While the outside of the nursery flashed like a nightclub with the red-and-blue strobe lights of the police cars, the inside of the locker room was as silent as death.
Yekta slowly rose from the green sheet-metal chest after Aylin walked out the door and left. His time was running out. The police had started to cordon off the nursery and gather the workers in the courtyard. Soon they would barge into this makeshift building and search everywhere thoroughly. Yekta gently lifted the lid of the chest. The heavy organic fertilizer smell burned his throat, mixing with the scent of fresh blood. Cem's lifeless body lay contorted within the peat soil.
Yekta quickly pulled the bloody cloth and the crescent-bladed pocketknife and pearl earring inside it out of the peat. His eyes shifted to the rusty metal lockers at the other end of the room. Locker number 14 with a makeshift padlock on it... Cem's locker.
Instead of breaking the padlock with a heavy crowbar in his hand, Yekta pressed hard on the bottom corner of the door and flexed it. Everyone in the nursery knew this weak point of the old metal lockers. The door opened with a slight squeak. Yekta shoved the bloody cloth in his hand, along with the murder weapon and that priceless third trophy inside it, deep into the cheap gym bag containing Cem's civilian clothes. When he restored the door to its original state, he had pulled that massive pin thrown at the Izmir police's arrogance.
Now there was only one problem left: The corpse.
If they found Cem in the fertilizer chest, it would become certain that the person who killed him in the nursery was an insider, and the circle would close in. The boy needed to look like he had "escaped."
Yekta slightly cracked open the back door of the locker room. This faced the blind spot where the nursery's diseased tree roots and insect-infested plants were thrown, where the disposal tanks containing industrial biological solvents were located. Riot Police teams hadn't moved to the back yet.
Yekta dragged a massive plastic dumpster on wheels next to the chest. He shouldered Cem's body, which was beginning to stiffen, with that primal, savage strength and threw him into the dumpster. He covered it with dried leaves and rotten branches. The blood seeping from the stitches on his neck mixed with the cold sweat on his forehead, but he didn't care. He pushed the dumpster and exited through the back door.
When he opened the lid of the disposal tank, the rising smell of acid and decay brought tears to his eyes. He mercilessly pushed Cem's body into that dark and bubbling chemical hell. As the boy's body slowly sank to the bottom in the dense solvent, Yekta closed the lid. There was no corpse anymore. In Izmir's humid, hot weather, nothing but bone fragments would remain of Cem in just a few days.
Ten minutes later, Yekta had blended in among the other workers who were gathered in the courtyard, trembling with fear. He was holding his neck, watching his surroundings with an anxious facial expression.
Chief Inspector Aylin stood before the workers with that rusty valve wrench in her hand. "None of you will walk out this door!" she yelled to the Crime Scene Investigation teams. "Search every locker, every chest, every vehicle!"
The police began breaking the locks of the worker lockers with iron-cutting shears. Only the static of police radios and the echo of breaking metal could be heard in the courtyard.
Yekta's heart was beating with a slow and flawless rhythm. His eyes were on that cop who would walk out the door of the locker room.
And the anticipated moment arrived.
A young plainclothes police officer dashed out of the locker room, holding a transparent evidence bag in his hand. He was pale as a ghost. "Chief!" he yelled in the middle of the courtyard. "Locker number 14! Chief, you need to see this!"
Aylin walked quickly toward the officer. The young officer raised the transparent bag in the air. Inside the bag, there was a crescent-bladed pocketknife with dried blood, and that elegant, bloody pearl earring attached to a torn piece of flesh at its tip.
Everyone in the courtyard gasped. Master Rıza's knees buckled; he was collapsing to the ground when the workers next to him barely caught him.
Aylin's eyes widened in shock as she looked at the knife and earring in the bag. That earring torn from Defne's ear and the weapon that carved that flawless curve on the victims' necks were now between her hands.
"Whose locker is this?" asked Aylin. Her voice was as dangerous as the silence before a storm.
Master Rıza covered his face with his trembling hands. "Cem... It's Cem's locker, chief."
That massive, arrogant machine in Aylin's mind started working in seconds. And exactly as Yekta wanted, she put the pieces together completely wrong.
"Where is Cem?" asked Aylin, looking around. "Where is that boy!"
"He's gone, chief," said Master Rıza in a tearful voice. "He's been missing for an hour. He last went into the warehouse to get a battery, then nobody saw him again."
That savage fire of victory gleamed in Aylin's eyes. She turned to Chief Inspector Selim beside her. "I was right, chief," she said in a whisper, but her voice trembled with arrogance. "That brilliant, elite killer doesn't get his own hands dirty. He hired an insider to use these materials, this pocketknife. This errand boy called Cem is that narcissistic surgeon's dog! He panicked while killing Defne last night, left the knife here, and ran away when he realized he'd be caught!"
Selim roared, "Put out a dispatch to all units! Cem Taşkın, twenty-two years old. Close all exits of the city, I want this boy alive!"
Yekta stood among the other workers, slapping his knees and joining the murmuring workers saying, "Wow, our clumsy Cem, huh? God damn him, who would have thought..." He shook his head from side to side, playing his role flawlessly as if he were a shocked, wretched man.
Yet inside, his dark mind was popping champagne.
Aylin hadn't just swallowed the bait moments ago; she had shoved the bait down her own throat with her own hands. The entire Izmir police force was going to chase a boy who was dead and dissolving in an acid tank; that "elite surgeon" profile in the media would continue to feed Aylin's arrogance, and Yekta, beneath that high-vis cloak, would be more invisible and more untouchable than he had ever been.
It was a flawless checkmate. And the game was just beginning.
ns216.73.216.48da2
and then Add to home screen.