Another Tragedy

      It was a chilly evening in the springtime, in the middle of nowhere. The only thing that was even close enough to the road where I now stood was the dark woods beside it. This evening was beautiful except the flashing red and blue lights glistening in my eyes and the throbbing, loud, annoying sirens going off. I got a sudden chill down my spine wondering what the tragedy was this time or otherwise I wouldn’t have been called here. I was getting closer and closer to the yellow tape that said police line, do not cross.

   “May I help you ma’am?” the police officer asked. “I’m with the FBI” and as I showed him my badge I was putting the yellow tape over my head. A man named Aaron, which I’ve been working with for about 5 years now, greeted me. “So what’s the tragedy this time?” I said with a little smirk trying to make everything less tense.

    “Well I can tell you this much Grace, you have probably never seen a case like this before” and when Aaron said that I could see the gloom in his eyes. He motioned me to follow him to the cab. As we approached the car, the smell worsened. It was a hard smell to describe. There was a doctor in the cab examining something. When I got a good look, I saw exactly what he was examining. I could have mistaken this thing for an animal, but I saw brown hair and a porcelain doll face. The woman was beautiful. The face was the only thing that wasn’t hurt, or scratched but the rest of her body was a disaster. The stomach was badly cut open, blood was everywhere and pieces of her stomach lied on the floor pad. Flies were eating at this poor carouses arms and implanting themselves in her skin. It made me want to puke. Suddenly I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and I jumped. “God damn dick you scared me! Do you have an identity for this body” I said.

     “I’m sorry grace I really didn’t mean to and yes we do. Her name was Julia Robinson. She was 25 years old and worked as an interior designer for C.I.D.C.” Dick was my boss. He was tall, had a saggy face that reminded me of a dog.

    Without warning the doctor turns around and screams “Get me an ambulance, get me an ambulance!” for a second I thought Julia may be alive! How crazy would that be? With all the blood smeared in the backseat there could be no way, I mean I could take a shower in how much blood she lost. I saw one of the ambulance men picking up what I thought looked like a glob of blood. They started wiping it off and the blood glob took a form of a baby. “Oh my gosh it’s a baby!” Dick and I said at the same time. We stared with wide eyes, watching the men do their job. It was so unbelievable. About two minutes past, you could hear a faint, weak cry. Poor child, coming into this world with a dead mother. I finally got words to come out of my mouth, “So do you have any suspects like the cab driver? Where is he?” “Well the driver is Arnold Fredrick. We don’t know his whereabouts right now but we are working on it. He also has a nice little record with the police. Arnold has been arrested for theft and switch blade fighting. He is definitely are number one suspect” Dick said with a firm voice. “Has the family been notified?” I asked. “No, not yet. I’m about to head down there now, would you like to come?” “No sir, I don’t want to be there when you break bad news to the family” I said politely.

    They finally removed the body out of the cab and I decided to put on some gloves and get to work. Besides finding stomach pieces on the back floor, I also found broken glass so I bagged it up. I collected some fingerprints from the back doors and driving wheel even though it’s probably useless. I started making my way up to the front of the car. Underneath the driver’s seat was a wallet that belonged to the driver. Maybe Arnold was in such a hurry after murdering Julia that he forgot his wallet. After finding all I could in the car, I started looking around it. I really didn’t find anything else so I got in my car and headed off to the crime lab.

    “Hello Grace, what’s in the box?” asked Charley. “Just some evidence that needs to be analyzed. Would you like to help?” I asked even though I barely had any evidence. “Yea sounds great” Charley said with a smile. The fingerprints that I collected where from Arnold, Julia, some druggies, and unauthorized people which meant they weren’t in the system. The glass got us somewhere though. It was from a glass coke bottle and there were blood spots on the glass as well. The blood mostly belonged to Julia but not all of it. The other blood belonged to Arnold. Maybe he cut himself a little when slicing her up. Ring, ring, ring. I just realized what the ringing was, my phone. I answered it and on the other end of the phone was Dick. “I broke the news to the family and I took her husband down for questioning so meet us at the police station in twenty minutes”.

     I drove down to the police station and met up with Dick and Aaron. They put me behind the glass this time. Julia’s husband was good looking. He wore a nice button up shirt and his brown hair was perfectly emplaced. Aaron started the interrogation but it seemed more like a friendzy.  “I know this has been a rough time for you Sam but we just need a few questions answered. Before we get started would you like anything to drink?” Aaron asked. “Could I have a cup of water?”Sam replied back. Dick left the room to fetch some water for Sam. “Where were you the night your wife was killed?” asked Aaron. “Well I was out shopping for our baby girl. We barely had anything ready for the new arrival” Sam said almost tearing up. Dick walked in with the cup of water and handed to Sam. He took a drink and then sat it down, waiting for more questions. “Did you know your wife was going to take a cab home after work?” Dick asked this time. “No sir, I would never have my wife ride home in a cab, let alone by herself” Sam started to cry after he said that.  Dick and Aaron tried to comfort Sam but all Sam could say is he didn’t know. Since Sam was in an emotional stage, they stopped questioning and released him to go home.

      After Sam left the room, I collected the styrofoam cup he drank out of. I wanted to make sure that Sam wasn’t in the cab. I also decided to get Charley and go back to the crime scene with him until the fingerprints from the cup were analyzed.  As we approached the cab, I told Charley to look for the weapon that was used. We headed to the woods. When we reached the dirt, I saw dried up footprints leading into the trees. Charley and I started to follow them. We weren’t very far off the road until the footprints stopped. Since Charley is a faster runner, we decided that he should run back and get some shovels and gloves from the back of his van.  When he arrived back here, he was out of breath. I hurried to grab a shovel and start digging. The hole we dug was deep.  “Do you think anything is down there Charley?” I asked. “Let’s do a couple more digs and if we don’t find anything we will stop” he proclaimed. I think we did about five more digs and his shovel hit something! We both started digging with our hands now. The object was almost up. It was a pocket knife! “This has to be the weapon, let’s hurry back!” I said with a shocking face.

      We were now at the lab. The fingerprints from the cup were done. Charley decided to take care of the knife and I was to compare the fingerprints off the cup to the fingerprints found in the cab. It was about two hours afterward when Charley interrupted me. “The fingerprints belong to Arnold Fredrick BUT blood on the knife also belonged to him!” said Charley with suspension. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would there be blood on the bottle and the knife?” I said. Then something clicked in my brain and I grabbed my phone and started dialing Dick’s number. “I think I know where the cab driver is Dick! Get a warrant for Sam’s home now!” “Are you crazy women?” Dick said confused. “Just trust me please” I said then I hung up. “Do you really think…?” Charley didn’t finish his sentence. “Let’s hope I’m right or I’ll get fired” I announced.

   In about forty-five minutes later, Dick called me back. I was right. The cab driver was in Sam’s basement tied up. He had a gash on his leg and cuts on his head. He was in critical condition when they found him almost bleeding to death. The police arrested Sam ten minutes ago. As I got off the phone I saw that the analyzing of the fingerprints was done. Sam Douglas was in the cab with Julia as I suspected.

    Two days later Sam gave a confession. “I killed my wife Julia. I met her at a bar and she was a one night stand but she ruined everything. She found out that she was pregnant three weeks later and said it was mine. I didn’t want a family now but I thought the right thing to do was to marry her. Her family hated me, wishing that I would leave Julia and my baby behind for they could steal them .But I wouldn’t go. So they decided to try to talk Julia out of marriage with me. That’s when I decided that if I couldn’t have them, no one could. I wasn’t ready to be a father anyway. So I made a plan up in my head how to kill her. I wanted the most painful thing for her and the baby. That’s when I decided to do a c-section on her. I knew she was going in a cab that night so I followed her. As soon as I saw nothing but darkness around me, I sped up and cut the cab driver off. Julia was so happy to see me but knew something was wrong. I hopped in the back seat with her but she started fighting back. The cab driver tried to help her but I stabbed him in his leg. He still tried to help, so I took the coke bottle and hit him over the head. I laid Julia down in the back seat again. As I listened to her scream, I dug my knife into her stomach. Little by little I dug deeper and deeper as she screamed louder and louder until she bled to death. I figured the baby would die right away so I left Julia and took the stupid cab driver. I wiped off the knife and put it in his hands to frame him. I was going to let him bleed to death in the basement, let him suffer”.

    How could anyone live with themselves after killing their wife and unfortunely we lost the cab driver as well. As far as he knows the baby is dead too but what I know is different. The baby is in stable condition and will be took care of by Julia’s parents. As far as the creep named Sam, he has life in prison but people are working on getting him the death penalty.