The Last Chapter

The Last Chapter

To Whom It May Concern;

I have committed the perfect crime. None of you believed her when she said she was being followed. Personally, I don’t feel as if I crossed the line before. She was so perfect.

Meant to be mine from the beginning.

I fell in love with her the minute I saw her.

And then she took her away from me. She stole the love of my life. I tried to warn her that she was no good for her and she should be with me. I tried to reason with her. I honestly did. But she wouldn’t listen to me.

She wouldn’t listen to reason.

I am the one who loved her. I am the one who followed her everywhere she went. I am the one who watched her cry whenever she got hurt. It was me! Not her. She stole the love of my life away from me and now she will pay.

Just like she had to pay.

Sincerely,

Me

Chapter One

Brenda

The sun is beginning to fall over the horizon. It will be dark soon. I didn’t have a problem with night, it just made my job more challenging at a crime scene.  My shift was supposed to be over an hour ago, but a report came in, as I was heading out the door.  It was a report of a woman’s body being found. 

The chief said the call seemed to be similar to a case I was working on before and he wanted my partner and I to take a closer look at it.

The winter air tickles the back of my neck as I make my way through the tree-line to the riverbank. A few yards ahead of me is an area taped off. The crime scene investigation team is already here and so is the coroner.

Feeling uneasy about being the last one here, I flash my badge to the peon guarding the crime scene. Normally, I’m the first or second one here. Never the last one.

Detective, he says and lifts the tape up so I can cross under. 

In the moonlight, a piece of white lined paper catches my eye. The paper with the scratchy handwriting on it of someone who was in a hurry to write it. The writing is slanted, sloppy and looks hurried. There are a few misspelled words that have been crossed off on it, but that is to be expected.

Just by skimming the letter, I know we are dealing with someone uneducated.

Let me guess, they didn’t leave any form of identification on the body? I mumble to the coroner, Addie Miller. 

She looks over at me with a smirk. You’ve done this before.

Once or twice. How long has she been dead? I ask as I crouch down to look at the water-logged body of a petite woman. 

Her blonde hair is full of sand and her skin is tight against the bones of her body. Rigor Mortis has begun to set in. The woman looks to be about thirty-ish, and average height. There is a tattoo sticking out under her shirt of a typewriter on the small of her back. Maybe she’s some type of writer or something? 

I’m not entirely sure. 

Randy Campbell, my partner for the past three years, jogs over to us with his lip curled up. He still hasn’t gotten used to seeing the amount of dead bodies that have been washing up or showing up in our county the past three years. What do we have here?

I roll my eyes. A dead body, Campbell. What does it look like? 

If Campbell would have been here on time, he would have known more information. As always, he disappears in the middle of our shifts and no one can find him. I know I’m hard on him, but this is not just a job. This is something that changes your whole life. 

Miller hands over the note we found on the body which is now bagged in an evidence bag. I don’t know why she even bothered. The water would have washed away a majority of the evidence we would have been able to find. 

As Campbell reads the letter, his curly brown hair falls in his eyes. He’s a decent looking man at about six feet and he seems to have a muscular body. We work out a lot together at the gym, but I have never thought of him like that. He’s just Campbell to me. 

And, I happen to play for the other team. 

Any calling cards or anything around the body? Campbell asks.

I look around the woman’s body to see if I can find anything. Sure enough, I don’t see so much as a twig out of place. The river would have gotten rid of anything we could have used. 

No, Miller says over her shoulder. She’s an older mulatto woman with curly hair that falls over her shoulders. She has been a coroner for over fifteen years and seems to be married to her job. I won’t know much of anything until I get her on the table. I’ll let you know what I find.

And with that, she is picking up the body and putting the woman on a gurney to take back to the morgue. This is the part of the job that gets to be routine.

Come on, Campbell, I yell. We get to look through Missing Persons reports!   

Chapter Two

Corrine

W ho would you like me to make this out to? I asked, holding the pen and looking up.

The signing is a huge success! Over the past ten years, I have made my way to the top of the best seller lists and have earned every one of my readers. It was a hard thing to do, make life-long readers. However, I did it. I love them more than I can say, too. 

Each one of the author signings I go to, I have a decent amount of followers that stand in line in front of my table. I take my time with each of them. I try hard to