Double Helix

By: Chao C Chien

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This is a blockbuster.

Emilio was a data processing professional. His wife Bernice was a successful real estate agent. The real estate market had been red-hot. She rode the wave and made a bundle, and so did her pals. For that, they developed a habit of going for the happy hour at the Double Helix Winery every Friday after a fruitful week. This week, however, Fate, or, Mephistopheles, interfered. A stray bullet from a freak gang tussle close-by accidentally caught her and killed her. The classical wrong place at the wrong time.

To say the least, Emilio was devastated. He went on an epic rage, and swore that he would avenge her death. He was going to hunt down the gangster punks and kill them all. Yet, how would he do that? He did not know who they were. After he had cooled down somewhat and thought about it, the very thought confronted him. Nonetheless, at the end, a tentative plan was formulated. It would be a lot of hard work, but it was deemed doable.

Was life really that easy? Of course not. It was, in fact, complicated. Coincidentally, a serial killer was active in the area at the same time. Emilio was thrilled to learn of the killings, as they served as inspirations and guiding patterns for his aspiring project. After all, he was but a would-be avenger, an amateur, with an on-coming prostate cancer diagnosis to boot. How easy, Emilio said to himself. One whack. Just like that. All it took was a baseball bat. Easy and low cost. However, that also produced a problem for law enforcement, Who was killing people?

The police were confused. Some suspected that they were dealing with a serial killer, while others were sure that it was a single demented criminal at work. For instance, Detective Larkin Hammerschlagen had her eyes on Emilio, simply because she was aware of Bernice’s tragedy. Detective Ramon Hernandez, on the other hand, had his eyes on someone else.

So, was it just one single serial killer, or were there two of them, with one emulating the other? Then, there was the most elusive question. What drove him or them to kill? What was the motives of the killings? What were the killers after? The detectives could not make heads or tails of it. They were lost and confused, and the killings turned the police department upside-down.

At the end, they decided that, indeed, imitation killings were involved, regardless of how similar the murders were.

The entanglements led to all kinds of twists and turns, interpretations, and misinterpretations, with complications on top of complications. It was all just like a double helix.

Full of unexpected actions and events, the story is exactly what intrigue afficionados are looking for. Indeed, it will satisfy them. So, start turning the pages.