadly Desires

How does it feel? How does it feel to see your most desperate desire right in front of you, watching as it's ripped away from you? There's nothing poetic about this bitter revenge story.

YOUR MOST DEADLY DESIRES

 

by J.E.F.

 

I

Come…

He stumbled through the alley. He had left his car parked outside with the keys still in the ignition. It would drain the battery, surely, but that was the least of his worries right now. He needed to get there. He needed to get there fast…

Follow…

“Damn,” he swore as his foot plunged into a murky puddle. It soaked through his shoe and left water sloshing every time he took a step. But he moved on. No time to waste.

Find…

He turned the corner and found, in the dim light of a single overhead bulb, the one thing that he has been longing for ever since the incident. For a moment, he only stared, completely taken aback by the shock.

Collect…

Tears were already forming when the figure under the bare lightbulb opened his eyes. His hair was disheveled and eyes bloodshot. There was a nasty cut on the side of his head. Despite his throbbing pain, a kind of smile broke across his face. “Ford,” the figure called to him, his voice gravelly and cracked. “Ford.”

“Michael,” he returned. His mouth hung open in a combination of horror, shock, and unbelievable joy. He rushed to his long-lost friend, one he thought he would never see again. They clung onto each other in a tight, long-overdue embrace. They cried shamelessly into the other’s shoulder. Together they laughed, they hiccuped, they sobbed more. They clung on tighter and tighter every second, not daring to let go. There was no greater joy in him than to see his best friend again, not after spending years wondering and worrying.

Lose…

Suddenly, he felt Michael jerk away. A disembodied hand grabbed the back of his friend’s collar and pulled him away violently. Michael tried to grab on to his coat, his hand, anything. They screamed. He screamed. He could not bear to see his friend be ripped away again. He felt all his muscles cry in protest as if they were rotting on a cross, pleading for their last sip of water.

Die…

The hand flung Michael away. His head hit the concrete with a nasty crack and his body slid away until only a ghostly outline of his unmoving body was visible.

“No, please don’t! NO!”

“How does it feel?” hissed a voice in the dark. “Remember this feeling. And know that what you’ve done to me was even worse.”

A face showed himself in the dark. At the same time, the cold metal of a gun touched his forehead.

At the sight of the familiar face, his colour drained. He felt a chunk of ice thunk into place in his stomach. “No, please,” he pleaded desperately, searching the face, the gun for any sort of help. “You don’t understand. Don’t do this. PLEASE!”

Then his body fell sideways and the blood gathered in a pool around his head.

* * * * *

II

As the heavy downtown traffic rolled on, further slowed by the rain. It was a very Monday-ish Monday, where everything seemed grey and bleak. As Detective Finnegan sat idly in his car, waiting for the car in front of him to get his arse moving, the world around him continued to spin lazily as if it had nothing better to do. Nothing seemed to matter. Nothing seemed to be really mean anything. Nothing he did, Finnegan thought as he honked his horn along with the hundred other drivers, made any remarkable change.

Days like this, he reminded himself that there’s more to the world than his own desires. He was a detective; this was an easy task. His life was devoted to bringing justice for families he’d never met. He knew how to push aside his own needs for the families. But even he could not help coming back to his selfish wishes. That’s what made these desperate desires, well, desperate.

As he neared the flashes of blue-red lights by the Hudson River, Detective Finnegan reached behind his head for a hood, but realised he wasn’t wearing a raincoat. All he had was his trench coat, which fashioned a huge collar, but no hood. Useless. He pushed up his collar anyway and gathered his coat around him, as he walked out into the rain, only to open his coat again to show his badge clipped on his belt within ten seconds.

Under a make-shift tarp of blue water-proof jackets, Dr. Patricks was working on the dead body. Finnegan approached her from behind and opened his mouth to say something playful to his friend when his partner, Detective Peebles, beat him to it, “He looks a little wet, doesn’t he?” Finnegan took in a deep breath and reminded himself again about pushing his desires away in honour of the victim. Or would-be next victim…

The detective turned his head sideways to see Peebles leaning over the ME’s shoulder to glimpse at the body. In the split-second before Peebles looked over and gave him a smile, Finnegan narrowed his eyes in a glare. That being enough to satisfy his annoyance at the moment, he turned his head again to take a look at the victim for himself.

He was wet, all right. White male in his 50s, everything from his greying brown hair to his stained clothes was completely soaked. If it weren’t for the deep red stains in the clothes and the clear hole in his forehead, it would’ve looked like he drowned in the river.

“He washed up right there,” Dr. Patricks reported, pointing to the wet dock to her right with her pen. “It wasn’t drowning, obviously. Point-blank shot, small caliber. Maybe an hour after death, he was thrown into the Hudson. I’d say, between 1AM and 5AM yesterday, but I’ll get a more definitive answer once I get him to the morgue. Wallet intact, but keys are missing.”

She handed Finnegan the evidence bag with the contents of the dead’s pockets. Driver’s license showed a matching photo ID, an address, and the name Jerry Stein. A teacher’s ID card confirmed the name and face.

Peebles took a look. He gave a little sniff as he handed them back to the ME. “What sort of elementary teacher can afford a suit this nice?”

* * * * *

III

Jerry Stein’s apartment was also nicer than they expected. Luxurious suite with a loft, it was decorated with beautiful art and expensive furniture. It was the home of a successful business owner with impeccable taste, not a teacher at an under-funded public elementary school.

Finnegan snapped on some gloves and picked up a hastily torn envelope. There was no sender address. Its contents were emptied right onto the carpet, as if Stein had read it and flung it away. He was just bending over to pick up the letter when Peebles finally got off the phone and approached him.

“Uniforms found the car abandoned uptown. Keys still in the ignition,” he relayed. “I got them scanning the area for security cameras right now.”

“Peebles, look at this,” Finnegan, barely registering what Peebles said. He held up the letter to his partner. “It’s coded. And signed in blood.”

“A drop of blood pressed on the paper… It’s like one of those ‘deadly contracts’ in horror movies.”

“Yes, well, maybe it’s the killer’s. We’ll send it back to the lab for testing. In the meantime, let’s go find Stein’s friends and co-workers to shed some light on�"” Finnegan was interrupted by his phone. He picked it up, spoke briefly, and quickly made for the door. “There’s been another one. Let’s go.”

It would be a couple of hours before Finnegan and Peebles met up again in the precinct.

“George Harold, age 52, insurance agent, found dumped just off of Route 2. He was shot with the same caliber bullet as Jerry Stein, between 7PM and midnight last night,” Finnegan updated his partner as he took notes on the Murder Board. “Most likely the same murderer. And not even a day between the two murders. Looks like a serial killer to me.”

“Maybe. I talked to the co-workers at Stein’s school and they all said that he had no enemies. None of them suspected anything. Other than Stein being unusually cautious, but they said that was just how he was,” Peebles said. “Oh and while you were gone, Patricks called. She got the results from the bloody letter. DNA matched to a Michael Golding. Uniforms are bringing him now.”

Finnegan entered the interrogation box and sat across Golding, a middle-aged man who looked like he hasn’t had a good shower in days. He wouldn’t speak, he wouldn’t drink, he wouldn’t eat. Whatever the cops did, Golding followed like a zombie, given up on free will. It was now up to the detective to pry open his consciousness.

“Michael Golding?” Finnegan began. There was no sign from him that he had heard the detective talk.

“How did you know Jerry Stein?” Golding made no effort to reply.

After a painful silence, Finnegan produced the letter in a plastic evidence bag. He watched as Golding’s eyes flickered on it for a second before widening. A small whimper escaped the man’s mouth. He began to rock back and forth. “Your blood was found on this letter. It was found in Jerry Stein’s apartment. Can you explain how it got there?”

Golding’s continued to whimper.

“You didn’t come into work today, or yesterday. Why is that?”

The whimpering became louder.

“Where were you between 1AM and 5AM yesterday?”

Golding’s eyes were glassy, staring at some far-off distance. He was seeing something outside this room. It must’ve been horrible, for his whimpering became cries and sobs. His body writhed with pain until he banged his fists on the table and sobbed loudly. “He’s coming to get me. He’s coming,” he breathed between hiccups.

Finnegan perked up his ears. “What?”

“He’s gonna kill them all. He’s got him. He’s gonna get me. He’s gonna get them. He knows, he knows…”

“What? What does he know?”

“Everything, everything, he’s gonna kill…”

“Who is he?”

“The devil.”

* * * * *

IV

“The devil?” Peebles cried as Finnegan stepped into Observation, the room behind the one-way mirror. “This is getting exciting, isn’t it?”

“Shut up,” he said curtly. Unlike Peebles who seemed to believe this was a fun adventure, Finnegan was distressed by Golding’s behaviour. He was definitely in shock, for sure; but from what? Did he really have an encounter with the devil? The idea seemed silly, but perhaps it was a devil in Golding’s sense, whatever that meant. Either way, this devil had murdered Stein, and was out for more blood. That much was clear.

“What did you get?” Finnegan asked, noting the files in Peebles’s hand.

“Oh, right.” He handed the detective a grainy, black-and-white picture of a man stepping out of a car. “We got this off the security cam near Stein’s car. You can’t really make out the face enough to run it through the database but it’s a start.” Peebles produced a plastic evidence bag with a letter and envelope identical to the one found in Stein’s apartment. “Found another one of this in Harold’s apartment. Coded again, but most of the content looks basically the same. Cryptographers are working on it right now.”

“Blood stain?”

“None this time, just a tiny crystal of synthetic diamond, most likely from a piece of jewellery. Wiped of prints, can’t ID where it came from.”

At that moment, a fellow cop poked her head into Observation, but she only carried only more bad news: “Detectives. There’s been another one.”

Carl Higgins, a 58-year-old Indian chef, was carefully laid across the floor just inside the door, waiting to be discovered by his wife the moment she opened the door. Same caliber bullet pierced his brain in a point-blank execution-style not an hour after Jerry Stein’s body was discovered in the docks. The back of his pants were muddy from running in the rain, the same rain Finnegan was in that morning.

His wife had found the coded letter and envelope in his room. No blood or diamond, but a strand of his son’s hair was taped on the paper. As for the son himself, he was supposed to be at daycare, but he was found sleeping under the influence of sedatives on the living room couch. His clothes were soaked in his father’s blood, and his face had an angry red mark where the killer must’ve hit him.

The wife was distraught to say the least, but she had a surprisingly level head and was keeping it together for the cops. She had phoned the police after suffering, understandably, from a fit of confusion, fury, and distress. Now she sat in a guest room, waiting to be questioned.

Finnegan, after discerning that Higgins, like the other victims, had no enemies in his life that she knew of, showed the wife pictures of Stein and Harold. “Jerry Stein and George Harold. They were killed by the same person as your husband. Do you recognise these people?”

“Yes,” she said, looking at them closely, “but they are not Jerry Stein or George Harold. Carl used to talk about them, about his life before our marriage. These are some of his old colleagues. He referred to them as Henry Ford and John Froberg, not Jerry or George.”

Finnegan turned to Peebles. “They’re cover-ups. What are they covering for?”

* * * * *

V

There was a lot of digging done, but all three victims were connected under their true identities. Jerry Stein, George Harold, and Carl Higgins were once Henry Ford, John Froberg, and Theodore Khatri, all prominent lawyers of the same law firm. The three of them, along with Walter Smith and Roy Parker, formed a team that was virtually undefeatable in intelligence and shrewdness. That is, before they all faked their deaths and disappeared in the city of anonymity and fresh starts. They all took to their separate paths, never to contact that one another ever again.

All, except one. The timing and cause of deaths for the others were all clearly faked, but one stood out among the five. Roy Parker’s death, officially stated to have been killed in an accidental shot by an anonymous druggie, was peculiar. Other than being the first death among the five, this was the only one supported by pictures and reports. Though it was obvious that someone had gone through the trouble to cover up a lot of facts about this particular death, it still had an unmistakable ring of truth that caught the detectives’ attention. Finnegan assumed that the cover-up cause of death was based on some truth.

If Parker’s death were based on some sort of truth, then it would be logical to assume that Parker was the only one that was truly dead before the murders. He was the catalyst that sent the others scrambling for cover, faking their own deaths to disappear from the radar. Why?

Finnegan dug up the old files on Roy Parker’s death. There was pitifully little on it, and what was in it was not very informing. However, the detective learned that the druggie who fired the shot was never caught. The investigation had gotten cold after running into legal troubles with finding the gun that the deadly bullet had come from. However, the lead suspect was a member of the Latin Kings. There was a bit of evidence, which might have been overwhelming before the records were altered, that pointed towards a conspiracy involving Parker and the drug cartel that has caused Detective Finnegan a lot of trouble already. Judging from financial records of each of the five lawyers in Parker’s team, Finnegan deduced that all five must have been involved. But they were gaining, not losing. So why flee? What happened between them and the Latin Kings?

Peebles, meanwhile, had tracked down the remaining survivor: Walter Smith. It had been surprisingly easy. A cooperative judge and banker gave him access to confidential files on Walter Smith. Right before his death, all his money had been transferred to multiple accounts in a short amount of time. Peebles followed the money trail until it lead him to Caleb Cera, a living resident of New York, New York.

Detectives Finnegan and Peebles quickly made their way over to Cera’s apartment. They half-expected to find it empty, half-expected to find him disturbed by the news of the deaths but still safe and sound in his home, but what they found was worse. The door was left unlocked. The coat rack was left knocked over on the floor. The letter lay open on a coffee table.

He was gone. Gone to die.

* * * * *

VI

“We put an APV out for his car,” Finnegan said breathlessly as he watched Patricks work impatiently. “But we need something now. It’ll take some time before they spot his car, but you could do something. Erin, please, there’s got to be something.”

The doctor didn’t slow her work. “I’m cross-examining the three victims right now. I could tell you a lot of things about them, but not much about the location of their death. However, I can tell you that they definitely all died at the same place: look at their pant legs. Jerry Stein was thrown into a river, so no evidence to be seen, but Harold and Higgins both had a wet shoe and pant cuff. Most likely from stepping into a puddle. I managed to squeeze a few drops from each, and they match. Same puddle, consisting of concrete rubble, no algae, grease, and other assortment of dirt, but it doesn’t really narrow things down, does it?”

Finnegan groaned. “Anything else?”

“Bruising at the knees that seem consistent with being forced down to kneel on a hard floor,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed on the microscope lens. “There was some old cocoa powder and aluminium dust on the soles, among the other usual stuff, but that’s really not narrowing anything down. Let me work, Finnegan.” She raised her head to look at the detective. “I’m sorry, James, but I can’t help you this time.”

“No, wait. Was the cocoa powder and aluminium dust fresh?”

“Yes, it was the freshest but�"”

“Then that’s it!”

 Patricks blinked in surprise. “How? What do you mean?”

“Freshest imprint�"that’s the latest place they were at, or in other words, the murder site,” Finnegan explained, breathless with excitement. “Hard floor, cocoa powder, aluminium dust, puddle with no algae�"there’s only one abandoned chocolate factory in the tristate area that was recently rained on. Thank you, Erin, thank you!”

Finnegan and Peebles, even with their gumball lit up brightly and their siren blaring loudly, had to weave carefully through the traffic. So much for letting the police pass easily.

“That’s Smith’s car,” Peebles chirped as soon as they put on their brakes and ran towards the factory. Half way to the door, Peebles cried out. Finnegan thought he was shot or something, but he had only stepped in a cold puddle, soaking his shoe and pant leg. Peebles shook his leg frantically, trying to dispel as much water as possible.

“We’re definitely here,” Finnegan murmured. “That’s the puddle that they all stepped in, in their hurry, but why were they in such a hurry to get here. There’s only death waiting for them. What was in that letter?”

* * * * *

VII

Walter Smith had no time to waste. Even before the letter arrived, he knew he was next on the list, but he didn’t know that the killer would write to him in the same code that they had used. He didn’t know that the killer would seize his most beloved and hold her captive until he willingly walked into his own grave. Poetic, was it?

He left the keys in the ignition when he sped out of his car. Smith ran straight for the door, not slowing down one bit even when his foot was caught in a puddle. He burst through that door, turned the corner in the dark factory, and saw a bare lightbulb gently swinging from the ceiling. Once he stopped moving, there was absolute silence. He could only hear the minuscule squeak of the swinging bulb, the sound of his own panicked breathing. His foot slipped forward and the small scratch of sole against concrete echoed like a loud cymbal.

Her eyes fluttered open. His heart stopped. They met each other’s eyes, and an instantaneous recognition and empathic link formed between them.

“Walt,” she breathed. “Walt.”

“Julia,” he replied. Smith rushed forward and embraced his wife as tight as he could. He had watched her cry at his pretend grave. He had watched her grieve over his faked death, unable to say a single word of comfort. He had to suffer watching from afar, utterly powerless to tell her the truth. But now that she was here, after all these years, now that she said his name, he felt as if he was forgiven for everything. The truth did not matter between them anymore�"there was only this moment, and this kiss.

Suddenly, he felt Julia break away. She let out a cry of pain as an unseen hand dragged her away from him by a fistful of her hair. She was sent sprawling across the hard floor, sobbing. She lunged forward, trying to get at a shadow of a man, but there was a nasty crack of knuckles against cheekbone and she was knocked back to the ground.

“Don’t you touch her, you b*****d!” Walter cried. He rushed forward for a tackle but the man was much quicker than Walter, who was in his 50s. A hard, metallic object hit his guts and he doubled over. The man kicked his shoulder and Smith was down on the ground.

The man stepped into the light, showing his face for the first time. With a gun pointed straight at Smith’s face, the man acknowledged Smith’s wife, now laying unconscious beside him, with a gesture with his chin.

“How did it feel like? To have her being ripped away from you? To see her suffer?”

Walter could barely breath. The man standing above him was… “Thomas Parker. Little Tommy.”

“How did it feel?” Tom snarled, taking a step closer. With his face in full light, Smith couldn’t help but gasp at the revolting sight. The face that once used to be the symbol of purity and innocence was twisted and contorted with unbelievable anger. Every line was shaped by his fury and seemed to shoot a painful accusation in every direction. His eyes were bloodshot and tinged with tears from the flood of emotions. But his hands were not shaking; he was prepared to do whatever he had to in order to get his revenge. He was not afraid anymore. There was no more fear, only hatred.

“Tom, please, listen to me.”

“Why should I?” he shrieked at Smith. Suddenly, Walter wasn’t scared anymore either. He only felt weary and tired, like a teacher listening to a teenager complain about a test grade. When he looked at Tom, he understood every line of anger, and he only wanted the kid to understand before the inevitable pull of the trigger.

“Tom, please, you need to. Things are not the way you think they are.”

Tom screamed in frustration. He took the last couple steps forward and placed the gun right on Smith’s forehead. “I know exactly what happened. You’re going to suffer like I did. She will suffer like I did. You’re going to find out how it feels to have your most precious treasure be ripped away from you!”

“Stop right there,” echoed a new voice.

Tom turned and saw two cops with their Glocks raised. Even in his anger, he could not bring himself to pull the trigger right in front of the detectives. This was a private matter.

“Tom, listen to me,” Walter continued, stealing only furtive glances at the detectives, otherwise keeping his eyes fixed on Tom. “We did not kill your father.”

“That’s a lie,” he growled back at him. “You roped my father into doing dirty work for you. You were already foolish to exhort money out of a drug dealer, but when he did the smart thing and told you to stop, you killed him. You killed him because you were greedy.”

“No, son, that’s not what happened,” Smith replied. “Roy was a hero. When he told us that we had to stop before the drug lord collected his arms and decided to retaliate, we agreed. We made arrangements to fake our own deaths and disappear, but we couldn’t do it fast enough. He found us. He confronted us with violence. Roy was the one that took the bullet in that encounter, but he made sure we escaped. He took the bullet for us. He saved us all.”

“No, no, you’re lying,” but his voice had a lot less conviction than before. The truth was weighing down on him. Tom’s hand faltered and Finnegan dared a step forward.

“I’m sorry. I know you’re hurt. I know we didn’t tell you the truth when we should have. Even after Roy sacrificed his life for us, we were still selfish and could not bring ourselves to admit our guilt and give Roy the honour he deserved. I’m sorry,” Walter repeated. Tom wanted to believe he was lying, but he couldn’t. There was an inimitable sincerity to his voice that he could not ignore. However hard he tried to deny it, he knew that Walter was telling the truth.

Finnegan took the gun from Parker’s hand.

“Thomas Parker, you’re under arrest for the murder of Henry Ford, John Froberg, and Theodore Khatri.”

* * * * *

VIII

“You know, even if he was a homicidal maniac, I still kinda feel bad for him,” Peebles commented as he watched Parker be ushered away by a couple of cops.

“He’s exactly what I don’t want to become,” Finnegan murmured as a reply.

“What?” Peebles sat down next to his partner, looking at him expectantly for an explanation.

“My parents,” he sighed. “I don’t want to become so obsessed with my parents’ death that I become, well, that. There’s overwhelming evidence that their death was truly a murder, yes, but from his point of view, so did Parker. If I follow it blindly, what if I end up chasing down the supposed killer for revenge, not justice? I don’t want to let their death eat away myself. I want to be me, the best detective in New York City, not their avenger.”

Peebles nodded apprehensively. He laid a hand on Finnegan’s to show his support when Smith, escorted by a uniform, walked across the precinct to their desk.

Finnegan stood to deliver him the good news: “In light of recent events, the department has dismissed charges for whatever accusations have come up by Thomas. In any case, he’s a homicidal psychopath and not legally able to bring up such accusations anyway. Besides, we’re looking for a Walter Smith, not Caleb Cera.”

“Thank you, thank you so much,” he said, shaking the detectives’ hands. “However, I must ask you a favour�"witness protection. Now that this case is out there, he knows I’m still alive.”

“The drug lord?” Peebles asked. Smith nodded.

“Who is he?” Finnegan demanded.

“He… has many names, but I believe you know him as Alejandro Vasquez, the Latin King.”

Finnegan was dumbstruck.

“But… he’s in jail,” Peebles spoke Finnegan’s thoughts. “He can’t hurt you from there.”

“Detectives, Vasquez is more dangerous than you know,” Smith said gravely. “One day, he will escape. When he does, he will seek revenge. He always gets revenge.”

Finnegan and Peebles then agreed to give him witness protection, but they could not help but feel that Vasquez will not only be looking for Smith. The detectives were surely on the top of the King’s list.

 

The End