Cold Hearts by Stella Hart

Author:Stella Hart [Hart, Stella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-27T05:00:00+00:00

2

Celeste

“They found the second body floating in the Allegheny.”

I twirled a pencil in my hand and glanced down at the FBI guest speaker, Agent Jason West, as he lectured on today’s subject. He paused and turned to the projector screen to point at the photo he’d just brought up on a slide in the lecture hall. “This was in late August, 2002.”

As he spoke, I could hear two girls whispering a couple of rows behind me. I knew they were talking about me, because they weren’t being anywhere near as quiet as they obviously thought they were.

“Look at her. She doesn’t even care. She’s just looking at all the photos like they’re nothing. What the hell?”

There was a short snort of derision from the other one. “I know, right? It’s weird. I mean, for us it’s normal, but for someone like that, with the… you know….” She trailed off for a second, then sniffed. “It’s sooo weird.” Her voice was annoyingly nasal.

“I bet if the Heartbreaker got her and carved into her chest, he’d find nothing but a block of ice,” the first one whispered cattily.

The nasal one snickered at that. Another student near me rolled her eyes, turned around, and gave them both a dirty look before flashing me a sympathetic smile. I gave her a faint smile in return, but I didn’t turn to look at the bitchy girls. They were pathetic and childish, but they were also probably right—sometimes I felt like I was frozen on the inside when it came to things like this.

The sickening images on the lecture slides should bother me, but they didn’t. I’d seen so much worse before. Besides, this was a criminology class. If I wanted to pursue this as a future career, I needed to be desensitized to horrifying images, even the ones from this particular case.

“…and then the third showed up under the 30th St. Bridge on Washington’s Landing.” Agent West went on with his lecture, his eyes coming to rest on me for a second before skating over the rest of the students in my row. “The killings stopped for four whole years after that, but they didn’t end for good. I’m sure you’ve all figured out who I’m talking about by now, right?”

The lecture hall filled with nods and murmurs. One clueless exchange student from Australia put her hand up. “Sorry, I’ve never heard of this serial killer. Who was he?”

Agent West smiled thinly. “Who is he is the more pertinent question. Or she.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “He’s still alive?”

“As far as we know. He was never caught, and after that four year cooling off period, he started back up again. He’s been active for fourteen years now, counting the first three victims, and he struck as recently as six months ago.”

“Wow.” The Australian girl shifted nervously in her seat, as if the serial killer might pop right up in front of her any second. “So who is he?” She quickly shook her head. “What’s he known as, I mean?” she added.

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