The Society

Chapter 9: The Hometown Part II

The Hometown - Cassie Cassadaga

I turned off the engine of Auntie Clara’s truck and it died down, its humming sound gradually fading into silence. It really was sweet of her to lend it to me for the day. I leant back in my seat and looked at what was in front of me. The grey asphalt of the car park was coloured a dark black by the nights rainfall. I had met the downpour and passed through it earlier this morning on the freeway, as I was driving down. Now Baltimore was enveloped in a post rain mist, blurring the contours of the world and shortened my line of site with its slightly foggy quality.

I felt like I had two reasons to come to Baltimore, firstly I needed to uphold my promise to Mr. Rosenthal and go through that murder file, there was two victims of the Broffman case, which I had not yet looked into. I glanced out over the abandoned car park, they were shot in this location nearly twenty years ago. What did it looked like then?

Secondly, after finding my mothers notes on the Lieberman case, all dated from the year she died and all from Baltimore there must be something in this city that can help me understand her notes. I'll just go through this murder file quickly and make some notes. Then I will put all my attention on Mum's notes. There must be something in her notes that can help me with my case.

I walked down towards the east end of the car park, according to the report this is where the two victims was found. I was reading the police report section first, which called the victims by the numbers 1 and 2.  Best to get an understanding of what the first officer on scene was met with, to start out. Then I can look into the victims’ identities and see if there is any relevant family that I can visit while I'm in town.

The mist in the air had started to cling to my wool coat, placing itself like little drops of humidity across the fabric. I focused back on the report, the notes described a man walking back to his car in the early hours of the night, he had worked as a shift janitor and was on his way home. When he walked across the car park to his car, he had noticed something laying on the floor. As he approached he had seen two bodies, two women, on the ground. Their bodies had been sprawled out in unnatural positions, as if they had been unable to make any resistance but simply forced to just take the impact of the fall. Both victims  had experienced multiple gun shot wounds. The shots were the distinctive headshot, followed by chest shots all pointing towards a seasoned professional.  One of the victims had her face and any other body part that may lead to identification, atrociously destroyed. It was almost as if the killer had not only killed her but also wiped out her identity completely. The paragraph made me shiver, this had all the hallmarks of a deliberate assassination. Broffman must have taken out these two women because they somehow threatened the Lieberman Corporation. I know that these were the first murders, I had studied the rest of them with Ian. But these ones felt different, they were the first but also the most coldly deliberate ones. From the diagram drawn of the bodies I could tell that the women must have been walking from the west end of the parking lot, heading towards the east corner where this contract killer had been coolly waiting to strike. I looked over the rest of the report, the autopsy had confirmed what had been blatantly obvious, both to the janitor who had been the first witness as well as the first responding police officer. There did not appear to be any other witnesses to the event.

Let’s look at the personal reports… Who were these two women and why did they fall victim to Broffman’s cruel coldness? Maybe they have some family who would be willing to speak to a connection between the victims and the Lieberman corporations?

I turned to the personal reports in the murder file, victim number 1 was labelled as Jane Doe, apart from some basic information such as weight and height there was no information to go on, the killer had violently removed any form of identification from her body.