One More Piece of the Puzzle...

‘Several blocks away...’
As he had been for each murder which had happened yet. Frankie Sommers had been two blocks away for the murder of the girl, Penny Ranger who had died last week. The man who died just before her. Both in Queens. And yes, he had been two or three block away when their bodies had been found. Watching the police, their searching for evidence. None had been found. They had no clue as to the identity of the killer.
Though Frankie Sommers certainly did. Had the police thought to ask him, would their investigation still be pondering? Hard to get an answer when they never spoke to him, only moved him on without asking a single question. How he hated to think of those people the city put their lives in the hands of. The NYPD, ‘New York’s Finest’ but far from their slogan. Now though he had heard they had called for help from the Bureau of investigation. Federal that is.
Finally, maybe someone who could give him a real challenge, he would look forward to it.
Young officers, some dressed in Navy uniforms, some plain clothes but most were dressed in crime scene overall’s, the NYPD logo proudly displayed on their arm. He watched as they cleaned up the crime scene which had just happened. A teenager, male Sommers believed from what he had overheard. A student from the local high school. Hillcrest High School. A shame really when you come to think of a person dying so young, their life ahead of them. Such a cruel way is how murder works. Yet the feeling leaves a sweet stain inside a person, a kick like a drug. One which is to be enjoyed and preserved.
The man stood and pulled the hood of his jacket over his head.
Blend among the crowd. That was the trick. This particular jacket had cost him over $200. A price a man would pay to blend with the crowd. A shame Queens had a particulary stylish crowd of gangsters and those who just wanted to be. Far from the high prices in Manhattan, prices Sommers could far from afford. The reason why only twice he had travelled to Manhattan and failed to blend in. He had returned to the modestly expensive part of town. Where people lived in houses more than apartments. Where people bought instead of rented. Still part of the big apple, Queens was a mixture of a normal life in America, and life in New York city.
Normal it was until Sommers had become so fond of this area. Now, he had to go. He had business that needed attending to in his next favourite place on earth. Brooklyn.

Anyone who is prepared in these dark days to travel along 73rd Avenue will finally come to Cunningham park. Usually empty for a summers day. Cunningham park would have in face been completely deserted if it wasn’t for the dark figure whom could be seen laying perfectly still on the uncomfortable wooden bench he called his bed.
Riley Stevenson had spent the previous four years of his life homeless. Surprising only for the fact that he was no more than fifteen. When his parents had died in a car accident Riley had found himself homeless and alone. A life he later become accustomed to. Riley in fact now enjoyed being alone. No one to give you orders and no one to keep an eye on what you do. The only thing that prevented a person from doing something was what he himself wanted to do.
No longer still and now awake he sat and looked around the park. This place had become his home. Three weeks ago today he would have been woken an hour before this time by a group of mothers and small children running around the park making as much noise as they could. Today though, he was alone. The park was empty as far as he could see.
Of course, even a bum with no television could easily keep tabs on what was happening in this city without much of an effort. Provided he had the ability to read and was prepared to talk down the busy main streets to buy his daily fix then he would know of the murders which were ravaging this town.
Riley Stevenson, however aware of murders, felt no need to read the papers. Somehow he just knew. No need to question and no need to read. The murders were moving further away from the park. Jewel Avenue close to the baseball field had been the closest which had happened this week. That had been a long way to walk.
Those in need do what they have to.
A motto this young man lived by. Jewel Avenue had never been much of an interest to Stevenson. It was long and out of his way. But one of the best links to Main Street he could remember in all the time he had lived in Queens. It avoided the high schools which stopped the children there asking why he was not inside.
Riley had not been to school since he was eleven. Not knowing how to enrol had prevented his high school and middle school transition. Now he was free to do as he liked. Paid only to clean the litter from the park at 7’o clock, before and after the main parties got there. A tidy income of $50 a week was made there.
His new job brought him more.
A pay rise to $150 a week had almost found him the money to rent himself a small apartment in The Bronx, but that would have been if he was an adult. He certainly was not one. This new job, a blessing from the heavens had come about only three weeks ago when he had been asked to travel to 46th Avenue and from then his life had changed.
Nothing incriminating had been found on him, but with no address to trace to, where would the police begin their search?

Hillside High wasn’t known for the violence it promoted. Lilly Dulnhelm recalled as she sat in her biology class thinking of the events which had recently been happening so close the centre of her life. Her father had been out every night and her mother had been worried sick about him. Scared he wasn’t going to come back. With the incidents playing out as they had been doing who could blame her?
Lilly cared for her parents much more than she cared for anyone else. Though often questioned why she bothered much of the time. Her mother would notice when her father was out and would endlessly worry about his whereabouts, though everyone knew Thomas Samuel Dulnhelm had more than one girlfriend alongside his wife. Few people questioned where he went those long nights he was away. Even Lilly had grown immune to questioning.
The answer was obvious.
During her mothers worries, Lilly had succeeded to slip from the house like she had never been there. Stay out for much of the night and return to the house to see her mother fussing over her father whom would sit on the sofa and take it like medicine. Neither of them had ever noticed their daughter was missing. It hurt.
Maybe that was what had driven her to do the things she had. Maybe her parents neglect had been the reason for a good and intelligent girl using her brain for something she shouldn’t have. The answer was no more clear to her than it was to the police. She wasn’t even sure what she had done on the nights she was out. Only she had been sure of the area. Each one tied in with another person who had died.
The latest one, that boy from her school. Alex Parker, he had known her. They had never been friends. He had bullied her for wearing her hair wrong, or because of her father’s money. Nothing she could have done was right and he had angered her. Many times she had wished he would simply disappear and now he had been murdered last night, whilst she had been in the area.
She couldn’t remember what she had done. Could not recall who she had seen. But she knew she had been in that exact area and close to the time the poor boy had died...
Surely, not even if she hated the boy so much could she have killed him. Or maybe in her undecided heart, she simply did not care whether she had.