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he
was besting Tony Santos was an elixir, the most powerful taste in
the universe. Few ever experienced the wonderfully sweet taste of
power that he had. He was one of the lucky ones. One of the few to
actually take action on a plan that was so thorough, so well
thought out and follow through to the point of causing the one
thing he wished for more than anything else in the whole world.
    The man laughed out loud as he watched
Detective Tony Santos talk to one of the officers. He knew what
Santos would do next. It was simple and predictable. First the
great detective would pull together a team of officers and focus on
the evidence. A loud snort echoed through his car. Tony and his
police officers could search the scene all day long, but they
wouldn’t find anything because he hadn’t left any evidence. Well,
he had left one small thing.
    This time the laughs came so hard tears
trailed down his face. The puppet master was at work and Santos
couldn’t do anything to save himself.
    Tony’s success and failure rate on big cases
wasn’t a mystery. And this case was going to be big. So big that
Santos wouldn’t know what hit him.

Chapter 5
     
    Tony reached across the empty expanse of his
bed to find she wasn’t there. “Damn it.” Rolling over, he punched
the snooze button hard, knocking the clock to the floor. The
silence that followed reminded him how empty his life had become.
Dropping his anger on inanimate objects wasn’t his way, but his
dream had been vivid and waking up to find the bed empty and
Marissa gone, was a cruel trick. Sorrow flowed through his body,
squeezing the breath from his lungs. Something had to change.
    His thoughts switched to work mode, and he
groaned. The first forty-eight hours were the most important in any
murder investigation. It sounded like a trite catch phrase, thrown
around by supposed experts, but it was the truth.
    Yesterday was a wash. His team made no
headway. Everyone had stayed late to work on the Longfellow case.
Dr. Sekorski called at eleven to inform Tony that the victim had
the letter ‘A’ etched in the flesh of her right butt cheek. His
team had left before the call. This morning they would go over the
strange carving and try to figure out what it might mean.
    Before he headed home, Tony had begun to
make a list of what the ‘A’ could mean. The only thing he came up
with was that the victim’s first name began with an ‘A’. It didn’t
make any sense that the killer would carve her initial in her skin,
but anything was possible.
    The fog in his brain last night made his
movements slow and jerky, his thoughts jumbled. He was strung-out
from the day’s events, and decided to head for home. But home
wasn’t the same since Marissa left. Rambling around the house with
a beer in hand wasn’t as fulfilling as crashing on the couch with
his arm flung around his beautiful wife, decompressing before they
turned in for the night.
    “ Damn,” Tony cursed as he
slid from under the covers.
    Why was he thinking about Marissa? She had
been the one to leave. Tony stared at his face in the bathroom
mirror. He was lying to himself again. Marissa wasn’t in the wrong.
He had given her no choice. Disgusted with his self-deception, Tony
closed his eyes to avoid their burning look.
    Should he try to see her today? He couldn’t
put it off any longer.
    He opened his eyes, staring at his
reflection. He squinted, wondering if he could he do it? Did he
have a choice? Rejections from his past twisted his gut. Being
passed over for adoption, time and time again, taunted him. Marissa
didn’t have to take him back. If he didn’t confront her about her
decision, he could go on believing she would come back one day.
    That was the coward in him talking, and he
hated that selfish little bastard. He wasn’t a little boy left to
the mercy of an overloaded system. He was a man in control of his
future. Marissa helped him realize that long ago. He made up his
mind. Today was the day to pay a