Everything Falls Into Place
Chapter One: Seven Murders
By: SilverWolfShadow
Black circles under the eyes were not, Kes decided, a very attractive statement. Neither was hair matted with old sweat, or eyes red with lack of sleep. She was definitely going to get it today at the office. Slowly walking out of the small bathroom she'd been in she warily glanced out the window. This winter had been a flurry of blizzards and ice storms, making her job much more challenging.
Still fairly blurry-eyed, she made her way around her bed decked with a comforter donning rose and vine print, and to a small dresser that stood to her shoulders. She shuffled through a small heap of unfolded clothes in each drawer before finally settling on dark blue jeans and a plain black shirt.
Fifteen minutes later, she was clean and dressed. She made her way into the small kitchen that had only a stove, microwave, refrigerator, and a total of four small cabinets. She looked at the time on the microwave with read seven twenty, and then glanced at the clock on the nearby wall over the doorway she'd just come through, and it read eight twenty. Confused, she conducted a ten-minute search of her bedroom before finding a silver digital watch that confirmed the clock on the wall had been the correct one.
Then it dawned on her. Muttering a string of curses to herself, she made for the living room. It was slightly bigger than her own room, but the one small black sofa, and small TV couldn't't take someone's mind away from the fact that the floor was literally covered in stacks of books. The only sign of her remaining sanity was three small paths, one to the sofa and TV, one to the door, and one the way she'd come from the kitchen.
After rummaging through a few piles of books by Anne McCaffery and Stephen King, she finally found her car keys somewhere between the Acorna series and Misery. If she was late again, she'd end up getting all night watch duty again at the station. Glancing at her watch again, she gripped the keys, grabbed a coat off some Dean Koontz books and headed for the
"You're late again." Clint said from his desk at the front of the station.
"I know, please don't tell Markus." Kes gave him a pleading look. Clint was supposed to be retired from the police force, but he was always hanging around so the Police Chief hired him again and put him at a desk. His hair might have once been blonde, but it was a silver-gray now with dark brown eyes. While at the academy, she'd interned at all the local police stations but the downtown one was her favorite because of Clint. He almost reminded her of her grandpa Larry, the same kind and sweet face with a personality to match.
"I won't tell him if you tell me why you look like you've been up all night."
"I was on watch…again." He gave a deep laugh that made her smile.
"So that's why you don't want me telling Markus. You just want to get out of watch again. All right, I won't tell but you better get your butt over to the briefing room before he notices your not there."
She waved her thanks and hurried down the hall to briefing room number four. She entered as quietly as possible, taking a seat in the back. Markus was in front, pointing to a group of photos and a list of suspects. She began trying to take notes and catch up.
"Kestrel," She looked up from her notebook. "Nice of you to join us, shall I review?" When she didn't answer, he continued. "Two weeks ago, a group of seven bodies were found near Stellar Harbor. All seven of them were identified by dental records." He shuffled through a folder until he found the paper he needed. " The victims names are: John Prihoda, David Enna, Raven Goldbelt, Audrey Lusby, Melinda Sloan, Steve Greenburg, and Deborah Wolfson. Kes, what's the first thing you should ask?"
"What did the victims have in common?" She glanced around at the other officers who were staring at her.
"Good. The claw marks on their bodies would suggest a very large animal, perhaps a bear, killed them. But, on all of them, a piece of skin in the shape of a bell was cut away from their backs."
"Why bells?" She tried her best to ignore the hard stares her co-workers were giving her.
"We've talked to family and friends, but none of them can figure out what bells would have to do with the person."
"Serial murders?"
"Even if they are serial murders, they usually have something in common. Something more than a killers mark," He added before she could point out the obvious.
"A similar motive."
"Right, but what's the motive? They're all unrelated and haven't seen each other before according to accounts by family and friends."
"Random?"
"I don't think so. A gut feeling."
"Maybe the killer sees something in their personalities that connect them?"
"Maybe... Kes, a new perspective would help, I want you to re-interview all the families and friends."
The others around the table kept silent, they had gotten used to this by now. Ever since Kes had joined their squad, half the cases were solved due to Markus and Kes' discussions. They also knew it was best to keep silent and let them finish despite the fact that there were hardly any good cases left for them once the duo solved the interesting ones.
"What? Wait, no, can't I just read their statements?" The last thing she wanted to do was waste her weekend getting the same useless information. Since she'd graduated from the academy, she'd been doing this same sort of useless legwork and surveillance. She was trained in on-the-field homicide but Markus refused to give her some real work.
She'd made a point to make the top of her class, which she did, just to get into a good squad where she'd be useful, which she was, but it seemed only for helping Markus sort out information. Well, there went her plans for reading the new Stephen King book this weekend.
"Good luck with that Kes," Clint said, shaking his head after she'd told him what happened.
"Yeah thanks," She looked at the file in her hand again. She'd be spending the rest of the day going over the statements and rechecking the victims profiles. Tomorrow, she'd interview the first four.
She made her way to the second level of the parking garage, found her green jeep, and fumbled between the stack of folders and her keys. Slowly, she felt the folders slipping from their resting spot under her left arm.
"Damn it," she bent down to pick up the dropped folders when she saw one of the statements had fallen out under the car. She gave a disgruntled sigh and got on her knees, straining to reach for that damned paper, but it remained just out of reach. A breeze blew through the garage suddenly, blowing the paper out from under the car to the other side.
Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she was about to get up when she heard the sound of paper rustling. She looked back at the paper; a bare foot was resting on it, toes flexing then curling.
"Excuse me," she started standing up, "could you please get that paper at your foot…" her words trailed away as she saw the person on the other side of the car. It was a man, probably in his early 30's, his hair was already graying and he was balding slightly, but his most noticeable feature was that he wasn't wearing anything.
"Sir, are you all right?" She took a step backwards wondering if there was something mentally wrong. There has to be, she thought. The man gurgled in response. "I'm going to call for some help, okay?" she slowly began pulling out her cell phone. Seeing her, the man came rushing around the front of the car. From somewhere he'd pulled out a knife, how she'd missed it before she didn't know. Shit, you'd think I'd see something like that…She quickly backed away toward the rear of the car and reached to her side for her gun but only met air. I picked a fine time to leave my gun at home. Trying to think fast, she retreated back a few more feet trying to keep a safe distance between her and the man, which proved difficult since he was now flat out running at her, knife upraised.
"Hey Kestr-" Markus stopped mid-sentence. The mysterious man stopped and looked at him. Markus must have come to tell her something last minute before she left, but now he just looked back and forth between her and the stranger and slowly began to pull his gun out from its holster. "Kes, what's going on?"
"I don't know. He just came at me with that knife."
"Sir, put the weapon down and put your hands behind your head," Markus was now pointing the gun straight at the man. Still holding the gun, the man turned facing Markus with his back to Kes and grunted some unintelligible string of words before raising the knife high over his head and began taking unbalanced steps forward.
a/n:
And I leave you with that. Though this isn't the first fanfic I've written, it's the first I've voluntarily posted online, so I'm a little nervous about what people will think about this. It will be a DMC fic, just wait for it.
Please leave a comment if you have any advise on how to fix this, constructive criticism, have any ideas, or just want to say hi. I'm sure there are some grammatical mistakes I made that I missed, I can't spell to save my life.
Also, about the seven names, I want to see if anyone can find a tie in their last names…probably no one but me will get it, but…
Yup, that's all I got to say for now…