The Eyes have it

A small rectangular light coaxed Mel’s eyes to open. It was her phone, passive-aggressively calling out for a charge. 

She awoke to a dimmed office space, sitting back, with her neck lipped over the top of her chair, eyes staring pointedly at a series of number two pencils that punctured the ceiling’s porous surface; a cluster of dark, lined shadows. 

The dull red haze of the hallway exit sign cut through the glass windows, and she could just make out a low electric buzz, like a soft dirge humming through the space around her. 

Mel removed her boots from off the desk and dragged her hands over a puffy face. She could almost feel the purpled pillows beneath her eyes. The hours of sleep she’d had this past week could be counted up on one hand. 

Mel had been working routine all-nighters at the bureau, utilizing an office space turned storage closet on the lower levels of this concrete incasement for the past five weeks. Stacks of files, photographs, loose leaf, and pencil shavings covered every inch of this space. A cork board stood at the far corner of the room, a singular red tack running through the forehead of one Professor Ryan Thorne.

He was killed over a month ago. Blunt force trauma to the back of his skull. Eyes ripped from their sockets; leaving black, soulless caves. His body, found in his study, was contorted at an inhuman arch; the spine expertly cracked in several places, propped up by three metal rods—one through the neck, the chest cavity, and both of his feet, crossed over each other. 

Mel had been told to stay away from the crime scene, but she stormed in anyway, flashing her badge to a group of pale officers, bowing under the cautionary yellow tape. 

The grief of it bore in her stomach even now. She couldn’t look at his face on that cork board, not without recalling the visual nightmare of that day. 

It was no secret to the bureau that Thorne and Mel had a special relationship. Some might call it romantic, but Mel considered it more as a meeting of the minds; a feast of intimate psychiatry that scorched her insides like whiskey. They found pleasure in unraveling the rough edges of their mortal coil. 

But it was a terrifying thing, to reveal too much of yourself to someone else. To have someone see behind the mask; a truly ugly, fleshy thing. And it scared Mel; it scared her more than anything. So she drew a line, kept things strictly business, and left him out to drown in her wake. 

She hadn’t cried, only vomited into a waste bucket at the crime scene. A wretched sound that silenced the whole room. She had wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and left, Agent Fray chasing after her. 

It was after that that she grew into a creature of guilt. Spent long after-hours, pouring over a paper trail of Thorne’s lectures, notebooks, and dusty case files, borrowed from various police departments across the US. He had been working on an algorithm; she had watched him dabble with it during breakfast, absentmindedly forking eggs into his mouth. The algorithm, he had told her, sought to track homicidal patterns from within a city, potentially across state lines, pulling data from yearly murder reports sent to the bureau; ultimately aligning descriptions of the murder, the geography, the M.O. Thorne wanted to counteract linkage blindness, he’d explained, to make whole what others considered separate coincidences.

A week before he died, Thorne had messaged Mel to let her know he’d stumbled upon something important with his algorithm. A cluster of murders within their state, spanning ten years, all with the same exact M.O. They had planned to meet at the end of the week, to analyze the data together; he wanted an agent’s eyes, and she wanted to be a part of something bigger than herself. 

He never showed up at her office. And when she walked across campus to his classroom, she’d found it empty, not even his laptop on the desk. Hours later, they’d find him back home; skewered and shamed. Algorithm wiped from existence. 

Just then she heard a soft knock from behind her office door, and turned to Beverly Fray as she stuck her head in. The motion sensors caught her presence and the lights blinked on like eyelids, a soft clink clink clink before a fluorescent glow. 

“Still here?” Beverly asked, concern lined like a cavern between her eyebrows. Mel watched as she surveyed the hurricane of papers around her. 

“I could ask you the same thing,” Mel grumbled. She reached for another notebook and thumbed through pages of code, question marks, and the frustrated, circular scribbles of one who’s pen was nearing death. 

It was nearly two in the morning by now. She imagined her cat, a tabby named Phil, moping about the apartment, howling for grub. 

“Just talking to bodies in the morgue,” she said, shrugging as if it were normal. “Speaking of which... you look like death, Mel. Why not give yourself a break?” 

“I’ve told you, I’m fine,” Mel waved off the suggestion with her hand. “This is how I work.” 

“It’s chaos.”

“Organized chaos,” Mel corrected her, flipping a page in the journal. More notes for a lecture. 

Beverly snorted, shook her head. “Fine. But, if you need me, you call, alright?” She made to leave, but stopped to look back before closing the door. “And get some sleep.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Mel rolled her eyes, but a small smile tugged at her lips. Though the check-ins were tedious, Beverly meant well, she knew that. And Mel knew what she was doing—the long nights, the obsessive digging—was unhealthy... perhaps borderline insane. But by putting her all into this, she knew she wouldn’t leave Thorne’s death in vain. 

Before calling it a night, Mel pulled out a folded, printed page, stuck in the spine of Thorne’s journal. She recognized the format as an early version of his algorithm results; pockets of small, jumbled text organized into cells on a spreadsheet. Of the over one hundred cases detailed on the page, just eight unsolved murders were highlighted, dating back ten years prior. Cause of death: blunt force trauma to the head. The eyes were removed post-mortem, the bodies displayed in their homes. 

Mel found another page. A list with three highlighted cases. Dated nine and eight years prior. Blunt force. Eyes removed. Found at home. 

Mel swallowed, picked up a final page, a coffee circle at its corner. This time, only one highlighted case. Peter Glenwell. 37. Found dead at home seven years ago, body displayed in the living area, a pipe through his chest, lodged into the floor. Only one was eye removed; the other, a glass eye, was kept in the socket, rolled back to only show the white. The local police still had no one in custody. Frantically, she wrote down the name of the station on a blank page, ripped it out, and went home with Thorne’s results in her bag.

Five hours later, Mel stood outside the police station off Emery St., following in after the admin assistant once the doors were unlocked. 

“I’m looking for a Rade Wilson,” Mel said, placing her badge on the counter, watching as the assistant set her things down at the front desk. She was chewing on gum like a cow chewing grass. “He’s the detective on the Glenwell case?” His name had been on the spreadsheet, circled several times. 

The woman’s eyes slid to the wall clock, the badge, and then back to Mel. “He’s off on a fishing trip.” The pop of her gum shot through the room. 

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” Mel asked, tapping her fingers on the front counter before stopping herself. People were readily entering the building behind her, quieting at the sight of her badge. 

“Two weeks,” the assistant said, her voice possessed by a monotone enthusiasm. “It’s his annual leave.”

Mel sighed, “Can you call him? Let him know I have important information about the case?” 

“I can leave him a message on his desk,” the woman cut in. She studied Mel before pulling a pencil from a coffee mug. “Can’t promise a response. If I call ‘em when he’s off, I’ll get fired.” She nodded to a few officers who entered the building and slowly began to write down Mel’s information. 

“Just tell him that it’s an urgent matter, please,” Mel said, watching the woman write, making sure it wasn’t just gibberish on the page. 

The rest of the day Mel swiveled around at her desk chair, wracking her brain around the algorithm results; how they led to Thorne’s death. If only she had still been by his side. Maybe she could’ve prevented this. Safeguarded his ambition. 

She rubbed at her face. 

All she could do now was follow his tracks. Visit the police stations, cull through their records, interview those who had worked the cases—whatever remained of these murders, she would analyze and frame together. Look at the suspects, find through-lines. Did the killer leave anything behind? What was their objective, before Thorne? 

She turned on her computer, pulled up crime scene photographs stored in the bureau records, all from the victims on Thorne’s list. Endless black caverns looked back at her, humans without eyes. What was the meaning? Religious? Cultist? Were these people called out for not seeing? For not believing in something? Or was it some form of guilt? That the eyes judged him, even after death?

Mel shook her head and clicked through the victim’s backgrounds, searching for any stark similarities. But she was met with different ages, different genders, different races, different sizes. No significant religious ties or careers. It was almost too random; as if the killer had no reason for these selections other than they had crossed him at the wrong place, wrong time. 

Had Thorne seen something she hadn’t? 

It was then that her phone vibrated across her desk. She caught it and stared, thumb hovering over a hang-up. Beverly. She had emailed her earlier that morning with a scan of the results, remembering their conversation from the night before.

What am I not seeing? — m 

Her lips pursed into a thin line and she caved, put the phone to her ear. 

“Mel, they’re jurors,” Beverly stressed, sounding winded. Mel could hear the sharp clack of her heels beating against concrete. 

She blinked. “Jurors?” 

“Yes! Think about it: where else would you find twelve people. All from different origins, social statuses, careers, and towns. All registered to vote...”

Mel put a hand to her face. “And all from the same county.” She took a breath, pulled a search up on her computer. “Thank you, Beverly.” 

“Just know you owe me a drink,” she said with a laugh, reaching the indoors. She yelled at someone down the halls, her voiced muffled by a hand over the microphone. “A strong one, preferably.”  It wasn’t difficult to uncover the case that tied all these victims together, having hit various state newspapers. A man was on trial for the murder of his wife, Anna Bennett, who had been found drowned in the lake behind her home, stones in her pockets. 

Suicide was suspected at first, but the defensive wounds found by the coroner suggested foul play. It wasn’t long until Ray Bennett, Anna’s husband, was cuffed and behind bars. With insufficient evidence, and a defense that proved the coercion of a confession, Bennett walked home a free man. 

The brother, a Carter Dowd, had caused a bit of a stir at the end of the trial. He had stormed from the gallery after the verdict, tackling Bennett before the bailiff could stop him. Bennett’s head hit the ground so hard he became concussed, Dowd pounding his face until three officers finally pulled him off. The article noted that Bennett was left on the floor, spitting up blood. He’d lost several teeth.

Another news article quoted Dowd, as he was dragged off the premises, “You are all blind to the truth,” directing that same anger to the jury. The scene was captured in black and white, a page six story: Dowd pulled back at the elbows by three cops, leaning toward the jury like a snapping hound, while Bennett scooped up his teeth from a puddle of blood and spit. The jury’s eyes were a scattering of fear and neutrality. 

Mel continued her search to uncover details on what became of Bennett. Not just ten months prior, he had been found dead at home, having swallowed a whole bottle of eye drops. He had gone into cardiac arrest, his death ruled a suicide. A strange, almost poetic justice. 

Her mind wandered to the brother, his words in the courtroom. You are all blind to the truth. A hunch scratched at her thoughts. She turned to Thorne’s picture. Was this who you were after? 

Mel located Dowd’s address, a small home just outside the city limits, and decided to make a house call. 

An hour later, as her dashboard clock marked 7:45pm, Mel stepped out her vehicle and crossed the rusted metal gate onto Dowd’s disheveled property. Grass and weeds reached up high past her knees, swaying into her path. The doorbell was a mess of caved in, splintered plastic, so she opted for a knock on the door, knuckles rapping against the wood. 

No answer. 

Mel peeked in through his windows, squinting through the grime. No one looked to inside. 

She checked her watch. 7:51pm. What could he be up to? 

She decided to snoop around the property, looking over her shoulder before quietly rounding the corner of his house to the backyard. 

Nearly hidden by the tall grass, Mel spotted a pair of gray cellar doors, paint chipping off in large chucks. They were secured with a padlock. She would’ve ignored it, if it weren’t for the metal rods leaning against the siding; she recognized the ribbing, their rusted appearance. Her mind went still. 

Without a second thought, she grabbed one of the metal pipes and rammed it against the padlock; a repeatedly loud effort that was reckless in retrospect. 

But an effort that proved fruitful as the lock slipped into the grass. 

With a deep breath, she opened the cellar doors and descended, pulled on the string to illuminate a singular, flickering bulb among concrete walls. 

It was a normal cellar, a damp space with tools, supplies, and leftover furniture. But it was the newspaper clippings, scattered and hung — the red x’s cast over faces and names — that shifted the room into something wrong. And then, hung from clotheslines, were eleven pairs of eyes and one lonesome eye, that of Peter Glenwell’s, perfectly preserved. 

Pushing down her disgust, Mel began to take frantic pictures of the space with her phone, a focused numbness overtaking her. 

It was then that she heard a crash of glass, and a pop of electricity. 

The lights cut off around her, pitched her in darkness. 

Immediately she ran in the direction of the double doors, but they had been lodged back into place. She pushed her weight into the doors, but they did not budge. 

Heavy footsteps could be heard from above her, dust falling through the cracks of the flooring. She froze at the whine of the basement door opening at the other side of the room. The blackness before her seemed to shift as Carter Dowd slowly made his way down the steps. 

Mel blindly pointed her gun into the abyss, stomach lurching at the silence that poured over the space. 

“Dowd?” she breathed into the dark, careful to move her position.

“Ten years of peace, and now you’re all coming out of the woodwork like vermin,” he responded, voice shaking. “You people keep getting in my way.” 

“Ever consider there’s a reason for that?” Mel’s gun wavered to find his location. 

“What I did was necessary,” he said, voice closer. She recoiled, nearly tripped in the process. “Those people could not see justice.” 

“Justice?” 

“They let him walk free. They called him innocent.” Something scraped against the floor. A spark of metal against concrete. She remained still, trying to find a way to attack, to shoot. “He was the real murderer, not me.” 

“So you played God. Judge and jury,” Mel said, listening for his footsteps.

He stayed silent a moment. “I hope you understand that I can’t let you live,” he said, his voice like a scratch at her neck. He was behind her now. “As I couldn’t allow the professor to live.” 

“Why kill him?” Mel asked, throat dry.

“Unfortunately for him, his eyes were too clear. But the jurors, they were pigs,” he said, disgust lodged in his words. “All they had to do was see.” 

“Blind justice,” she said, turning to the sound of his voice. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark. 

“Yes.” A hiss of agreement. 

“And are you above that same justice?” she asked him, thinking of Thorne. Of his mutilated body.

Justice; justice was a funny thing. So easily warped, molded to one’s selfish desires. 

And she knew Thorne deserved something better than what the world gave him. 

She stepped closer, could make out his breathing. 

The man only laughed, and her gun set its sights. “They got what they deserved.” 

“And so will you.” 

A bright light, a crack of sound, and the man fell limp to the ground. His eyes were open in surprise, glossy in the moonlight. As if he were seeing justice for the first time.