By R. J. Quisenberry
The captain doesn’t get why I do it. She yelled at me this morning about these hunting trips. She will just have to do it again. I’m sure she regrets promoting me to detective from time to time.. This perv has taken three girls in as many weeks. Each girl had a blunt impact on the skull. One survived because I was almost in time last week. The doctors say she may come out of the coma any day, or never. She had a matchbook from this bar in her purse.
Teen girls have been playing a game lately. They score points by collecting matchbooks from bars they manage to get to serve them a drink. The girl he had almost saved had 12 ounces of beer in her stomach when she was assaulted. The doctor at the hospital insisted that she had to have ingested it no more than ten minutes before the attack.
So, here I am, at a bar ten minutes walk from the park the last victim was attacked in. I try not to think of her name. Allecia, it makes me so angry to have failed her. It’s better to think about the abstract of his choice of victim. He likes them about 15 to 17. So far, all of them have dressed provocatively. Each was a stereotypical “Bad Girl”. The matchbook had been a big clue. Once it came to light, a search warrant had revealed collections in the rooms of two of the other girls. Some questioning of students had revealed this bar as a widely known easy place to “score” in the girl’s game.
Now, a cute little waif in standard goth garb sauntered in the door. Odd, she looks about 17, but with grace no teen I had ever seen in her walk. Gliding up to the tree wearing a sleeveless leather shirt and a shaved cranium that almost looked like it was waxed, she mumbled sweetly to him. Said treelike bartender smiled sadly and pointed to the sign behind the bar that read “We Card. Be 21 or be somewhere else!” She turned away towards the door with a pout. The bartender went back to drying glasses without really observing any part of her exit other than that it happened.
Somebody else did pay attention to her exit. Too much attention. He fit the profiler’s description pretty well too. Maybe five and a half feet tall, pudgy, a haircut that only his mother would have given him. He wore cheap knockoffs of designer clothes in a style popular with teens. I guess his age at mid ’20s.
I had little trouble getting out of the bar after the perv followed his waifish target. I lost them in the unusually high foot traffic on the sidewalk. It was really crowded for nine in the evening on a Thursday. No problem, I know where they are headed. Funny, I don’t remember seeing her in the school when we were interviewing students.
Finally free of the human logjam, I am rushing to the location of the most recent attack, when I hear a scream that tapers to a moan. Rounding the corner of a retaining wall, I see them huddled together. At first, it looks like she is nuzzled into his neck in a romantic embrace. Maybe I was wrong and this is just a romantic encounter in the dark. As I look closer, I see that his coloration has faded. His cheeks, once ruddy from drink, are now pale. The last gasp of a moan escapes his lips as I bring my sidearm up and shout, “Freeze! Police! Raise your hands and step away from the man or I will be forced to shoot!” I hold my flashlight tight alongside my weapon. The beam of the flashlight reflected back from her eyes and I saw no fear. She sprang at me and I reflexively squeezed off three rounds. I heard the meaty thunk of two rounds hitting. I need more practice time on the range. Still, two hits with a 10mm should have her deader than disco. I look over to where she should have landed, no body. Hearing movement by where she had dropped the perv,
I shine the light towards the sound just as she begins screaming, “You moron! I just got this outfit! Do you know how hard it is to get entrails out of lace?” I saw her drop the body of the perv as if it were some sort of distasteful article of clothing. He can’t have been more than 190 Lbs., but she would make little more than half that given her build.
The enraged vixen came at me with blinding speed. I fired round after round at her, but she always seemed to be ahead of my shots. She moved faster than I even figured was possible for any person. The last thing I saw was her fist as I heard my firing pin click on an empty chamber.