Page 7 of Pure Killers

I look at the pictures. They're familiar, I saw them circulating back when the news was fresh. The first, the body suspended upside-down, though you can't see it, wrapped entirely and neatly in layers of gauzy cloth. The second, the same cloth dipped in plaster, dried and cracked open to reveal the nude body inside. Everything is shiny like wax, with something bright tucked in behind the body. The third, the body is upright, arms spread, the cocoon having fallen away. Bright orange wings made of cloth and wire stretch out two meters to either side, everything similarly propped to hover several meters above the ground.

"That was the first time he did that- a set, you might call it. He branched out.” Dean passes me another picture, and I stare at it. It’s an opaque cocoon. “And look at the scene this year."

"He's doing the same pattern again. Which means…"

"There's going to be at least two more before the end of the year," Howie asserts.

I sigh, lowering the picture to rub my eyes. "He's doing three a year now? That’s… a lot." Not as much as Needler is gearing up to do, but people care less about that.

"Yeah, and we're no closer to catching him."

“Some of them, you never catch,” Howie says, and Dean blinks, pulling a slight face. It’s a hard truth to hear. Sensing that, Howie lifts his head and gives Dean a companionable pat on the shoulder. “We do our best no matter what.”

I smile a little at the exchange, though that falls away as I look back at the pictures. "How? How is he so good at hiding? He never makes a mistake. And why is he changing his style now?"

Shrugging, Dean takes the picture back. Howie says, "We need to issue a warning to the public. They’re going to work it out for themselves soon enough as it is."

"It'll be bad for the department, we're pretty much admitting we're not going to be able to stop him in time. It doesn't matter how safe everyone is," I say.

"No."

"There's already been calls out, graffiti and the like, to the Needler to get him." Howie shifts in his chair. I hear his back creak. "They've got more trust in another killer than in us nowadays."

Dean tilts his head to me. "How is the Needler case going?"

Leaning back in my chair, I wobble my head from side to side. "We're making some progress. But the public perception is… difficult. It makes them less cooperative."

"They don't want him caught."

"That’s about the gist of it."

There's a lull in the conversation now, and I feel them share a look, feel it grow tense, feel their thoughts slipping towards him, Needler’s first. I clap my hands on my thighs, standing up. "Well, I think it’s home time."

"Yes, us too," they're grabbing their coats as well. Around the topic of the Needler, with me, people get like this. Afraid to delve too far.

***

Thanks to a drunk driver on the ring road, it’s nearly 10 pm by the time I get home, the exhaustion of the day long since caught up to me. I sit on the couch and open a can. Just one, I tell myself. Help me sleep.

One drink turns into two, turns into three. It's close to midnight now. I should go to bed, I know that. I'm being a cliche, I know that too. Sitting on the couch in the dark, looking at old photos of a time I'm never getting back. My housemate is out for the night. I'm all alone, and it sure feels that way.

In the pictures, we're all smiles, arms around each other. In this one we're standing in front of the house we thought we'd have a family in, down in Brinik on the south side, the suburbs, away from the worst of it. There was a pool, a two-car garage, and a security system. An empty room, ready for… I finish off the can.

The next picture is dark, too hard to distinguish. I’m looking back into the camera flash, laughing as Caleb leans over beside me, looking through the eye of his telescope. I used to tease him about how massive the thing was, how he’d get everyone who came over to look through—see the Northern Cross? And there, the Winged Horse?I never quite could see them, but I’d smile for him and say yes anyway.

Of course, pictures aren't the whole story. But I don't look at his face long enough to remember the bad times.

And yet it’s the bad times they eventually lead to. Him being taken away from me. I've reached the end of my third drink. Everyone thinks the Needler is some kind of hero. But hereis what he took away from me. A husband, and a future. I've opened the fourth can without thinking about it. Why can't they see? Why don't they want to remember that his first victim was the opposite of a killer? He was a detective, like me, and the first and only to even come close to catching the Cocooner.

And now, three years later, we've still got the Cocooner, and a new killer added to the mix to boot.

Those tiny, so so deep wounds, difficult to see even in the morgue once the blood was cleaned away. But they puncture deep.

He's refined, since then. On my husband, the wounds were numerous, varying depths between one inch and five. Puncturing his lungs, his throat. I saw them, made the mortician point them out to me. On a body I couldn’t recognise… too different under that harsh light, lacking the life I’d known in it. And the face, I wasn’t allowed to see. Burned, unrecognisable. But him.

The wounds were clumsy, the burning a spiteful act apparently reserved just for my husband. Never since. Now, the Needler finishes them with just one strike, maybe two. He leaves them clean, recognisable.

I can't fall back into this grief. Making myself stand, I go to the sink, and pour out the rest. Then I open the last two cans and pour them out as well.

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