Girl Psycho

Posed (Dlamini)

Her eyes felt like they were going to bleed. She almost wanted to rip them out they were hurting so much- physically hurting. She had seen things that night that she never wanted to see again- ever. And she still wasn't any closer to figuring this out. Did they have a murder on their hands as well as rape? Or was it just some sick reenactment? She's seen some porn out there that likes to reenact the very gruesome and violent.

Either way, Eddy was currently being painted with a very bad brush, all while his family sat in the waiting room crying and holding hands and comforting each other. They were all fretting over when they could get his body so they could start planning a funeral...she wondered if they would want his body back if they knew what his body had done.

Next thing she needed to do was go over to the coroner's office and figure out cause of death. But it was 2:00 in the morning and she needed to go home and pretend to sleep like she did every night. She hadn't had a good nights sleep since the day she had personally looked darkness in the eye.

She let herself out the back so she didn't have to walk past his family, she and Jake would need to start questioning them in the morning, she knew that much. Awkward conversation...

"So, did you know your dad like to assault young women and film it and then strangle them ... would you like a donut with that coffee?"

Fucking hell, her police training hadn't prepared her for the kinds of conversations she was going to have to have tomorrow. She had some screen grabs from the tapes, she would need to show them those too, because they wouldn't believe her of course.

Abigail drove home to her apartment in Killarney. It was one of those old, massive apartments with parquet flooring and beautiful pressed ceilings that had been lived in by an old granny for fifty years. She had got it at a discounted price, since the previous owner had died in it and apparently that spooked a lot of people. Not her.

She tip-toed past her neighbors apartment, they hated her and the last thing she wanted to do was wake them. The less fuel for that fire, the better. It had started late one evening a few months ago, she'd been kissing a girl goodbye in the passage outside her door, the kiss had gotten a tad heated, it certainly hadn't been a peck on the cheek, and the neighbors had walked out.

Had they been a normal heterosexual couple kissing in the passage, it would have been fine- a little awkward maybe, but fine. But a black lesbian kissing a white chick- well that blew their conservative little Christian minds and now they fucking hated her.

She was evil, from the devil, perverted, blah blah Corinthian's something or other. Burning in hell etc...

When they'd thrown around some more offensive words, this time pertaining to the color of her skin, she had taken out her badge and held it up in their faces threatening to take them in for hate speech- let's just say the relationship was not good.

She barreled into her apartment and threw herself on the couch grabbing a stale leftover muffin as she went. She liked to keep bite sized, healthy food available to her, it was easier to eat. She was starved and she ate it too fast and now her stomach hurt. She flicked the TV on and flung her shoes off, her feet stank. She loved to watch the travel channel and dream about all the pretty places she would never see because she was overworked and totally underpaid.

But tonight, not even the picturesque images of white, sandy Thai beaches could sooth her. She was so bothered by this whole thing, and it wasn't for the obvious reasons. Sure, what the fuck was a guy in a retirement village doing with a video like that? But that wasn't it entirely. That wasn't the only thing leaving her so unsettled. She was known for her gut feelings and the sixth sense that she seemed to have from time-to-time, and it was working overtime right now.

Firstly, she had a very strong feeling that she was dealing with a homicide here. Although there were no obvious signs of trauma on the body, something about the way Eddy had been sitting in his chair seemed so totally posed. You can't die of a heart attack or a stroke and look like nothing has happened. People don't just sit down peacefully in their chairs and die.

The little blanket on his lap, the remote placed perfectly in his hand, his legs crossed. Posed. And despite what had been showing on the TV, someone had chosen to pose him in a calm, almost peaceful and pleasant manner. It was the kind of peaceful pose an undertaker would do when showing the body to the family. The kind of pose that someone who cared for him would want to see, or someone who cared for him would do. She couldn't imagine why anyone would put him in that position after they saw what was on the tape.

And if someone had murdered him, the kind of killer that would pull off something so calm and controlled and effortless looking, was the most dangerous type of killer- because it implied practice.

"Fuck it!" She said out loud as she grabbed her shoes and put them back on. She walked to the kitchen counter, grabbed her car keys and walked out. She needed to go back to his house and walk around a bit more. There had to be something there that could tell her more about what the fuck was going on.

But first, she'd stop and get another coffee on the way...