The Hidden Side

By Christine Zafra

One New York City detective will do anything to stop a killer from claiming his next victim.

He might already be too late.

Detective Angelo Lombardi has done his best to keep the streets safe for New Yorkers for years. Hard bitten and grizzled, he is the definition of a proper detective. So, when he is assigned to a gruesome case in East Harlem, he accepts like only he could; with the natural desire to find a killer known by the officers of the 25th Precinct as the “Winter Stalker”.

Detective Lombardi has his skills put to the test from the moment he arrives. There are no leads, no clues as to who this mystery killer might be. Only a trail of bodies—all with the signature mangled necks stretching back over three years.

This will be the test of a lifetime as Lombardi digs deep into all his training, knowledge, and experience. Together, with the help of his peers in the 25th Precinct, he will come face-to-face with Harlem’s worst nightmare in decades.

Will Lombardi discover the killer’s identity in time to stop him from claiming his next victim or is this one case he can’t hope to solve?

Find out in the thriller The Hidden Side.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387397211

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The night was young, and the skies were clear yet there was something ominous about it.

The man in black was sitting in his black 2018 Ford F-150 truck, stalking people like an owl for his next victim. It has been four hours since he clocked out from work, and he already couldn’t contain his excitement for what he was about to do.

He felt restless the entire day. He couldn’t shake off the feeling and it drove him nuts.

There’s that urge again, he muttered to himself.

Ever since he was a kid, he felt these tiny urges to kill. It was something he couldn’t control. As a juvenile, he started with the animals that his parents bought him. Every month, he seemed to find a good reason why the previous ones died, and his parents couldn’t care less. They just bought him more, which, in turn, fueled his passion for experimentation.

They got out of the cage and fell off the balcony.

I forgot to feed them for a week.

I arrived home from school and saw them like that.

He was a pathological liar and was prolific at it. He thought his parents taught him well at an early age. He grew up in a home where his parents bickered at each other all day long, and as an only child, he had no one else to vent his anger to but his poor pets.

As an adult, he never outgrew this urge to hurt others and has graduated from hurting his pets, to hurting people. He liked to look them in the eyes and see life fading from it, while they begged for his mercy to stop. There was something about this kind of control that gave him gratification; sometimes, even sexual.

He thought, with seven billion people on earth, the world was his playground. He had too many options yet so little time.

After another hour or so of watching people come and go from the local mart, he saw a young blonde woman pushing a shopping cart and was headed towards an old Corolla parked a few feet from the store’s entrance. She was wearing a white shirt and a light jacket to protect her from the chilly autumn weather. He thought she was perfect.

He parked his car on the adjacent street to avoid the store’s security cameras, but also made sure that he had a good view of the entrance. If there were any security cameras that recorded his car, the resulting playback would be too pixelated anyway. It was the perfect spot to spy on people.

He got out of his truck and extinguished his cigarette. He made sure that he kept all his cigarette butts in a container, which he took home, to prevent his DNA from falling into the authority’s hands. God knows how many perps got caught because of little errors like this. He grinned from ear to ear knowing that his genius was again at play.

"Can’t fuck up this time," he thought.

He rushed to the parking lot and tipped his baseball cap further down his face to hide from the cameras. He was wearing a thin, black, waist-length trench coat and black gloves. Nobody in the parking lot deemed he was out of place. It was mid-autumn, and the frigid weather made his outfit look like he was an average Joe.

It’s the perfect time to hunt, he thought to himself, bemused that he had half a year to plan everything, and half a year to execute.

Hi, sorry, I think you dropped this at the counter, said the man in black as he handed her a $50 bill.

This was the perfect ruse to get close to a person’s proximity. He tried other items in the past such as flyers, pens, and whatnot. However, money seemed to be the best bait. People conversed with him longer as they rummaged their bags and wallets for their missing imaginary $50 bill.

Oh, no, I don’t think so. I have all my bills intact here. Maybe you can give it to the cashier? Someone might come back for it, replied the woman.

Are you sure it’s not— he never even finished his question as he got closer to the woman’s side in one swoop.

"I have a knife inside my coat and if you scream or signal others, I will puncture your spleen in this parking lot. Now, close your