"What's that?" Halen asked, coming over to his desk.

He'd been staring at the large envelope for a while now.

"A package from a dead man," Oliver said, and Halen pulled up a chair.

"What?"

"It was post marked the day that Nathan was shot, but has no return address and a delayed delivery date. All it says is "from a dead man." Oliver turned it over and grabbed a letter opener from his drawer. As soon as he opened it, loose pictures spilled out onto his desk, and Halen jumped up and skittered back.

Pushing them away from one another, he tried to figure out what they were. Corpses, for sure, but there was a woman in the pictures. They were trophy pictures, all of them. What sort of sick person wanted to keep a memento this deranged? Inside of the envelope there was a small SD card likely containing the hard copies.

There was also a letter, and he pulled it out with morbid interest.

"Please kill her or the murders won't stop," Oliver read aloud, and Halen crawled back to look at the paper. His enforcer didn't have the constitution for the brutal photos and hovered close to him when he was uncomfortable.

"There is barely anything written," Halen said. "For a dying guy, he sure didn't have much to say."

"No, I guess not." There was a second page, and he flipped the paper over.

I couldn't do it, but I'm gone now.

Richard Williams.

"Holy hell, this is from the guy who lost it at the pen," Halen said.

Oliver narrowed his eyes. The man who'd caused Tanner's death. Why would he do the bastard the favor? Oliver did his research and figured out the girl was Melinda Williams, currently at a university and studying for women's rights and welfare. She was on a number of articles detailing her community service and fight for shelters for women as well as help groups for various addictions.

She was pristine on paper.

Pushing the SD card into his computer, he opened the files and gave them a closer look. There weren't so many, but they were deranged enough that it was unnecessary. In each there was a different woman, but none were the one who was murdered here. Whoever this woman was, she was insane, but the one who'd taken the pictures had to have been equally as void of a conscience.

In the first, she was straddling the girl and pulling a belt that was wrapped around her throat, though from the eyes, Oliver could tell she was long dead. The others were no better. All of them had her pinning a corpse, or violating it in some depraved manner.

The last image wasn't one, and he clicked on it.

A document opened and it had two numbers.

The first he knew.

1-2pm, December 11th

The date and estimate time of death for that woman who had been murdered here.

3:30pm, 1520 Gable Avenue December 11th

The second he knew, but didn't know what it meant. That address was one of his bars in the back parts of town. It had surveillance like any other, and dread filled his chest as he considered what this was. It was a message from a man dead, one who had nothing left to protect in the grave.

It was a drive, but he had to know if this was the truth. His men greeted him and offered him a drink as he came in, but he brushed them off. They muttered complaints and others patted him on the shoulder in a more physical display then he was used to. They all knew he was mourning Tanner's loss still and wanted to help.

Nothing would help.

Nothing but this.

In the back, he found Luca laying around, but he hopped to attention as soon as he entered.

"What can I do for you, boss?" he asked, and Oliver motioned toward the wall of tapes.

"How far do you keep back?" Oliver asked, and Luca frowned.

"Not far, I'm afraid. A month if I'm lazy about erasing, a week if I keep to my normal standard. Not much happens here. Why?"

"It's fine. It was wishful thinking on my part to think you'd have something so old." Oliver turned to walk out, but Luca got up and cut him off.

"When are you looking for?" Luca asked again, and Oliver sighed.

"December eleventh," Oliver said, and Luca's eyes brightened.

"You want those tapes. I have those." Luca crawled over boxes into a back office and rummaged around for a while.

After a few minutes, Oliver crawled in to see if he was still alive and regretted it. It was packed wall to wall with old tapes, and junk that he couldn't even identify. It was the horrible hovel of a pack rat. A stack of boxes fell, and Oliver took a step back as Luca emerged with a small one.

"I didn't erase these because I knew who was here that day. Here you are." Luca went back to the surveillance room and popped the tape in.

It had a good view of the counter and half of the room. People came and went in the film as Luca fast forwarded through the day until a familiar face walked in. The film clock said eleven am, and Oliver looked down to Luca.

"Sorry. I know it's a sore spot for you, but I was fascinated that this was the last place that guy was on the day of the murder, so I watched them a few times. I personally played darts and pool with him in the early hours of the day. It was usually easy to win money from him, but I got the impression he lost on purpose so people would let him hang around.

"Anyway, he was here all day. We lose sight of him for like a minute or two here and there for the bathroom, but around one, he's at the counter drinking. The man didn't go too heavily on it. He hadn't been for awhile, and he just sits here pretty much all afternoon chatting up Angela. You don't want to see what he does under the counter around two. It's gross," Luca cringed. "He doesn't leave until around three thirty. See here, three thirty-five, he gets up and heads out the door."

"Son of a bitch." Oliver grabbed his mouth, and a vicious urge for revenge coursed through his bones.

"What's up?" Luca asked, and Oliver shook his head.

"This is an alibi. Richard Williams couldn't have killed that girl. The real perpetrator of the murder that set everything off at the pen is walking free."

"Shit. Do you need us to round up surveillance in the area and see if we can't figure out who it might be? Everyone kept the tapes from around then."

"No. I know who it is."

~

Tailing the woman wasn't hard, mostly because she was focused on tailing her own prey. How convenient for him. Maybe Melinda was here to kill her, or maybe she was observing her to see if she was a good candidate for later. Either way, her focus wasn't on him, so slipping up behind her was easy.

"Excuse me!" Oliver called out, and the prey took one look at him and skittered away.

Melinda Williams turned around to him, and her pallor became ash.

Good girl. Knew who he was.

"Why are you here?" Melinda asked, reaching down for her purse.

Oliver didn't let her get that far. Bringing his gun to eye level he pulled the hammer and she froze. "Drop it," Oliver commanded, and she slid it off her shoulders. "Didn't your mother tell you not to wander in deserted, camera dead-zones?" Oliver smirked and ushered for her to go into the building to her left.

It was condemned and she had to kick in the door, but no one was around to hear. It didn't matter. He was in Venice right now, with pictures tickets and airport surveillance to prove it. Money bought him safety and the ability to carry out his revenge with leisure. As they walked in, she backed to wall and her hands fidgeted again.

"Strip. I have no idea where you might be carrying. If you reach for anything that looks like a gun or phone, I'll shoot your hand clear off."

The girl was ice. With no emotion on her face but frustration, she pulled off her shirt and pants, kicking her phone to the side. It was an old GPSless flip phone. Of course. She couldn't stalk prey with tracking on her.

"All of it," Oliver said, motioning for her bra and underwear.

"You get off on this?" Mel asked, but Oliver remained silent. "If you want a good time, I could be more than agreeable. You don't need the gun."

"Wrong tree, Melinda Williams. I'm engaged."

"Please, what men don't have a little fun before the wedding?" the woman tried again, taking off her bra and flaunting her breasts like they'd save her.

"To a man," Oliver elaborated, and her smile fell away.

"Great, a queer." Melinda crossed her arms over her breasts, and Oliver took his first step toward her.

"A fair queer." Oliver lifted the gun and set it down on the table. "I'll give you the same chance I gave Tanner the day I came to kill him."

She didn't deserve it, but Oliver wanted this to last, wanted to remember the feel of destroying this woman. While shooting her straight in the face was appealing, he wanted to do it himself, with his bare hands.

She darted for the wall to get around him, and he moved with her, grabbing her by the arm and tossing her back onto the ground. She let out a squeak and cursed when she cut herself on an old nail. As much as he wanted this to be longer, he could tell by her form and expression that she'd never done any heavy lifting.

Without subterfuge she couldn't fight, and he was bigger than her.

Positioning himself on top of her, he grabbed her wrists and wrenched them to the side as she tried to fight him. She was so weak, so easy to subdue. There was nothing in her eyes as he brought his own to an inch away and bore his hatred into her.

"You want a kiss, fag?" The girl spat on his cheek, and he wiped it off, slapping her so hard across the face that she'd reconsider doing anything similar.

"I want you to remember my face in Hell," Oliver said, grabbing hers and yanking it forward so she had to look at him. "You took someone I loved that never deserved to die."

"Aren't you gay? I only kill women."

Oliver slapped her again, and she groaned. If he didn't stay his hand, he might actually knock her out, and that wouldn't do for what he had planned.

"You don't need to know his name. It will mean nothing to you. Just know that it was your brother who led me to you. It seems like you put a little too much on his plate to swallow, and in death he was released from his obligation to protect you.

If the woman cared, it didn't show in her eyes. There was nothing inside of her. How she put on a façade every day was beyond him. Releasing her wrists, he wrapped his hands around her slender throat, and she clutched at his as she realized what he was doing.

"You bastard," she rasped, but he choked it off.

"This is how you did it, didn't you?" Oliver said, squeezing off her breath.

She clawed at his arms and he gripped harder, his rage and agony pouring out of him. In her desperation, she raked his skin with her nails, but the pain only burned this memory into his mind that much harder. Tightening his grasp, he squeezed and she flailed under him but couldn't escape. No one could escape, not when they'd taken something precious from him.

After a bit, she weakened and her hands fell away to the floor. The fear and rage grew to vacancy as red blossomed in her eyes and she faded. Sitting there over her still corpse, he couldn't remove his hands from her throat. They were gripping her skin, and he wanted to do it all again, take it back and make it worse, but no matter what he did, he'd never be satisfied.

Tanner was gone.

"Oliver." Halen came in and stood next to him. "Come on." Halen reached down and eased his hands off her neck. "She's gone. Let's get the cleanup in here. You want to throw the body at the authorities with the evidence you have, don't you?"

"Yes." Oliver stood and went with him to the opposite wall as Halen texted their men. This was an out of town job, so they'd only brought so many people. They didn't have the resources or comfort to linger. With her natural aversion to surveillance, Melinda had made her own murder easy.

"Can I ask why you care that she's outed for what she was?" Halen asked, sitting on a chair next to him.

"I don't. But Richard Williams did me a favor in handing over the perpetrator for Tanner's eventual death. True, it was his own fault, but I am a man of my word, and a debt is a debt. I owe Richard Williams his innocence for granting me my proper revenge."

"Are you going to get those treated?" Halen grimaced as he looked at his arms.

Oliver examined the ripped black flesh on his for arms and cast his eyes on the blood smeared on Melinda's cold dead hands. For being so weak, she fought just as hard as everyone in the pen had to stay alive. It hadn't helped them, and it certainly swayed him none.

"I will, but I want them to scar. I want to remember."

It was all he could do for Tanner. Remember him and be a vessel for his legacy.

Word count: 2371 -- Edited March 26th, 2020