A Killer I Didn't Want to Catch (flash fiction)

I started off my rainy day being called to look at a sliced up body that was dumped into the river. Like the other six we found, their throat was slit and they had postmortem wounds all over. Now I’m sitting at my desk, one hand holding an evidence folder, the other scratching my chin. In spite of all the years I’ve been on this job, nothing has prepared me to see this series of grisly murders. But I’m getting ahead of myself; my name is Gerard Tawny. I’m a Detective here in Woodlake Cove. I’m also the first Black Detective in this precinct. I get more insults and threats than when my Grandma used to catch me doing something stupid. I worked hard for this job. A helluva lot harder than some of these clowns they got running around with badges. But I can’t afford to go around starting problems. Normally, the worst crimes you’d see here in Woodlake Cove are armed robberies, single homicides, things like that. Now, we have a serial killer on our hands. We never had something like this here, this is the work of someone who is twisted in the head. An Officer walks by and drops an envelope on my desk. It’s not Tuesday, so I know it’s not a death threat, plus I already know who it’s from. Only one person sends mail to me at my job: Sarah Tompkins. She was assaulted and almost raped two years back; I was a beat cop who happened to be nearby. I caught the perp, and she’s been sending me mail ever since. Her being a White woman liking a black man is doing neither of us any favors. But, like me, she seems to power through the insults she gets around town. I don’t read her letters anymore since they pretty much say the same thing. She’s nice, but I’m not willing to go through all the trouble that’ll come with dating her. I toss the letter in the drawer with the rest of them and go back to looking at the evidence. The victim, like the others, had an Odin cross tattoo on his body, a symbol of KKK affiliation. The irony of this case is not wasted on me, as well as my fellow officers, asking if I was really the best fit to lead this case. Don’t get me wrong. Some of these victims were real scumbags, with rap-sheets longer than the Mississippi. Arson, battery, rape, and manslaughter pretty much defines them all. They ain’t even worth the ink the rap-sheet is printed on. But if I were to overlook this, or not try my hardest to catch the perp, would I be any better than the cops that ignore crime in black neighborhoods? Grandma always said two wrongs don’t make a right. So I’ll catch this killer because that’s justice. I toss the folder on the desk and scratch the back of my head. I know we have a list of known KKK members’ addresses. There’s around 25 of them in Woodlake Cove and we just don’t have the manpower to watch all those houses. Besides the obvious connection, I try to determine who the next likely targets might be. I don’t think our killer knows the addresses of them. We only got a bit of info on the perp: the victims never had defensive wounds so the killer took them all by surprise. The footprints left behind at the riverbank suggest an abnormal gait, a limp maybe. Other than that, and the shoe size, a large one, we got nothing. There’s not much else I can get done today. I throw on my jacket and head out. “Heading home, Tawny?” the desk sergeant asked. “Yeah, see ya in the a.m.,” I reply, walking out the door. My drive home is quiet. I have to drive through a pretty bad part of town before I get to my neighborhood. I look out the window to my right. I see someone dragging somebody else into a trunk across the street. The one being dragged is a bald white man, muscular, covered in tattoos, with a deep gash on his neck. The other was in a trench coat and a hat. I didn’t need a badge in order to tell something was up. Trench coat got in the car and started to drive off. I radioed for backup and started tailing the perp. He headed down to the river where it opens up into the lake. I radioed my location once more and approached. The guy in the coat was short, very short, and struggling to carry the body. He chucked him into the river, sighing with effort. Right then, I pulled back the hammer on my pistol. “WCPD! Put your hands up and turn around!” I commanded, holding my badge. The face that turned was all too familiar: Sarah Tompkins, wearing large men’s shoes. “What’re you doing here?” she asked, “It’s not the right time!” “What’re you talking about?” I demanded. “The plan? That I wrote about in my letters? To make you famous?” she explained. I heard sirens approaching in the distance. “Well it doesn’t matter, I can fix this. I love you!” she continued, as she clutched the back of my head, pulling me into an intense kiss. Then she grabbed my hand holding my gun, putting the barrel in her mouth. “NO!” I shouted. She pushed my finger, making me pull the trigger. BANG! I heard blood from the back of her head spill out as her lifeless body collapsed. Just as she fell, three squad cars pulled up behind me. Their headlights and sirens added deep shadows to this grisly scene. I was still too shocked to move as I heard the doors open on their cars, the cocking of weapons and, “FREEZE DETECTIVE!” The End