Case #1: Romeo
Chapter 1
Amy Harper & Cassandra Milton's Home
Atlanta, Georgia
Friday, October 1, 2002
10:33 PM
A slow waltz played in the background as he sat and watched
her. She was so beautiful to him.
It was haunting how much she looked like the woman who had gotten away
from him. She had the same blonde hair and the same bluish-gray eyes.
He smiled at her and extended his hand out to her as if
asking for a dance. She didn’t
take his hand, she only sat and stared blankly back at him.
His smile quickly faded away when she did not take his
hand. His body trembled slightly as
anger began to fill him. He
extended his hand out to her again. “Take
it!” His voice trembled in
agitation as he spoke.
When she didn’t take his hand he screamed, a monstrous
scream, and reared his hand back and struck her across the face with the back of
his hand.
The blow was so strong that it knocked her clean out of the
chair she had been sitting in. He
sat in silence and stared blankly at where she had been sitting.
He sat there for a few more moments as he collected his thoughts. He
stood to his feet and went over to where she was lying on the floor.
Bending down he lifted her up and placed her back in her chair.
He smoothed her tousled hair and straightened the sleeves of her black
dress. He stepped back and took a
quick look at her, and then he returned to his seat at the dinner table.
He retrieved a matchbox from his right jacket pocket and
took a match out of it. He struck
the match on the rough side of the matchbox and the match sparked to life with a
short-lived hiss. He held the match
perfectly still and brought it closer to his face. He stared at the flame hypnotically for what seemed like
minutes, but which had only been seconds before he lit the red candle that sat
on the elegantly decorated dinner table.
He pulled the match close to his face again and blew out
the flame. He focused on the
candles flame, but quickly realized that he wasn’t looking at the candles
flame at all, but through it at her.
He watched as she sat there perfectly still and stared at
him with those glassy stare. It was
almost chilling the way she stared at him, past him, as if she wasn’t seeing
him at all; and she wasn’t.
He stood from his seat again and went over to the other
side of the table to join her. He
stood beside her and extended his hand again, asking for a dance.
When she didn’t move he placed his hand on hers and helped her to her
feet. He placed her right arm
around his waist and her left on his shoulder.
He had to hold her limp body up as he danced around the kitchen with her.
Her head fell to the side and rested on his shoulder as he
danced around with her. He let go
of her hand that he held at his waist and it quickly fell to her side.
He grabbed her arm quickly and held it at his side again.
He danced around the kitchen with her for a few more minutes then he
returned her to her seat.
After he had placed her carefully back into her seat he
extinguished the candle on the table by pinching the wick with his thumb and
index finger. He took a single long
stemmed rose from a nearby bouquet and placed it in her lap.
Taking one last look at her lifeless body he left her, dead and alone.
Outside Amy and Cassandra's Home
Atlanta, Georgia
Saturday, October 2, 2003
2:18 AM
Cassandra Milton leaned down and stuck her head inside of
her boyfriend, Chris Brodie’s, open car window. “So I’ll see you tomorrow night?” She asked.
He nodded his head, yes.
“You know you will. A pack
of wild dogs couldn’t keep me away from you.”
She smiled. His
personality was so strange, but she loved it.
“Well I better get going, got to get up early in the mourning.
Work and all.” She stepped away from the car.
“Love ya.”
“Love you too,” he called back to her.
He rolled up the car window and started down the drive.
She gave him a quick wave goodbye and took her keys from
her purse. It took her a few
seconds to locate the key to the deadbolt.
Her roommate, Amy, always insisted on keeping the deadbolt locked, but
she never really understood why. Cassie
located the key and slid it into the lock and opened the backdoor, which lead
into the kitchen. She walked into
the kitchen and shut the door behind her, locking it.
She started towards the living room when she saw Amy Harper sitting at
the dinner table wearing a black dress. “Is
everything okay, Amy?”
Cassie began to worry when Amy didn’t reply.
She walked over to Amy and put her hand on her shoulder.
She noticed the long stemmed rose sitting in Amy’s lap.
“I see you got flowers.” Cassie
tried to make conversation. “Amy?”
Cassie shook her friend lightly. When
Amy’s dead body fell out of the chair Cassie let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Hope Watson's Apartment
Miami, Florida
Saturday, October 2, 2002
3:00 AM
Hope
Watson rolled over onto her back. She
couldn’t sleep. She hugged her
pillow tightly and looked over at her alarm clock.
She squinted trying to focus on the glowing red numbers.
She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock again; it read three
o’clock in the mourning. Sighing
she rolled onto her side and covered her face with her pillow. I’ve got to get some sleep, she thought to
herself.
After a few minutes of lying in her bed she fell asleep.
She was asleep when the phone on the nightstand began to ring, waking
her. She reached over and picked up
the phone. “…Hello?” Her
voice sounded raspy from being asleep.
“Hope?” The man on the other line asked.
Hearing his voice sent a shiver down her spine.
“Yes, it’s me,” She replied. She
sat up in her bed and waited for the man to speak.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” Detective Logan
North started.
“Go on,” Hope replied.
Logan hesitated. “It’s
Romeo…”
Hope closed her eyes in disbelief.
“He’s back isn’t he?” She
asked.
“Well…we aren’t really sure if it is him or not, but
it fits his profile.”
Hope began to list the factors of Romeo’s profile.
“A black dress, a long stemmed rose, and a brunette,” Hope said.
“That’s his profile.”
“That’s just that thing that has us stumped.
We have the woman wearing a black dress, and the long stemmed rose, but
she’s not a brunette. She’s blond,” Logan replied.
“It could be a copycat.
It fits Romeo’s profile almost, but Romeo had a thing for brunettes.”
“Hope, the thing that concerns us the most is that the
woman that was killed looks a lot like you,” Logan said.
There was a long silence on the phone before Hope broke the
silence. “I’ve had enough of
this creep Logan; he killed my sister for Christ’s sake.”
“We have all had enough of this creep.
We all thought that you killed him.”
“I did kill him. I
watched him drown in the lake,” Hope began to get defensive.
“Your dealing with a copycat this time Logan.”
Logan knew he shouldn’t ask but he had to at least try.
“I would like for you to work this case with us.”
Hope didn’t want any part of anything dealing with Romeo,
not now, not ever again. “Listen
Logan you’re going to have to find yourself another detective. I’m finished chasing things that go bump in the night.”
Hope hung up on Logan in frustration.
“Romeo can’t be back, damn it, he just can’t be.”
Hope expected the phone to ring again.
She knew that Logan wouldn’t give up that easily, he could be so pushy
sometimes. Hope waited for about
twenty minutes for Logan to call her back, but he never did.
Maybe Logan had given up, which would totally be a first for him.
Hope put her cordless phone back into the base and crawled
back into bed, even though she knew she wouldn’t be doing any sleeping for the
rest of the night. She chuckled
nervously at the thought of Romeo being alive and she hoped to God that Logan
was wrong and that the new string of Romeo-like murders was just some screwed up
copycat out to make a name for themselves.
Curling up into the fetal position under her pink satin
sheets Hope began to sob. Thoughts
of her twin sister, Faith, began to surface and she fought like hell to keep
them out of her head. She
absolutely hated Romeo for murdering her sister and she did not want to remember
anything to do with Faith or Romeo, anything at all.
Thirty minutes had passed before Hope’s phone rang again.
She hesitated before answering it. Finally
she reached over and picked up the phone fully expecting to hear Logan’s voice
on the other end, but this time it wasn’t Logan it was someone else, someone
she wished to never speak to again. “Logan!”
She started. “I thought I told you I didn’t want any part of your
investigation.”
There was a long silence before the man on the other line
replied.
“Hello Hope. I’ve
been waiting to speak to you again.”
Hope gasped in horror when she heard his voice.
A voice from the grave, a voice from her past, and a voice she hoped she
would never hear again in her lifetime. She
panicked. What was she to do or to say to such an evil man?
A man with warped morals, a man that murdered innocent women for fun.
After minutes of complete silence Romeo spoke. “Cat got your tongue?” He chuckled mischievously, sinisterly. The evil in his voice was only amplified by the very complex, and very expensive piece of voice distortion equipment.
In a mix of hatred and sheer horror Hope hung up on him, and she began to pray that he wouldn’t call back. But, she knew that he would, and he did again and again. After the eighty-seventh ring of his thirteenth phone call to her, she gave up and answered it. And he wasn’t happy.
