text: Regi S. Riddle 
   
   
   Chapter 1  
   
  Riddle Chapter 1 
  	8:22pm 
  	Melissa Blundell took a detour from her normal corner. She was told by Erica Hasley that rich guys tend to pick up there and she was hoping for a chance to make more money than she ever had. 
  	She was, what she considered, a middle class prostitute that never got overly disgusting and never did more than one at a time. She respected herself a lot for never getting a sexually transmitted disease. She had been pregnant a total of twice in her life, each child being aborted shortly after her knowledge. She was not going to ruin her body with a pregnancy.  
  	Her preference in customers was not overly fastidious, however she refused to get in a car with people that smelled or looked like they belonged in the movie Deliverance. Whether they were male or female did not bother her at all, on the contrary, they interested her. 
  	She managed to dismiss the other ladies that worked on her new block. When the next car pulled up, she was ready to make her money. 
  	“Hey, babes,” she said, flashing a seductive smile, “you looking for some company tonight?” 
  	A smile. “Get in.” 
  	Melissa opened the door and climbed into the stranger’s car.  She was driven to a Hilton hotel with her hand on her companion’s lap. She smiled again as the door was open to their expensive suite.  
  	“I’d like to see my pay, if you don’t mind,” Melissa whispered in the stranger’s ear. 
  	Five hundred dollars was pulled out and handed to the prostitute who placed it on the dresser with her jacket. 
  	“I need a minute.” 
  Melissa sashayed into the bathroom and quietly shut the door. She stripped out of her lewd dress so she was only in her bra and thong. She ran her toothbrush over her teeth and sprayed her perfume before leaving. 
  	When she went back out, her stranger was sitting on the bed, fully clothed. 
  	“So, are you gonna tell me your name?” 
  	“No.” Smile. 
  	“Anything in particular you want?” 
  	“Everything,” the stranger said, pulling Melissa in for a drugging kiss. 
  3:02am 
  	When Detective Patrick Rowe arrived, the doorway was already surrounded by yellow tap and crime scene investigators. There was a large pool of blood on the floor that came from a small stream on the bed. The body was sprawled nude on the bed, covered in her own blood and a bed sheet over the lower part of her body.  
  	Her crystal blue eyes were wide open and her face was mangled with fear. Her thick brown curls caressed her face like and angel. Her lips were swathed with blood with a small dried stream pooling out of her mouth. 
  	“How long has she been dead?” Rowe asked Dr. Liesel Fisher, the coroner.  
  	“The body is still warm, so I’d say about three hours. Maybe four, I won’t know more until I have her back at the morgue.” 
  	“Any idea how old?” Rowe asked. 
  	“Sixteen or seventeen. Like I said, I will know more after an autopsy,” Dr. Fisher said. 
  	“How was she killed?” 
  	“Stabbed in the jugular. And stabbed several times elsewhere,” Fisher said, shaking her head. 
  Rowe stared down at the sixteen-year-old body that was covered in blood. His partner, Alison Verday stepped through the door and grimaced. She looked like she had not gotten much sleep. 
  	“I definitely did not miss this,” she said, her face turning a slight shade of green. 
  	“Alice,” Rowe said, surprised to see his old partner standing in the door of victim’s house, “I thought you weren’t going to come back for another week.” 
  	“I hate to say it, but I am really getting sick of the baby. All he does is cry, go to the bathroom, and cry some more. I have no idea how my mother handled me and my sisters growing up.” 
  	Rowe laughed. “Well he is only two months old. Give it time, he’ll get better.” 
  	“God, I hope so. Anyways, what did I miss?” 
  	“Right. A sixteen year old stabbed in the jugular, she has been dead for about four hours, and that’s all I got so far.” 
  	“Any ID?” Verday asked, slipping into a pair of rubber gloves. 
  	“Yeah, here,” Rowe said, handing the girls small wristlet to Verday. 
  	“Melissa Blundell,” Verday read off the young woman’s driver’s license, “She’s sixteen.” 
  	Rowe turned to Verday and looked at the small laminated card. “God. Nothing like a baby killer to start off the day.” 
  	“Blundell…that name sounds familiar.” 
  	“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Fisher said, walking over to them, “I found fluids, on her face and vagina. The bastard raped her before he killed her. And I found this underneath her.” 
  	Fisher handed Rowe a small piece of paper with messy words written in blood. 
  Such a shame, 
  You let me die. 
  For this means 
  The second one is already damaged. 
  If you care to know who it is,  
  Look where the beginning meets the end. 
  5:33am 
  	Verday dumped for packets of sugar into her coffee before walking over to Rowe and Detective Donald Gabrielsson who were hanging up crime photographs on the whiteboard. Rowe looked grim and Gabrielsson looked like he was about to throw something through the window.  
  	“Does this letter make any sense to you?” she asked, taking a sip of her coffee. 
  	“All I get out of it is that there is going to be another victim,” Rowe said, flipping the note in his hands. 
  	“It’s a riddle. The killer is messing with us. He wants to see us squirm,” Gabrielsson said, snatching the note out of Rowe’s hands and hanging it up on the whiteboard.  
  	“Well, there has got to be a clue to this. It might be nothing and just something to get us going,” Rowe said, “Lord knows that it wouldn’t be the first time.” 
  	Verday nodded in agreement. “I remember that.” 
  	“Well, let’s not take chances. Were there any other clues?” 
  	“No,” Gabrielsson said, “Although she was involved in the neighborhood prostitution ring.” 
  	“How do you figure?” Rowe asked. 
  	“Five hundred, next to her jacket, on the dresser. Cash. The killer paid with all tens which I found to be odd, but it might just be some desperate guy that saved up until he found a woman that would take only five hundred, which is very cheap for a prostitute these days.” 
  	“Personal experience there, Don?” Verday asked with a smirk.  
  	“No, Alice.” 
  “Don’t worry, I will never disregard your seniority,” Verday laughed.  
  	“Ah ha ha, don’t you have a baby to breastfeed?” Gabrielsson snapped. 
  	“Hey, you two, let’s not bite each other’s heads of,” Fisher said, walking into the room with a clipboard.  
  	“Got any news for us?” Rowe asked, eagerly. 
  	“Yes, actually, the letter was written in the victim’s blood. I also found a DNA match already in the system.” 
  	“Really?” Verday asked, “Who? I mean, was it someone we arrested?” 
  	“No, surprisingly, the DNA matched a rape case from quite a few years back. The perp was never caught but we have his sperm in the system. It’s a match our new victim, who is either a sister, daughter, niece, or first cousin to the perp.” 
  	“Who was the victim?” Gabrielsson asked. 
  	“That’s the thing, this case was run through a college and the evidence was given but not the name of the complainant. Poor thing never stood a chance.” 
  	“How old is the case?” Rowe asked. 
  	“Well, it’s about three years old.” 
  	“And you said that they never caught the perp? Maybe it’s an angry relative looking to avenge their sibling,” Verday said.  
  	“I don’t know, I mean, the campus police said that the girl didn’t even know who the assailant was. She was at a loss and didn’t even bother to do anything.” 
  	“What college did she go to?” 
  	“NYU. She was majoring in criminology.” 
  	Rowe had a tiny flashback of his time as a professor in criminology at NYU. He wondered if he ever taught the girl. 
  10:45am  
  	Rowe returned home close to eleven, stripped, and hopped in the shower. Images flashed in his mind about his old teaching days. He remembered one student in particular that he was very fond of. She was very different from most of the female students at NYU. She had her nose, lip, and both eyebrows pierced, along with her ears and her navel. Her hair was black, her nails were painted black, and she wore dark eyeliner. She was the definition of the words “gothic girl.” She was sweet though. And Russian. She had been adopted when she was ten and brought over to the Americas. She had grown up in Queens, New York. She was not very open about her past nor anything that happened in her personal life. The only reason they had even met was because she was the top student in his criminology course.  
  	By the end of the first semester, they were seeing each other at least twice a week. He knew that pursuing a sexual relationship with one of his student was a huge risk. She was very pretty and it did not seem to bother her. She was willing to lie for him, even. The relationship began to be purely sexual, no strings attached, until she confessed her love to him. She was willing to drop out of school just to stay with him. He wanted her to stay and finish her scholarship, and had felt the same way, so they decided to have a relationship and keep it quiet. He had been in love with her. Then, he was going through student files, for a reason he could not recall, and discovered that the love of his live was only sixteen. She was fifteen when the relationship had begun. He was ashamed of himself, thought himself to be a pedophile, and called off their relationship. He had gotten into a huge fight with her about her lying to him and making him become a pedophile and said that he could never forgive her. She was gone the next morning. Her room was cleared out and her scholarship was given up. He never heard from her again.  
  	It had been four years since that had happened and he moved on but part of him always wondered what it would have been like if he had never found out her age. If they would still be together today. 
  Rowe grabbed his towel and tied it around his waist. He made his way over to his bed and drifted into a deep sleep.  
  	He dreamt about the girl from college. He could see the curly, black hair swimming around her face, her smile, as white and pure as ever. Her eyes were an odd brown, almost red, but still very beautiful. He could see her face clearly, giving him the same loving look she gave him in the years before. He could feel the soft brush of her lips against his and belly touching his abs. He laid her down on his bed and stripped her short, black dress from her and pressed his mouth against hers. He remembered making love to her before, her fingers on his spine, her lips on his cheek, and her soft eyes that made him melt. He would never deny being in love with her, but he would never admit it to anyone other than himself.  
  	To be completely honest, he missed her. He missed every minute he spent with her. She had made him feel so full of life and happiness. It was the happiest he had been since his mother had died. He was very upset for his decistion to leave her and ashamed of how he did it. That night, she had said she had something she wanted to tell him and she never got the chance. Maybe she was going to come clean to him about her age. Maybe she was going to finally open up to him about her past. Or maybe, she was going to say that she was leaving him. Whatever it was, he was never going to know now. He did not even know if she was still in New York, let alone still in the country. 
  	She could have gone back to Russia and now be married with five children for all he knew. She could even be dead. He obviously knew that there were other men after him, just like there were other women for him. She could be married by to a big-wig lawyer, or a member of congress, or an astronaut. It hurt him to think about it. He knew that if he did not let her go, it would have ended badly eventually. At least, he liked to believe that. 
   
   
   Publication Date: March 16th 2012 https://www.bookrix.com/-regi.s