Free MOSAICS: A Thriller by E.E. Giorgi Page B

reminded you of!”
    He wobbled his head and started the car. “Oh, that. Nah. I just miss my old man is all.” And with that, he backed out of his parking spot, bade me goodnight, and drove off, leaving me to cradle my own thoughts on profiling, murder suspects, and what the hell I wanted in life. 
    Once a killer, always a killer.
    Danny Mendoza. I slit his throat when I was sixteen. And then stabbed his eyes. Except I recalled nothing of that. All I recalled was his slurred voice, his breath heavy with dope and nicotine, telling me how he’d tortured fourteen-year-old Lily Germano, how he made her beg for her life, before he closed a noose around her neck and strangled her.
    The judge denied bail based on the cruelty of the crime. Every Monday of my one-month pretrial term, the jail psychiatrist came to the interview room with his perfectly knotted tie and clean-shaved face. He smelled of sugarcoated lies and ordinary mediocrity, of unexciting sex and conventional middle-class life, of a suburban two-story home with a blonde wife installed on the front doorsteps.
    Of everything I never had growing up. And he was staring at me, judging me.
    I have no doubt.
    He smelled so damned normal.
    The nights I’d spent curled up in a dirty cot, heavy steps echoing in the background. Keys rattling, inmates moaning, kids—just like me—screeching, sneering, snoring, crying, wrapped in vicious smells that crawl ed under my skin, into my bones…
    You know nothing about it, I snarled. Nothing.
    My rage churned a smile out of his thin lips. His finger slid toward the panic button, poised.
    Killing fulfills your anger, Ulysses, doesn’t it ?
    I did kill again. As a cop, clean shootings. Yet that triumphant little smile of his came back every time I pulled the trigger, like a feather tickling the inside of my ego. To remind me what I am. And what I’ll never be.
    No matter how hard you try, fate is always gonna come back to bite your ass.
    Like Oedipus.
    It’s in your genes, Ulysses, your fate switched when you were six… Every time you collect a new trophy, i t reminds you of what you are.
    And w hat you’ll never be.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    SIX
    ____________
     
    Wednesday, July 1
     
    “I hear your man did it again.” Malcolm Olsen squinted his small, beetle eyes trying to look earnest. He was trying too hard. A wrinkle on his left cheek curled around the corner of his mouth and came to rest on his chin like an old scar. He leaned back against the wall, laced his fingers across his stomach and smirked. A smirk never looks good in an orange jumpsuit, especially the kind that has CDCR—California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation—embroidered over the breast pocket.
    Satish sat at the long end of the table, facing the white cinder block wall, and I at the short end, opposite from Olsen. There were no windows, only a gray, heavy metal door, and a cc camera looking down on us from one corner of the ceiling. A bounty of disinfectant sprays lingered over all surfaces and yet failed to cover the stale smells of recirculating air, un-showered humanity, and general ripeness that permeated the place.
    I undid the knot of my tie. It didn’t help much—the nausea had already kicked in. It didn’t matter that I was wearing civilian clothes instead of an orange jumpsuit, or that the hogs—jail guards—nodded at me instead of sneering and yelling to my face. The nausea kicked in as soon as Satish and I walked through the double metal doors and a co rrectional officer handed us our visitor badges.
    Smells remain engraved in the brain like lovers’ initials on a tree—long after the love is gone.
    Satish plucked a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, opened it, and set the offering on the table in front of Olsen. “We’re not sure, Mr. Olsen,” he said. “A birdie told us you might have something to do with Charlie Callahan’s murder.”
    Olsen squinted. He shot his chin up and regarded both Satish and me very