EVE 2: The last symphony

    Days passed unnoticed, and the only thing on my mind was that woman. Even though I had other cases, I found them mostly boring, since no case interested me like Eve’s. Despite not leaving many clues, this woman, or may I say assassins who worked for her, left patterns within older crimes that we managed to discover. She’s either challenging us with her games or she commits these murders purely for fun.

    A week after, we had another case of a woman who obviously killed her husband and couldn’t control her body language. She even confessed immediately after we told her that lying may extend her period in jail. The moment my colleague Steve and I started discussing said case, I received a message from an unknown number and read it out loud. It read: “Don’t cry for me, for I go where music is born.” I had no idea what it meant but Steve, a musician back in the day, said that these were Bach’s last words to his wife on his deathbed. It was an unusual message but I didn’t have time to think about it for I was busy helping Steve and his husband with preparations for their newborn baby celebration.

   Two days later, and during the ceremony, a woman called and said she urgently needed a meeting. It was most likely Steve who shared my number on his blog because we secretly decided to work apart from our boss and become private detectives. I apologized to him to go see her but he seemed worried and said he’d check on me every now and then to make sure I was still alive. We used to go on all of our cases together but once he got married things changed. I immediately drove to the address she gave me.

    I arrived there and found her sitting on a street chair crying her eyes out. Once I approached, she dried her tears and drew a smile on her face as if she had seen a spark of hope in the darkness of her desperation.

     “Are you detective Olivia?” she asked, trembling.

     “That would be me, what’s your name?” I replied patting her on the shoulders and simultaneously checking if she had any weapons.

      “Carla.”

      “Is everything okay Carla?”

       She told me she needed somewhere more private so we could talk. We went to a coffee shop nearby and I ordered her a cup of coffee, she couldn’t even talk to the waiter.

      “They lied to me.” She spat out angrily.

      “Who lied to you Carla?”

      “Policemen, they told me my husband killed himself, but he would never do such a thing. I’m sure of that. He was only forty one, he was passionate, and he loved life… he loved me…” She started crying again “He would never do that to me.”

       “Carla I’m sorry for your loss, but there must be something else that assured you it wasn’t suicide. What is it?”

       “I heard something”

     My heart beat fast as I heard her last words. I knew it was excitement but didn’t let it show. She seemed frightened.

      “My dear husband looked scared the day before his death. I thought he was just stressed with work. But when we went to sleep the day after, he said he didn’t feel alright and needed to play the piano to destress. He started playing. I remember it was Bach’s symphony, he used to love it when we were young. I then heard steps, and a gun shot. I rushed to the room to check on him and found his body lying on the ground, drowning in its blood, a gun in his right hand. I called the police right away and they deemed it a suicide. No one talked to me or listened to what I had to say about it. They didn’t even call a detective, that’s why I came to you. I heard that you and your friend are the best in the country.”

      “Tell me about your husband, his work, his relationships, something weird that happened lately. Anything can help.”

      “He had contact with someone new. I don’t know who it was, and he refused to talk about it to the point that I thought he was cheating on me, but apparently he wasn’t. Oh my poor John! His phone was there when I found his body, but I couldn’t find it later on, they took it.”

    I tried to calm her and asked if she wanted me to drive her home, but she refused and said that she could take care of herself. At that moment Steve called to check on me. I promised to tell him everything once I got back because I was too tired to talk.

    I woke up the next morning excited to tell Steve all about yesterday’s events. I wasn’t bored anymore, things were getting exciting again. I went to work, greeted my angry boss and told him about Steve’s baby so he would treat him well, and sat at my desk to do some work until Steve came. He showed up so late that our boss threatened to fire him. I told him every detail of my conversation with Carla so we could start analyzing it. Either this man knew something and someone unreachable had planned his murder, or his assassin was well protected. A few hours later, I received another text from an unknown number that read: “The taste of death is upon my lips… I feel something that is not of this earth”. Steve froze.

       “Mozart’s words before his death.”

       “A serial killer.” I said, hiding my excitement.

                                                                                            To be continued …