By: Aithne
Hathian’s violence isn’t confined to its blood-soaked streets. The true abyss of human darkness often festers unseen, in the supposed sanctuaries of homes, where cruelty whispers its vows before erupting, staining the very soul. This is one such story, pieced together from shadows and hushed confessions, a chilling chronicle that demands a stark warning for its graphic truths. Unlike many of my writings, be warned: the details that follow are grim, stripped of any levity by the sheer weight of their depravity.
The thread began with an anonymous tip — whispers from a source who had overheard a raw, street-side confrontation. This led me to a seemingly common Hathian occurrence: a pedestrian assault involving known gang members Zeek Rookswood, Angelo Baker, and Muck, part of the KSB gang. The initial assault, marked by biting but no severe injuries, was almost trivial by Hathian standards. Responding officers, outnumbered, merely separated the parties, allowing the aggressors to depart. But the incident didn’t end there. It exploded into a furious shouting match between Zeek, Angelo, and one Officer Arnaud.
This verbal eruption ripped the veil from a far more sinister drama. The core of their rage: the recent decapitation of a former police officer named Drue Tucker. Zeek, it was revealed, allegedly had macabrely left Drue’s severed head on the hood of Officer Arnaud’s police cruiser. This, in turn, had seemingly provoked a legally questionable raid by Arnaud on Angelo’s home.
Angelo, visibly shaken during the argument, appeared ignorant of Zeek’s grotesque act – a significant detail, given his intimate relationship with Zeek and, more disturbingly, his apparent custody of Drue’s daughter. Zeek’s chilling revelation during the altercation — that Drue’s baby was “ours” — was later substantiated by claims of his biological paternity. The mention of Drue’s religious family, a point of contention in the heated exchange, was the final piece in this first act, of this initial, horrifying puzzle.
To understand those involved, I sought insight from another HPD officer, their identity shielded to protect them from the department’s opaque leadership. The KSB, I learned, from another source, are the Kings Street Bones, carving their territory from the projects east of the graveyard and north of Rader Records. Zeek was painted by the officer as a figure of extreme violence, his signature methods involving “depraved torture, drugging, and beatings.”
Drue, my police source stated, was Zeek’s ex-girlfriend and a former HPD officer. A particularly chilling anecdote emerged: Drue and Zeek had once been arrested together, during which Drue had reportedly accused Zeek of brutal beatings, rape, and forcing her to conceive and bear his child. Her recovered head, I was told, was buried in the cemetery; the search for her body continues. My source’s warning to me to avoid KSB territory was advice I didn’t quite heed, venturing often by in my small red chariot.
With enough information to paint a disturbing picture, I decided to confront the alleged perpetrator. A visit to Zeek in lockup, after a pointless delay by Officer Porkins (whom I reminded that familial or legal ties aren’t prerequisites for inmate visitation), brought me face-to-face with the man accused of such heinous crimes against his daughter’s mother.
Zeek confirmed his identity with a guttural “aye” and a nod. His face was a canvas of recent violence, his demeanor primal, almost animalistic. He stared through the glass with piercing eyes — whether a result of recent trauma within the station or his natural state, I cannot say. The picture left is gleaned from social media, a much less battered man when taken clearly. After I reminded him our conversation was likely monitored and not confidential, he began to answer some questions I had.
Was Drue his girlfriend? A shake of the head.
Was Drue’s daughter, now with Angelo, biologically his? A surge of anger, restrained by a guard, then an affirmative nod.
So, Drue was a vessel for his child, not a partner in his eyes. The accusation of rape loomed large. Why was Angelo, his lover, rather than he, in primary custody? He claimed shared custody: Angelo as “Mama,” he as “Papa.”
Circling back to Drue’s accusation of rape, he said, “She lied.“ Crucially, he didn’t deny she made the accusation, only its veracity.
My final question – “Did you force Drue to have the baby?” – struck a raw nerve. Visibly unsettled, almost convulsed by an unreadable emotion, he signaled an end to the interview and was led away. As a reporter, not a psychologist, I can only state that his profound agitation at this specific question was palpable, suggesting a deeply buried, perhaps damning, truth.
The trail inevitably led next to Angelo Baker(left of Zeek in the image), Zeek’s lover, the designated “Mama.” I found him by chance, a solitary figure on a project bench, the KSB territory brooding around us. Declining his offered cigarette, I began. He confirmed his romantic entanglement with Zeek. His description of his maternal role, however, was more detached, more performative than Zeek’s possessive claim. He painted Drue as “a decent woman,” her demise “a shame.” He professed ignorance of the circumstances of her death, insisting he would have intervened. Drue, he stated, “loved her child more than her own safety,” a poignant epitaph given the price she paid. She’d done her best as a mother, he added, though it seemed a hollow platitude.
When I laid before him Zeek’s implicit admission of Drue’s accusations – the rape, the abuse, the forced birth, even couched in his claims of her dishonesty — Angelo distanced himself, asserting he wasn’t involved with either of them during those alleged events. He claimed he was under the impression Drue desired the child. He’d learned of Zeek’s alleged murder of Drue from Officer Arnaud, terming it a “tragedy.” My ultimate question probed the abyss: his perspective on raising a child whose mother was, by her own account, raped, brutalized, and forced to bear this very offspring by the child’s own father — his lover — who then allegedly murdered and decapitated her. Angelo’s reply was a monument to moral detachment: profound remorse, certainly, but ultimately, “the child needs a parent, and Zeek is the parent that is left.”
The final piece was Sergeant Arnaud. Against my better judgment, anticipating HPD’s usual obfuscation, I went to the station. Surprisingly, he agreed to speak, and we moved to the nearby impound yard.
Arnaud expressed his absolute conviction of Zeek’s guilt in Drue’s murder and the delivery of her head, citing a confession from Zeek himself, DNA evidence, motive, and Zeek being the last person known to have seen Drue alive. These were the grounds for Zeek’s arrest and murder charge.
Arnaud added a macabre detail: Zeek, upon later release (presumably pending trial), had promised to bring Drue’s body to the station for a proper burial but had yet to do so. The Sergeant also confirmed his belief in Drue’s accusations of rape, assault, and forced pregnancy, adding that Drue had wanted to leave Hathian with her daughter, and Zeek had decided to stop her – permanently. When questioned about the warrant-less search of Angelo’s home, Arnaud became terse, denied it had happened, and concluded the interview.
The tragedy of Drue’s stolen life and denied motherhood is profound. The sacred bond between a mother and child, severed so brutally, leaves an irreplaceable void. While her daughter is reportedly unharmed and cared for, the shadow of this horror is inescapable. To contemplate a girl being raised by the man who murdered her mother, alongside that murderer’s lover, is a thought that chills to the bone. The infamous line, “The things we do for love,“, feels almost trivial against the backdrop of this real-world nightmare.
Children grow. They learn. The truth, whether whispered in playgrounds or discovered in archived articles like this, has a way of surfacing. Secrets fester, and the belief that truth can be indefinitely suppressed is a dangerous illusion.
For the child’s sake, I can only hope that Zeek and Angelo recognize the inevitable, devastating revelation that awaits. The only ethical path is to surrender her to Drue’s next of kin. The argument that Drue’s religious family — perhaps viewed with disdain for their conservative values – or even a foster family — would be less fit guardians than those complicit, directly or indirectly, in her mother’s murder and rape, is an obscene distortion of morality.
Even if they could conjure a semblance of a normal upbringing, the eventual discovery of the mother’s fate at the father’s hands would shatter that fragile construction. The kindest future this child might hope for is with another family where the biological father is, at best, a taboo subject, or at worst, rightfully vilified. No child should ever have to reconcile the image of “Papa” with the reality of her mother’s killer. That is a betrayal that cuts deeper than any grave.
