“I just have to find out exactly what the hell is going on”, he muttered, reaching for the cellphone he had managed to copy the decrypted information on.
His pictures were clear and perfect, obviously taken with a camera which led Jake to wonder if the woman was moving around with one or if she had someone taking them for her while tailing him around. He flicked through the images and settled on the file bearing a short note.
“The man in the above enlisted photos by the name Detective Jake Sullivan of the NYPD is my belief to be a serial killer who targets lowly prostitutes with over five reported cases of these girls going missing at various parts of the state with no clues left behind. I believe i have fund where he stashes the bodies and I hope to seek your assistance of the CIA in bringing him in as I bear no understanding of just how far this entire setup stretches with the NYPD”.
Feeling himself gasp and read on as she dissected all the information she had gotten following him and how she found him stashing away his last kill in the swamp, Jake’s stomach sunk and his entire world felt nude. She had nailed him to the bones and had done everything right to get enough information with pictures about him visiting the swamp the last time he was there.
“Oh my God!” he mumbled in guilt upon realizing just how bad the situation was. “This cannot be happening!”
There were more pictures taken after the note and three showed a man of similar build as he was, in hood and well sheltered by the darkness as he went about his business. As much as his face remained covered, it still bode nothing good for the detective and he knew it was only a matter of time before anyone with the information would be able to put everything together.
Enraged and fuming, he topped the table upon which he was reading over. He kicked against it and cared less about how badly his cut was bleeding. He had been careless enough to get caught and his seemingly perfect life was on the verge of coming to an end.
“Sarah!” he thought. “I need to get over there!”
He hurried to the tiny bathroom bearing a bath tub with hot water running. Standing before the mirror screwed into the wall, he took a good look at the cuts and the severity of Sean’s heavy punch before concluding that he would live. The wounds were bound to clot soon and all he needed was to wash them and make sure they didn’t get infected.
Hoping for a nice shower before heading out to get some clothes in any available shop around, Jake Sullivan shook his head in dismay as the water came running down his face. He was living like a fugitive and he never would have thought it possible.
Chapter Thirteen
C
limbing up the fire escape was easy as pie and without seeing Sarah’s car in the driveway, it was safe to assume she wasn’t in. Breathing heavily and unscrewing her window from the outside to gain access into the living room. Jake made light work of it in minutes. It wasn’t his first breaking and entry and with the life he lived in the shadows, it wasn’t going to be his last.
Stretching mildly with the window out of the way while he slipped into the room, he carefully made his way in before putting the window in place.
“Her makeup box!” he thought.
Navigating through the dark room was harder than he had imagined, having been there just once and without perfect mental image of the entire house. Thankfully for him, the dressing room stood not far off from the bedroom bed and had a standing lamp Sarah always kept on for whatever purpose. He hadn’t thought of it until he saw the light in the dressing room on, but she could have an alarm and he would be fried in seconds if he made a mistake.
“It’s a worthy risk”, he told himself before approaching the dressing room.
Looking through her makeup area, where the large sized box laid on a perfectly seated frame, he flipped it open to the feminine scent he recognized to be part of the cologne she donned every time they met. Bearing no business with her cologne, he shoved the boxes aside until the casings bearing her lipsticks came to view.
“There you are”, he mumbled excitedly to himself.
With widened eyes and subtle breaths escaping his nostrils, Jake took out the lipstick he had retrieved from Captain Luke’s house on the day they discovered the murder before comparing it with the ones inside the lipstick rack. It was no different from them and an empty slot existed on the row of six which meant it was meant to be there.
Turning around and heading out of the dressing room, Jake felt his heart pound while he tried to understand what exactly it was that Sarah wanted with him.
“What game are you playing Sarah?” he whispered.
If she knew about him, then why not report to the authorities. It would have been the noble and sensible thing to do, but that alone wasn’t what puzzled him, if not for the face her lipstick had been found on the crime scene and they had arrived there together which made it impossible to have fallen from her purse on that day.
Deciding to snoop around some bit in hopes of getting some information, Jake located her computer situated in the small sized study room just along the hallway leading the living room to the bedroom. The slightly ajar door granted him unrestricted entrance, while he flipped on the lights for better navigation.
Settling himself into her seat and booting up the computer, he waited for the mainframe to load up and the desktop page to come to life.
“What are you hiding Sarah?” he thought, while flipping through the files on her desktop page.
Ranging
