Black Roses

A detective comes across a harrowing case that shakes him to his core.

Allen Harris became a detective for the LA Police Department at the age of twenty-seven, and across the next six long years following his ascension, he had seen more horrors around the city than he had ever believed he would; and yet, the gruesome scene he arrived upon at 5:52 A.M., PST, on what he had hoped the night before would have been like any other Saturday right in the middle of February, was more harrowing than anything he had ever seen.

When Detective Harris arrived at the scene, he was already in a groggy state of disbelief, and it wasn’t because it was before sunrise; in truth, it was all due to the location. As he stepped out of his police cruiser, Harris shut the door, and took in the sight of the building. It was a monumental white fortress that sat before the coastline of the state of California, nearly seventy feet tall, reaching for the skies, and almost a hundred yards in either direction. Six rows of pristine and polished stained-glass windows stared out, closed, as if the building were asleep. Pillars rose along the face of it like the watchtowers of a palace, leading to the red gabled roof, and palm trees sprouted from the ground like palace guards. And standing before the massive place was a marble sign, just about the same size as Harris’ cruiser.

The Monarch Hotel and Resort.

Harris sighed and began for the doors. He didn’t like hotels all that much; you never stopped hearing about what happened in great places like these. Murders, ruinous cheating scandals, satanic rituals; it was all the same to him. He’d had the right amount of hotels.

Harris removed his fedora and freed his neatly combed blond hair to the early, dewy morning air, as he pushed through the set of gold-lined revolving doors.

The lobby was an extravagant thing all on its own, he thought. He was surrounded by wallpaper of salmon-pink, gleaming designs of gold, and plants, encased in fine pottery, were hidden around the room, stalking him from the corners. A silver chandelier hung above him, adorned with twinkling crystals that overlooked the fine velvet furnishings. The smell of sweet wood brought him back to camping in a cabin in the woods with his family, and though he wasn’t all that much into camping, his father always managed to convince him.

Haris was met with an empty reception desk. It struck him as something inherently eerie. He was aware the hotel wasn’t open for business just yet—and would not be for another month or so—but there was simply something about an empty hotel that rubbed him in all the wrong places. Especially the desk. It was missing the polite and overbearing receptionist, ready to accommodate your every need and desire. As the plan went, the Monarch Hotel was supposed to be open briefly within the next couple weeks to only a select few—the rich and powerful, as he liked to put it—but if something as awful as murder had truly occurred in this place, then he wasn’t so sure the plan would be able to continue as scheduled.

At the end of the left hall, he saw the flashing lights, muted by a pair of frosted glass doors, and he made his way down.

The lights of cameras brightened the dining hall, blinding the scene for only brief flashes, but Harris walked through it all unfazed. The scene appeared to be in the center of the vast room, enclosed by yellow tape, what felt like a mile away of marble floors to walk across. In truth, the tape seemed deathly futile to Harris. No one would be caught dead in a place like this, other than them, for at least another month—perhaps even more now.

Though, he supposed he spoke too soon.

Within the overly-secure bounds of the tape, he saw the body. Surrounded by photographers taking photos of the scene, a sheet was laid over the victim, and evidence collectors worked to find just about anything they could. Although, to his fresh eyes, he didn’t see all that much around. He saw the body, and adjacent to that he saw a splatter of blood, and then a pool of it, drying in a thick puddle from where the head lay. Two crystal-clear wine glasses were shattered on the black-and-white tiled floor, and in about a thousand microscopic fragments, a dark green wine bottle. The red wine pooled along the floor, intertwining with the drying blood of the victim.

Harris knelt beside the body. He often had good feelings when it came to scenes like this, after doing this for a long, long time, and this one just screamed homicide. Though he figured it didn’t take a detective to figure that one out.

“Well, would you look at this,” a voice came from behind him. “Somebody finally decided to wake up.”

Harris turned and met the gaze of Officer Cooper, a smug leer printed on his thick face. “Good morning, Herb,” he said. “What do we have today?”

“What do you think it is? It’s your late Christmas gift,” said Officer Walters, coming up beside Cooper, grinning wide and big. “We felt bad for forgetting to get you something. No receipt, so our apologies if you wanted to return it.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Harris muttered. He reached gently for the body sheet.

“Oh, I—” Cooper began, stopping.

Harris looked up at him. The man looked off.

“What is it?” Harris asked.

“I would just . . .” Cooper cleared his throat.

“Just prepare yourself a smidge, would you, Harris?” Officer Walters said. “It’s uh . . . an interesting one.”

Harris nodded, then pulled back the sheet.

He stifled a gag.

“Oh, Christ,” Harris said. He rose to his feet, a fist going to his mouth. “What the fuck happened to this guy?”

“My guess would be homicide,” Cooper said.

Harris glared up at him. “Oh, do you? He looks perfectly fine to me, doesn’t he?” He sighed. “Who was the responding officer?”

“Garrison,” Walters said.

“Of course,” Harris mumbled. He didn’t want to hear another peep about that guy. “Who in CSI is on this one?”

“That would be me,” said a voice behind him. Harris turned to meet Stuart Peterson, their head of CSI, stepping back into the bounds of the yellow tape. “Morning, detective.”

“Peterson,” he greeted. “Eventful morning?”

“I wouldn’t put it any other way,” Peterson said, slipping into a new pair of gloves. “I hope you skipped your breakfast.”

Peterson knelt beside the body, drawing back the sheet. Harris heard Cooper and Walters groan behind him. He fought the urge in him as well to stifle another lurch of his stomach.

He looked down at the revealed face of the victim—or, as far as he could see, what was left of it. The eyes had been gouged out of their sockets. All that remained were two empty, bloody holes, rings of dried blood surrounding them, trailing down the pallid and pale cheeks. Harris then looked lower, at the mouth sitting open, frozen in a lifeless expression of terror, dried blood around the lips, as if the victim had coughed up blood. Beneath that, he saw the throat had been slit nearly from one ear to the other.

“Heavens to Betsy,” Walters muttered, looking away.

“I think I may hurl,” Cooper said. And before Peterson could show them any more horrors, they both walked away.

“Now would be a good time to mention,” Peterson said, “that if you haven’t had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a one Mr. Robert Hamilton—now is your only chance.”

Harris snapped his gaze to Peterson.

“Robert Hamilton?” he asked. “This is Hamilton?”

Peterson nodded.

“This is the owner of the hotel we’re currently standing in?”

“It was,” Peterson said.

“What happened to him?” Harris asked. “Besides . . . this.”

Peterson returned his gaze to the body, drawing back the sheet even further. Harris’ eyes grew large.

“My God,” Harris breathed.

“Seven stab wounds on the chest and abdomen,” Peterson said without blinking, rising to his feet, “and four more across his back. It seems as though the victim was grabbing wine and glasses from the back room—two, to be quite exact—when the attacker found him.” Peterson stepped across the crime scene, carefully weaving through the body and the scattered remains of the glass objects. “Then, once the attacker had him down, they didn’t cease their brutality in the slightest. What sealed the dark deal was cutting his throat clean and wide,” he finished, his finger hovering above the gaping wound in his throat, like a cavern coated with dried blood.

“Oh, you think?” Harris asked.

Peterson looked at him blankly. “Yes.”

Harris cleared his throat and nodded. “Alright, do we have any starters on who did this? Any camera footage?”

“All cameras were down,” Peterson said.

Harris scoffed. “Did we find a weapon then?”

Peterson held up another bag, containing a bloody knife. “It would seem someone forgot to pack the kitchenware.”

Harris cracked a weak smile. “It was just left here?”

“So it would seem.”

Harris thought. It was quite uncommon, as far as he had seen, for the killer to simply leave the weapon at the scene. “Any prints?”

“None,” Peterson told him; “however, we did find footprints. Ten-and-a-half, to be exact. Most likely men’s. We’ll have to wait for the lab to see what kind of shoe our culprit was wearing.”

“I see,” Harris said. “I thought everything was packed up until the grand opening? Where’d the wine come from?”

“Supposedly, Hamilton had been hosting secret and intimate parties to prepare for the grand opening,” Peterson said. He gestured to the back room, across the dining hall. “Locals have reported seeing lights inside, hearing music from outside. A couple noise complaints here and there, but nothing deathly serious—until this morning, of course. There’s just about everything you’d need for a big dinner party back there—wines, silver utensils, glasses, just about anything. That’s where our attacker got the knife from.”

“Who was the other glass for?” Harris asked.

Peterson pointed behind him. Harris turned to see a woman sitting in a chair across the room, two officers at her side. She had red hair, curled and shining, and a thick blanket laid over her shoulders. Her makeup ran down her cheeks in black tears. “Clara Barber, the Front Officer Manager. She’s the only witness.”

Harris looked at Peterson. “Just her?”

Peterson nodded. “She’s been quiet all morning.”

Harris looked at the woman, then down at the body, and he wondered what the two of them could have been doing here at this unholy hour. Unfortunately, with the two glasses and the bottle of wine, it truly didn’t take Harris at all that long to come to any sort of conclusion to his own question. He was a detective, and that meant he was a tad overqualified to figure this case out. Harris would bet a considerable amount that that was why the cameras were down.

“I’ll talk to her,” Harris said, starting for her.

“That’s not all, detective.”

Peterson never blinked before the face of death; and yet here, Harris saw he looked oddly grim. Harris waited.

Peterson leaned over the body, reaching for a small plastic bag. “We found these laid over his eyes,” he said, handing it over.

Harris took it, peering in. There were two small, black circular figures inside, soft and folding in on themselves. “Are these—”

“They sure are. Flower petals, from black roses.”

Harris stared into the bag. He wondered where someone had even gotten black roses from—he wasn’t sure those grew naturally anywhere in California. Or even the United States, truthfully.

“And this,” Peterson went on, grabbing another evidence bag, longer than the first one—this one had a black rose inside, the long stem covered in thorns, “was found shoved down his throat.”

Harris’ suspenders suddenly felt far too tight. “Christ, this . . . this is just—”

“Way too early for all this,” Peterson said, rubbing his eyes. “It looks to be some kind of calling card. But it’s not quite like one I’ve ever seen. Have you?”

“No, I can’t say that I have,” Harris told him. He looked down at the body, half revealed under the sheet. He saw it all in his mind, the black voids where his eyes should have been; the flower erupting out of his open mouth, flourishing with death. It was an image that he was sure would unabashedly follow him into sleep.

“Alright,” Harris said. “See if you can find anything else. I’ll go talk to Barber.”

Peterson nodded as Harris stepped away. He crossed the room, approaching Clara Barber’s corner of false security. Harris gave the two officers at her side the signal that they could step away, and they both did with no protest. Clara looked up at him, eyes widened like a deer in the night. Her cheeks were streaked with black smears, and her eyes had red streaks within them, like red lightning.

“Good morning, Miss Barber,” Harris said, reaching for his notepad in his coat. “My name is Allen Harris, I’m a detective with the LAPD. Would you mind if I asked you just a few questions?”

Clara looked up at him. She nodded subtly.

“Miss Barber,” he began—and though he already had a theory of his own, he asked as gently as he could, “would you mind telling me what you and Hamilton were doing here at this hour?”

Clara opened her mouth to answer. Nothing came. Then her eyes—already red—began to swell with tears.

“We never meant to hurt anybody,” Clara said softly. Her voice already began to descend into airy whimpers. Her lips, glossed with red lipstick, smeared across her lips, either wiped away or otherwise, trembled terribly. “We knew it wasn’t right. He’s married, and I . . . we . . . oh God,” she cried, her face fallen into her hands as she burst into tears, shaking in her seat. “He told me he loved me.”

Harris swallowed, reaching for his handkerchief from inside his coat. He handed it to her. Clara took it and wiped her eyes. She breathed deep—shaky, but deep. She offered it back and he told her to keep it. He had plenty more.

“Miss Barber,” he pressed on delicately, “do you have any idea who would have any desire to do such a thing?”

Clara shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, I didn’t—I didn’t even see anybody else here when I came to check on him.”

Harris sighed. “Miss Barber, could you tell me where you were around the time Hamilton was murdered?”

She looked shocked. “I was upstairs,” she said, swallowing. “In the suite, the one we were . . . we were staying in.”

“Is there anything to prove that?”

Clara thought for a while. Her eyes were flushed with worry.

“No,” she said at last, solemnly. “I suppose there isn’t.”

Harris sighed. “Alright,” he went on. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Clara nodded.

“We were in one of the suites—the Presidential Suite,” Clara began, composing herself. “He asked me if I wanted a bottle of wine, and I told him I did. He left to go grab it, but . . . he was gone for a long while, too long to just be grabbing wine, and . . . and a couple of glasses. So I went down to go find him. But when . . . when I . . .”

She swallowed. Shaking. Inhaling deep.

“When I found Bobby he . . .” Her voice was starting to break. “I just found him like—like that.” Her eyes drifted across the room, to the body covered by the sheet. She broke into another fit of tears and used the handkerchief once more, covering her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s quite alright,” Harris said. He offered her a moment, then said, “Miss Barber, we’re going to arrange for someone to bring you down to the station. We’re just going to need a statement from you, if that’s alright with you.”

Clara looked a tad frightened. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t do . . .” She looked like she might cry again.

“Oh, I know,” Harris said, stopping her with a hand. “I know. We just need your statement. You’re the only witness to Hamilton’s murder, so it’s required. Then you’ll be taken home.”

I hope, he thought. God, I hope.

“Okay,” she said, nodding solemnly. “Okay.”

“Alright,” Harris said. “Thank you for your cooperation.” He rested his fedora back atop his head, nodded to Miss Barber, and he began back for the scene.

“Take her to the station,” Harris told Walters and Cooper. “She’s the only witness here. I don’t think she did this, but she was the only one here, so we need her to take her statement.”

“You sure about that, Harris?” Cooper asked, eyeing past him. “You know what they all say about the redheads, don’t you? They’re the crazy ones.”

“Just shut your mouth and do what I say, Cooper. She’s in shock, for Christ’s sake. Just take her to the station.”

Cooper’s mouth clamped shut and he nodded. Then he began across the room, but Walters remained beside Harris.

“Got something to say, officer?” Harris asked.

Walters looked at him and inhaled deeper than normal. He had a look in his eye, tense and disturbed. He rarely looked that way. “What the hell do you think this is? A new serial killer? I sure hope not.”

“If we’re lucky, we won’t have to find out,” Harris said. In all truth, he didn’t know what more to say than that. He hadn’t seen a case as morbid as this one in a long time. He had seen plenty of dark things throughout LA over the years. You had to, if you were in this line of work. It was necessary—when you put yourself on the front lines of humanity, when you were subjected to the darkest things that humanity could conjure, from the darkest parts of their minds, you had no other choice but to endure it.

What he knew about this one was that it was special. It had a creativity that frightened him; it was unapologetically malicious, and that was what scared him the most.

That meant they were enjoying it.

“I have somewhere to be,” Harris said, giving Walters a pat on the shoulder. Walters nodded and began for Cooper and Barber, and Harris stepped away, heading for the doors.

But as Harris was heading out, ridding himself of the unease crawling along his body like insects, he caught one last glimpse of the corpse across the room. The head had tilted upwards, and the empty, darkened eyes, stained with blood, were staring at him.