Havana Fear (The Pepper Ryan Mystery Thriller Series Book 3) by Timothy Fagan

Author:Timothy Fagan [Fagan, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fireclay Books
Published: 2024-07-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

“So, what the hell can we do now?” asked Angel.

After a long walk and a short taxi ride, Pepper was back at Casa de Vides, sprawled in the living room with Angel and Hector. Angel looked upset. Hector looked defeated. Pepper felt both.

But time was short, so he brought out the police reports Detective Valdés had so kindly slipped to him, and they got to work.

They spent an hour reading the reports and studying the pictures in silence. Then they compared notes, including everything they could remember from the Carlina Borja report.

All the victims were artists. In fact, all were the most celebrated Cuban artists in their field. The four murders occurred in January, May, July, and August. So, the time between killings was shrinking.

“Looks like el Segador is getting more confident,” suggested Angel.

“Or more excited,” said Pepper. He knew both possibilities were not unusual for serial killers.

“The causes of death were all different,” pointed out Hector.

The writer, Alicia Arenas, died by blunt trauma—her fall from the tower and her impact on the concrete walkway.

The sculptor, Rolando Carreño, was poisoned.

The painter, Osanna Falcón, died from a blow to the back of the head.

And the dancer, Carlina Borja, was strangled.

“But then comes the weirdest part,” said Angel. “The killer stabbed each of their bodies in the back, over and over—after they were already freaking dead!”

“I agree with the psych profile,” said Hector. “The stabbings, it’s like the killer has personal anger toward the victims.”

Pepper placed the pictures of the three victims side by side. Absolutely brutal and absolutely similar. “I agree,” said Pepper.

“The book thing’s bizarre too,” commented Angel. Each victim was found with a copy of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls resting on their bloody back. But the reports didn’t speculate about what the books signified.

“It’s got to be a statement by the killer,” speculated Pepper. He knew that Hemingway got his book title from a famous English poem by John Dunne. Pepper remembered from a long-ago English literature class that there were debates about what Dunne meant by the phrase. Some thought it had to do with the interconnectedness of all people. Others thought it was a warning to the reader not to forget their own mortality. But leaving a book with that title on the body of someone you’d just killed? To Pepper, the act felt more like gloating. Or hubris.

“Holy shit,” said Pepper. He was reading the murder file of Alicia Arenas, the writer. Her body was found in January at the foot of a tower at the Ernest Hemingway estate outside of Havana, where she was doing a writing residency. She was el Segador’s first victim. The ones who first discovered her body, an estimated thirteen hours after the woman’s death, were Viktor Beriev and Dayana de Melina. They had arrived together to meet with Arenas about a possible film adaption of one of her novels. Instead, they’d found her dead.

“That must have been traumatic,” said Angel, after Pepper shared the information.

“Like a nightmare,” he agreed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.