I watched hours of interrogation footage, and the police overlooked a vital piece of information given by their prime suspect: Elijah had been dating someone who ‘didn’t fit the life,’ as he put it. Despite the insistence of the best friend, no one followed the lead.
Pressure to resolve these media-picked cases trickles from the mayor and chief, putting political pressure on the departments. Coining it as a gang-related crime, unfortunately, assuages all elements involved, except the survivors.
With IQ3, I have access to prisons in order to conduct interviews with the criminals. It’s not often that petty crimes are of importance, but just this morning, I interviewed and assessed Elijah’s friend. We started with the interviewee’s drug-related incarceration and his past, and the conversation naturally transgressed to the Bitten case. The death of his best friend, who died three years ago, weighed heavy on his conscience.
His theory pointed toward the girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend. Previously, I looked into this wealthy boyfriend; not only did he own a gun, but so did three members of his family, and those were the registered weapons. I doubted the grandfather and father, who were both dead, had anything to do with it. This leads me to believe, the name on the bullet will most likely belong to Aaron Borshin, who had been implicated and arrested for armed robbery with multiple arson charges, but none stuck. Money can buy a lot of things in this city, especially freedom.
The police, with a modicum of diligence, will connect the evidence and realize Borshin had staged the scene to resemble a gang shooting by using multiple guns, one of which will most likely tie to the weapon he used in the armed robbery, and the others, to the ones belonging to his family. If my speculation is right, Borshin was smart in a stupid kind of way. In three hours, that gave him seven minutes per shot and plenty of time to enjoy Elijah’s suffering. Given the scene of the crime, no one would have heard Elijah screaming.
This is what I like to call, Good foundation, poor execution. Psychoanalysis will no doubt shine a light on Borshin’s lack of guilt for his kill.
Why would it? Eliminating Bitten got him what he wanted. According to his social media, Borshin is married to his ex-girlfriend, who had leaned on him through the heartbreaking time.
While Bitten Senior, now divorced and estranged from his other children, continually seeks justice for his son. He doesn’t believe Elijah’s friend killed him, so he has spent countless hours spying on the gang he thought did.
He’s been shot twice and is still relentless.
IQ3 will no doubt match Borshin to the guns, and then I’ll happily engrave his name and send it off. I’m not quite sure whether Elijah Senior will take revenge into his own hands, take the evidence to the police, or sit with the information, like many before him did.
Either way, I’m always excited to see what happens when people are given the opportunity of retribution.
My computer pings with a calendar notification, distracting me from my afternoon endeavors.
My ten o’clock appointment will be here in the next fifteen minutes. Prior to our first encounter, my patients are required to send all the necessary paperwork, complete with bloodwork, permissions, insurance information, and medical history. Pulling up the file annexed to her name, I prepare for the meeting.
The first sheet tells me very little about her: female, engaged, age twenty-six, drinks coffee three times a day, and doesn’t smoke.
The next page tells me a bit more.
She’s a cop. Interesting. I skim over the details of her specific situation and dial my receptionist, Cara.
The older woman in her late forties picks up immediately. “Hello, Doctor. What can I do for you?”
“Morning, Cara. How was your night?”
“Boring as usual.” She sighs softly, but mostly for comfort—my concern eases her mind. Cara’s family lives seven hours away, and after her divorce, I’m the closest thing she has to a sort of friend. “And your night?”
“Busy.” I chuckle softly to pique her curiosity.
“How so?”
Never fails. “I had a date that ended poorly.” Mostly, I’m asexual, meaning I don’t feel sexually attracted to women or men. Sex, with either gender, is tedious—a chore more than anything else, but I do enjoy the release that comes with an orgasm.
Luckily, I don’t need a partner to achieve this, and therefore, am not dependent on anyone. A little lie about dating both assuages the people around me and provides a decent alibi.
“You need to stop finding me-wo—” She stops stuttering for a moment and exhales before continuing, “You’re a handsome man, Dr. Mills. You need to stop using those teenage dating phone apps to meet people who use fake names.”
Her flustered concern amuses me; I lean back on my executive leather chair and smile. “I assure you, Cara. It is not teenagers I meet.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know,” I soothe before she insists on explaining. “One of these days, I’m going to work less and actually make it to happy hour.”
“I do not understand why you need to run group sessions or work at the university. You make plenty of money here, and you’re turning away patients.”
I make more money working on the IQ3, but that’s a secret project, and requires security clearance for information. “I don’t do well with idle time, you know that. Now, tell me about my next patient. Why does it say police referral?”
“Oh, poor thing.” The tone of Cara’s voice dips low and grows hoarse, almost strained as she explains, “Do you remember three months ago? The cop who was shot?”
“No,” I answer, honestly.
“They didn’t give it much attention because it was around the time that girl’s body washed up on the shore, you remember? Oh, what’s her name? Her mother is one of our patients … Mitchell!” she shouts.
Ah. Yes. Test Subject number forty-seven. That one is almost done too. She’s checked off as a revenge-seeker, and will no doubt produce a body. So far, with over fifty bullets delivered, the death rate of the study is just over fifteen percent. Due to the early assessment and what I refer to as “open tests”, this preliminary number is not statistically relevant. Albeit it’s nature, I find the otherwise useless calculation telling and allows me to accommodate my schedule accordingly. Of the ten people sitting on a bullet, at least one of them will act. The question at this point is when.
“So sad … Anyway, Ms. Devero was pregnant before being shot.” The woman who knows everything about everyone, but doesn’t have friends, goes on to explain a variety of different things about those occurrences until someone chimes in on the other line. “Got to go, Doc.”
“When she arrives, please bring her in.”
“Yes, sir.”
As soon as the call ends, I run a search on Eleanor Devero. Immediately, the headlines from three months ago fill my screen. The one titled “Unborn Baby Murdered on the Streets of New York” catches my attention because a murder conviction can’t be achieved on an unborn person in the city. At least not yet.
After ten minutes, I know enough about her to be intrigued by my new patient. Despite having ten nearly solved, or solved cases, I had considered taking a break until the media died down a bit.