Broken Marilyns

MURDER, SHE WROTE

MURDER, SHE WROTE

Everything was settled with my attack on Anne and I was ready to move forward. I got all my evidence together with my eyes on the prize. I was done wasting time, I wanted answers. After filling out some final paperwork, I went to the head honcho - Sergeant Ritter, who I'd met the night I stabbed Anne. "Sergeant Ritter?" I walked confidently up to his desk. "I have some things I need to discuss with you in private. Would you be willing to meet up with me later this evening?"

"Uh...sure, what's this about?" Ritter peered at me.

"I'd rather not say but it's very important."

"Okay," Ritter tapped his desk with his fingernails, "how about dinner at 7?"

"That sounds great. Can we go somewhere besides the diner? Somewhere we're less likely to run into people we know?"

"How about the crappy Italian place on 8th?" he asked grudgingly.

"That sounds great, sir, I'll see you there." I felt an instant uneasiness walking out of Ritter's office; what if I was completely wrong? No, my gut fired back - it was too late to turn back anyway.

I'd anxiously arrived at the restaurant half an hour early, my nerves thickening the air inside my car. Ritter finally pulled up but I waited until I saw him walk inside through my fogged up windshield. Hastily, I stuffed all the pictures and information I'd gathered over the months into my huge purse so it wouldn't look suspicious and headed for the restaurant.

Sergeant Ritter was waiting for me in the lobby and shot up anxiously when I walked through the doors. An awkward silence engulfed us once we were seated, broken only by the clinking of ice cubes in Ritter's glass as he stirred sugar into his iced tea. "I know it's odd, me asking you to meet with me," I blurted out, catching Ritter off-guard. "I just can't hold it in any longer." Ritter settled into the back of his padded booth seat and nodded for me to continue. "Okay, months ago I started working on a story about the 'Marilyns' everyone talks about. I got curious after a run-in with Julia Eisner. Shortly after that I had a situation with a stalker and Bradley...Officer Stephens invited me to live with him for a while. While I was staying there I found some disturbing things." Opening my purse, I pulled out the pictures and slid them casually to Sergeant Ritter. Browsing through the pictures, he looked confused and blew out a hefty breath.

"I don't understand," he mumbled.

"It's all very tangled and...complicated. I met Julia when she was running away from the scene of a crime. She told me she was tied up to a tree, raped and beaten. Officer Stephens was the responding officer but his report seems odd. When I mentioned the tree to him he pretended to not know anything about it, but I found this picture of his fiancée standing next to the same tree and she's also missing. None of this sits well with me."

"Jenna -," Sergeant Ritter started in his gruff, smoker's voice, uneasy with the situation, "what you're implying is very serious and could have serious consequences." The sergeant looked at me with wounded eyes as if I were jabbing my fingers into a fresh bruise. He probably wished he'd never set eyes on my pictures but now that he had, he was branded with the same obligation I was.

"I understand the gravity of all this, sir, but I was a researcher for several years before moving here and I have been obsessed with this. I don't want it to be true but I think Bradley had something to do with Julia Eisner's murder or knows something about it. If that's the case, he could know about Kelly and several other women who've gone missing as well."

All of the color seemed to drain from the sergeant's face. I was hesitant to confide in Sergeant Ritter; my faith in the law since uncovering all this had been shaken. The sergeant rubbed the gruff on his chin. He believed me; I could see it in his eyes as he took in a deep breath with my heavy accusations. This was serious, I was talking about one of his men but when you laid it all out on the table, which I had, it was plain as day that something was very wrong.