The warehouse door slides open, vomiting a piercing stench. The windows, so black you can't peek inside, look like the empty sockets in a stiff's skull. Under the waning moon, the clay bricks pale, taking on the sickly pallor of human skin. Everything tonight feels like a beacon for grim omens.
Yellow crime scene tape chokes the perimeter, keeping the rubberneckers at bay. If that doesn't work, the hard-faced cops—their features painted in alternating flashes of strobe blue and blood red—scare off the brave ones.
Edmund doesn't know who crawled out of the woodwork first: the gossip hounds were as fast as the rumors they spit out, but you couldn't underestimate the press either, bloodhounds sniffing for a morbid headline. Either way, the cops beat them to the punch, and as far as Edmund is concerned, they won the first round.
The curve of his lips hitches up, flashing a row of well-kept teeth. He doesn't smile too wide, just enough to project confidence, never mind that he wants to puke his dinner. To the 50,000 residents of La Crosse, he was a man to believe in—second only to the guy on the cross, the old man in the clouds, and the president. The KillTheKiller. A moniker that makes his skin crawl every time he hears it.
Edmund Hopkins, the current Captain of the local PD, is the guy who scrubbed Wisconsin clean of its last serial killer. Now kids could sleep tight without pissing the bed, terrified that Jeff would slice their throats open.
The Captain ducks under the tape fast, looking like he's eager to sink his teeth into the crime scene. Truth is, all he wants is to escape the staring mob and the press's probing questions—vultures feasting on news dressed up in blood and maggots.
The stench of the warehouse hits him before he even steps inside. His smile wavers, but doesn't fade. He's the Captain, the killer-killer who never hesitates and never sleeps—more due to crippling insomnia than some burning thirst for justice. No, killer-killer is too violent; criminal-stopper sounds like something more palatable the choir kids might say at Sunday school.
The inside reeks of raw meat and copper, like blood left rotting in a jar. The uniforms greet Edmund with their usual deference before diving into the gory details:
Old man Turner came down to check the property, looking to fix it up and rent it out, but found a hell of a lot more than leaky walls and a swarm of green blowflies.
"Maybe now he'll actually lower the rent," he mutters. Other cops might dig deeper into Turner, but Edmund figures wasting time on that cheap bastard is like trying to pinch a horse to death. Being a tightwad doesn't make you a murderer—at least, not right out of the gate. "Got any coffee?"
They hand him a black cup, no sugar. Just the way he likes it.
Not a single officer bats an eye at their superior's apparent apathy. The Captain always moves to the beat of his own drum. He's the hero who saved them from the grinning psychopath. Even if nobody ever figured out what the fuck Jeff found so funny; even half-dead, the bastard kept laughing, and long after he kicked the bucket, he kept that gruesome, unadulterated smile plastered on his face.
A smile of pure horror.
Edmund blames it on the disfigured face. He prays to Jesus, Buddha, or whatever entity has enough free time to grant the request, that the next batch of killers are a little easier on the eyes. Because there'll always be more, right? They already dealt with Ed Gein and the first Jeffrey—Dahmer, not Woods. Maybe those crazy tree-huggers are right and the pollution in the Mississippi is turning people into soulless freaks.
"Poor girl."
Natalie Parker was a charming kid. A little promiscuous, but less than most; high school student and choir flutist; short hair framing a sun-kissed face and cherry lips. But her most striking feature was her beautiful violet eyes. Right now, Edmund can only stare at the empty holes where they used to be.
(If she were my daughter...)
Edmund thinks, but shoves the comparison down for the sake of his own sanity.
Two hollow sockets bathed in crusted blood stare back at the cops. Above the girl, a lone lightbulb spills a sickly blue glow, swaying in the draft leaking through a broken skylight. Judging by the slashes and the pool of blood soaking her clothes and the legs of the chair where she was tied and gagged, it's pretty damn clear whoever did this took their sweet time having fun.
"Captain, look at this."
He glances at the officer who called out, then follows the beams of their flashlights. Smeared across the white-painted wall is a message in large, weeping, crimson letters:
GO TO SLEEP.
The cops hold their breath. The Captain just stands there admiring it, like he's evaluating some incomprehensible piece of abstract art. He takes a sip of his coffee.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announces, sounding like a late-night infomercial host trying to hawk a vacuum cleaner. He turns around, his smile growing wider and painfully stiff. "We've got a copycat."
Inside, Edmund is screaming like a madman.