Whispers Left Unheard
The wind spun leaves along the path, pulling them along in a twisting, twirling dance beneath the feet of those passing by.
He halted, absorbed in the graceful movements of the leaves, delighting at how they brushed against His feet like a reluctantly affectionate animal. They executed one last pirouette before scattering to the ground, the dance picking up several metres away.
He hefted His bag on His shoulder and turned His back to the setting sun, His shadow stretched far in front of Him, pointing Him home.
Another figure wavered beside His shadow, a companion in darkness.
_______________________________________
Aurore Legrande
Shoda Kunio
Rein Frederich
Raja Allam
Laurel Mack
Oscar Mallin
Ye Young
Rosalva Mele
Volya Egerov
Elvan Simsek
Ten names, unalike in all aspects, their owners being of different ages, nationalities, lifestyles, classes. Only one thing connected the dots between each name.
The way they died.
Or to be more accurate, the way they were murdered.
Ten unfortunate victims, all felled by the same hand, executed with the same clinical, precise mechanisms that left the public suddenly reeling in the absence of one of their own.
The first murder had been unusual, even as murders went. 22-year-old Aurore Legrande was quiet by all descriptions, she barely had friends, hardly anyone to call an enemy. Legrand was widely unknown until her body was discovered perched on a sofa in the public library. Her death was a media sensation, the girl who had once been a ghost in her community now a household name as her story roared in the news, until it quickly faded into the background, the investigation trawling sluggishly on, uncovering little of importance.
The story took like a match to gasoline-soaked paper weeks later when 17-year-old Shoda Kunio was found slumped outside his place of work. Unlike Legrande, Kunio was a large figure in the community, his death burned in everyone’s minds as his presence left a gaping hole in the life of those around him. Kunio’s story exploded online, forums crammed with posts detailing everything from the precise location of his body to the delicate cyanide crystals discovered crusting his nose and lips.
Panic surged with the deaths of Rein Frederich and Raja Allam, the cold stiff corpses of the 78-year-old and 6-year-old proving that your age, whether you be old or young, wouldn’t rule you out as a potential victim. The public mourned, loudly, and incessantly, candlelight vigils held for each of the victims, their families appeared on every interview available, badges and pins were handed out everywhere, urging for anyone able to rally together, avenge the victims of the Black Cat Murders.
It was a catchy name, only popularizing the already sensational deaths, the mystery of the papers found with each victim held an extra level of fear. Nothing has the ability to generate fear more than the unknown, and the simple depictions of cartoonish black cats that accompanied the bodies were inexplicable to say the very least.
And yet it was a while still before the death of Yo Young brought it to the attention of the police. ‘It’ being a range of previously undiscovered notes delivered to each of the families, stuffed under doormats, shoved in letterboxes, even tied to the family dog’s collar. They read simply; the clock has started, the game’s begun, hurry now, don’t take too long. Printed on white paper, typed in courier new, the notes spiked paranoia within the public, they became a warning, a sign that if you received meant tragedy had struck and it was too late to prevent it.
The notes became the killers MO, there was nothing connecting their victims prior to their deaths, nothing the police had uncovered at any rate, and the method of death by cyanide poisoning was hardly unique. It was the curious depictions of black cats that dubbed the killer the Black Cat Murderer, a name that bred fear among those who heard it.
As with anything, some in the public had no ability to take the tragedy seriously, it became a common prank among teens to plant notes imitating those sent to the victims’ families, causing a peaking in calls to the police from frantic friends and family, claiming that their loved one had befallen to the worst fate. To most this was nothing to laugh about, they cleared the market in security items, escorted their friends and families everywhere, paranoia bred despite the best efforts of law enforcement and the unpredictable movements of the killer did nothing but fuel the whispers passed from ear to ear.
Ten victims in just eight months and despite the wonders of modern technology, not a solid lead was in sight. Ten victims, ten people irreversibly gone.
Nila stared at the list in her hand, running over the names in her head again and again, as if they were some kind of puzzle that if unlocked would reveal vital information.
Deliberately, painfully, she penned the last name, adding to the list its newest edition.
Hassian Soyinka.
A stab of guilt echoed in her stomach at the name, a reminder that if any of this was to be blamed on her, it would be his death. Up until now she had been blissfully uninvolved, only a spectator, another voice in the crowd humming condolences and murmuring iterations of ‘awful business isn’t this? Terrible really, I feel for the family.’
She never would have been assigned the case, her superiors preferred to tack her on to the smaller, more quote unquote “manageable” cases, although there really was no question as to whether she could handle more. She supposed there was something to say there about the inherent misogyny and racism that was undoubtedly affecting her workload but alerting HR had never gotten her anywhere before, so she didn’t see the use in it now.
A case like this, something so unavoidably present in society would never have been shouldered to her, it just happened to be her luck, good or bad she had yet to decide, that she had been there that day, when a tearful, panicking Eira Soyinka had stumbled into the station, sobbing that her brother was gone, her brother had been taken and they had to find him.
The woman had just happened to grab her, because she had just happened to have lingered by the desk at reception, and she had just happened to have missed her bus, making her 20 minutes later than usual.
“He’s still alive,” were the first words out of Eira’s mouth, the only words she had gotten out before she was dragged off of Nila by nearby officers, which did absolutely nothing to soothe her current state and only served to heighten the panic.
Thirteen minutes later, Nila had been assigned the missing persons case of Hassain Soyinka, seated next to a still weeping Eira and in front of a disapproving Captain Sampson.
This of course meant she also had to be the one to break the news of Hassain’s death when his body was inevitably discovered the next day. She had been saved the courtesy of responding to the crime scene in favour of sitting awkwardly in front his friends and family, observing the painful stifled sobs of Eira, the stony silence of his roommate and the frantic babbling of his fiancée.
And of course, of course, because the police couldn’t be any more incompetent than they always had been, she had been handed the case in totality, like some immature game of tag, whoever touched the case file last has to solve the murders! As if it was a playground sport and not the untimely demise of eleven people. The previous detective in charge of the case had dropped the files off at her desk with a smug smirk that she could only assume meant that when she inevitably could not solve this case, because why could she, anymore than anyone else thrown a series of mysterious murders, she would deal with the repercussions.
What hurt more than anything else, a burning bright pain that refused to be ignored, was the still fresh memory of Eira clutching her as she left the station, begging for her to find Hassain. And she had promised, because what else was she supposed to do apart from rub comforting circles into the other woman’s back and whisper soothing lies into her ear, lies that she had slowly begun to believe despite everything, that she could get Hassain back safely, that she could reunite him with his family.
She wasn’t doing that anytime soon.
Defeated, Nila let her head come to rest on her desk with a heavy thunk, ignoring the glances from those around her. Eventually, her colleagues’ inquisitive gazes diverted, leaving only one pair of eyes still boring into her back. She waited for the expected tap on her shoulder, quickly folding up the pain, both physical and emotional, from the last 24 hours.
A moment of silence before the insistent contact came, calling her attention back to the present.
Liang Fèng, one of her best (read as; only) friends, and official pain in the neck sent her a concerned look, tilting his head in a manner that expressed more than words could, eyes soft and questioning, devoid of their usual humorous light. Nila was jealous for a moment, a pang of irrational anger, of how put together he looked, tawny curls falling effortlessly over almond skin, his olive eyes bright and painless. She quickly shoved the feeling down, answering his look with a soft smile.
“What’s crackalackin’,” he murmured, leaning closer around the partition between their desks,
Nila smiled ruefully, “the usual,” she whispered back, “reading over the previous case files for the serial murders I’ve been handed despite my lack of work in the homicides department,”
Liang nodded seriously, although her couldn’t hide the growing worry in his mannerisms, “I hate it when that happens,”
Huffing out a sorry excuse for laughter, Nila turned her attention back to the documents on her desk, the scraps of information acquired from the previous crime scenes, which was to say, almost nothing.
Liang’s hand closed on her shoulder, his expression imploring and twisted with an ugly concern,
“You can’t solve every case,”
His normal jaunty tone was smothered in pity, he was right, they both knew he was right, but it did nothing to stem the steady flow of guilt and pain that weighed her down. They both knew this wasn’t like any other case.
Her eyes stung with unshed tears that threatened to spill over, though she knew they wouldn’t. It was almost disappointing, that she couldn’t even cry for this man she had failed, but at the same time she didn’t know whether she would be pleased if the dam did break.
Why should I cry? I’m the one still alive.
Nila closed her eyes briefly, packing up the guilt, folding the lingering emptiness in her chest into a small square, small enough to ignore. It was harder and harder to brush aside the emotions as they built up, but she shoved them down and continued. She could deal with them later.
Liang’s hand remained on her shoulder, but she didn’t respond to his earlier statement, she didn’t know what she would say if she did, so she let the office ambience fill the silence between them, focusing instead on the documents spread before her.
The murder of Hassain Soyinka was identical to the previous Ten, cyanide found in the blood and saliva, delicate crystals adorning the rim of his nostrils, suggesting it had been administered as a gas, no external injuries, although unlike his predecessors, Hassain had a fractured wrist, which was determined to have occurred some weeks prior. Just like those before him, there were no witnesses to either Hassain’s kidnapping or the disposal of his body, there was no evidence of a killer at all, except for the obvious corpse, not strand of hair, no fingerprints, nothing on the body, either note, the crime scene.
Nothing.
Nila supressed the urge to scream, packing it tightly inside her, down deep until it stopped straining at her throat and burning under her skin. She closed her eyes, scanning her memory for anything relevant, anything to help unlock the next stage of this mystery,
Cyanide is a rapidly acting, potentially deadly chemical that can exist in various forms, a colourless gas, such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN) or cyanogen chloride (CNCl), or a crystal form such as sodium cyanide (NaCN) or potassium cyanide (KCN). Cyanide is released from natural substances in some foods and in certain plants such as-
STOP.
Halting her train of thought, Nila switched tracks, forcing the reel of information to grind to a stop,
A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons, usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three murders, others extend it to four or lessen it to two. Psychological gratification is the usual motive for serial killing, and many serial killings involve sexual contact-
STOP.
Nila gritted her teeth, the data spooling into silence,
In criminology, a calling card is a particular object sometimes left behind by a criminal at a scene of a crime, often as a way of taunting police or claiming responsibility. The name is derived from the cards that people used to leave when they went to visit someone’s house and the resident was absent-
STOP.
Her lungs ached and she realised suddenly that she had been holding her breath, quickly releasing it with a low huff. Her breathing had become sporadic, frantic, as she recalled information, she realised, her body had tensed up, hands fisted into her skirt and back rigid.
Relaxing slowly, Nila allowed herself to slump slightly into her seat, ignoring the way her body protested, feeling every second of the last 24 hours. Nila massaged her temples, warding of the headache that was beginning to pang gently in her forehead, she didn’t have time for that.
She felt rather than saw the concerned look Liang shot her, ignoring it in favour of staring blissfully ahead, where she could pretend that she wasn’t having a breakdown in the office because she wasn’t.
Footsteps approached her, input that she seized eagerly, quickly running the sounds through her mind, recognising the familiar gait. The person stopped just behind her, a familiar motion Nila had come to recognise, after 3 years working with someone you tend to pick up on their habits and Zakia Ogande was nothing if not a man of habit.
“Zakia,” Liang crowed, standing to heartily embrace the shorter man, “I missed you so much,”
Blinking rapidly, Zakia gave a flustered smile, a shock of white teeth against Hickory skin, patting Liang on the back awkwardly, “Uh, yes, I also missed you greatly in the 8 or so hours since we last saw each other,”
“Only 8?” Liang sighed dramatically, leaning his weight onto the other, “It felt like forever,”
After a few seconds of theatrical bemoaning the short time they had spent apart, Liang finally stepped back, his customary greeting finished, wiping away a false tear as he collapsed back into his seat. Zakia’s attention remained on him briefly, the perplexed expression that always followed the greeting in place, although it had been happening for several months now. Then his eyes snapped to meet Nila’s, softening into a warm greeting.
“Working hard I see,” he nodded at the paperwork piling on her desk, eliciting a harsh chuckle from her,
Liang swung around on his chair, “Working hard or hardly working?”
“Working hard,” Nila shoved him, sending him skittering off to the side, the wheels of his ancient office chair protesting, “although I suppose I could be working harder,”
Zakia shook his head, “you work harder than any of us combined,” he stood up straighter, arms clasped behind his back, “however, I think I may be able to assist with the latter half of that,”
“You solved the Robinson case?” Nila arched a brow, leaning forward in her chair,
“Domestic abuse,” Zakia bowed his head, “An unfortunate ending to a young life,”
Nila hummed in assent, lapsing into silence. She had, thankfully, not been privy to many of the details surrounding the murder of Oliver Robinson, but what she knew is that it was brutal, inhumane, a violent tragedy; the ending of a 6-year old’s life. The homicide department was a difficult place to work.
Zakia cleared his throat, “I am now free, if you require assistance with the Black Cat Murders,”
“At least one of us works in homicide,” Nila smiled gratefully at her friend,
“Yes,” He frowned, “Why did Captain Sampson assign you to this case, last I recall the lead investigator was Detective Henare,”
“I personally think he is hoping to watch me fail,” she twisted her mouth to the side, “However I believe it is due to the insistence of the most recent victims’ sister,”
“Eira Soyinka,” Zakia raised his eyebrows, “That was you?”
“It was,” Nila exhaled, “it’s a shame she couldn’t have grabbed on to someone more qualified,”
“I don’t believe that is entirely possible,” Zakia regarded her expressionlessly, mouth quirking into something resembling a smile at her reaction, “If anyone can solve this case, it’s you,”
Nila smiled softly at her partners optimism, “I appreciate the compliment, but I think you are overestimating my skills,”
He cocked his head to the side, “It’s not about your skills per se, though they do come into play as you are quite adept at psychoanalysis and that area, always helpful in a case like this, but I don’t believe I would be wrong in saying that Soyinka’s disappearance became something of a personal matter,”
Behind her Liang, who had clearly been listening, fumbled with something, dropping it with a clatter and a mumbled curse. Nila forced herself to swallow thickly past the lump that had formed in her throat,
“You would not be incorrect in saying that.”
Zakia tugged at his gloves, a blue woollen pair that stayed on his hands all year round and had Nila not watched them be covered in blood during an investigation only to be spotless the next day she would think they were the same pair as when she shook his hand on the first day they began working together. He focused on a string that was working itself loose as he spoke his next words,
“You are, expectedly, much more dedicated to this case than your previous ones, not to say you have been lazy or impertinent in others, but there is a certain attachment that is forcing your hand in this case,”
Nila shook her head briefly, as if to dislodge the scurrying thoughts that threatened to overwhelm her, “you truly have an impertinent eye for detail,”
He smiled at her, a quick flash of teeth and a warmth that lingered in his eyes, though she could see a hint of guilt behind the expression that she silently dismissed by indicating he keep talking.
“Would I be correct in assuming you haven’t yet had the chance to visit the crime scene?” Zakia rocked back and forth on his heels, “Only I was hoping to accompany you,”
Nila opened her mouth, closing it again briskly. She couldn’t help but hesitate, a detail that instantly irritated her, part of her rejected the idea of leaving, hot guilt stirring storm-like in her gut at the mere thought of visiting the place that had, even briefly, contained the dead body of a man she couldn’t save. The again, the idea of lingering in the office, reading and rereading the same files, examining the same pieces of evidence, hardly seemed beneficial.
It was a true catch 22, stay in the office and feel guilty and bad or leave the office and feel guilty and worse. One of those was clearly the more productive answer, so she made the decision.
“I have not,” she answered finally, “I was tasked with breaking the news to the victims’ friends and family,”
Zakia winced sympathetically, “That’s- well, um, I had expected you may not have visited the scene yet, since the victim was discovered not long ago,” he hesitated, seemingly choosing his next words meticulously.
Swallowing past the anxiety that constricted her throat, Nila stood, tugging on her overcoat, “the files for this case haven’t exactly been the treasure trove of knowledge I had been hoping for,” she shrugged, feigning nonchalance while she buttoned up the thick coat, “I can only hope the scene itself will be of more use,”
Zakia gave a short hum in agreement, attention fixed once again on the loose string of his glove, frowning in concentration as he picked it loose. Gathering her belongings, Nila swept them into her bag, slinging it over her shoulder with one hand and, as a last thought, tucking in the most recent case file. Liang handed her a pen as she passed him by, a reflex from the last time they’d worked together, tucking it firmly into her bun,
“Remember to consume something other than caffeine today,” she reminded him, lingering by his desk for a moment,
He snorted, “Don’t I ever,”
Nila smacked him lightly on the back, ignoring the way he jerked forward and cried out in false pain, “I’m serious,”
“As am I,” he replied, though the creases at the edges of his eyes claimed otherwise, “now go, you’ve got a murderer to catch,”
She chuckled, ignoring Liang’s parting “Tell Zakia I’ve always loved him!”, walking towards the man in question, who glanced questioningly between her and Liang before turning to leave with her.
“A new suspect has come to attention,” Zakia said as they exited through the maze of desks, waving farewell to Liang who returned his own flirty twiddle of the fingers. “Just recently so I don’t expect the information would have reached you yet,” he continued, “Ayuna Katsumi, it may be nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence, but when further inspection was done on Soyinka’s phone, they discovered texts between the two arranging to meet up on the supposed date of his abduction.”
They entered the stairwell, footsteps echoing off of the walls.
“Katsumi?” Nila scanned her memory for the name, “I believe her name came up in the initial stages of the investigation, she was a friend of the victim, from high school if I remember correctly,”
Zakia nodded, drumming his fingers against his thighs as they traipsed down the stairs, “she supposedly had connections to two of the previous victims, students of hers, Legrande and Young,”
“Students?”
“She instructs a self defence class, claims to be self-taught,”
Nila furrowed her brow, committing the information to memory, following Zakia blindly.
“It may be nothing,” Zakia added, emerging into the lobby, “but then again it may be something,”
Nodding absent-mindedly, Nila turned over the information in her head. It was unlikely, she knew, for a suspect such as this to be the killer in the end. Serial killers, after all, chose their victims randomly, often with some kind of Modus Operandi for how they were executed, but these murders followed the same random patterning.
They exited the building, Nila shooting a smile over her shoulder at the receptionist (Adalia Weber, something of a friend she supposed) who returned it in full force. The brisk late November air hit her like a slap in the face, a perfectly timed cold gust of wind whipping leaves around her ankles. Shivering, she drew her coat tighter around her, though it did little to shield her near bare legs from the frigid wind.
Zakia, clad in a knee length trench coat, not dissimilar to those worn by fictional detective, Nila supposed that was half of its purpose, and jeans was not having the same issues, and she knew for a fact that he hated the texture of denim, so he most assuredly had on another pair of pants underneath. Briefly, she cursed the impracticality of women’s formal wear, before picking up the pace, walking briskly ahead of her friend.
Matching her speed (somehow, despite being about half a foot shorter than her) Zakia led them towards his ‘ancient’ (according to Liang) sedan, tucked into a little corner of the parking lot. Nila faltered as they drew closer, anxiety she had been forcing down for the last few weeks rising sharply, her breathing suddenly hindered by a blockage in her throat that refused to leave.
Vision spinning, Nila jumped at the sudden noise of Zakia unlocking the car, ignoring the pitying look he sent her. Stoically, she reached for the handle of the passenger’s seat, cursing the tremble that had just now decided to re-emerge.
Get a hold of yourself.
In one fluid motion, she opened the door and seated herself inside, heart pounding in her head and throat, dizzying fear mixed with relief and her head spun. She was distantly aware of Zakia cautiously opening the door next to her and tensed, she knew what was coming and she didn’t want his apologies, she knew he’d forgotten, and she preferred it that way. Before he could speak, she cut him off,
“Let’s go,”
A rustle of fabric, most likely him turning his head to look at her again, she wished he wouldn’t, not with her slumped in her chair, bonelessly exhausted from a simple action.
“Nila-”
She screwed her eyes shut, “Please,”
Silence, and the car shuddered to life under them, the engine rumbling in her chest, masking the erratic, frantic beating of her heart as the car lurched forward. The stereo, tuned as always to the same channel, began pouring the classical music Nila had come to associate with her colleague, the swelling tones of a string symphony easing the ache in her chest. The music waxed and waned, drowning out the nervous background hum of her overworked brain, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, she realised, the tonal shifts of the concerto’s ringing familiar in her head.
Despite the trawling orchestra, silence stretched between them, Zakia keeping his questions at bay and Nila knowing even if he didn’t, she would not answer. The music lilted to its end, the quiet between them growing louder in the absence of other noise, broken only by the calm, demure tones of the radio announcer confirming Nila’s earlier identification. A new song, Bizet’s Carmen, swelled into life.
Retrieving the folder and the pen, Nila stared blankly at the pages before her. She would normally be taking notes, making observations, picking out the details of the crime scene to form her first conclusions, but not with this case. The killer was meticulous, it wasn’t just a murder, it was surgery, the precise amount of cyanide, the swift and careful disposal of the body, not a single hair, fingerprint or footprint left behind.
Wait,
She squinted at one of the pictures of the crime scene, a hidden grassy knoll, the body seated, as always, poised, and proud at attention, hands folded in it’s lap and glassy eyes staring directly ahead. But she wasn’t focusing on the body, she was staring at the ground, at the footprints leading directly to, and then away, from the body.
“Chlorine,”
Nila snapped out of her reverie to look at Zakia, whose attention was still focused firmly on the road,
“Chlorine,” he said again, “trace elements on the letters and clothes of the victims,”
Nila nodded silently, it was a detail that had gone unexplained for a while, since the identification of the chemical’s involvement on the body of Rein Frederich.
“Powderless gloves,” he continued, “are treated with chlorine in order for the latex to not adhere to the skin of the wearer,”
She furrowed her brow, “You believe the killer was wearing powderless gloves?”
“I’ve seen it done before,”
“And what does that mean for us,”
“Not sure,” Zakia braked suddenly, the traffic in front of them jamming, “but it may come up down the line,”
Nila hummed affirmatively, allowing the sound of a trembling violin crescendo to fill the car, the performance dying down to the smooth voice of the announcer.
A new song trilled, Grieg’s Morning Mood, the lulling tune swirling around her, filling her lungs when she breathed in and leaving her limbs heavy when she breathed out. Her eyes ached from lack of sleep, eyelids threatening to close, but she forced them open stubbornly.
Yet, without permission, the rocking of the car and the soft tones of the music began to lull her into a light doze that she snapped out of as they turned a sharp corner.
Grasping for stimulation to keep her awake, she clutched onto the first piece of information to cross her mind,
Motives for murder can be condensed into four sets of ‘Ls’: Lust; Love; Loathing; and Loot: Lust: a lover kills a rival for his/her object of desire; the ‘thrill-killer’ who murders people because he gains a sexual payoff. Love: the ‘mercy killing’ of a baby with a major deformity or partner with incurable cancer. Loathing: lethal hate directed towards one person…
Her eyes drifted shut again, her body too heavy to force them open, the pooling information in her mind only adding to the soothing lilt of the music, the gentle pitch of the car beneath her sending her spinning into unconsciousness.
