Top Ten

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Book: Read Top Ten for Free Online
Authors: Ryne Douglas Pearson
Tags: Fiction, General, Thrillers, Suspense & Thrillers
less prominent photo of the crime scene. “His body was found on Valentine’s day in a Utica motel room standing before a mirror.”
    “Standing?” Ariel asked, looking closely at the indicated photo. There was Calvis Winkler, standing at the vanity in a motel room, hands planted on either side of the single-bowl sink, his boxer shorts and white tee shirt wet red nightmares. He seemed to be intently gazing at the mirror. At the dead perversion of himself in the mirror. But how...
    “Re-bar,” Jaworski said in response to the question her puzzled expression was asking. “Those metal rods they put in concrete to strengthen it.”
    Ariel nodded at the horror.
    “Cut to length and bent just right,” Jaworski explained. “He made holes in Mr. Winkler and pushed the re-bar in along the long bones in the legs and arms. Spine, too. The medical examiner said that one was hammered down through the skull. That would have killed him if he wasn’t dead already.” Jaworski paused. “I hope to God he was dead already.”
    “He sculpted him,” Ariel observed. “He made himself a human sculpture on a frame.”
    Jaworski nodded. “His letter told us he called it ‘Reflections Of A Myth’.”
    “The unicorn is a mythical figure,” Ariel said. “But here he gave it a reflection.”
    “Don’t chew on it, Grace,” Jaworski warned her. “Don’t try and figure him out that way. Let the shrinks and the gurus at Quantico handle that end of it. Focus on the tangible. Be a cop, not a psychoanalyst.”
    She looked to him. “Those methods have worked, sir.”
    He allowed a nod and looked to the pictures. “I don’t think it’s going to be that way with this freak. I just don’t.”
    She turned toward the next set of photos in line as Jaworski moved to them. In all the photos an older man sat naked in a chair, his right hand fixed over his mouth, his left over his eyes. His penis was nowhere in sight. “Ricardo Lomanico, sixty, a retired army master sergeant. Found dead in his house in Jersey City in early March by his painter who was touching up the trim around his bedroom window. His uvula had been removed and his penis attached in its place. It was blocking his windpipe.”
    Ariel grimaced, but stayed focused on the photos. “He couldn’t have been alive...”
    “Traces of a muscle paralyzer called napoxcypharin were found in his system. And in Calvis Winkler’s. It was found in all the men. The medical examiner said this drug paralyzes the voluntary muscles, but lets you breath and lets your heart beat.” Jaworski glanced at Ricardo Lomanico’s hideously abused face. “It also allows one to still feel pain. But not scream.”
    A shiver scampered up her spine at the thought of that terror. Agony without expression. The cry withheld. She wondered if that could drive one mad.
    “This creation is called ‘Hear My Evil’. Try and pick that one apart.”
    Jaworski took a step down and was now on a new wall, the one opposite the door. He touched the picture of a heavyset woman whose breasts had been removed and fixed to the side of her severed head like earmuffs. Her head rested on a lamp whose shade had been removed. The burning bulb glowed through her gaping mouth. “Susan Rollins, age forty-one, she was from Trenton, New Jersey, but was found in a motel room just outside of Centre Hall, Pennsylvania. Her body was found in the bathtub, here.” Ariel looked where directed. “Fully clothed but drained of blood. We found about four pints in the toilet tank.”
    Stone , Ariel thought. Be stone . It was hard. She felt her stomach churning.
    “Like I said, we didn’t get a letter for this victim or the other woman, but he did leave what I guess you’d call messages at each scene. This one he left in lipstick on the bathroom mirror.”
    Ariel saw the photo nearby. “Women bleed.”
    “You think that means something other than the disgustingly obvious?”
    “It might,” Ariel replied.
    Jaworski shook his head and

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