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Dark Vengeance: A Nash Peterson Novel

He killed her because of me.

    Detective Nash Peterson stood over the corpse of Heather Campbell. The clothes that she had worn had been removed and replaced with bruises. The realization that she was murdered due to someone having an agenda towards him struck him like a sledgehammer; his resilience crumbled like sheetrock in an abandoned building.

    Surrounded by walls made out of square, ceramic tiles and covered with framed pictures of flowers, fields, with a luminous background, an overwhelming and suffocating grip held tight to his chest. The sharp stench of bleach lingered in the rooms and nearly choked him with each intake of the repugnant air.  Broken chatter filled the space of the apartment, but his ears were filled with an irritating ringing that developed the instant his eyes fell upon the first woman he had fallen in love with years earlier.

    Eighteen years.

    She had been his high school sweetheart. Hot, uncontrollable feelings filled each moment of every day. They had difficulty keeping their hands off each other. As a younger man, just the sight of her caused his heart to swell like a helium-filled balloon. Now, looking down at her made him feel as if someone was clenching his heart with an ironclad hand. Her future had been severed. There was no more love in her life, and no more dreams to see become a reality if she had any dreams at all.

    It’s been years since they had talked, and after all that time, he didn’t get to see the alluring beauty of her smile. The glistening that owned her eyes like a fresh pearl found from within a mollusk off the shores of Sri Lanka. Instead, he was standing in her bathroom taking in the sight of her head resting against the porcelain edge of the bathtub. Her long blonde hair flowed over her shoulders, barely concealing her breasts. The tips of her hair no longer blonde, but instead a dark amber. Her left leg bent at the knee as her foot hung over the edge. Most of Heather’s petite frame was purplish-blue from a severe beating. When his eyes had to painstakingly see the width of the wound that spread across her throat, his struggle was less from the sight of death and more from the sudden savagery to someone in order to get to him.

    The person who stole Heather’s life had had his own type of fun with her before he slit her throat. There was no possible way she hadn’t suffered before the enchanting light that once filled her eyes disappeared into some otherworldly atmosphere.

     It was clear that her death had taken place well over twenty-four hours ago. He wasn’t the forensics expert, but it didn’t take one to know by her flaccid appearance and the color of her skin. Minus the bruises, the torso was pale from the lack of blood. From the waist down was a purplish-red discoloration from the blood accumulating to the lower extremities.