Chapter Text
My Dad was a detective, the best there in the precinct they said.
When a string of unrelated robberies plagued the local towns from Arkansas to Louisiana; it was my dad who found out a group of homeless people was responsible, organized well enough and equipped thanks to their ill-gotten gains. If the arrest wasn't made, the robberies could escalate from shops and malls to people’s homes. When a second scary clown epidemic started appearing in the forest, charging at people with knives, axes, sharp objects in general, my dad found out that it was some sick trend teens are getting into, bringing real weapons for ‘authenticity’, he made several arrest for attempted assault, public indecency and destruction of properties. And when my dad interrogated what most would thought just a crazy man trying to attack some poor teen, he found out that teen sold him some kind of new drug belonging to his uncle and had a few of his friends spread the thing like a virus, the towns would be filled with addicts if my dad treated the man the same as the others did.
Some people call it luck, others call him a savant. My mom calls him a hero. Me personally? I wish I knew him more than when I was a baby, mom told me he kissed me on my forehead before leaving for work.
It was the last time she saw him again.
Since then, I had dreams of wanting to be a detective. But, my mom tried to stop me, she was practically shaking, and didn't want what happened to him to happen to me. And well, I didn't want my mom to be sad, and I like my life as is. So, I changed my dream to something else, something I unexpectedly like more than detectives.
A horror author and painter. After graduating, getting a job as a writer and part-time to ghostwrite several other writers, I fell in love with someone, had kids and my wife is now living in my mom’s house with said kids while I find us a home so we won't burden our mom.
The old house we live in seems perfect enough. But my mom didn't want to live there anymore, and said the place has too many memories of him. I’d at least figure to clean the place and see if it is livable. Despite the dust, plastic tarp covering the couch and kitchen and stuff, this place is as good as it was back when I remember it. The kitchen was as vintage as it gets, I could see my dad had his coffee here on the counter while my mom gave his eggs and bacon breakfast. The top floor was where my room was supposed to be, and in front was their room, simple, elegant, fancy enough for a detective and his wife.
The top floor was where my dad usually works, I see boxes and tapes, old guns in cabinets with locks still in them. I could see lines of conspiracy board about the last case he was solving. I see the dusty old brown coat, the red tie and the checkered shirt he wore like a uniform. Everything here reminds me of Dad, the man I could barely remember his face off as a baby.
It takes me back.
But I wasn't all fully happy here. All the work he’s done here are cases his boss trust him to work on, cases that he deems fit for his expertise, and in the center of the table, where a line of VHS with labels of every case documented and recorded, was the last case my dad solved, the one that cause his death.
The Painter Case, others call it after the murderer herself, the Mona Lanius case.
Mona Lanius, that name could make even a hardened veteran shriek with PTSD. It was said that her case was so horrific, so inhuman, so immoral that the sentencing did not even take 2 minutes before the judge ruled her ‘guilty’ and was sent to the Chair, the video of that execution today is the only ‘legal’ snuff film that even kids are allowed to watch, at least if the rumors about that are true. I haven't found that film then, likely never would be able to now.
The crimes she did would have made history in Arkansas and beyond, she’d be put together between Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, The Zodiac Killer, to name a few popular. She’d have a documentary series on Netflix, the popular topic for crime and horror themed-podcasters and an icon in the world of crimes and horror media, be it movies, shows, a parody of herself. Forever immortalized on the internet.
Thankfully, she didn't. The entire precinct and victims of this local town massacres had unanimously agreed on a gag order, they kept quiet about this after personally experiencing the horrors themselves, preserving only needed records and burning everything else. Her paintings of the victims, her corpse with her ashes sinked to the sea. Records of her name scrubbed from the world. Personally for me, it was an excellent foresight on their end, a murderer like that should not have any sympathiser or ‘fans’. Or God forbid, copycats.
I don't know Mona Lanius, nor do I have a strong feeling for revenge or even anger at her. I never met her, but my dad did. And according to my dad's police buddies, every one of them hated Lanius for what she did to my dad. So I should be angry… But maybe because I knew so little of my dad and Lanius herself, or heck even her case I didn't have anything to care for.
But maybe this box could make me care. The box had the Case’s name on it written in red, bold, marker. Unlike the rest of the boxes, with each scribbled fast and in cursive, the one in front of me was straight, slow and serious. Clear as day for anyone to read, and to leave it as is.
I found a cutter on his desk and slowly opened the tape, carefully and slowly to not damage its content. Inside were VHS tapes, the case files and pictures, pictures of the victims, of Mona Lanius herself and one accomplice, a victim turned mindless puppet, a sort of enforcer. Their photo reads, ‘Officer Bill Collins’.
Mom knew Bill Collins, I remember her and the other officer buddies talking about the family man Bill Collins, the kind man Bill Collins, the misunderstood creepy staring man Bill Collins. They talked about Bill Collins and the police’s nickname for the enforcer ‘Skinface’, Mona’s accomplice like two separate people. As I got older I hear them both, at the same time, like a singular person. Sometimes as a fluke, a slip up, but at times at their lowest point I could hear the choking breath of one of the retired officer trying to talk Bill and Skinface like the same person. He almost had a heart attack doing so.
I plan on never bringing up Bill Collins, or Skinface, or whatever happened to the family Bill Collins was a part of. In my hands now is everything about this case and more. The question is
Should I?
By far in my life, I have seen just how much my folks and those I know suffered from simply remembering about the case. Bill Collins was a name I remembered, someone I never met and yet he had impacted more lives than I could, in the worst way possible. For just that, I was afraid of what I’m going to go through here.
But at the same time. I wanna know about what happened with my dad, I need to know just how he died, if he died a hero, or if he ended up just the same as Bill Collins. I’m sure not the latter, because I knew there were worse fates.
I took a deep breath.
I stern my resolve, hammer it like titanium.
Then, with gusto. I begin setting up the VHS, set up an old TV as it's already in the attic and insert the first one, labeled ‘No. 1, Faces’ into the tape player. I held my breath in anticipation, once again hammer my resolve, and play it.
There are 9 tapes in total, made by my dad and the precinct. Each organized in their chronological order of make and timeline of the murder Mona Lanius commited. The Case report in my hand is organized to match the tapes, as if I’m reading some macabre play while reading it's scripts. My guess is to help with compiling the case and making it digestible for new detectives and police to come and help. It was such a large case, if I remember, and the string of murder had also involved members of the precinct besides Bill Collins, so something like this seems necessary for Dad to make.
The first tape showed me the usual FBI warning screen, then a warning of the gruesome material, and finally the contents. According to it, six months before this tape's date, Louisiana Police got a tip from an anonymous caller of some suspicious paintings in the local abandoned storage. According to dad’s report, that storage was also a crime scene for a different case, assault charges caused by three people. Carla Grey, Jackie Gramm and James Miller.
Ironically the three victims of Lisa’s publicly known killings.
Carla, Jackie and James were gangbangers, hanging out near that abandoned storage, smoking and drinking, causing trouble to anyone unlucky enough to cross their path. My dad first assumed the three decided it was a good day to rob a local art museum or something, but when he got there with his partner they found an opened storage shed, riddled with blood and struggle, and inside was three paintings named after them. I assumed these must be Mona’s, according to her case files she would paint the victims first and then commit the act.
I can only imagine it as more than just the painting called ‘Carlas Teeth’. What she thought as she painted the red smeared teeth, elongated, uncanny and mishapen. The lifeless eyes and a lack of noses. It feels like shoving a chattering teeth toy as someone’s poor replacement for fake teeths. Carla was later found beaten, stabbed and teeth pulled with Mona’s own bare hands.
‘Floating Jackie’ represents Jackie Gramm, a friend of Carla’s, used to hookup with her too. An athletic swimmer who was stabbed in the perineum 27 times with her butterfly knife, a birthday gift from James herself apparently, before drowning in a puddle of her own blood. Her paintings showed lifeless black pearl eyes in a sea of red, her hair stagnant in the blood.
James Miller was a drinking friend of Jackie, guy is beefy, strong and with the bigger violent related charge than the two. He’s also the most diplomatic, as my dad and him tend to talk the most when it came to whatever the trio’s recent crime spree was. "James Secret Face” was his painting, depicting himself ripping his face off with his nail between his bulging spherical red eyes staring with shock at whoever sees it. According to dad, his wrists were slit and face pulled off, crude yet efficient enough that he lived for a few days faceless.
Each painting is no less horrifying for the common person, for an author of horror like myself. Brutal as it is, it was more or less common, beastly violence you’d see in liveleaks, in lesser known gore-themed movies and stories. Still, these depictions, the color and how she uses tones and colors, the way she shades the red to spread around the painting is… impressive to say the least. Should I replicate this painting myself, canvas and all, exactly with the same material as Mona used pouring all my time here, it might take days or weeks. Months if I include my schedule.
There were also other paintings besides the three, each one with a more horrifying and cruder name than the last, with depiction of self mutilation, meat and screams or laughter. That makes a total of 10 paintings of the victim.
The three victims weren't saints, and they practically bullied people into submission. Personally I can see why Mona picked these three, my dad must've thought the same considering her interrogation before sentencing, all she did was lure the three out of public sight to her ‘workspace’ and from there was a simple hide-seek and takedown.
The rest… was, according to her, clockwork. She strapped the two to a mechanical restraining chair, while she worked on Carla, then Jackie, and finally James. Just thinking about seeing their friends brutalized… I didn't want to think about it, even if they were criminals. Then she took pictures of the three, and sent them to the precinct once she found out her paintings went public, apparently they wanted to prevent any murders these paintings could relate to, though they didn't think Mona herself would see the warning and decided, by her own admission, to pull a Zodiac Killer and mail sent the victims faces to the Precinct.
It was clear by everyone alone, a Serial Killers on the loose and she's challenging them. A race between them started.
That ends the first tape.
Well,
it's a lot indeed to take all of it in. But, my family is waiting. I think it's time to retire for the day.