Punish the Deed Read Free

shoes.

Four
     
    He huddled under cardboard, peering out at the community of the left behind. He wanted to punish them for the ways they were just like him. He wanted to stomp them into the ground for the ways they weren’t like him – for the courage they lacked to strike back.
    Instead he observed their movements, wrapped in a tattered blanket of pity for the pathetic nature of their lives. Each man who shuffled past his makeshift home bore the stench of a misbegotten life. All had the repulsive smell of the never washed but each foul odor bore its own distinctive accents of personal musk. He could close his eyes and still recognize each man by the fragrance that traveled in his wake.
    The women were different. Each left a rancid feminine perfume on their trail – an alien aroma that overpowered any individual nuance that left him feeling lost in a jungle of desire and loathing. The last one he abolished was a woman. It was hard to sniff her sins beneath the mask of femaleness that emanated from her coppery blood. It took too much of a toll. The next one would have to be a man. The scent of woman dead robbed him of his sleep.
    His eyes darted back and forth from the pathetic souls who moved about or sat still under moldy cardboard shelters or huddled beneath crinkly garbage bags. He watched them with as much interest in their welfare as he expended on the scurrying beetle that struggled through the dirt and mud. He was of them. Yet he was above them.
    He hated them all. He loved them all. He did what he did for each and every one of them. I am the snake that slithers in on angel wings seeking vengeance for the world of the forgotten.
    His lips curled as the rain stirred up the scent from the above-ground latrine – nothing more, really, than a spot behind the bush. That solitary bush of modesty made the dirty two-legged creatures superior to the rats, stray dogs and feral cats that darted in and out of the night. But not by much. Not enough to count. Not enough to matter to the world outside, which continued to turn and thrive by ignoring those lost in the shadows.
    When the rain stopped, he’d move on, seeking another village of the damned in the center of a city of conspicuous consumption – a place where both goods and souls were consumed with little distinction between the two.
    He’d acclimatize to the new place. Then take his time to sniff out another Pharisee and lead yet another lamb to slaughter.

Five
     
    Lucinda gave the go-ahead to the team of techs to process the crime scene. She watched as the first suited-up body videotaped their approach and another followed in his wake shooting still shots with a digital camera. Once they’d passed into the kitchen, another tech got busy with the contents of the trashcan, and yet another gathered samples of the blood and saliva stain on the floor beside the door.
    Lucinda followed the first two techs into the room but stood back while they worked. When they had completed their documentation of the scene with the body in situ , the team leader, Marguerite Spellman asked, “Lieutenant, we’re ready to call in the coroner’s guys to remove the body. Do you need some time first?”
    “Yes, Marguerite; just a few minutes. Thank you.”
    Lucinda absorbed the image of the victim from every angle. Because of the location of the body in the small room, she couldn’t do a 360-degree circuit of the body as she preferred. Her eye was drawn to the fingers, splayed at unnatural angles with her hands folded on her chest. Had to have been placed there after she died. What else did he do to her after he killed her?
    She observed the victim’s skirt riding halfway up her thigh. Did that happen in her fall to the floor or in a struggle? Or did the perpetrator do some exploration after her death? Was she sexually assaulted? The answer to that would have to wait until after the coroner completed the autopsy.
    She crouched down to examine the coffee mug nestled in the arch of the