The Last Case

Thirteen years of experience.
Not even thirteen years of experience in the homicide department prepared Robert for the sight that was sprawled in front of him.
His colleagues turned away in repulsion.
But braving up, he scribbled some notes on his pad.
‘Dead body… Pavement of Susan Street… Headless…’
The last word made him shiver a little.
True, there had been thousands of heinous crimes in his life that he had witnessed but this was different. It felt awful.
As the paramedics took the body away, he walked towards his car.

Investigation was not new to Robert.
He had solved many cases before.
But this one was leading him to a dead end.
Reading the paper that morning, a day after the incident, he sipped his coffee, tired from the lack of sleep. He had spent the whole night trying to find some clues, something to link him to the crime. But no one was willing to give him any information about the murder. His own colleagues had stayed away, excluding him from the case. Or, maybe it was because they knew that it was a case, the horror of which, only he could stomach.
Robert got up from his chair and left the house, determined to come up with a solution.

The bell rang shrilly in his ears. But no one came to his attention.
He rang it again with the base of his palm.
The librarian didn’t even look up.
Sighing to himself, realizing that his uniform was earning him this hostility, Robert decided to give it one last try.
“Excuse me, ma’am” He said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
One person, a woman sitting at the far end of the library, looked up and gasped.
Robert turned to her, used to that expression, and then back to the librarian.
“I’m here to investigate a murder,” He said. “I need your co-operation”
The librarian looked up briefly, stifled a yawn and then got back to her magazine. Her lack of interest and absence of fear angered him. Meanwhile, the woman at the far end of the room waved her arms widely in the air. Everyone turned and looked at her but she didn’t care. They then turned and looked at him. Embarrassed, he looked away.
After a little hesitation, Robert walked over to her, a little scared and sat down.
“Hello,” She said, gulping nervously. “I’m Joe!”
He nodded.
“There was a murder down this street” He said.
Robert hated small talk. Probably that was why he was so alone in this world. No woman could tolerate his brash nature.
“Do you think that the victim’s ghost is still wandering around here?” She asked, worried.
Robert looked at the woman, his expression one of irritation.
“I think the ghost is still angry. I can sense the ghost. I can sense it.”
Closing her eyes, she began chanting a weird prayer, positioning her fingers to her temple.
Frightened and worried, Robert got up and walked away, aware of all the eyes watching her and feeling embarrassed on her behalf.

“When I get out of jail, you’re a dead man” The criminal spat.
“You’re threatening a Police Officer,” He shouted back.” I’m not worried about your lame taunts.”
“Oh, but I’m not like the others, Mr. Robert!” An evil grin. “I know about you.”
Robert tightened his fist. It was a good thing that this man was finally caught. Even after three years of searching for the man, he still had the hatred left in him to kill the rogue.
“Rot in hell!” Robert muttered, relieved at the sight of the man being taken away.
Before being dragged off, the criminal shouted, “I killed Lisa on purpose.”

Startled, Robert woke up, covered in sweat.
Gasping for air, he grabbed a bottle of water and drank off it.
Lisa.
His dead wife.
The dream brought back terrible memories.

“Honey,” She moaned, dragging the vowels and he realized that the sound of her voice excited him even after twelve years of marriage.
“Not now!” He whispered back into the phone. “I’m dealing with a case.”
“Is it a woman?” She asked, cheekily and laughed. “Are you cheating on me, Mr Husband?”
He chuckled at her teasing.
“I’ll try to get home as quick as possible.” He replied. “Maybe then I could prove my loyalty to you…”
“It’ll take time,” She said, her voice turning impossibly husky. “I’m hard to please.”
“However long it takes. We have forever, don’t we?”
His voice came from the base of his throat as it tingled with trying to hold back the excitement in his body.
Before she could reply to that, he cut the call in his hurry and ran back to the crime scene. No matter how hard he tried to wrap up the work and get home to his wife’s loving arms, something unresolved kept coming up. As usual, he couldn’t keep his promise and ended up getting home three hours later than the time he had promised.
Every bone in his body was screaming with the strain of over-work. But his heart was still going strong, as it eagerly longed for love. Bouquet in his hand, he tip-toed into his house and looked around. Everything was quiet. Upstairs, the light in the bedroom was on.
Smiling, excited, he ran up the stairs, two at a time and stopped at the door.
Unbuttoning the top two buttons of his uniform, he combed his hair with his fingers and cleared his throat.
Then, he stepped in.
Seconds after he took in the sight, a low gasp escaped his mouth.
The bouquet fell to the floor.
At the same time, the walkie-talkie in his pocket beeped.
Another case.
But he didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore.
If tears would help, he would cry till the world sunk. But they wouldn’t. Nothing would help him.
Dropping to the floor, he sat there, watching the lifeless body of his wife, slashed and blood covered. She was sprawled on the bed in a seductive pose, her eyes open in shock.
He stared at her chest, hoping to see the rise and fall of it, of a hint of a breath remaining in that beautiful body of hers.
What kind of sick mind would do this to her?
His walkie-talkie beeped again in his pocket.
That was when he saw the single word written in blood on her forehead.
‘Revenge’
Following the duty of a Police Officer, gulping back unshed tears, he finally answered his walkie-talkie.
“I need to report a murder” He said, his voice choked.
And a suicide, he wanted to add. The only thought left in his mind was having to cope with this for the rest of his life.
By the time his colleagues had arrived, Robert was sitting where he had been all along, looking distraught and very much lifeless himself. They were worried for him but the situation deemed that kind of response. They realized that not only had her life come to an end, so had his. Covering his wife’s modesty, hoping that they would find a way to help him recover, they started their investigation, their hearts breaking for the colleague they loved as their minds worked furiously at their determination to solve the case.
For his sake.
For hers.

A single tear escaped Robert’s eyes.
Wiping it away, he closed his fist and prepared himself for the day.
The case of the headless man needed solving.
His wife would never come back to him. It was time he had made peace with that.

The paramedical scene was quite depressing.
It almost always was.
This was the place where families came to identify the bodies.
Robert hated the fear in their eyes, the shock on their faces. He hated it enough to want to quit the job. But he knew that he would never be able to.
He remembered his own dismay when he had come to get a crime report on Lisa.
Cold blooded murder.
At a distance, he heard discussions taking place about the headless body they had found a couple of days ago. The nurse in the white coat was explaining to his colleagues about the body.
He wondered what his fellow officials were doing here. This was his case.
“It’s very unfortunate,” The lady was saying. “His presence shall be missed.”
Stepping closer, Robert listened in on the conversation.
“Robert was such a dedicated officer” His colleague, Jack said.
“Wait!” Robert exclaimed. “Was? I still am dedic…”
Before the sentence was finished, he felt the nurse’s hand go through his body.
Looking down in shock, he finally realized what had happened.
Robert collapsed to the floor, his head in his hands.
Everything made sense now.
The ignorance by the librarian, the weird lady in the library, his colleagues turning away at the crime scene… It all fell into place.
Shuddering, Robert remembered that night three days ago.
He had been walking home when one of the criminals he had caught, the man who killed Lisa, had butchered him to death.
As tears rolled down his cheeks, Robert closed his eyes.
A shiver went down his spine as he realized that he had been investigating his own case.
Unnoticed, he slowly slipped away.