Strawberries E-Book

Casey Bartsch

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Fifteen years ago, the innocence of the small town of Pleasure, Wisconsin was stolen by a young boy. Now, he is back, leaving a trail of bloody carnage in his wake. The media has dubbed him Strawberries, and the country is mesmerized.

Detective Harry Bland is a broken man, and can’t find a single clue to catch him. It doesn’t help that his mind won’t focus; his heart just isn’t in it anymore.

Halfway across the country, Sylvia is in a different state of mind. When she isn’t selling sex to the rich, she is doing her best to disappear. Sylvia lives a life of assumed names, one night stands and a constant stream of narcotics.

A reporter, two cross-country truckers, an eccentric friend and a rubber-clad CSI all have their part to play, as their paths come together in a small town you've never heard of.

Strawberries has killed again.

This book contains graphic violence and is not suitable for readers under the age of 18.

Leseprobe

Strawberries

Casey Bartsch

Copyright (C) 2016 Casey Bartsch

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015913172

Cover art by Jennifer Chang

Edited by Ricki Walters and Tammy Long

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For my Mom. Because she is where I began, and one of the main reasons I haven't ended yet.

“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.” -Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyFrankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

“Spend another night at the Motel 6. It's five dollars extra to get the porno flicks.” -The Beastie BoysHigh Plains Drifter

PROLOGUE

The boiling oil from the deep fried turkey spit like a geyser drenching the concrete slab beneath. Despite her uncle declaring his fluency in this kind of cooking, it was clear to Elizabeth that he had no idea what he was doing. The remainder of the family, who had gathered to watch the turkey being dipped, moved back, away from the grease and flame. Some of the cardboard that her uncle had fashioned into a makeshift grease screen was now on fire. Elizabeth's Aunt Gloria dumped a glass of ice water onto the cardboard before Uncle Bob could stop her, causing small, feathery flames to cascade downward to the lawn.

In the end, only a bit of grass and a couple of egos were scorched. Miraculously, the turkey survived, and to Elizabeth's delight, was perfectly edible. The turkey would be the highlight of her Thanksgiving dinner with the family. The rest would be a hell that she knew all too well, and too often.

Her family was tried and true, God fearing, southern Catholics. She too was raised in the faith, but abandoned the idea around the age of thirteen. She had always had more questions about the world in general than the rest of her family, and when the church could not answer her questions, she began to look elsewhere for the answers. She had decided that organized religion was just a brick wall that kept other knowledge out. She continued to go to church for a couple of years for appearances, but at seventeen, Elizabeth declared to her parents and brother that she would not be attending church on Sundays anymore. She had a different outlook than they did, and she hoped that they could respect that.

They could not.

The months after her declaration were filled with attempts to change her mind. Religious books were left on her bed. Dinner conversation was less focused on the day's tribulations as it was on the glory of the Almighty. Father Duncan, from her former parish, made several house calls under the guise of dinner invitations, though his focus had been perpetually on her. He soon began to come over every day to speak with her, and during the summer he would come at odd times; like when her parents weren't home. On one occasion, the last as it turned out, he put his hand on her thigh. When Elizabeth removed it and crossed her legs away from him, he put his arm around her, pulled her close, and then moved his hand lower on her back than any Godly man should. She swung away from him and slapped him with as much force as she could muster, and then she started laughing. She laughed so hard that tears streamed down her face, and nasty snot bubbles began to burst from her nostrils. Here was this holy man who was supposed to save her and shepherd her back to the fold, and all he really wanted was to get his jollies like any other guy.

“Get the fuck out,” she calmly stated as she opened the door to her room.

Though he continued his service to the local parish, Father Duncan never made any further attempt to convert Elizabeth.

Soon after, she got a horrible job at a dingy dining establishment aptly called The Shack. She hated it there, but she saved every penny she made, and in just two months she was moving out of her parents' house and into the world alone.

A woman free from religious tyranny! That was what she called herself.

It took several years to realize that her hatred for religion was not what she needed either. She eventually understood that neither blind faith, nor complete rejection held much value. She simply had to be herself, and that thought brought a peace with it that she still had to this day.

The struggle came when Elizabeth returned home. She didn't come back often, but she made it a point to come home and see the family on holidays. She still cherished the notion of families, and that romantic thought kept her coming back. She had married a wonderful man, Tony, and with him, she had a beautiful daughter named Emily. They didn't come with her this Thanksgiving. Tony had long since given up on her family. He had never discovered the peace that Elizabeth had found. However, her daughter was a different story. Elizabeth didn't want Emily to be there. Peace or not, she didn't want any of that Christian hate mongering goo to dribble over her poor daughter.

So this Thanksgiving, Elizabeth was alone, surrounded by the people she loved for the sake of loving, and whom she knew might not actually love her back. As she sat at the dinner table, fork in hand and napkin in lap, she glanced around at them. They were like pigs at the trough, stuffing their faces. All except her grandmother who was looking back at Elizabeth, her eyes filled with contempt. Elizabeth believed that she could actually feel the beams of hate shooting into her as their eyes met. Her grandmother looked as though she was about to speak, but Elizabeth's Uncle Mike interrupted their ocular exchange with the same comment that he made every time he saw her. “So Lizzy, we haven't seen you in church in a while.”

“Yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it,” Elizabeth said. This was her standard response, every time, to try to avoid the conversation. She was always avoiding something when it came to her family. She knew Mike would push the matter though, and she was prepared to quietly swallow her anger just as she always had.

“Lizzy you know that we just worry about you. We all do. We simply want to make certain that you're okay, but we never hear from you.”

“I know, Mike. I've just been busy with work is all. And with Emily and the addition to the house, it seems like I just don't have any time at all these days.” She hoped that would be enough to halt the inquisition, but then she noticed her grandmother. Elizabeth got the idea that those eyes had not left her for a moment. That angered Elizabeth. She could feel fiery words boiling up from the pit of her stomach, threatening to escape from deep down where she had banished them. As Mike pushed on the subject again, those words erupted, flowing like lava over everyone at the table.

“Look, Mike, just stop it okay! You haven't seen me in church in a while because you haven't seen me there since I was a kid. I don't go to church because I don't believe in it. I don't believe in the institution, and I certainly don't believe in God! Now, can you and everyone else please just drop it so we can have this meal and act like a family for once?”

Elizabeth heard the sound of silverware collectively dropped onto the fine china used only for these holiday meals. Most of her family had their heads bowed, eyes on their food, as if they were awaiting some sort of punishment for their sins.

Then, her grandmother finally spoke; her raspy voice, the penalty for a lifetime of cigarette smoke. “Our family goes to church. Our family respects the Holy Father and sings his praise every Sunday. We pray before dinner. We don't just bow our head and say nothing, hoping that no one will notice. Our family loves the Lord, and anyone who doesn't isn't part of our family.”

That was it. Elizabeth was not a part of the family as far as her grandmother was concerned. The rest of the family now had their eyes fixed on her. Every one of them was silent. Not one made the slightest inclination that they were going to disagree with her grandmother.

Elizabeth backed her chair away from the table and put her napkin down on her plate. That small bit of movement seemed to awaken the family. They murmured and sputtered anger at her, as if they were enraged at having been raised from an ancient slumber. Their words grew in magnitude. Obscenities were flung with fervor. Each hit her hard, and each scarred her. She realized that as much as she had been holding her feelings in, so had her family, and now the floodgates had opened.

Elizabeth moved away from the table and into the front room. Tears moistened her cheeks, but her family didn't stop. They pursued her as she moved out of the room, and it reminded her of the zombie films that her husband often watched. Yet, these were not the walking dead. This was her family attacking her. Not with violence, but with words. As she tried to drown out the shouting voices, she thought that she would rather be physically beaten than endure this. She had to do something. She had to retaliate or be overwhelmed. “There is no God,” she said timidly, “and if there was, do you really believe that this is the way he would want all of you to act?”

Her grandmother pushed through the rest and stood directly in front of her. It was impossible to tell how small a woman she was while she was sitting down, but now that she stood among the others, her stature was evident. She was a full foot shorter than Elizabeth–and Elizabeth was not a tall woman–but the small frame of her grandmother did nothing to diminish her presence, and right now she seemed deadly. She looked at Elizabeth one last time, and then slapped her face hard. She had to reach up to do it, but it was more powerful than would have seemed possible from such a frail human being.

Elizabeth's face was forced to the side, and as her cheek began to turn red, her skin felt as if on fire.

“Get out,” her grandmother said with a certain calm. “You are no longer welcome in this house.”

Elizabeth backed toward the door. She looked at her family, who had finally stopped shouting at her, and they seemed like strangers. As she grabbed her coat off the rack, several others fell to the floor. She didn't bother to pick them up. As she opened the door and stepped out, she looked back one last time. No one had moved. They were not hers any longer. She shut the door behind her and walked to the car.

The drive home was short, but due to Thanksgiving traffic, it was longer than usual. The motion of the car calmed Elizabeth and her mind and body went numb. By the time she pulled into the driveway of her home, she had nearly forgotten her sadness.

Wasn't that funny?

She took a moment to check her face in the rearview mirror. There was no sense in appearing distraught in front of her family; it would only worry them. When she got out of the car, she caught a glimpse of the small shed that her husband had built in the backyard. Tony had said he needed it as a place to get away and do man stuff, but it had turned into a place where they all spent a lot of time. Tony would often tinker with a carpentry project while she and Emily would watch and play. She knew that he and Emily were there now, as Tony never left the light on if he was not working. Instead of going into the house, she headed straight to the shed. She needed to be with her real family as soon as possible.

As Elizabeth walked in, she met her husband's gaze and smiled. He was hammering on something and smiled back at her. He made as if to stop, but Elizabeth gave him a gesture that said, “No you keep working.”

Emily was just to the right, playing with a plastic workbench that they had gotten her for Christmas last year. She was mimicking everything her daddy was doing, and barely noticed her mother enter.

Elizabeth went to the back of the shed and pulled herself up onto one of the counter tops. She had spent many nights on that counter just watching her husband work and her daughter play, and this night would be the same. This is where she was calm. Everything that had happened just an hour earlier drifted away on the currents of her mind, and she smiled. This was her family, and that was all she needed.

* * *

Emily hammered when her daddy hammered. She sawed when her daddy sawed. She couldn't quite figure out why her things didn't match her daddy's things, but she played on. Her father looked back at her and smiled. He always smiled at her, and she liked that. Her mommy had come in a few minutes ago, but she didn't look like she wanted to play, so Emily just kept building what her father built.

Soon, however, she began to tire of building, and wanted to go outside to play on her swing set. She glanced at her daddy and then at her mommy; both were busy, so she turned to the door of the shed to go swing by herself.

What she saw made her jump.

The door was open and a man was crouched down just outside the doorway. Both of her parents were looking at other things and didn't see him. He looked at her and smiled. It was a big smile. The teeth in his mouth were very white and almost sparkled. Emily smiled back, and the man bent his finger in a motion telling her to come over. She hesitated, but then her daddy turned on that loud saw and it made her jump again. She didn't like the sound of that saw. Her mommy was reading a magazine and paying her no attention. The man outside was still smiling and looked like he might want to play, so she walked over to him.

He looked like a clown with no makeup and that made her giggle. His head was all bumpy, and he didn't have any hair. He smiled and chuckled with her. She turned towards her daddy again to show him this funny man, but he was still using his saw–and it was so loud. Emily put her hands to her ears, but the clown man took her hands in his instead and made her lower them down to her sides. He pulled her gently toward him, and now she was standing just outside the shed door. The sound of the saw was not nearly as loud now.

He poked her nose lightly with his finger. “Boop,” he said, and Emily giggled again.

As he smiled his big smile, he grabbed the bottom of her dress, bunching it up in his fist and pulling her even closer. She didn't like that, and she tried to pull away, but the clown man held her firm. She looked down at the wrinkles he was making in her pretty yellow dress, and when she looked back up at him, he didn't look funny anymore. He was still smiling, but now his smile scared her. She called to her daddy, but he couldn't hear her over the sound of his saw.

Then the clown man took a plastic cup out of his pocket and put it over his mouth. Emily forgot about her dress for a moment because she couldn't figure out why he was doing that. The clown man made noises into the cup that sounded scary.

“Do you know why I sound like this?” the man asked in his creepy cup voice. “It's because I have a cup over my mouth.”

Then the man laughed into the cup. It sounded like thunder and frightened Emily. She tried to pull away again, but the clown man held her in place. She couldn't move at all.

“Do you know why you are so scared?” the clown man asked with a grin. “It's because I am as strong as strawberries.”

* * *

Elizabeth looked up from the magazine she was glancing through and noticed that she didn't see Emily. She stood and took just two steps forward when she saw her, and someone else, just outside the shed. Elizabeth saw the man's hand reach into her daughter's mouth. His fingers curled around Emily's bottom teeth, and then gripping hard, he yanked down. A mere whisper of a scream escaped from Emily before his hand tore away the little girl's jaw, and she collapsed into her own blood. Her body twitched and writhed like a worm, slipping around in the red pool below.

Elizabeth saw her husband stop what he was doing and look out the doorway. He reacted immediately, as Elizabeth stood frozen. The man who had violated her daughter quickly grabbed a sledgehammer that was propped against the outside of the shed. The hammer smacked into her husband's chest before Tony could get close, and then made a slam-crack against his skull just a moment later. The man then turned to Elizabeth with a smile on his otherwise blank face.

Finally, Elizabeth's legs began to move. She darted toward the back of the shed, but there was nowhere to go, and no way to escape. He was on her before she could blink. With a gasp, she reached for whatever was nearest–a staple gun. She attempted to use it against the grinning man, but he took it from her, grabbed her hair, and forced her head down to the same counter she was sitting on moments ago. He used one hand to hold her face to the counter and the other to staple her hair down. She could hear each click as staple after staple made her escape impossible.

The grinning man hovered, looking down on her, and raised up his newest discovery for her to see. A dull, rusty box cutter crossed her vision just before she felt its blade poke into her stomach. The man still looked down on her, grinning. Saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth onto hers, and he smeared it across her face with his finger. She felt a heat traveling across her abdomen, but couldn't tell if it hurt or not.

“Right now you are hoping this is a dream. I am happy to tell you that it is not.”

That was the last thing that Elizabeth heard, and as her eyes began to close, she could faintly see the grinning man lick her blood from his fingertips.

ONE

Three pills spilled from her purse, spinning in circles on the floor until they stopped near the toilet. One was a light blue Valium, another was a beat up ibuprofen, but the third, a white number, could not be readily identified. When she picked them up, the old pill crumbled in her hand and she wondered just how long it had been in her bottle. She pinched away a few specks of dust and lint, then closed her eyes and popped all three.

The bathroom was a disgusting affair. It probably had not been cleaned in quite some time, if ever. She shuddered to think of what may have attached itself to her pills, but she tried to cast that thought out of her head.

Sylvia had become a master of swallowing pills without fluids, yet one of these caught in her throat. She made a sound like a hyena sneeze, and luckily, the pill dropped the correct way. She glanced at the sink, contemplating how the water might taste, but opted to let her throat go dry. She had never really cared for the water found on airplanes, even private jets such as this one.

She was afraid to touch anything. The fluids. The sickening goop. The indecipherable chunks. All of these prevented her from moving. She opened the bag she was holding and removed a towel and small bottle of all-purpose cleaner, then set herself to work.

As she scrubbed, the door behind her continued to rattle and throb at the force put on it from the other side. The client was slamming his body into the door, as if he might knock it off its hinges.

She had decided to call him the Red Baron. Sylvia named all of her clients, and never bothered to remember their given monikers. Most of them gave her fake names anyway.

The Baron screamed at her to come out at once, and then flung his overweight body against the door again. Sylvia glanced back, but the door was sound, and it was not going to give way just because some horny oaf wanted it to.

Airplane bathrooms were small, but with the right touches and a little care, could be considered cozy. If not cozy, at least less like a small corner of Hell. Melissa, her friend and mentor, had taught her many valuable lessons as Sylvia learned their trade, but comfort was never something for which she had seen the need. For Melissa, the bathroom was just a place to wait out the assholes, not a place where life happened. Sylvia felt that no matter where you were, you were living, and it might as well be as pleasant as possible.

That was actually a lie that she had told herself for years. She had pushed her cynicism down into the pit of her womb, and let it pulsate there like a maddening fetus. On the outside, no one would ever know that she was impregnated with a hatred for just about everything. Melissa had gotten a taste, but even she was in the dark on how false Sylvia's sunny disposition was.

There was a thump at the bottom of the door. The Baron had decided that maybe a foot would succeed where upper body had failed. The two friends who had accompanied him egged him on with their shouts and laughter. They could make as much of a spectacle as they pleased, this bathroom was her home now. She continued to scrub the toilet seat so that she could have a place to relax. It might turn out to be a long flight.

Melissa would have told her that she should have stuck it out a little longer. She would have enjoyed the Baron's games–or at the very least, could have pretended. Sylvia did not mind when they grabbed her or slapped her ass. She could handle hands on her chest and even the kisses they liked to plant in strange places, but she drew the line when they invaded her.

The Baron had come up behind her as she was fixing drinks and stuck his hand down her skirt. He then promptly plunged his finger into her ass without asking. This was a breach of contract, not to mention disgusting and slightly painful. She wasn't opposed to such acts, but she wanted the rules and fees laid out beforehand.

Sylvia had no patience for surprises while on the job.

Melissa had told her that the world made its living from calling things something they're not, and in a time of rampant political correctness and a paralyzing social fear of being caught in a faux pas, the words to describe what something was or what someone does have become more of a parody than an actual likeness. Thus, Melissa and Sylvia were not prostitutes–they were freelance flight attendants.

The most important lesson that Melissa had ever taught her was the use of an emergency bag. “You always keep a bag where you can get to it in a pinch,” she had said, “That way, if things don't go how you want them to, or maybe the guy gets rough, you can grab it and head to the shitter.”

Her bag was her lifeline. It contained everything that she would need in this sort of scenario. Over time, she had added to it, and it had gotten bulkier, but she had learned to sacrifice what she absolutely did not need, and to pack well. Melissa's bag only ever contained bottled water, a book to read, something to snack on, and pepper spray.

Compared to Melissa, Sylvia's bag was a palace of necessities. She had disinfectant and deodorizing sprays, a blow-up cushion she could sit on during long flights, extra underwear and socks, as well as all of the bare essentials. She had tampons, and though she rarely ever took a job while on her period, they had come in handy once when a client had bloodied her nose. There was a spare pill bottle, some Alka-Seltzer tablets, Kleenex, and a little nozzle that filtered the water from a faucet. She also kept a small notebook and a pen where she recorded her thoughts, along with pertinent information that she had acquired on each of her jobs.

Her favorite item in the bag was a small snow globe that her father had given her when she was ten years old. There was a tiny plastic Empire State building inside. The snow was actually glitter, and the bright blue water that once filled it to the top was now a third of the way gone. She set it down on the counter by the sink as she sat on the toilet–seat cushion in place. The snow globe was her connection to a life that she had left a long time ago, and it was her most prized possession.

Bang!

Something crashed against the door so hard that Sylvia could actually see it buckle just a bit. The Baron yelled, and in a language unknown to the common American girl. It wasn't always German. She did not speak German herself, but she knew it when she heard it. She didn't know what he had thrown at the door, but judging by the sound, she guessed it to be a barstool.

German men, in Sylvia's experience, were generally very well mannered. They nearly always pulled out her chair and rarely massacred entire races of people. The Baron had never once touched her chair, and that was her first clue that he was not going to be a polite sort of man. The second came when the inflight cook was forced to prepare three different meals; each of them returned with a dissatisfaction that grew each time, until finally, it escalated to the point where the Baron slapped the cook in the face with a frying pan. The bleeding cook said something that Sylvia could not understand, and then was escorted to another part of the plane; never to be seen again.

She had very little time to consider the cook's condition, as it was that very moment that the Baron violated her with the aforementioned finger. This caused his friends to laugh and praise him for obvious male prowess. Sylvia stood quite still for a few moments, in shock. His digit a wiggling affront to her. When she snapped back to reality, Sylvia spun around hard and slapped the Red Baron across the jaw. She grabbed her bag from a small cupboard near the bathroom, and bolted inside.

Before long, the noise behind the door died down. The German invader quieted himself and ceased his assault. Sylvia slowly allowed herself to relax, and when she felt that the tempest had passed completely, she pulled a paperback from her bag. It was a suspense thriller that she had picked up at a gift shop in some airport along the way. It was packed with murder and mayhem, but more importantly, it was mindless.

She would just shut down her brain, and let the words creep in until they landed.

TWO

The jarring of the plane as the wheels hit the tarmac woke Sylvia from her dreams. She had turned her inflatable cushion into a makeshift pillow on the counter. As she raised her head, her hair stayed matted to the cushion by the saliva that had been seeping from the corner of her mouth. It took her only a moment to remember her situation. The Red Baron and his band of merry men had made a few more half-hearted attempts to get her attention, but as the clients always did, they simmered down and let her be. She had read at least a hundred pages of her book before dozing off, yet she could not remember a single protagonist or plot point. The book now lay splayed on the bathroom floor.

She thought of her mother, who read at least five books a week on the low end, and wondered how much she could recall of any of them. She wondered how many times her mom had reread the same mystery or romance novel without ever realizing it.

Sylvia picked up her things and repacked them carefully into her bag. It all had to go in just right or the bag would never close. When she was finally able to force the zipper shut, she sat back down on the toilet seat and waited; eyes affixed on the door and ears tuned in. This was the worst part of the job–the waiting. When a flight went wrong, as this one had, and she was forced to spurn the gentleman that employed her, they never stuck around on the plane for long after landing. They would leave her in the bathroom and escape to wherever men like them go. These were men of means, and none of them had any interest in drawing attention to what went on in their private jets. Sylvia simply had to wait for everyone else to leave before making her own exit, but she hated the wait. The moments felt like minutes, and every minute an hour.

She would wait on the toilet for two full hours. She had once made the mistake of leaving too early, and a client had remained on the plane for longer than she expected. He had a bit of an anger issue, and he wanted to go to therapy on her face. Half a can of pepper spray later, he realized his mistake and she realized hers. From then on, the wait was at least two hours every time.

The next item of business would be to figure out just where she had landed. The destination of these flights was rarely revealed to Sylvia in advance, and when she was given one, more often than not, it turned out to be false information. Her clients were not usually the type that wanted everyone to know where they were going and what they were up to. She suspected that, most of the time, they were not even doing anything exciting or important, but instead got off on the power they enjoyed from being mysterious. But she knew them for what they were. Everything about a man can be discerned from the sex they enjoy, and the moment just after they come.

As the second hour drew near, she took out her little notebook. In the back, she had taken notes on all of the places that she had ever been, and all of the ways that she had made her way back home. She didn't just take notes on flights that went bad, she also kept names, phone numbers, and important locations. She would make a point to get to know any person that had helped her along the way. She never knew when she might need to call on that person again, and her notes had saved her a lot of trouble in the past.

She was nothing if not prepared.

Sylvia intertwined her fingers together as she sat on the toilet seat. She would not want to give the impression that she didn't enjoy her work, or that it was always so unpleasant. On the contrary, the majority of the time she felt like she had the world by the balls. She got to travel to all corners of the globe and see things that most only see on cable while they shove cheese balls into their mouths and dribble soda on their shirts. She made enough money that she could stay wherever she wanted when the job was done.

It wasn't the sex that she was being paid for, and that was a common misconception of girls in her line of work. The sex was such a tiny part of the experience for which she was hired. A better assessment of her job was that she was paid to convince men that she wanted to have sex with them.

She would choose sex and travel over any of those other nine-to-five, cheese ball slob jobs every time.

She watched the bathroom door as if it were some kind of play. Memories turned to visions that played out on the flat white surface in front of her. The pills that she had taken earlier had given her a nice euphoria, and a serenity washed through her mind. She reached over to her bag and dug out her pill bottle, shook out a couple more from her cocktail pharmacy, and swallowed them quickly. She didn't bother paying attention to what they were. Sylvia valued order in her life, and needed things to be just as she needed them, yet at the same time, she had developed a habit of taking a constant stream of medication that caused her mind to flop around like a wet noodle. She enjoyed taking the pills randomly because she liked not knowing exactly how she was going to be feeling from one hour to the next. This gave her world of order a blanket of chaos. She needed the chaos just as much as she needed her schedule and her notes. She wondered if a doctor would have a specific term for her behavior as her vision zoned back into the bathroom door.

When the time finally came, Sylvia picked herself up, feeling a bit heavier than she should. Her eyesight threatened to spin briefly, but she got it back in line quick enough. She grabbed her bag and put her ear against the door. After a few moments, when she was sure she couldn't hear any commotion on the other side, she unlocked the door and ventured back out into the wilderness of the private jet. The Baron had skedaddled; his misfits close behind. They had been kind enough to leave her overnight bag–the other necessity in her line of work–in the kitchen cupboard right where she left it. They were such nice boys.

The hatch of the plane was still open, and the steps invited her to make a hasty exit. When she stepped onto the cement, she found that she was in a semi-private hanger. Hers was the only plane currently inside, but there was space enough for three. Through a window in a small office at the back of the hanger, she could see a man sitting at a desk and talking on the telephone, but he didn't notice her. There were no other people around, so she made her escape. When she walked through the hanger door, the sunlight struck her eyes violently. She closed them tight and could see her own colorful blood vessels frolicking on the inside of her eyelids. They swirled in geometric shapes along the outer rim of her lids and she paused to admire their beauty for a few moments so that her vision could adjust to the brightness of the world.

When she was able to crack her eyes open to let in a bit of light, what she saw made her smile. To her left, just outside the hangar lot, was a path lined with a thick smattering of trees. Beyond that, was the Santos Dumont airport. She was in Rio de Janeiro. She knew it well. It was a favorite haunt for the sleazebags of the world, and she had been here many times. The hangar she was at, and several others next to it, were located on a long single lane runway. Above her–so close that Sylvia felt she could reach up and graze her fingers across its belly–a plane came roaring in for a landing, and as its wheels screeched down onto the runway, the ground beneath her quaked.

The path to her left wound up a hill and went all the way to the main airport parking lot. If she was an actual honored guest of the Dumont, she could easily get a ride, but instead, she had a walk ahead of her. As close as the airport looked, Sylvia knew that it was going to take her at least a half hour to get there. She looked down at her feet and took note of the smooth red heels that she was wearing. They were fashionable, they were expensive, and they were seriously going to fuck her over.

Before starting her trek, she took her notebook out and jotted down a reminder. From now on, she would always pack a pair of sneakers in her overnight bag.

THREE

The American motel is a prime example of the nation's priorities in shambles. No other place could you find a better representation of people willing to sacrifice any sort of quality for convenience and low price.

Harry Bland had been in this room for almost a week–just a few days after he was handed the case. He had been in countless motel rooms in his lifetime, all of them nearly identical. The color schemes were always in earth tones, the bedding often seemed like Bed, Bath and Beyond rejects, and he swore that he had seen that exact lamp a hundred times. The televisions had gotten a little better, depending on what part of the country he found himself in, though this room's TV was still a monstrosity of early 80s engineering. The set still had dials that clicked unduly as he turned them, and there was no remote control to be found. The picture took an eternity to actually appear, and when it did, it had a greenish tint that could not be removed.

Harry loved this television.

The jewel of this particular room, however, was the old rotary phone on the table by the bed. Harry had not seen such a device in years, and this one was glorious. The original color was probably off white, but now it was a light brown from all of the oils and dirt it had accumulated.

Harry was the kind of man that had a phone with no screen that didn't flip. He liked to write things down with an ink pen on actual paper. At fifty-two, his knees were virtually nonexistent, most of his teeth had been replaced (though not because of poor dental hygiene), yet he had all of his hair–graying as it was.

Harry had joined law enforcement when he was only nineteen years old. He had walked the beat for years, then made detective when he turned thirty. He was great at his job and closed cases almost faster than they were assigned to him. At the urging of his peers, he entered the academy, and eventually became an agent for the FBI; a job he was still working today.

In all that time, each motel room he was in had been virtually the same, right down to the smell. It wasn't a bad smell really, just a stench that lay beneath the surface–under the smell of cleaning products and air fresheners.

It was the aroma of sex and lawlessness.

Oh come on, Harry, don't be melodramatic.

Harry imagined that every motel room in America had been fucked in, and had some sort of crime occur; sometimes simultaneously. He liked to sit back and look at the room to see if he could figure out the details of these unknown crimes. He had this fantasy that he could read any room and know what went wrong; just like Sherlock Holmes. Deeper in his mind, he knew that he was full of shit.

Harry glanced at the bed to his left, and the same stacks of folders and papers that he had abandoned an hour ago were smiling back at him. Case files, witness reports, photographs, and other evidence were all piled in predominantly neat stacks. This case didn't lack for paperwork. That was for sure.

He had been put on the Strawberries murders a week and a half ago, inheriting the case from another agent who had failed to put the evidence together during the six months he had been in charge. Agent Henderson was initially given the case because he was one of the best young agents the bureau had seen in years. Harry was sure Henderson had the same piles of paper on his bed all those months. How many sleepless nights had Henderson experienced before he was unceremoniously removed from the case?

Thus far, Harry hadn't gotten any further than Henderson had.

All that was known about the case was that there was some psychotic individual, probably male, moving in no discernible pattern across the country, and every now and then, he would make a pit stop. The body count was estimated at twenty, though some were still being found in remote locations from time to time. No two murders were exactly the same, but they were all brutal, and creative in their hellishness.

Harry had stared at the stacked pictures for far longer than was good for any man's soul. A person could see beauty in the pictures if he looked deep enough. Blood and sinew. Bone and entrails. Masterworks in unconventional media. Seeing elegance in murder made him sick.

The only piece of evidence that linked each of the crimes together was a drawing of a strawberry left at each scene. The size of the drawing varied depending on the location, but it was always drawn using the victim's blood with a finger.

At first, the theory was that it might actually be multiple people committing the murders in a cult scenario. Most serial killers made their kills ritualistically. They tended to be similar and patterns could be found. The fact that each murder was different from the last pointed to multiple killers, but eventually that idea was ruled out. It would be very difficult for multiple people to stay hidden for this long. If it were a cult, there would be a trail to find. It could be a sick family, Chainsaw Massacre style, but even that would be hard to hide. One person, off the grid, and in the shadows was more likely to evade capture.

At some point, an expert was brought in to analyze the strawberry drawings from each scene, and it was determined that, while they were not all identical, the probability that they were drawn by the same hand was high, and the artist was always smart enough to not leave prints. Most likely, the killer wore a glove, but the blood drawings had a peculiar rough texture to them, so it wouldn't have been a normal latex glove.

You've got fuck all for evidence, Harry. Boy, you sure are screwed.

Harry sat back in his chair, letting his body sink deep into the worn leather cushion. This was actually not a motel owned chair; this was his. Harry had never been known as much of a hard-ass in the bureau, and he rarely threw his weight around, but this chair was his one demand. He traveled all around the country, and if at all possible, he had this recliner shipped to him on the bureau's dime. His supervisors allowed it because Harry didn't make waves. As long as he kept catching the bad guys and kept his head down, they would let Harry have his chair.

Harry did most of his thinking in this chair. He slept in it most nights. The chair was basically the only home that Harry had; his chair, the earth tones, the rotary phone, and the sour shower water. What else could a man need?

He suddenly remembered one other thing that was universal in motels, and he reached into the drawer of the bedside table. Inside, predictably, was the Gideon Bible. He pulled it out and opened to a random page. There, scrawled in an unsteady hand, was the word FUCK in big black letters. He turned the page, then flipped through the rest of the book. Someone had taken the time to write the word on every page.

Harry didn't know God from a hole in the ground, but he knew this was rude. Though he had to admire the dedication it took to get the word on each of those thin pages.

Putting the book back, he glanced once more at the stacks on the bed, half-heartedly contemplating giving them one more look. The thought passed quickly though, and he went back to scanning the motel room. His eyes began to get heavy as his thoughts crept in. He wondered how many lines of cocaine had been cut on the dresser top; how many drunks had passed out with half their bodies on the bathroom floor, the other half drooling into the shag carpet; and how many prostitutes had been fucked against that far wall. The possibilities were endless.

The rotary rang before his thoughts could morph into dreams.

FOUR

The Brazilian sun forced all of Sylvia's nooks and crannies to rain sweat. The rays beat down on her like hellfire causing her skin to blister. The beginning of the path to the airport had tree cover, but that soon disappeared, leaving her with just a rocky dirt path to traverse. The going was slow in her heels, as they seemed to catch themselves on every rock and fallen tree branch. She had tried to take them off, but the ground proved to be too hot to handle.

Half way, she remembered that she had a small fan in her bag, and cursed herself for not remembering it sooner. It ran off a single AAA battery, and when she flicked the switch, it luckily began to spin. It was a tiny thing, and didn't make much of a breeze, but she held it up to her face, and the slight wind felt like ice against the sweat beaded on her skin. Though the rest of her body still boiled, it was enough to keep her chin up and her feet moving.

Twenty minutes after she found the fan, she was finally staring up at the ceiling of the Santos Dumont. The temperature was a good fifteen degrees cooler inside, and while still quite hot, was cool enough to make every drop of moisture on her body shiver with delight.