Angela Everly prided herself to be a well achieved woman, living a brilliant and luxurious life alongside her lovely spouse still at an early age. The new Smartphone designed by her husband was purchased like hotcakes in only one month, earning them quite a fortune, not to mention that her new published cookbook Family recipes by Angela Everly was a total success and she was the idol of many housewifes. Yes, she could say she had the ideal life, holydays spent on exotic islands and cruises, attending classy parties only for prestigious people and generally having all she ever wanted. But that didn`t put an end to her desire of increasing the prestige of her Restaurant, to serve fine dishes to grand and famous people. When you get the taste of success, you can`t help but want more.
And as she laid there asleep in her bed, the moon shining gently upon her, she would have never guessed that her dreams and aspirations will met a sudden end. She was dreaming blissfully when a thudding noise, as if something heavy fell down the porch steps, woke her up.
Looking blearily around the room, she noticed that she was alone in bed and the thought of her husband being the one to make that sound put her at ease. Or most likely there were just some cats running around the porch. So she just shook it off and went back to sleep. Some time later another loud thump and a strange gurgling noise rose her from her slumber.
She looked beside her and was surprised that her husband hadn`t returned yet. Maybe he was munching on a snack? The man was too gourmet for his own good. But still, she couldn`t shake that uneasy feeling when she noticed that their bedrooms door was ajar and there wasn t even a spark of light coming from the hallway. It was a little uncanny because he always left a light on whenever he woke up during the night to take care of his bathroom needs or other necessities. Shaking the weariness away, she decided to check up on him just to simmer down her nerves.
She walked slowly through the hallway, glancing at her surroundings and palming the walls for the lighting switch. When she finally found it, the surprise at not working brought even more worry in her gut. Now slightly scared, the woman slowly made her way to the kitchen where her husband would most likely be.
"Dave?" her trembling voice sounded through the thick darkness
She squinted her eyes in order to survey the kitchen when a little movement beside the pantry door caught her attention.
Approaching closely, she could make out a man`s silhouette standing by the window. With a sigh of relief, she relaxed her tense shoulders, thinking he was just Dave drinking a glass of water.
"Honey, you scared me." she laughed lightly, placing a palm on her heaving chest to calm her racing heart.
"Why are you staying here in the dark?"the woman asked gently, titling her head curiously at the unmoving shadow.
When the figure remained silent and only stayed ominously in the same place, she knew something was very wrong in this picture. From where she was standing she couldn`t discern his expression and he only seemed to stare at her, still as a statue.
"A-are you are you alright?" she croaked slowly, fear beginning to envelop her every sense.
No response.
A lump formed in her throat and bits of perspiration started to seep on her neck when she realized this was definitely not her husband.
"W-well...I`ll be g-going back t-to sleep n-now.. "she shuttered faintly while taking small trembling steps away from the unmoving figure who suddenly appeared menacing and bloodcurdling.
She thought that she might reach her purse from the hallway where her mobile phone was currently placed if she fled fast enough to grab it, then lock herself in the bathroom to call for help. A dark chuckle coming from the intruder made the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she froze in her tracks.
It was the evilest sound she had ever heard in her life. It was ill natured and tenebrous ,full of dark promises.
Suddenly, the trip to the hallway seemed far too long and she quickly scrambled to the back door which seemed to be the closest escape. Seized with fear, she fumbled with the door knob in a desperate attempt to open it. She could hear unhurried footsteps coming from behind and she almost sobbed from sheer desperation.
Giving a mighty jerk, the door finally opened and she bolted out faster than a bat out of hell. Stopping when she reached the half of the backyard, shivering she scanned the area. At the end of the lawn a thick forest stretched from side to side and the terrified woman was a little hesitant going in it`s gloomy depths.
Crickets chirped in the silence that followed and a branch snapped with a loud crack in the night. She turned to glance in the direction which the sound emerged, her body tense. Not a single leaf stirred. The air deathly still.
A whimper escaped her trembled lips, feeling like a cornered animal ready to meet it`s death. She couldn`t see him anywhere, the silver light coming from the moonlight failing to illuminate all the dark corners. Another branch snapped and she couldn`t take it anymore.
In her panic, she tried to make a hasty escape but her long gown got caught under the sole of her foot and her back fell against something solid.
Inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale... the noise has stopped.
Looking frantically for some movement she was only met with darkness. Her heart pumped wildly in her chest at the thought of her tormentor being hidden in the shadows, watching her troubled form as she struggled vainly to regain her breathing.
A heavy smell reached her nose and she became aware of something squishy resting under her frail body. She felt something wet and slimy touch her hand and she remained motionless.
Should I look? She thought ,scared out of her wits, dreading to see the substance`s source.
With a shuttering breath she turned to look and the ghastly sight that met her eyes caused her to let out a blood curling scream. Terrified beyond means, she scrambled backwards from the slayed corpse, her eyes filled with terror. The woman could only sob uncontrollably as she stared horrified in the dead eyes of her husband while scratching at her hands in an attempt to wash away the blood which smeared them.
"You`re next." A voice whispered in her ear
She jolted, eyes widening at the cold breath caressing the shell of her ear.
A large hand roughly grabbed the back of her hair before forcing her head down with brutal force until it made contact with the ground. She screamed in pain as blood poured from her forehead and nose. Her bare arms scraped against the grass as she struggled desperately to get free. She felt her hair being pulled harshly till she was face to face with her attacker and by now she was sobbing uncontrollably, knowing her life was about to end. His unusual eyes stared directly into her pleading, tear-filled ones, begging him to spare her.
The last thing she saw was a malicious grin before being stricken with an unbearable pain.
The fog still had not lifted off the streets of Amegakure and the smell of rain approaching wafted through the window screen into Pein`s office, being stirred slowly by the ceiling fan rotating lazily above.
He sighed heavily as he sat behind his desk in the Amegakure Police Department complex. It was just before noon and already he felt like pulling his hair from his head. For two weeks in a row he did nothing but fill and sign papers in his cramped office and he got tired of it. When he joined the force as a criminal investigator, he didn`t sign in for this.
He abhorred the office work with a passion, that`s why he preferred the field work...he loved to search for clues, to sit in a lab late at night pouring over them , not to mention that you can met all sorts of interesting characters. He was in dire need of a challenging case, to give him the thrill of chasing down an intricate criminal, to decompose his psychology and survey him as lab mice. But unfortunately for him, there were hardly any cases he was lucky if he were sent to search for a lost dog of some old lady. Not that he wasn`t happy that the number of crimes has decreased in the past years...he just wanted to escape the bothersome task of filling up papers. He cast a look at the time on the computer screen and groaned, pulling his fingers through his hair, making the already spiky strands even wilder. Time goes so slow when you got to do something so tedious.
Just when he was about to make a bonfire from his fillers, a sudden knock brought him back from his pyromaniac thoughts. The blonde head of Leuteant Deidara appeared in the doorway.
"Pein. We have a new case, un. Grab your coat and I`ll inform you on our way there."
Pein stood from the pile of unfinished work and strolled over to the door.
"What is it the case of emergency?" he asked stoically, moving past the younger man.
"We received a call from a hysteric lady. Apparently, there had been a particularly unpleasant death at the residence of Everly family. The victims, a prominent figure in the mobile telecommunication industry and his wife, a well known chef and owner of the Daisy Restaurant, were found out murdered by the housekeeper in the morning." the blonde jabbered while hurrying after the ginger haired man.
"I see.." he nodded to himself, heading down the hallway to the lifts. The metal doors slid open and the two men stepped into the cool metal box. He pressed the button to the first floor and the door closed before them.
"They warned us that it`s quite the gruesome sight, un."the blonde added airly while looking at the floor numbers as they descended downstairs.
"Does Kakuzu know?" he asked when he didn`t see his partner.
The older man was too greedy and conservative for his tastes, but he was a true master mind when it came to do his job. They were both rational people and worked perfectly together, so he could overlook his flaws most of the time.
"He`s already headed to the crime scene." Heh...the man wasted no second.
It was a little before one o clock when the squad car arrived in front of the large mansion on the King Street. Pein turned off the siren and got out, Deidara hopping out through the car window and following close behind him. The large building had already been sectioned off from the rest of the houses by several strips of police tapes.
The two bypassed the crowd of curious people milling outside and ducked under the yellow tape. As they neared the front door, Pein noticed that one of the window screens had been removed.
Entering the house, he took a moment to survey the wrecked indoors. There was a distinct trail of blood starting from the door and leading to what he assumed to be the kitchen, the trail looking as if someone had been dragged while bleeding profoundly. Walking further ahead, he spotted Kisame in the living room, sitting in front of a middle aged woman with a notepad in hand. The woman must be the housekeeper of the deceased couple, judging by her distressed look and shuddering shoulders. He gave the massive man a nod before walking past them in the kitchen, making a mental note to check her declaration later.
The room looked as if it had been a war zone, dried blood was smeared on the cream walls, several kitchen items were cast aside haphazardly, along with some chairs, and amidst all the wreckage he saw the back of several police officers through the opened backdoor leading to the courtyard. Walking outside he neared his partner who was already surveying the crime scene.
Pein quickly scanned the layout of the courtyard, committing it instantly to memory. Sasori was already there, holding a camera and taking pictures as he moved along, occasionally picking up probes and placing them into bags. His ringed eyes followed the large trail of blood leading to where a few stunned officers stood with shocked expressions on their faces. The stench and sight of the carnage even caused some to vomit.
Looking at them intrigued, Pein moved to see the cause of their illness, followed closely by Deidara and what met his eyes was truly an appalling sight.
On the neatly cut grass lay two bodies. One was a man that appeared to be in his thirties. Someone had savagely punctured his face with dozen of wounds until it was hardly recognizable while the rest of his body suffered multiple stabs. He noticed the stabs were only in vital areas as if the murderer calculated his slices with perfect precision.
The other body was that of a woman with long brown hair lying in a full length gown, the once white material now being smeared in brownish red.
The woman's corpse was laying in a blackish puddle of blood, pale blood-drained arms outstretched as if begging to be saved. Her throat was slit open, her eyes were gouged out, the eyeballs scattered around her head and her insides were spilled out of the gaping hole in her gut. The vile, putrid metallic smell contaminated the air. The filthy air forced its way down his lugs, making him to quickly cover his nose and mouth. No wonder his colleagues were sick to their stomach. If he wasn`t a trained professional and wasn`t accustomed with those kind of cases he would have hunched over too.
"Crap...I think I`m going to barf, un." muttered the blonde, his face gaining a shade of green, before squatting down near a shrub of petunias and proceeding to puck his guts out.
Ignoring Deidara`s retching, he turned to his partner, who was scribbling down some notes in his jotter.
"Kakuzu." he greeted him
"Pein.: he returned with a nod, finishing his notes unperturbed by the nasty scene that lay before him. The miser must have nerves made of titanium.
"It looks like all these crimes happened right after midnight and the alarm system was disabled by the murderer." he mused out loud while scribbling some more.
"What can you tell me about the murder weapon?" The orange haired man inquired, accepting a chirurgical mask from a nearby officer. He put it on, the little barrier preventing the stench from reaching his nose, even if the smell ingrained in his nostrils.
"From my observations I deducted that the killer used a machete or a Glen McClain knife. I can only presume. The weapon has not been found."he told him evenly, a little irked by the lack of evidence.
"Is there any sign that can indicate the cause of slaughter?" he asked once more, his eyes watching as the bodies were put in plastic bags and taken away on gurneys.
"It wasn`t a pillage. Valuable possessions are still in the premises."
"It may be a crime out of revenge, but I have no clue if the victims had any enemies." the green eyed man muttered thoughtfully while putting away his jotter in his breast pocket.
"Or the couple managed to stir somebody`s malevolence. They were successful individuals, after all..."
"Or...it could be a crime of passion... "the orange haired investigator spoke, his eyes narrowing at the spots where the bodies had been.
Kakuzu stared at him with a raised eyebrow.
"What?"
"Look closely."He pointed to the stained grass.
Now that the bodies have been removed, amidst the splattered blood and some innards they could discern some strange symbol. It was smudged but the two men could clearly see the shape of a circle with an upside down triangle.
Kakuzu quickly snatched his little notebook to sketch the symbol as a new clue.
"This looks like some cult ikon."
Pein had to agree with the older man.
"I have never seen this symbol before." he furrowed his eyebrows, moving closely to observe it better.
"I will do some researches when we head back to the Headquarters." the miser nodded to himself " Hopefully, we`ll find some useful information that`ll lead us to the murderer."
The two stared at the bloodied ground in deep thought. It was obvious this wasn`t the work of a mere common criminal. The flawless slashes, the way he managed to sneak into the mansion undetected and to turn off a powerful alarm system with ease was alarming. Not to mention that aside from the slayed corpses of the victims, he didn`t let a visual cue that he had been there. Not a footprint, not the weapon, or some stray hairs... nothing. He covered his traces very well. A canny and possibly suffering from religious psychosis murderer was a perilous matter and they had to catch him before he could harm other innocent people.
Storm clouds were gathering on the horizon and a deep rumble announced the beginning of a gloomy day. When the first drops of rain came down on the sprawling city, Pein looked up at the unbound leaden skies and watched the heavy rain fall from the mournfully grey clouds. The hard-driving June rain immediately slapped against his coat, and along the way washing away the blood from the earth. Ironically, the murky weather chimed in with the tragic situation.
He took a moment to relish the feel of cold drops on his skin before turning to his partner, who was also lost in his own musings.
"I've got a feeling that this is going to be a long assignment."