Blood Orange

Hey, Kayla, I'm sorry I can't make it to your graduation; I have a date with a coworker I've been stalking for the past two years.

That probably wouldn't go over well, I thought as I sighed at my drafted text message for the third time. Of course, I never intended for the dichotomous realms of my existence to converge this way---especially on the one day I needed them to stay separate.

It's worth noting that although Kayla knows what I do, her understanding is quite vague and I intend to keep it that way.

Today is my sister's graduation, and coincidentally, the day I finally scored a date with Mitchel Hoffman, the man in question---though from his perspective, we've been chatting and flirting until our inevitable meet outside of work.

As an investigator, I had suspicions that Mitchel, a blood analyst and coworker in the task force, had been becoming concerningly obsessed with the Lipstick Butcher---the serial killer famous for targeting young women, luring them into a romantic relationship and butchering them into pieces; his unique marker was that each victim wore a particularly bloody shade of red lipstick. It made sense that he would be so invested given that many of the victims had been his former criminology students---it was personal to him.

My friend and fellow investigator, Natalie Brooks, was the most recent victim, whom I had the misfortune of discovering. It was a month ago and yet it felt like it happened yesterday, still so fresh on my mind.

In our grief over our colleague, Mitch and I grew close. I figured if I could vent to anyone about the Lipstick Butcher, it would be Mitch. Both of us, with our own personal investment, worked passionately on the Lipstick Butcher case; so much to the point that I was always the first one on the scene and he was usually a close second.

Our fondness had grown into something a little more and as we spent more and more time talking after hours at the office, we agreed our conversations required more...space. So we converged on the 1st of May.

This brings us to today; I sat in a red leather booth of the local diner sipping on my black forest milkshake, desperately trying to come up with an alibi that wouldn't seem suspicious to Kayla as I waited for Mitchel.

As soon as I heard footsteps approaching on the checkered tile floor, I hurriedly hit send and looked up with a brimming smile, “Hey, Mitch.”

“Hey, Cassie,” he grinned as he took his seat across the table, “sorry I'm late, traffic was terrible.”

It was three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in May. There was no traffic.

“Really? I bet it was torture.”

“You could say that.” He reached across the table and gently held my hand. “You know, I never would've expected someone like you to have feelings for me.”

I met his snaky green eyes with an innocent tilt of my head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you're very...analytical,” he said, rubbing his thumb across my hand, “I'm more of an emotional guy.”

“What's wrong with being an emotional guy?”

He paused. “When I fall, I fall hard and fast.”

“You're an idealist.”

“Of sorts. What's your red flag?”

“I'm very direct. Sometimes to the point of stepping on toes.”

“That sounds like it could be very dangerous.”

“Depends on whose toes I'm stepping on.” I took a sip from my milkshake.

He tilted his head at me. “You know, some people may find our relationship…unethical.”

“Because you used to be my criminology professor and now we work on the same task force together?” I returned to my milkshake, finding comfort in it somehow.

He paused, taken aback, and glanced around the diner for any potential ears. “Jesus, Cassie, you don’t need to be that direct. That makes me sound creepy.”

“Oh please, we’re both adults. I can make my own decisions.” I watched a small smirk form on his lips for a moment as I sipped my milkshake.

“It’s a matter of perception,” he retorted.

“Making regular house visits for ‘work-related’ meetings has its own connotations,” I raised an eyebrow, “Don’t you agree?”

Mitchel pursed his lips, “We were meeting to discuss work.”

I shrugged and sipped once more, “Like you said, it’s a matter of perception.”

An urgent ringing from my pocket almost startled me. I pulled out my phone to see Kayla's name on the screen. I sighed, “My sister's graduation is about to start and I completely blew it off.” I shrugged and put my phone back in my pocket.

“You missed your sister's graduation for a date with me?” He scoffed.

“This will be worth it,” I smirked.

Mitch’s eyes lingered on me for a moment and he subtly bit his bottom lip, “Where is she going to college?”

“Bayshore University,” I took another sip.

“That’s…an interesting choice,” he crossed his arms.

“Believe me she’s more than aware of what she’s walking into.”

“Well, it just seems like an odd place for your sister to go,” he raked his fingers through his hair, “since the murder on campus happened during your time there.”

I swallowed the memories. “Yes…it’s hard when your own classmate and rival is the victim of something so brutal, but it's what made me change my major to criminology. I wanted to know how a killer thinks and how to catch them.”

He nodded, “Very noble.” There was something lingering behind his eyes. Pain, regret, and something else. “As a professor, it’s a jarring thing to hear about one of your students. I mean, just the day before, she was sitting in my class stressing about maintaining her perfect grade." His eyes trailed back to me. "I sometimes forget how close you and Lilly Swan were, I know you two competed pretty intensely to have the best grade in the class.”

“I'd prefer to not harbor on my traumatic postsecondary education,” I chuckled with a wave of my hand, “besides, what I really want to know is what you think about the Lipstick Butcher.”

There was a brief pause, the temperature in the room just dropped and left an icy mist between us. “Oh really? What made you think of that?”

I rested my chin in my hands as I gazed off. “I've been asking for everyone's opinions about it at work. I'm just trying to make sense of it. I mean, this guy has killed eight girls in the span of two years and has a specific method of killing, but apparently no specific method of choosing his victims.”

“Why do you say 'apparently'?”

“Well, the only common denominator between the victims is a specific shade of red lipstick. They all have different backgrounds, ages, heights, etcetera.”

“But what about the romantic relationships?”

My eyes darted to meet his. “The lipstick was only applied after the victims were dead. They weren't romantic relationships. They were witnesses, and he was marking them like a box on his checklist.”

“How do you know they were witnesses?”

“The timing and placement of the bodies.”

His eyes narrowed. “Witnesses to what exactly?”

"His first crime, of course. At least it started that way, then it extended to any witness of his current crimes."

The atmosphere completely changed. He leaned back, clenching his jaw. “What was his first crime?”

I could feel the diner close in on us and the lights seemed to get dimmer. “Lilly Swan. She was brutalized right before final exams two years ago. A suspect was never found and it became a cold case.” My heart rammed against my ribs and my legs felt numb. “I believe the Lipstick Butcher has been hunting down every witness to his crime so that his acts stay buried.”

“If he wanted the secret to die with him, why make a big show of their deaths by butchering them into pieces?”

“Simple,” I took a sip from my milkshake, “he has a taste for it now. Who knows? He may be killing indiscriminately now for the thrill alone. That would make it nearly impossible to trace his movements.”

His chuckle sent chills down my spine. “So, you think the Lipstick Butcher killed a girl, in a completely unrelated case years ago, in cold blood and then went on a brandish killing spree for two years in an effort to hide his crimes?” He rubbed his temple with two fingers.

“I believe you did, yes.”

He stopped rubbing his temple. Something flickered in his eyes as he leaned forward, his harsh gaze was strikingly different from the laid-back colleague I was speaking to moments before. “Are you accusing me of being the Lipstick Butcher?”

"I'm proving that you are."

He blinked at me, as if still unsure that he heard me the first time, then leaned in slowly. “Are you out of your mind, Cassie?” His voice raised, “Do you hear how crazy that sounds?”

“Oh, you mean the damning coincidence that Lilly Swan was killed during your last year of teaching before you joined the task force and that nearly every victim afterward was a former student of yours?” I hid my trembling hands under the table.

I watched his eye twitch and his lips purse. “That’s all it is: a coincidence,” he snapped, “I had nothing to do with the murders. If I did, I wouldn’t join a task force in charge of finding the killer!”

“You should've thought about that before you poorly hid Natalie's body parts in the trunk of your car,” I countered, “Why Natalie, hm? Did she get too close? See something she wasn’t supposed to? Or was it an unfortunate case of being an ‘emotional guy’ gone wrong?”

His eyes widened and his lips parted as if I'd stabbed him, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“We found everything,” I crossed my arms in an effort to hide the welling in my chest. “The tools you used were stored in your garage with traces of blood from each of the previous victims. Your DNA is on every one of them.”

He stood up, his face red, sweat dripping from his forehead, and the corner of his mouth twitching. “How in the hell did you find that?”

“I've been watching you for two years, Mitch,” I glared up at him, “ever since Lilly Swan died. I’m going to make you regret what you did to her.”

“You’re crazy…” he let out a nervous chuckle and raked his fingers roughly through his hair, “so everything was fake? Even us?”

“Not everything,” I took a sip of my milkshake and laced my fingers together on the table. “I enjoyed our intellectual competition. It was exciting and challenging.”

“That was a game to you?” He furrowed his eyebrows, “you were insanely obsessed with the case to the point where even Natalie couldn’t get you to take a break.”

I narrowed my eyes. “An academic rival is still a rival, how could I not obsess?”

His head snapped toward me and he practically lunged over the table, leaning close and grabbing my shirt collar. “You’re not going to get away with this. Mark my words.”

My heart leaped into my throat and my fingers felt numb, “I figured you say that,” I quipped, “question: did you ever notice that this diner has been empty the entire time we've been here?"

He cautiously darted his eyes around the vacant diner and turned his head to glance behind the kitchen counter where not a single worker was to be seen. The distant wailing of sirens began to creep closer and closer, faint flickers of red and blue illuminated the block across the street as squad cars pulled around.

“Everyone's waiting for your grand debut,” I prodded. The tension inside me had finally begun to fade.

He released his grip on my shirt and watched the cars pull into the parking lot with a distant gaze. “You think you won, don't you?”

“Of course, I won.”

He bit the inside of his cheek, “You know this isn't right. I've been studying the Lipstick Butcher's moves much longer than you have. I can prove my innocence.”

“We both know that's not happening.”

“Cassie, please! I didn’t do this!” His voice cracked like the whimper of a tortured animal.

 “Like you said, it’s a matter of perception,” I sighed, “Blood orange was never your color anyway.”

Mitchel paused for a moment, and as the police burst through the doors, his lips muttered, “It's you.”

As he was slapped with handcuffs and dragged out of the diner, he turned and shouted at me, "You were the first at every crime scene! You were the one who discovered Natalie's body! You're the Lipstick Butcher!”

I leaned next to one of the officers, “He'll need to be psychologically evaluated.” I took one last sip of my black forest milkshake before reapplying a new coat of my Blood Orange lipstick.

With that, I strolled out of the diner in the midst of flashing red and blue lights and a crowd of uniforms, trying not to smile at the sound of Mitchel’s protesting screams from the squad car. As I sauntered past the mob of curious and concerned onlookers, I took a deep breath of fresh air.

Today was a victory. The electric thrill of conquest surged within me.

My phone rang again and as I answered my sister’s call, I glanced at the time and grinned with a budding excitement. I'm having coffee with my ginger next-door neighbor, Genise Witherspoon, in a few hours.

Blood orange might be her color.