Hushed Confessions | ✔

{20} Sinners and Saints

Malik Idris

My blood ran cold when I heard what happened. I had seen the most unimaginable things as a cop, there were many sleepless nights of just replaying the horrid images of bloodied bodies like a constant horror movie in the back of my mind. There were moments of weakness, where my heart would collapse on me as I thought about the lives that could have been saved.

Nothing prepared me for the news that had just came in, absolutely nothing. I thought I would be able to handle anything, my heart was hardened from years of death cases. I'd witnessed so much as an officer, from the most careless deaths to the most heartbreaking cries, yet I wasn't prepared for this.

Mr. and Mrs. Hollen were dead.

"Malik?" asked Cole as he turned on the road. "You're awfully quiet."

"They're dead."

His brown eyes darkened, jaw clenched."Trust me," he gritted out, "when I find this killer I'm going to make him wish he wasn't born."

"Cole, it's been weeks. Six people were murdered," I sighed, threading my fingers into my hair.

"I don't like it anymore than you do."

"You know what I don't get?" I asked, staring out the window. The killer was still out there, Sajdaa was far from safe. This was probably the closest encounter Sajdaa had with the killer, which surprised me even more.

"What?"

"The killer was so close to Sajdaa the entire night, he was outside of the house. He didn't kill her," I stated, theories running gears in my mind. "Why?"

Cole shrugged, "Maybe he wants to mind fuck us."

I blinked.

"What? It's an option on the table, man, don't judge."

"I'm judging a lot," I emphasized.

"Well, that's not very professional," he muttered under his breath.

"Cole, focus."

"I'm being serious. All throughout history, serial killers have a pattern of wanting to get as close to being caught without being caught."

I pondered his words for a moment, thinking back to notorious killers like the Axeman and Zodiac killer from the twentieth century. There was even the D.B Cooper hijacking, where D.B Cooper did the same thing without getting caught. The unsolved mysteries of many of those crimes had men who liked messing with authorities. It made me wonder, what if this killer was the same?

"Malik, I think we're looking at the wrong people. We need suspects other than Ethan."

"Ethan isn't the killer. We've established that," I stated, pointedly.

Cole rolled his eyes, gently steering into the parking lot of the hospital, where Sajdaa was currently at. "His other gang members? Someone must have seen it or security footages. There's no way he could cover his tracks that well."

"I put Nathan in charge of the Hollen home. Did you happen to get any new information off of Ethan?" I questioned.

"Yeah, I picked up the security footage from the area around and I need to run a license plate," he confessed. "After Ethan sold the drugs, the guy walked into a nearby alley where there was a car."

"So you have the plate number?"

"Well," he chuckled, nervously, "it's very blurry on the camera that caught it."

I groaned.

"It's fine! We can work with it. We have people at the department who could clear the image up some more."