On the heavy, rotting leather and mold-scented floor of the old tannery, Blind Mouse's lifeless body lay in a pool of blood. Yekta dropped the bloody, heavy manhole hook to the ground. His victim's face was unrecognizable; it didn't bear the signature of the "aesthetic serial killer," but the ruthless mark of primitive, brutal worker strength.
However, Yekta's work was not done. This corpse was the miraculous key that would untie the massive knot sitting in the stomach of the Izmir police. The department needed the "grunt who killed Cem and tossed him in the acid tank". Yekta was going to give it to them, packaged with his own artistic touch.
He crouched in the darkness. He pulled out the worn "Metropolitan Municipality Personnel ID Card" belonging to Cem, which he had been carrying in his pocket since that horrifying day at the nursery. He smeared a drop of Blind Mouse's blood from the floor onto the corner of the card, and sloppily tucked it into the side pocket of the man's cargo pants, leaving half of it visible.
Then he moved to his real masterpiece. He took a tiny amount of the transparent, amber-colored pruning paste he used on his victims. He smeared this paste onto the blade of the cheap, rusted switchblade that had dropped from Blind Mouse's hand. But when doing this, he didn't use the smooth, artistic finesse he applied to the necks of his "rare orchids." He slathered the paste onto the knife crudely and messily. Just like an ignorant hitman would do—someone who didn't know what the paste was for, using the chemical merely to melt a victim or cover his tracks.
"Buy my masterpiece with your own arrogance, detective," Yekta whispered in the dark ruins. He popped the collar of his jacket and looked at the corpse one last time before blending into the night. "My shift in Izmir is officially over."
The next morning, 07:00 AM.
The forgotten backstreets of the Hilal district were illuminated by the blue-and-red strobes of dozens of police cars. Crime Scene Investigation teams were swarming like ants among the crumbling walls of the tannery.
Chief Inspector Selim, sipping tea from a paper cup, had a smile on his face for the first time in weeks. Despite his sagging belly and sleep-deprived eyes, he looked relieved.
"Finally, man!" said Selim, turning to Aylin as she approached. "We finally untied this knot, Aylin. You know your 'elite, mysterious surgeon' profile? You were right. That elite scum was having this sewer rat down here do his dirty work!"
Aylin, hands shoved in the pockets of her leather jacket, her face sunken from exhaustion, walked toward the corpse. She looked at the crushed, mangled body on the ground not with disgust, but with pure analytical suspicion.
"What did we find, chief?" Aylin asked in an icy voice.
Dr. Koray held up the evidence bag in his hand. "An absolute jackpot, Aylin. From the victim's pocket, we pulled a bloody personnel ID belonging to Cem Taşkın, the worker we found melted in the acid tank yesterday. Furthermore, on the victim's own switchblade, there are traces of that famous pruning paste we found on the necks of the victims. This guy is the one who killed Cem and tossed him in the nursery tank. It's obvious he had a falling out with his 'Elite' boss over money, or the boss lured him to these ruins and smashed his head in to silence him and destroy the evidence."
Selim clapped his hands in joy. "Case closed! Lift the blockade on those laborers at the nursery, release them all. This scum killed Cem, and the elite boss came and cleaned up this scum. Now all we have to do is find the 'Elite' from this rat's phone records. Today we go to the press and show off!"
The entire department was ready to celebrate the end of a weeks-long nightmare. But as Aylin knelt next to the body, that massive, dark machine in her mind had already started running in reverse. The alarm bells in her brain were ringing deafeningly.
"No," Aylin said softly.
Her voice was so quiet but so sharp that Selim's smile froze on his face.
Aylin stood up. Her eyes tracked over Selim and Koray like a hawk. "This is a play. And a very cheap play."
"What are you babbling about, Aylin, first thing in the morning?" Selim grumbled. "The evidence is right there, Cem's ID came out of the guy's pocket!"
"That's exactly the problem, chief!" Aylin shouted, pointing a gloved finger at the corpse on the ground. "That brilliant, elite, narcissistic man who severed Defne's jugular in a single curve, who murdered Hale with millimeter-perfect flawlessness in the police parking lot and left a message with an oleander flower; he wouldn't come to a ruin and commit a murder as crude as crushing this guy's head with an iron pipe! This man doesn't leave a forgotten corpse in an acid tank or a bloody ID behind!"
Aylin reached for the evidence bag in Koray's hand, pointing at the switchblade. "Look at the paste on the knife! That man applied this paste to women's necks like a surgeon, sealing a work of art. But half a kilo of paste is sloppily smeared all over this switchblade. He's playing with us, chief! He deliberately gave us this body, this fake evidence, so we would lift the blockade on the nursery. One of those workers at the nursery is the killer himself, not some errand boy!"
"Enough!" Selim roared. His voice echoed in the ruins. "The press is tearing us apart, the department's honor is in the gutter! I have a suspect, paste on the murder weapon, the victim's ID. I'm sending this file to the prosecutor pinning it on this rat. The nursery blockade is lifted! And you, go home, sleep, and rid yourself of the conspiracy theories in your head, detective. That's an order!"
As Aylin watched Selim turn his back and walk away, she balled her hands into fists. Her nails were digging into her palms hard enough to draw blood. The entire department had swallowed this fake, cheap setup playing out before their eyes.
At the same hours, İnciraltı Nursery.
As the announcement to lift the police blockade came over the radios, the yellow-and-black crime scene tapes were torn down by the officers. While Master Rıza and the other workers breathed a sigh of relief, Yekta was in the locker room, slipping his windproof dark jacket over his civilian clothes.
In his hand was the official document approved this morning by the Metropolitan Municipality Human Resources: Notification of Transfer to Bodrum Municipality Parks and Gardens Directorate.
The Izmir police had swallowed the fake, bloody bone Yekta tossed them within hours. Yekta looked at himself in the mirror. The disgusting, thick stitches and the scar on his neck had scabbed over. The darkness in his eyes shined with the thrill of a new hunting ground.
He had beaten Izmir. He had beaten the police.
He slung his tool bag over his shoulder and pulled the zipper tight. Inside were spare work clothes, rust remover fluid, and his famous, razor-sharp crescent-shaped pruning knife.
From the gates of the nursery, toward the horizon where the setting sun painted Izmir crimson for the last time, he slowly began to walk to catch the bus to Bodrum. Bodrum's spoiled, luxurious, pristine white streets were awaiting their flawless gardener.
ns216.73.216.152da2
and then Add to home screen.