Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 70429 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70429 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
His thoughts drifted back to his daughter. Well, the baby he’d thought was his child. Legend had had a similar situation a year or so later in high school, but that girl was his girlfriend at the time. A slightly better situation. Nevertheless, Legend’s girlfriend had terminated the pregnancy. Aunt Angel helped Caspian try and take care of baby Bethany, but as the little girl got older, she looked less and less like him. His genes were strong, yet the girl didn’t have his eyes. His nose. His hair. His mouth. None of him, in fact.
Aunt Angel was suspicious, too, and asked Sabrina straight out if there had been anyone else in the picture, which the young lady had denied. Sabrina said he was being stupid and ridiculous and letting his Aunt Angel poison his mind.
They weren’t even in a relationship—they just fucked around from time to time, so it wasn’t beyond the range of possibilities. He wasn’t the best father anyway, although he helped where he could. He was just a child himself after all, and a troubled one at that.
Regardless, he remembered clearly not wanting a baby to grow up without a father, like he had. Mrs. Florence had told him he needed to step up to the plate. In her words, ‘You wanna be out here doin’ grown folk things like havin’ relations, then you need to do a grown-up thang and be a father to this child.’
Hell, he’d only been fifteen when she got pregnant, but at age twenty-one, he decided to sneak the little girl to a DNA center over in Lexington that he’d heard about. He loaded the small child into his beat-up beige Chevrolet with rust around the tires, and off they went. Two days later, the results were in: 99.999 percent, he wasn’t the father. He was heartbroken and angry.
Then, after a few days, relief set in. He wanted nothing more to do with Sabrina after this revelation. Had she been honest, he wouldn’t have gotten as close to the child, but it was too late. A bond had been forged. Despite everything, he did miss Bethany, although she wasn’t kin. He even kept showing up for months after he knew the truth—until the big argument between him and Sabrina frothed over—two young folks who life had hit too fast. It took him a while to totally let go of that innocent child caught in the middle of it all.
Sabrina finally admitted many months later who the other possibility was. A guy he barely knew and who didn’t have a pot to piss in, much like himself. That didn’t stop him from giving the girl Christmas toys for two years after the facts were revealed. He even babysat a few times, too.
Caspian got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. He then opened a different laptop that required two passwords, and logged onto the Onion Tor VPN.
Cold case after cold case after cold case. Six of them.
After careful research, he’d solved these particular ones himself. It took months, sometimes years, but he unraveled them, one at a time. Pet projects. He’d then follow up and send an anonymous letter to the families, ensuring it looked as if they’d come from different states, sometimes even different countries. Some were handwritten—no prints, of course. Others were typewritten on cheap refurbished computers and typewriters, letting the poor ailing families know the name of the perpetrator who’d killed their loved one was wiped off the face of the Earth. He’d give a name and details, hoping to give them a shred of relief. He’d been at this for years and was always quite careful. Patience was a virtue. He didn’t have to speak a word to deliver justice. His mind and hands did all the work.
For his personal ventures, Caspian was mostly attracted to cold cases involving young women as the victims. The ones around his mother’s age when she died. That, too, had become a compulsion. More times than not, they’d have dark hair, too, just like Mama. He’d purposefully neglected to discuss these matters with his therapist, who he’d seen every two months for the past five years. The cases he’d zero in on featured female victims who’d been either missing for a long while, vanished without a trace, or died under mysterious circumstances. Someone had to be their voice. Someone had to be stronger than silence.
He sipped his coffee and smiled, pleased with himself, then leaned over to his other computer and turned on some music. ‘Cherish,’ by Madonna, started to play.
Flashes of sinking his knife into the flesh of various people filled his brain like a fine brandy pouring into a glass until it overflowed. His lips curled as he peered at the photos of his deeds over the years. Damn, I’m good.