A part of something i started a long time back but havent gotten around to finishing.

Leave Me Be

The dead stinking carcass lay in a pool of blood, maggots and flies swarming all over it. It was terrible to even look at, as Sergeant Henkley found out. A concerned newspaper delivery boy had found the body after enduring the stink coming from the house for 2 days he had decided something was definitely wrong. It wasn’t as if the old Mrs. Day was a very social person, he only saw her every other month when he forgot leave a receipt for the newspapers. The newspaper money was left every month in the mailbox in a manila envelope. But this time the stench and the curiosity got better of the boy and he peeped into the house. Seeing a droopy head with the flies all over, he first called the cops and then broke into the house.

The scene of the crime, inspite of the break in by the newspaper boy, was well preserved. Sergeant Henkley had seen too many of these kind of crime scenes so he was used to the smell but the boy had not stopped retching since he had opened the door.

This crime scene wasn’t like the others, which is what started intriguing Sergeant Henkley. There was your usual blood and gore but in the grimy dingy house, there was a layer of dust. It looked like this murderer wanted to make sure that he was noticed. A very obvious impression on the sofa opposite the body. A glass half filled with alcohol. It was as though the killer was toying with the minds of the cops, willing them to find him.

Things slowly starting registering in Henkley’s mind. With all the cold obviousness of a brutal killer, this one was smart as well; he thought to himself. “No fingerprints or DNA to be found here”. But the squad had arrived , the men were trying to find finger prints , palm prints, anything unusual .Sometimes something very small which doesn’t seem to be important holds a key to the answer, which is why the police photographers were photographing the gruesome crime scene.

Feeling he was just an obstruction to the systematic procedure, Henkley left the scene and just drove around in the car; a long drive always cleared his mind. In slow motion he went over each aspect of the crime scene. The old woman whose hands had been cut in a weird pattern, nakedness of the wrinkled body and the precise cuts from the cracked skull all the way to the vagina and back to the starting point. Razor sharp thin line with streaks of blood flowing down. Though the cuts were thin they were deep, cutting through the tissue, muscles all the way to the bone. But the old woman’s hands were not tied as he couldn’t see obvious rope or wire marks on the wrist. “This woman died slowly and painfully, the loss of blood was very gradual,” thought Sgt. Henkley.

The autopsy was being done by Dr. Rivers, known to be one of the more methodic coroners, but this time Sgt. Henkley felt that half his work was done. Dr. Rivers took his own sweet time, though it was an ordeal for him too. But his findings astonished even him.