Two Miles to Heaven

-Chapter 8- «An Interesting Dream»

The newspapers' articles were piled on the ground in the living room, forming a circle around me; Sometimes, they would be thrown at the wall, due to my obsessive need to find out the truth.

The killer clearly committed the crimes for a specific, but undefined, reason. The problem is those women were completely different from one another.

Alice used to be a professor, Elizabeth was a stayed-home mom. Alice lived in Manhattan, Elizabeth lived in Queens. Alice cheated on her husband while Elizabeth was the one being cheated on. And somehow, they both manage to be the murderer's targets.

I interrogated their families and their friends; they haven't given me any useful information that might help the case to move forward.

I poured another cup of coffee. This was roughly my sixth, or my seventh. My concentration made me lose count at the fourth one, adding several lumps of sugar and a little hint of Vermouth to boost myself from the sleepless night.

I decided to draw a diagram, in order to think clearly, where I regrouped the families, the friends and the suspects. The victims' names were written at the top of the card in scarlet red, bold.

It's really upsetting because Alice's entourage and Elizabeth's weren't even linked to each other; They never met at all.

I thought about having a little chat with Garrett, for a second. I mean, he didn't tell me about his affair with Patricia which was kind of part of his wife's depression.

What if he was hiding something?

I saw the way he looked at me when we had our first encounter in front of his apartment's door, a day after Elizabeth was found dead in the bathtub. Blank stare, motionless. Maybe, it was due to a cerebral shock. Well, I've experienced it with my mother's death, too. And I can tell that it's the worst thing you could ever feel, for as long as you live.

First, you don't understand anything about what just happened, looking at the done deal as if your brain was trying to analyze the emotion that you're supposed to feel at that moment.

Then, you start realizing that this is real; this is not an illusion. The closest person in the world is not here for you anymore and it's going to be stuck in your head, forever. So, you might accept the fact that you're going to live with it or you don't.

At the end, it brutally hits you. It starts consuming you in baby steps. You're officially and unfortunately disconnected from the world as you've already built the "anti-emotion barrier", that's how I labeled the process.

Your mind becomes unreadable, your soul now unshakable and your heart henceforth unbreakable.

That's when you know you're experiencing a cerebral shock. Even though I'm not a psychiatrist, I can confirm it as I used to be one of its victims.

I leaned against the wall, covering my face with the palm of my hands, still wearing my ocean blue shirt and my black jeans of yesterday. My eyelids were heavy, begging me to go to bed... And that's what I did.

--

"Follow me." a voice echoed.

I was standing in front of my building in Queens, alone with no one else around, glancing at my watch.

It was 2 am. I looked around then saw a woman approaching, passing by.

-"Elizabeth?" I frowned, surprised. "What... What are you doing here?"

She was hurriedly searching her home key in her handbag. I glanced at her features; her eyes were red and puffy from probably crying too much, her hair was messy and her upper lip had a cut.