I Will Follow You Into The Dark
2653 Words
Mel tore the door open as he rushed back in with Franco trailing behind. The look of urgency on his face caused Tristeza and Capri to be alarmed. Franco’s delayed arrival complemented the confusion written on his face.
“Mel,” Capri eased with concern. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said with a disturbing hint of calm. “Miss Woodruff, thank you for coming in. If we have any more questions for you, I’ll give you call. Allow me to escort you out.”
“Wait, that’s it?” she questioned as he reached his hand for hers. “Well, if you guys have everything under control, maybe I can take Capri to …”
“No,” he told sharply. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
“Don’t worry, Aunt T. I’ll call you as soon as this is over. Shouldn’t be long, right y’all?”
As Franco opened his mouth for an unsure reply, Mel hurriedly said, “Absolutely.”
§
Capri sat with Franco in Mel’s brief absence. She tried to get an idea of what was going on, but he could only give an unknowing shrug. When Mel returned, Capri did not hesitate to put him through her own version of an interrogation.
“What in the world is going on here? Why did you come in charging like Galahad and send Tristeza away?”
“We have something to discuss and it’s not meant for mixed company,” he stated. “You once told me that The Florist has a story to tell. We need to know what that story is.”
Capri’s eyes vividly shifted from left to right as they gawked at her. “You say that like I’ve got the inside track or something.”
“Well, you’ve managed to c***k the code of the flowers …”
“Anybody with botanical knowledge could have done that.”
“You have a quick enough mind to understand the notes …”
“It’s poetry, not rocket science!”
“… And you’ve called attention to some discernible links between the two. Capri, you know how this guy thinks!”
“What the hell am I, the psycho whisperer?”
“We need you to dig deeper so we can bust this case wide open.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Her eyes enlarged with fright. “Oh no! Oh no! Are you crazy? I’m not doing that!”
“Do what?” Franco asked, clearly stumped by the course of the conversation.
“Get in his head,” Mel finished. “Think like the killer.”
“Like Silence of the Lambs? Or, uh, what was that real dark, sinister movie Jennifer Lopez was in?”
“The Cell,” Capri answered sulkily.
“Yeah, yeah, that! You mean like that?”
“Capri is the only one who can do it! She knows everything he knows.”
“Let me clue you in on something, lover,” Capri opened resentfully. “No one knows a serial killer like a serial killer, and I am not a serial killer! What you’re asking is dangerous, and if I’m the only one who can do it, who’s supposed to help me if I get lost in this psycho’s crazy world of darkness? You’ve lost your mind. No.”
“Miss Winters …”
“Oh, we’re back to Miss Winters now?”
“This is the most progress that has ever been made on this case and it’s all because of you. No one’s got this guy’s mark like you, not even the copycat you said is trying to pay tribute to him. Now you argued your way to become a part of this team. You said you had the knowledge to carry this out. You said we needed you.”
“You would bring that up right now.”
“You said you were the best.”
“I know what I said, Mel!”
“Well … here’s your chance to prove it.”
“I already have.”
“With base hits! The bases are loaded right now, and we need a homerun!”
Franco put his hand up to stop their voices from getting any louder. “Let me see if I can … help out. We’re under a lot of pressure here, princess. If we don’t find this guy, they’re going to shut down this precinct, reassign us, and we’ll forever be known as the idiots who let a flower-toting serial killer terrorize the town for ten years with no consequences. IA is already up our asses, and it’s only a matter of time before the FBI and DEA join in.”
“Baby,” Mel called solemnly, “you were right when you said we needed you; I just didn’t let you know how much. You said you’ve spent your whole college career studying everything having to do with him from a botanical, criminal and psychological standpoint. No one here has that breadth of knowledge.”
She released an infuriated sigh. “Me and my big mouth.”
Mel could hear the shakiness in her voice. “I know you’re scared, but I promise you, I will keep you safe every step of the way … your body and your psyche.” His joke made her c***k a smile. He gave a supportive kiss to her forehead as Franco stood by. Mel took the opportunity to whisper an encouraging word in her ear. “As long as I’m alive, you will be too.”
Capri closed her eyes permitting the soothing yet sultry sound of his voice and the heat of his breath against her skin to ignite courage into her trembling frame. She stood to her feet and grabbed a marker from the dry erase board. “All right, gentlemen. What do you want to know?”
Franco was the first to speak. “If you were The Florist, how would all these clues add up? How would it come together as a story?”
She kept her eyes on the board. Scanning the information, she noticed elements were missing. After taking a picture of the board with her cell phone, she erased all of its contents. Mel and Franco watched as she wrote the goal at hand: The story behind the flowers, poems, and murders. A bold line separated the topic from the rest of the white space.
She briefly hesitated before continuing. In the left corner, she created another category headlined: What we know. Condensed versions of the facts Mel and Franco remembered recapping together were listed underneath: The flowers are poisonous – the killer knows but the victims don’t; killer knows Language of Flowers; he leaves poems that contain poisonous flower’s meaning, effects of poison, and motive/message behind killing via Language of Flowers; victims are killed at home – no forced entry, they know the killer; attention to the heart – poems, flowers and gunshot wounds.
A barrier line was drawn to separate the board into another section labeled: Killer’s characteristics. Beneath that, Capri noted The Florist’s botanical knowledge and his familiarity with the language of flowers.
“Do we know anything else about him?” she questioned with her back turned. Mel and Franco wavered. It wasn’t until she rotated her body that they understood she was addressing them. “Please tell me y’all developed some kind of profile.”
“Franco,” Mel called. “You’re up.”
“The Florist is an extrovert who loves attention but is private about his personal life.”
“Well, isn’t he just a ball of complexity?” she scorned while writing the information.
“He doesn’t like to be alone. He is skeptical of others, and he has a low tolerance for people who don’t learn from their mistakes.”
The squeaking noise from the marker stopped. Capri froze in place. In the passing moments, Mel’s brow lowered in wonderment of what inspired the change.
“What is it, Pri?”
“A low tolerance for people who don’t learn from their mistakes,” she repeated. “Well, that explains a lot.”
“The poems,” Mel associated. “You said he’s outing the victims for being criminals and making him suffer. You and I know personally that the people we were victims of never learned from their mistakes.”
“Nope. They were cheaters and liars to the very end. So, let’s look at this a different way,” she told taking another picture of the board’s contents before clearing it. She reached for her notebook. “We already have a list of all the murders. We have another list of the victims who were accused of exploiting others. Then, we have a list of people who have been victimized by the victims. Well, the people we know of anyway.”
“So, what other way is there to look at it? If we’re constantly rehashing and going around in circles, we’re never going to uncover anything!”
“No, Franco, it’s not about going around in circles. This case has a lot of victims and a lot of info. There’s no way we’re going to be able to remember it all off the top of our heads. The point of this is to make everything visual. If we can see it, we have a better chance of figuring it out.”
“Is that why you’re taking all these pictures?”
“Yes. If it doesn’t fit on the board, we have to capture it somehow. Let’s see here. We have one, two, three, four …”
“What are you counting?” Mel asked.
“Well, now that we know what to call it, I’m counting the mistakes the victims didn’t learn from. Okay, so there’s about ten of them,” she told. “Mel?”
“Hmm?”
“Maybe we can condense them by using the idea you had, where you thought The Florist was killing for a moral cause like Se7en.”
“What’s up with y’all comparing the serial killer to movies?”
“Sometimes art can imitate life.”
“But that killer used the seven deadly sins as his MO. Why would we look at that as an example if you already ruled it out?”
“Because even though I don’t think that’s his formula, we might be able to use it by condensing the mistakes and gaining a better perspective on what his formula is. For example, narcissism and selfishness can be sorted out as which deadly sin?”
“Pride,” Mel answered.
“Exactly. Which victims were accused of being narcissistic, vain, or selfish?”
“Your dad, Alton Van Boerne, Blake Luis Gutierrez, Magdalene Ann Bastille, Prudence Liesl Mata, Paige, Frances Rue Cowl, Oscar Ray Wallis, Montgomery Sawyer, and Max.”
“That sounds right,” Franco agreed. “Now the blindness your mother was accused of, a naïveté, that’s another category but it doesn’t play into the seven deadly sins.”
“That’s fine. We’re just trying to condense them, not ignore those that don’t fit or call one of the mistakes something it isn’t.”
“Then the home wreckers can be noted as lust and selfishness, right?”
“Yes! Who fits the bill?”
“Noticeably, Prudence but we threw Paige in there because we knew the specifics of what was going on between her and Rocco. Should we count the guys too?”
“Not yet,” Capri told. “Wasn’t someone accused of greed?”
“Neil Henry Barber,” Mel answered. “Gluttony, sloth, wrath and envy are left. Does anybody fit those?”
“Well, let’s see,” she said looking at her charts. “We’ve got thievery, deceit, exploitation, and neglect.”
“At least ten categories got lessened to eight. Write them up,” Franco instructed. “Read them off to her, Perrin.”
“Under thievery, we got Akira Wormer and Neil Henry Barber again.”
“Okay.”
“For exploitation – we should have this memorized by now – Alton, Frances and Sidney.”
“Yep.”
“Neglect is just one person, Samson Clyde Riley.”
“And the last one?”
“Deceit: Alton, Frances, Sidney, Addison Arcadia Joubert, and Rocco.”
Once Capri finished, she grabbed her phone to take another picture. Before she could erase it, Franco captured his partners’ attention by asking her to wait.
“Didn’t you say that we have to investigate why these people are being accused of these actions?”
She nodded. “It would help.”
“Alton was a doctor accused of being vain and exploiting his power, I would assume.”
“And we can’t forget that the murders are personal; so are some of the accusations,” Mel reminded. “Lust? Neglect? That’s their personal lives.”
“Neglect could be work-related though,” Capri argued.
“Not if Samson was killed with a woman who was accused of being a home wrecker. Hey, Franco, tickle those computer keys and find out if Samson was married.”
Franco carried out the order and discovered that the victim had a wife. “Spouse: Cora Riley.” When Capri rushed to erase the board and start a new list titled People to question, he spoke up. “Whoa, we already questioned her! She’s not a suspect.”
“I’m not saying she’s a suspect. Is there a record of what she told us?” she asked as he looked away doubtfully. “Then we question her again. See if she had an inclination of her husband’s infidelities before he was murdered. Ask if anyone they knew had an idea and if they weren’t too pleased by it.”
“Who do we question about your parents then?”
“What do you mean? You just – Tristeza! If we have any questions about mom and dad that I can’t answer, we go to her.”
They continued to fill the list with family members of the victims. Once it was complete, Capri took another picture on her phone and handed it to Franco. He plugged it into a nearby printer and made three copies of each for them to look over. Mel and Capri stuck around as Franco wrote down phone numbers and addresses of the contacts.
“We can start asking around tomorrow.”
“What you mean we, Franco?” Mel laughed. “You left the field, remember?”
“Oh, I remember, but I’ve been on The Florist since day one. If we’re bringing him down, I want a front row seat, center stage.”
- Writer
