I want a truly honest opinion about my writing. What can I improve? What would you like to see more of in my writing? Can I be successful as a writer if I remain writing on the level demonstrated in the following chapters? Do published novelist write better? If so: in what way?



CHAPTER 52


At 3:17 in the morning, I was awoken by an ear-shattering, eye-popping, hair-pulling scream. The sound came from Jasmine’s room, and without thinking I jumped from my bed, forgetting the pain being inflicted on my body, and darted down the hallway. Without the scream, everything would have been dangerously silent, but being awakened at this hour in the morning, even the walls were talking. I could see practically nothing as I turned into Jasmine’s room. She was sitting up in bed, that much I did see. And her hands were to her head, furiously rubbing, like she wanted to remove facial skin from facial bone.

The same type of adrenaline that I felt in the police station was back. I was on autopilot. I crept over to Jasmine and extended my arms in front of my body. Then I leaned in close, and held her upper body in mine. She was sobbing uncontrollably, and her neck, face, and arms were slick with sweat.

But it wasn’t sweat!

Nadia had gotten out of bed behind me, and at that moment, flicked on the lights. The brightness toppled my senses, leaving me blinking and searching for the refuge of darkness. There was no more sleeping on this night; that was certain. With the prospect of being able to use my eyesight, the bedroom environment looked patently different. What I thought was one of Jasmine’s harmless nightmares, was something much worse.

Red paint was smeared over Jasmine’s face and body. Her bra was completely covered and the liquid dripped from the lower edge of her breast’s covering, and was lingering on her stomach. Then my senses gave me another kick of realization. The red stuff that covered my sister wasn’t paint. It was blood. I could recognize that definitive smell. The way it burned at my nose. The feel.

I pulled back from Jasmine and noticed the blood had stained my black under-vest, creating what looked like a holographic image. I started to cough. What had happened to my sister?

Just then, Nadia’s body crumbled and hit the floor hard. I spun to see what happened—my girlfriend reminded me of the woman on the conveyor belt in Logan International Airport. This was more than scary. I was petrified.

Who did this? Did I want an answer to that question?

I saw the blood snaking its way through the carpet and down the hallway in both directions. I retreated from Jasmine, didn’t stop to observe Nadia, but kept on following the crimson trail. I chased the blood into the bathroom down the hallway and flicked on the lights. The toilet covering was ripped into shards the width of a belt. The bathtub was finger painted with the same red substance that covered other crevices of my home. I spun toward the mirror, expecting this to be like a horror movie. I thought I would find broken glass and an intricate message for me to decipher. There was a message on the large mirror. It said: This isn’t a horror movie honey, I left you a note. Find it if you can.

I stormed from the bathroom in a state of panic. Who wrote me the note? Was the Beautiful Killer still alive? I hoped not. I followed the blood further down the hall, and watched as it escaped the kitchen and weaved its way through the front entrance. I opened the kitchen door—it wasn’t locked.

I noticed that there were no signs of forced entry. Whoever did this massacre in my home was completely familiar with their surroundings. They did everything so easy and quiet. They completely refurbished my house with somebody’s blood, and nobody that was sleeping inside heard it.

I opened the door and found that somebody. A man. Whoever killed him had to have enormous strength, because the body was lifted from the concrete ground, and hung from a hook that I used to hang potted plants.

Blood continued to drip from the man’s body. My stomach began to churn. I felt bile rising to my throat, and last night’s meal was right behind it. Then I saw the note. I fought every sensation that said not to touch the man, and gripped the envelope from his shirt pocket. I was stealing from a corpse. The envelope was damp to the touch, but I didn’t care, I had to find out who did this and why.

I stared at the contents of the paper that occupied the envelope:

On this beautiful morning, a beautiful woman, gave you a beautiful gift. I watched you like nobody has ever watched you, and your son watched you, too. We adore you, the both of us. I think so highly of you, I can’t fathom not having you in my life. Melissa died because of that intrinsic motivation, and I’m afraid if I can’t get you, lots of other individuals will die for the same reason. Why was she sleeping in your bed, Mr. Greene? That’s no way to greet the woman that loves you with all her heart. I’ll be back. Sooner than later!

I just stood there in complete shock. The Beautiful Killer was alive, and she had my son. The both of them were in the island. And the killer’s motive was me.

CHAPTER 67


Peter Chase and I were traveling on South Shore when Buckley reported it was only a false alarm. A drug bust, nothing more to it.

“Shit!” I said, and Chase looked at me with that look of desperation I last saw on his face in New York City. “Well, he’s not as stupid as we thought he was. He doesn’t buckle easily, that’s for sure.”

We continued easterly, turned at Cobb’s Hill and traveled a little ways before the blue police lights filled the left side of our vision. “Guess we found the bastard,” Chase said.

Walsh and Buckley greeted us with serious looks and sweat soaked brows. The agents filled us in on the events that led to their silver sedan’s front end being smashed. It appeared as if Inspector Dennis Mitchella was traveling to a routine drug raid. Walsh or Buckley, or both of them, seemed to make a simple error in judgment. But now that we were all together, I wasn’t leaving. I put forward the argument that we needed to see the people Mitchella and his Task Force team had apprehended. Those individuals could be pertinent to us solidifying a case to put the inspector away for a long time.

Chase didn’t seem to buy my analysis, but I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I walked away from the agents. “You can all stay on top of the hill, but if that’s a ZBM News van down there, then this is public knowledge. I’m getting a first-hand account of the incidents.” The journalist in me was starting to blossom and I didn’t know if that was a good thing.

At the bottom of the slightly inclined hill, Mitchella stood with a microphone in his hands. What the fuck was this? Bright lights flicked on, illuminating the entire neighborhood. The Englishman said, “Testing, testing, one, two, three.”

I kept walking until I was at the center of the group of policemen and reporters. Chase was beside me, and so were agents Walsh and Buckley. “Did we just walk in some sort of media trap?” Buckley asked in a whisper. Truth was I couldn’t comprehend anything that was taking place this early in the morning.

“Thank you all for attending this meeting,” Mitchella told the group. “I gathered you all here on this wonderful morning to tell you a secret.” The inspector looked directly at me, and smiled. “That man,” he said, pointing in my direction, “is named Marcus Greene. You should know him. He has suffered severe losses over the last couple months. I pity him because he has a sister that spends her days in the hospital. When she comes out of the hospital, she will spend her days in a wheelchair.”

Mitchella’s voice was composed as if he had rehearsed these lines for the week that the FBI had observed him. He said, “I understand the emotions that are raging through that man’s head. I understand that Mr. Marcus Greene wants to find the criminal who destroyed his sister’s life. And let me tell you what he discovered.” Inspector Dennis Mitchella paused.

I couldn’t believe this. He was giving a press release at 4:45AM, and it was all designed to clear his name. I was intrigued by this tactic. In all my years, I hadn’t even seen a movie where the suspect was daring enough to put his face in the media spotlight. But the spotlight was no longer shining on Mitchella, was it? The heat from the light was singing big round circles in my face.

Mitchella took a deep breath and said, “Mr. Greene discovered that his sister was injured because she was in the middle of a drug ring. The two men, Craig and Damon, who the media has reported countless times since the initial murder that shook up this island, targeted Nicole Greene because of her illegal involvement with substances this island does not permit.

“And now Mr. Greene wants revenge. He wants to find a way to make somebody pay for his sister’s illegal activity. In his latest endeavors, Marcus Greene has turned his attention on me. His argument is: that because I am the man who has an extreme importance with drug issues on this island, and because I was involved with the take-down of various drug dealers that have been murdered since this fiasco began, then I must be the murderer. As you all know, that is a huge fallacy in reasoning.”

Dennis Mitchella was ogling in his acting abilities. If there was nothing more to be said about his performance, it was convincing. The public, once they heard his spiel, would be accepting of the inspector’s message.

Mitchella grasped the automatic rifle tighter now. “I thought there was no better place to get these issues off my chest then here, in the early hours of the morning, with the Bermuda Police Service’s latest drug operation taking effect. This is my objective: To catch and destroy drug dealers, so that they cannot deplete the integrity and social standards of the Bermuda society. That is my aim, and as long as the vengeful, manipulative, blood-hungry man that killed Andre Franklin is loose, I cannot complete and help the Bermuda population to eradicate the scum from our streets. Take a look at the murderer. Take a look at Marcus Greene.”

All eyes turned my way, and the media did a panning shot on the entire area. The pan narrowed to a close up of my astounded face. I couldn’t help but shake my head. Then the lights cut off, the microphone was out of Mitchella’s hand, and everybody began walking away. Everything operated too smoothly not to have been practiced beforehand.

Peter Chase gripped my arm. “Let’s go,” he said.

I turned away from Mitchella’s gaze and started walking toward my car. I was about to tell Chase just how pompous Inspector Dennis Mitchella was when I saw two flashes, at a distance, through the trees on my left. Two loud bangs accompanied the blinks, and everybody in attendance at the scene dropped to the ground—including Mitchella.

The difference with the inspector and the rest of the occupants was: that Mitchella didn’t stand after the terrifying bangs subsided into the night air. The two bangs equaled two shots from a high powered rifle. And the two shots sent two bullets careening into just below the heart and just to the left of the nose of Inspector Dennis Mitchella.

CHAPTER 72


I graced Francine with a visit later that day. I was going to start contacting the people on the Sexual Health Clinic’s patient’s list, but I wasn’t in the mood to use any investigative strategies on anybody. Except, maybe, Ms. Francine Dawson—a person who kept tons of viable knowledge away from me.

“Why didn’t you tell me from the start,” I asked, Francine.

Francine looked at me for the first time with something other than the magnificent smile I had become accustomed. She looked pitiful standing in front of me. She knew she couldn’t persuade me that she kept Nadia’s unfaithfulness away from me for a viable reason.

But she tried. She said, “I didn’t want to hurt you, Marcus. That’s the truth.”

“I don’t know what’s the truth anymore,” I responded. “Instead of telling me about Nadia, you would rather destroy a relationship that I thought was doing perfectly well?”

“I did no such thing. Anything that has happen between us is because you allowed it to. If you didn’t let me come between your relationship, then I wouldn’t have. You wanted me, too, Marcus. Why deny that?”

“I’m not denying anything. When I first came here, though, we weren’t romantically involved, but you still kept my girlfriend’s adultery from me. Explain that.”

“I can’t,” Francine said. “There is no explanation.”

“What else have you kept from me?” I asked.

“I haven’t kept anything from you, I promise.”

“Dammit, Francine, what do you know about the murders that I don’t know?”

The pitiful look was back on Francine’s face. I couldn’t break the gaze I had transfixed on the woman’s eyes. She couldn’t look away either. If it wasn’t for Francine, I would have never been able to piece together why Craig and Damon destroyed Nadia’s home. Nadia told me that the murderers, more than likely, ransacked her apartment because she was my girlfriend. But the actions of the two men made more sense now that I realized she was involved with Andre Franklin. Putting everything else aside, Nadia automatically became a suspect in the murder investigation.

I remembered sitting on the rocks by the water, and Nadia telling me that Franklin was cheating on Nicole. She wasn’t speaking of dreams eminent in the head of my younger sister, she was replaying endeavors occupying her time and space when she wasn’t around me. She stayed at my home everyday since Franklin was killed, because she was afraid that she would be targeted. But why would Nadia think she would be targeted? What was my ex-girlfriend’s connection to the Beautiful Killer? To Craig and Damon? Was Nadia the Master?

“Listen,” I told Francine, “I’m happy you had that conversation with Nadia on the phone. I’m glad that I found out. For that I am thankful, but I can’t understand why you would keep it from me. I’m sure you have your reasons, and I’m not going to question you about those reasons.”

Francine nodded.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said. “Why did you call my home if you knew Nadia was there?”

“I had something important to tell you.”

“How important could it be? You called my house and got in an argument with my girlfriend.”

“That wasn’t planned, no matter what you think. The argument naturally progressed from me asking to speak to you.”

I shrugged. “How did Nadia know I slept with you?”

“Are you being a reporter again,” Francine asked.

“I’m always a journalist. I haven’t been able to separate my personal life from my profession—that’s a flaw I have.”

“You don’t have any flaws, at all, Marcus.”

“How did Nadia know about our night together?”

“I told her,” Francine said, then plastered the pitiful look on her face again.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Nadia and Francine were in communication all along. I was sneaking behind the back of my ex-girlfriend, who already knew about my relationship with my new love interest.

I decided not to probe the obvious line of questioning that followed Francine’s confession. I said, “What was so important that you would call me on my home phone?”

“I was mad at you at first. Until I thought about what happened to me today.”

I thought that those comments were Francine’s clever way of shifting the conversation away from the inequities demonstrated on her part. I played along, not with words, but with a series of non-verbal clues, asking Francine to continue.

She said, “I was working and a customer came in. A woman. She brought you a brown sweater, a pair of tan slacks, and a shirt. She knew you liked earth tone colors. The woman was bragging about being with her man for six years. Pretty woman.”

Now I was interested.

“She asked my age and I told her. Anyway, the woman says I look good for my age. Then she tells me I probably know her man. Guess who her man is.”

“Me?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Exactly. I asked her name when she was leaving, and she said it was Melissa Thompson. I was thinking about it, isn’t that your son’s mother?”

“It was,” I said.

“Right. I know the Beautiful Killer, Marcus. I saw the Beautiful Killer.”

It is unbelievable how when all your chips are down, there is always something that uplifts your spirits about a situation. Sheds a new light on circumstances and brings you closer to resolution. I lost my girlfriend, didn’t trust the woman that stood in front of me—but I was one step closer to finding my son. One step closer to catching the woman that kidnapped Joshua.
“Could you recognize the woman if you saw her again?” I asked Francine.

“I would never be able to forget her face,” Francine responded. “She’s very attractive. She has gray eyes, Marcus.”

And just like that I knew the Beautiful Killer. Of course, my suspicions as to who the Beautiful Killer was needed confirmation through substantial evidence. But I didn’t think evidence would be difficult to attain on my prime suspect.

I didn’t want to involve Peter Chase and his team of federal agents, but I didn’t think I had an option. I needed to put the FBI on the trail of the Beautiful Killer one last time.

Looking at Francine Dawson, I felt a sense of fresh rejuvenation. The woman standing in front of me had genuine love for me. I couldn’t decipher if Francine’s objectives were so deeply heartfelt from the start, but I was sure she had the same feelings for me that I had for her.

The Beautiful Killer did know me. She knew Melissa Thomspon. She knew Harriet Thompson. She was close enough to Joshua for him to accept her arms as welcoming. The Beautiful Killer had soul-searching gray eyes.

uppity uppin up!

only read ch 52, will do the others later

Good visual imagery. Though I didn't read or even know what the other chapters were about I could grab alot from this one about the characters and a bit about there personalities.
Nicely done. Im sure you are already a successful writer.

thanks for the look, it's appreciated more than you know.

furthermore: I've read some of your stuff and I'm thoroughly impressed. You're definitely one of those individuals who can express yourselves through your writing in a more than sufficient manner.

Thanks again, Puddin'.....

Oh, so you really do write novels?
Very good read - Nice use of words, it painted a vivid picture for me as I was reading.

Hm...maybe you should think of re-using the word 'said'? It wasnt used to much throughout the chapters, but it seemed to stick out to me.
Just my 2 cents :) Hope to see more.

Thanks much for your advice in regards the word "said"...

You uncovered what I've known to be a major problem in my writing. I'm no good with that aspect of writing and I'll work on it. I was told a very long time ago that you might as well say "said" instead of "chortled", "demanded" and such...because the other words add nothing to your prose anyway.

But I've realized that I must find a more improved way of expressing my dialogue...any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks again.

I read the chapter at the top (52).

I like the imagery you used , although some sentences could be worded a bit better. Don't sacrifice sense for large vocabulary. Also , there were a few plot holes "Was the Beautiful Killer still alive?" ... but you didn't even tell the reader that the death was the result of homocide , let alone that the killer was beautiful.

Also , be consise. Don't add color to all of your lines , make it short and to the point ie: "At 3:17 in the morning, I was awoken by an ear-shattering, eye-popping, hair-pulling scream."

You don't need to say all that. Just saying "I was awoken by an ear shattering scream" would be much more effective

Feel me on this fam. Maybe I'll read more later on , you definitely got potential.

Stay up fam.

1

Thanks a lot........because this is Chapter 52, many of the holes in the plot are meant to be unknown to the reader. I take thorough consideration of what you're saying and I'll consider changing to suit such suggestions -- but only if after deliberation I feel it's appropriate. Sometimes people just need honest opinions to focus their work, you know. I know I break a lot of rules in writing, and I always will -- for the benefit of my style -- but improvement is always good.

Thanks for the look.

i still hate you..but ill read it tonight.

Good shit fam...I think all my criticisms have already been addressed...You definitely captured mah attention though.

Stay up Eugene, pz.

i hate te fact that ur so random and i already told u that...lol

but none the less ur writtens are very vivid and paint a picture for me to actually place myself at the "SCENE"

how ever i disagree with spitz on him telling u to be less descriptive i think the way u add all the similes make it more intense and adds more to teh vizual of everything as a whole...

i agree with LADY LACE though.. the word SAID does stand out alot... but its not that big of a draw back ...once ur done reading ur left with a sense of awe...its good reading.....


but i still hate the fact that i cant have the whole damn book!!!