As a gray and sullen dawn broke over the Bostanlı coastline, the yellow crime scene tape cordoning off the front of the apartment under construction cracked like a whip in the cold wind blowing from the gulf. In the air, there was that heavy, metallic scent of blood mixing with the smell of freshly poured concrete, sea salt, and rusted iron.
The first team to arrive at the crime scene consisted of Deputy Inspector Tarık from the Karşıyaka public order branch and two patrol officers. Tarık was an inattentive and crude man in his mid-twenties, whose professional vision didn't extend beyond cracking sunflower seeds and listening to soccer matches in his patrol car. He didn't even care when the ash from the cigarette clamped between his lips fell onto the concrete floor just a few centimeters away from the unique amber-colored paste on the victim's neck.
"Amateur work," said Tarık, shoving his hands into his pockets as he circled the corpse with heavy steps. He gently nudged the woman's open purse with the toe of his boot. "Wallet, cash, phone are still here. But there's a chain mark on her neck; he yanked and tore the necklace off. Some high sniffer or pill popper tried to mug the woman. When the woman yelled, he panicked and slit her throat. Classic."
Patrol officer Hasan illuminated the transparent, dull layer on the woman's neck with the small flashlight in his hand. "Chief, what's that yellowish stuff on her neck? Did construction foam get on it?"
Tarık rolled his eyes, took a deep drag from his cigarette, and blew the smoke out right over the corpse. "How should I know, boy, am I forensics? The woman probably hit her neck on some construction mortar or glue when she fell. Bag this stuff up, let's wrap this job up before the prosecutor arrives. I lost my sleep first thing in the morning anyway."
Just then, a sharp screech of brakes was heard from the head of the street. The yellow crime scene tape was lifted sharply upwards, and from underneath it, Detective Aylin stormed in like a hurricane in her leather jacket, her eyes deeply sunken and bruised from lack of sleep. She had spent the entire night memorizing the material ledgers in that foul-smelling nursery depot, but she hadn't found that genius, narcissistic "surgeon." Her nerves were taut as a wire.
Aylin's sharp eyes locked onto the cigarette Tarık was smoking right under the corpse's nose and the blood drops he was crushing with the soles of his boots.
"If you flick the ash of that cigarette in your hand over the evidence one more time," Aylin said, her voice echoing in the street like a whip, "I will make you swallow that stub without putting the cherry out, Tarık. Get the hell out of my crime scene!"
Tarık, utterly bewildered, panicked and crushed his cigarette with the toe of his boot, but upon seeing Aylin's freezing glare, he shoved the crushed stub into his pocket and hastily stepped outside the crime scene perimeter.
Aylin put on her white latex gloves and dropped to her knees. Dr. Koray and his team had also entered the scene right behind her and were beginning to open their kits. Aylin's gaze focused on that flawless, half-moon-shaped incision on the victim's jugular and the transparent pruning paste smoothly covering it.
"Him again," Aylin whispered. Her voice sounded as if she were under a spell. "The flawless cut, the frozen resin... He plucked his second orchid from its branch."
"But Aylin, there's an anomaly here," said Dr. Koray, pointing to the massive pool of blood around the woman. "As sterile and clean as the first murder street was, this place has turned into an absolute bloodbath. Furthermore, the blood isn't just around the victim." Using his tweezers, Koray pointed out the thick and dark-colored blood trails dripping toward the darker side of the street. "The killer also dripped blood while moving away from the crime scene. A lot of it, too."
Aylin furrowed her brows. Pulling her flashlight from her jacket pocket, she followed the bloodstains dripping onto the asphalt, which grew sparser and disappeared toward the end of the street. The size and frequency of the drops indicated that the bleeding person had suffered a serious wound.
Koray took a sample from that foreign blood on the ground with a cotton swab in his hand. "The killer was injured, Aylin. There must have been a scuffle; he either cut himself or the woman inflicted serious damage on him. We are going to have a fantastic DNA sample."
According to the crude and clumsy cops of the department, this was a simple mugging-turned-murder where the killer panicked, botched the job, and amateurishly left his own blood at the scene. According to Dr. Koray, it was flawless biological evidence that would bring justice.
However, Aylin’s overly analytical, "overthinking" mind had begun to spin around her own arrogance once again in order to reject the simplest and crudest truth.
"No," Aylin said, slowly rising to her feet. She was sweeping the flashlight's beam over those blood drops. "A hand skilled enough to sever a victim's jugular in a single move, at a millimeter-perfect surgical angle in his first murder, cannot be clumsy enough to bleed himself out in the middle of the street at midnight. This man doesn't make mistakes."
"What do you mean?" Koray asked in bewilderment. "The blood is right on the ground, Aylin. The man got injured."
That dangerous, morbid fascination flashed in Aylin's eyes. "He is humiliating us, Koray. He is leaving us fake breadcrumbs. That laborer-grade paste he deliberately took from the Parks and Gardens depots wasn't enough; now he has deliberately turned the crime scene into a bloodbath to paint a profile of a simple, botched, amateur street thug. These blood drops aren't random; they are directed toward the street's exit at a perfect angle. It isn't even his own blood; I am sure he walked away dripping animal blood or a foreign blood bag he stole from a hospital. A man this smart, this narcissistic, doesn't just leave his DNA in the middle of the street."
Aylin had become so blindly attached to that "genius serial killer" profile that she couldn't see the truth of the stitches bursting on Yekta's chainsaw-shredded neck, that cheap, pathetic state of humanity. Yekta's helpless physiological weakness had transformed into the masterpiece of a demonic genius in Aylin's eyes.
At the exact same hours, in one of those damp municipal worker barracks in the back streets of Karşıyaka; Izmir's terrifying, genius serial killer Yekta was groaning in front of the mirror, gritting his teeth in agony. His neon vest was completely covered in blood. In one hand, he held a thick sewing needle threaded with nylon yarn, and in the other, half a bottle of cheap vodka he was chugging to numb the wound. He was piecing the torn flesh on his own neck back together with a crude, bloody, and agonizingly primitive method, as if sewing up a burlap sack.
The man whom the cops called a "botched amateur," and whom Aylin saw as a "godlike genius," was making his own lips bleed to keep from crying out in pain. This colossal chasm between predator and prey was feeding the darkness of Izmir a little more with every passing second.
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