Prologue: June 2000

She was perfect, he thought. He followed her for two months, studied her, fantasized about this moment. She was going to sacrifice herself so he could become who he was meant to be. He could feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins, his heart slamming in his chest and every breath his lungs sucked in. This was his moment.

He started to walk in her direction, Molly Hemsworth was her name. She was 17-years-old and a whore. She walked the streets on the south side of town looking for her next client. Little did she know, he was going to be her last client.

Molly saw the man watching her from the dark alcove. She thought he was either married or never talked to a prostitute before. He looked rather young, so it might be the latter. He finally crossed the street and headed in her direction.

Molly was excited at first, he was rather handsome, with sandy blond hair and light brown eyes. He was young, well younger than most of her clients. Lately she had serviced men in their 40s and 50s. Old men who paid well, but were really boring or weird. The older men would want to do things they couldn’t do with their wives, like hit her really hard, or bite, or choke her. She was there to fulfill their fantasies, or at least that is what her “brother” said.

The man approached her and asked what her fee was.

“For you, sugar,” Molly smiled prettily at him and batted her brown eyes, “$250.”

He smiled and pulled out the cash. She took the money and led him to her room at the motel. The gang ran it and all the girls worked out of it. She walked into the room and turned around to see him shut the door. For the first time, Molly felt uneasy. There was something in the man’s eyes that didn’t bode well. He moved steadily towards her.

“I am afraid this is my first time,” he said as he backed her up to the wall. He smiled as her eyes widened. “I know, surprising right?”

Molly didn’t say anything, the man didn’t give her a chance, he grabbed her wrist and threw her on the bed.

“Hey,” she said as he tore open her shirt and ripped her pants, “you are going to pay for that.”

He didn’t answer her but just flipped her onto her stomach and plunged into her. Molly screamed as he pushed his penis further into her.

“I am not ready,” she sobbed. “This isn’t how you do this. This hurts.”

He pulled her up against him and placed his hand around her throat, “I am all about pain.” He said as he started to squeeze. He pulled her hands back with his other arm and kept the brutal assault going.

“Stop,” Molly said as she fought back tears and tried to sound calm. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I will give you your money back.”

He responded by picking up the pace and fucking her harder. He noticed his shaft was covered slightly with blood. Molly’s blood. She tried to pull away and get out of the room. Her torn clothes didn’t matter anymore. She had never been treated this brutally since her induction into the gang three years ago. And the “brothers” promised that she would never have to endure that kind of treatment again. They were there to protect her, they assured her. They weren’t in here right now and she couldn’t even scream to get their attention.

She had to stay focused if she wanted to get out of this situation. She had to calm down this man’s lust.

He could tell she was trying to reason her way out of the doom he had planned for her, and he knew it was too late. It was too late when he locked the door. He fed off the fear she was starting to feel. He thought she was brave by trying to think her way out of it, and admired her for it actually. She wasn’t one who was going to accept her fate and die easily. That is what made her perfect for him. She was going to make it interesting and fight back.

He started to squeeze her throat and felt her panic against him as she realized she couldn’t get any air. He felt her arms fling around, but he had them in his vice grip. She started to move forward to get away from him, but he was stronger than her and held her to him as he continued the onslaught. She increased the effort trying to kick him from behind her and finally broke free as she used his weight against him.

She hit the bed and was about to leap up and run out the door, but he was faster. He caught her, threw her back on the bed and climbed on top of her. He placed both hands around her throat and squeezed. Molly couldn’t breathe, she started to thrash around but that only intensified his strength. She felt her vision closing in and her world growing dark.

Ten minutes later she came too. Molly’s head was pounding and her body was bruised. Her arms and legs felt heavy and she couldn’t really move. He was standing over her and smiled evilly when he noticed she was awake.

“Ready for round two?”

Molly shook her head, “No. Leave me alone, you got what you wanted.”

“Oh, no I haven’t,” he let his hand gently caress her breasts. “I really haven’t” He squeezed her breasts harder and drew a gasp out of her.

“You are hurting me,” she said.

“I don’t think you have realized that is the point,” his fingers dug into her flesh and his nails started to cut into her skin.

Molly cried out and found the energy to move out of his reach, “you are not going to hurt me anymore.”

She jumped off the bed and ran for the door a second time, the man laughed, letting her get almost to the door before he calmly crossed the room to stop her.

Molly got to the door and opened it, but he was already there to shut the door before she could get out. He grabbed her by her long brown hair and forced her back to the bed. She started to call out for help but he silenced her by hitting her across the face. The hit stung her and cut off the scream. Molly started to hit him, but she was no match for his strength. She had to change tactics or he was going to kill her.

She raked her nails across his skin and kicked his shin, all in an effort to make him stop. The kick wasn’t hard and the scratches didn’t have much effect on him.

“All right, are you finished?” he asked. “Now, it is my turn.”

Molly started to back away from him, but he advanced. His fist connected with her torso and she felt her ribs crack, he threw another punch across her face that threw her head back. She tasted blood in her mouth. He rained several blows onto her body and she lost the strength to fight back.

He climbed back on top of her, invaded her body again and savagely thrust into her, drawing more blood and screams. He listened to her scream and relished the fear and pain he was inflicting on her body and her mind. She was broken, mind, body and spirit.

He waited until she stopped screaming, placed his hands around her throat for the second time and throttled her. He held her there for five minutes, watching her struggle to breathe, watching her fight for her life, then watching the light leave her eyes as her pulse stopped. Her face grew pale, her skin was clammy and her lips turned blue. She was dead. He finally spilled himself into her. It was glorious.

He started to clean the room up. There was very little blood, except on the sheets, but the maids will handle that. None of it was his and likely they won’t do anything like call the police if they saw it. He picked up her underwear, the one piece of clothing he didn’t rip to shreds, and used it to wipe up the semen he spilled inside her. He also wanted to capture some of her fluids, her blood and discharge. He wanted to record her scent on the panties.

He put on a cap and hoodie to cover his face and hair, wrapped her body up in a blanket and carried her out of the motel room. There wasn’t much traffic in the area at this time of night. The other girls were servicing their johns and the men were in another area waiting for their girls to come back with their cut of the night's profits. None of them had any idea that Molly wasn’t going to make it to the check-in point when the sun came up that morning.

He placed her body into his car and drove to the spot he picked out. He carried her body to a pre dug grave, dropped it in and started to cover the body with dirt. He was sated for the first time ever.

“Thank you, Molly,” he said to the freshly covered body. “You have done so much, taught me so much about myself. I will never forget you, but others won’t remember you.”

Two days later, after a heavy rain, two boys were passing by the empty lot and saw a foot sticking out of the dirt. They looked at the foot, not quite understanding what they were seeing. They called the police who deployed the crime scene unit.

The town’s homicide detective, Lloyd Feldman, looked at the newly uncovered body; she was young, not even out of high school. Someone was rough with her. Her jawline was bruised as was the rest of her body. She was strangled judging by the marks on her throat. This person was close, personal, the killer watched it happen. Her clothes were torn, her bra was hanging down her arms, her shirt was in ribbons and the crotch of her shorts were split.

This monster was savage and needed to be brought to justice. Lloyd didn’t know what he was dealing with, was this a one-off or was this a pattern? He knew she didn’t die here, this was just where her body was dumped.

The technicians collected the evidence from this scene and the medical examiner took possession of the body and transported it to the morgue. Lloyd had to identify the girl and find the actual crime scene fast. If the girl was who he thought she was, he didn’t have much time to collect evidence.

The girl’s fingerprints came back as Molly Hemsworth, she was a member of the local gang and was arrested for prostitution and drug trafficking several times. She wasn’t exactly a stranger to the criminal justice system.

A few days later, he was sitting in front of a gang member, one of the leaders, or “brothers” as they called them. Brothers indeed, Lloyd thought.

“I just want to know if anyone knows who her last client was,” Lloyd said. “You are not in trouble, you are not a suspect and we just want information.”

“Man,” the thug said. “I don’t have to tell you anything. Me and the boys will handle Molly.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Man,” the thug went on, “that bitch jumped. She took all our money and jumped. We are going to find her and make her pay.” He slammed his fist into the palm of his hand.

“So, you think she ran off?” Lloyd looked at the thug and pulled out a folder with the girl’s picture in it. “You think she is out there with your money and now you are looking for her?”

“Yeah, and we don’t need your help.”

Lloyd opened the file up and showed the thug the picture of Molly’s bruised body, “See, we already found her. Now, we want to find the bastard who did this to her.”

The thug looked at the picture of Molly, he barely recognized her. Her face was swollen, nose was broken, he noticed dark bruising along her chest and was glad the photo didn’t go down further. He didn’t want to see her legs or what the monster did in between her legs.

The thug didn’t say anything, just looked at the pictures in horror. He knew Molly.

“Man,” the thug started to clutch his stomach, “I need to go.” He jumped up and left the room to head to the bathroom.

Lloyd had a pretty good idea of what the thug was doing in the bathroom.

“Was he any help,” asked another officer.

“No,” Lloyd shook his head and placed the picture back into the folder which contained other more graphic photos of what the girl went through at the hands of a john. “Typical gang-banger. They act all tough and badass, but when they see real evil, when they look into the face of a real monster, they pee their pants.”

The officer didn’t disagree. He handed Lloyd another file, “the medical examiner’s report. She was strangled, big surprise there. She was also raped, or at least the sex was rough. We can’t be sure because she was a prostitute. There was a lot of blood in her vagina with very little discharge.”

Lloyd clenched his fist, it didn’t matter that she was a prostitute, this was someone’s daughter. She had a future. Who knows what she could have been if someone had intervened in her life.

“They are releasing her body for burial tomorrow,” the officer informed Lloyd.

Lloyd nodded. He was going to be there when they lowered her body into the ground at the graveyard.

The next day, Lloyd stood at the grave and watched the diggers lower the plain casket into the ground. The sky was gray and a fine mist was falling onto the casket and into the grave.

“I promise, Molly,” Lloyd said to the grave, “I will find the man responsible for putting you here.”