Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 108342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108342 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 542(@200wpm)___ 433(@250wpm)___ 361(@300wpm)
“My mother left him money in an account. He lives off of that, too.”
“Okay, that makes sense. Anyway, he would keep his cellphone off sometimes, too, disabling location services. No doubt that was a premediated thought to ensure he wasn’t traced to here during the disappearances and murders of his victims. Speaking of phones, yours proved that you were in fact where you said you were. Why is it then that I saw you fighting with Dmitriy on the beach?”
“Boy,” he nodded in amazement, “I knew you were good at this shit, honey, but you’re really good. In my urgency, I accidentally left my cellphone at home that particular day. When I got to the beach, I found him. I tried to stay out of line of sight of the camera, and so did he. That’s why he picked certain spots to do his deeds at the beach. But as we started to tussle, I knew there was a chance I’d be noticed. Our fight had spanned out too far. He’d already killed Clark by the time I got there. I think he was more upset with me that I messed up the order of his ritual, rather than getting caught red-handed. Anyway, please go on with what you were sayin’ a while ago, about my brother and how you believe he hunted. I think the captain here should hear this… see how it’s done.”
“Okay, where was I? Oh, yes… I was going to go back to his profile for a moment, too. If the person your brother was speaking with at the bar was also a drug addict, that was when he’d feel most compelled to strike.”
“Exactly.”
“The victim didn’t have to look anything like him or your father. He just needed to embody your father’s habit and crutch, during the rough time in your father’s life after his own mother had passed, he fell out with his brother, and adding in all the worries he had with Dmitriy. Your dad didn’t know how to express these intense emotions with anything but anger. Your father’s addiction became the blame for his actions.
“Dmitriy grew older and became disgusted with addicts and drunks. He was obsessed with his hatred for them. Much like yourself… another reason you were a suspect. People who knew you personally were aware of how you felt about drug addicts, Nikolai. It didn’t help that your own mother had been accosted by one and robbed. And now we know that those feelings are tied to your father’s albeit brief drug dependency—this was a profound experience and colored how you and Dmitry viewed those who are afflicted with drug dependency. Your father’s alcohol and drug abuse happened during your formative years, a time when you and your brothers were still defining who you were and what you believed in. You all were affected by the dysfunction in that home. Only, you didn’t turn around and become a murderer, now did you? Instead, you found another way to take out your aggressions.
“You became a blacksmith. You decided to strike iron and steel. Make it bleed fire. Mark decided to strike new land. Run somewhere safe and start over. Dmitry decided to strike and kill. Once he saw weakness in the victim, it would remind him of who he really was, and who he was trying to pretend not to be—him as a child. A person he loathed. Being sensitive. Crying. Being shamed for having feelings. It sickened him. Knowing something inside of him was wrong, but not receiving the help he truly needed. He wasn’t sick because he was sensitive, but he was made to feel that way. Instead of getting much needed assistance for what may have been a serious mental illness that is still undiagnosed from the research I’ve done, he was being punished for something he didn’t even understand himself.
She paused for the briefest of moments, and he gestured for her to go on.
“He had a mother who tried to protect him, but she was unable to stop what was happening. It was probably a chemical issue in his brain, but sometimes, a loving yet naïve mother doesn’t understand that. Good moms love hard, but they can’t stop runaway trains, no matter how hard they deny, cry or try.”
Nikolai’s eyes watered. He sniffed the emotions away.
“Dmitriy was the youngest, many times a coveted position in the sibling hierarchy, but in his case it was anything but. He had a brilliant brother who was intellectually gifted. The eldest of the Raven brothers. The middle child, one stereotypically believed to give parents hell, was a gem, too. He was the tallest, deemed the most good-looking. Athletic. Easy to like. Respectable. Smart. Good with his hands. Learned practical things quickly—from carpentry, to minor car repairs, Nikolai could do it all. Dmitry could not compete with that. He was the odd one. He did look like his good-looking middle sibling, but that is all he had, and it meant nothing if he was considered awkward and strange, without all of your special bells and whistles. People saw him as the defective, lackluster base model of you…He forever lived in you and Mark’s shadows. So, he became the true darkness. Allowing in no love, and no light.”