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Broken Mirrors

Kassandra Heit

    “You can’t tell us you didn’t suspect anything.”
    Detective Caddy Mitchell sat staring at the mountain of evidence collected on the thirteen murder victims. Evidence she had helped to collect. Family photos, autopsy photos, bagged evidence, detailed findings – they all crowded the table and seemed to glare back at her with warranted accusations. She felt as angered as their families probably did. Furthermore, she felt betrayed.
    “I wouldn’t kill myself over these cases if I knew who the killer was,” she stated flatly, almost defeated, to her boss.
    Captain Gordon Francis was a decade older than her, but he looked twice that with the lines on his face and the graying hair on his head. He stood beside her with his calloused hands leaning heavily on the table, covering up a statement she had taken at the crime scene of the fifth victim. “Caddy, you alibied him.”
    Caddy pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes closing briefly as if to reset herself. “I told you where I thought he was. I told you that I was not with him. If you really suspected him, you should’ve followed up. Our building has cameras.”
    “Yeah, well, we thought we could trust him.” Gordon confessed, pushing off the evidence and turning to the one-way mirror. He peered at her through the glass, meeting her eyes in its reflection before he whispered, “this is bad. The commissioner may decide to fire us all.”
    “We didn’t think these murders were tied together until Leland Rodriguez landed in our laps,” Caddy stated, shuffling through the evidence aimlessly.
    Gordon nodded and crossed his arms over his chest. “What victim was he? Seven?”
    “Eight.” Caddy corrected before lifting up an autopsy photo of Mr. Rodriguez. “None of the cases showed signs of a serial killer. They weren’t all killed the same way. None of them were directly tied together until Leland, and even his connection to all of them is purely location. It’s barely enough for our DA to consider a true connection. You even brought me in here, because we still don’t know why he’s killing all these people.”
    “I was hoping you would know,” Gordon retorted. He gave up his moment of self-pity and took the seat across from her. “You know him better than anyone.”
    A painful laugh managed to escape her lips as much as her throat tried to strangle it. “I thought I did,” she tossed the paperwork in her hand back onto the table, “but he was a lot different when I married him. Something changed him. I know things that have taken pieces of his soul, but I don’t see a connection between those events and these people being murdered.”
    Gordon picked up a document from a corner closer to him. “First victim that we believe is his had a death estimated to be September 26^th of last year. Do you remember anything strange around that time with him?”
    “Nothing substantial. Vince was just calmer. He’s been calmer since this all started.” She sighed. Her eyes started circling the table again, catching the eyes of some of the victims. “I know him well enough to know that he has a reason. He’s not a ‘kill for the thrill’ killer. There’s a greater purpose for why he’s doing this.”
    “But if we don’t know why, we don’t know if he’ll kill again.” Gordon urged her. “I have to arrest him.”
    Caddy glanced up at her captain, running a hand through her hair and leaning back in the metal chair. “I would arrest him myself if you’d let me.”
    His head shook slowly. “I can’t let you do that. But, I will need your help.”

    “Now I know why we couldn’t take more than one car.” Detective Bell grumbled in the backseat of Caddy’s car. He was hunched over next to his partner, Detective Lyle, to avoid the chance of being seen. “Why the hell do you have this place? It’s in the middle of nowhere.”
    “Not all of us like to live in the city, Bell.” Caddy declared, a small smile tugging on her lips. Her hands shook though with the nerves wracking her body. She glanced over at Gordon, hunkered down in the passenger seat as she sped along the dirt road to her home. The rickety shack on warped wooden pegs. “He could be in the shed working on his car.”
    Gordon grunted trying to adjust himself on the floor to a somewhat comfortable position. “Pull up to it to see if he’s there. We don’t need a surprise.”
    Caddy drove around the house to the back where the similar looking shed stood slanted. But, her heart dropped to her gut when she could see inside, and her foot slammed on the brakes. She ignored the grunts and groans of disapproval from the three men and whipped herself out of the car.
    Vince’s pickup that he usually drove was parked beside the shed, but the car he’d been fixing up was nowhere to be found. Only the sheet he had used to cover it lay abandoned in the sand. She didn’t even need to go inside their home to know they were too late. “Shit.”
    Gordon, Bell, and Lyle struggled out of the car, shoving the front seats forward to free themselves from the backseat and stretching their cramping legs. It was Lyle’s voice who stated the obvious. “He’s gone.”
    “Check the house just to be sure.” Gordon ordered the partners. He watched the two head back for the front porch but turned to Caddy when her cell rang in her back pocket. “Is that him?”
    “Yeah,” Caddy breathed before even looking at the phone. She pulled it out and pressed it to her ear without looking at the screen. “Vince?”
    “Hey, gorgeous.” His voice was the same. She didn’t know why she assumed it would sound different now knowing what he was. It was still the same voice that calmed the storms inside her. Even now, her anger towards him was tapered with his velvet tone. “I’m afraid that we’ve come to a change in course.”
    Caddy swallowed, glancing around the desert. He had to be watching them. “Turn yourself in. It will be better for us if you just take responsibility for this.”
    “Uh, that’s not going to happen. I’m not done yet.” Vince stated like it was a fact. He almost sounded sad, pained, over the words. “You figured out I killed thirteen people, and you’ll soon find the fourteenth. Turning myself in will only dictate whether or not they kill me as punishment. So, I’m not going back. But, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you. Knowing you, you won’t stop until you catch me.”
    Caddy let out a shaky breath. “Would that make you happy?”
    She heard him chuckle, one she’d heard dozens of times over the years. It gave her goosebumps this time though even with the warm air circling around her. And, that chuckle morphed into his final words. “Oh, I’m always happy to see you. I gotta go now. Know I love you, Caddy.”
    “No, Vince-,” the silence on the other end cut off all possible conversation though. Caddy let the screen go black, letting her arm drop to her side.
    “He’s gone.” Caddy confirmed, her eyes still trained on the distant rocky terrain.
    Gordon cleared his throat. His arms leaned against the roof of her black car. “We’ll need to know what kind of car he’s driving now.”
    Caddy inhaled sharply through her nose, nodding quickly. “I know,” her hand raked through her hair, pinning it back and away from her face, “but it won’t matter.”

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