Fields stirred at the faint sound of chittering in his quiet bedroom and cracked open one eye to see, just above the bed's edge, two beady eyes and a hedge of whiskers looking at him expectantly.
"I fed you three hours ago," he rasped, barely a whisper; but Carl plainly didn't remember the meal.
Emmett placed bare feet on the cold hardwood floor, sitting silently for a minute before checking the silver pocketwatch on the nightsand, its cover glowing from the oil lamp's flicker as twilight crept through the window in a blue haze. He never slept in a fully darkened room.
5:15 am.
Somehow, Fields always knew the time but checked anyway, just to confirm. Three hours had passed, and sleeping always came with guilt, as if allowing his body some recovery wasted precious time. And on this case, every minute was indeed precious, but even he had to admit that the ongoing lack of sleep had started to wear him down.
His clothes from 2:15 am, still heavy with rain, were folded neatly over the wooden chair, and he pulled a small notebook from the wet waistcoat and took it to the kitchen, his body wrapped in a thin wool blanket pulled tightly over bare shoulders.
"Mr. Carl….SIR Carl," he said quietly as the raccoon pattered behind him. Emmett opened two loosely folder bundles of paper on the kitchen counter to reveal a quarter loaf of bread and a bit of beef, made the raccoon a fair-sized snack then hunkered down in front of Edgar's pet, who held out his spindly hands for the early breakfast.
"Little Sarah will come by for your daily walk in the park today, if the rain stops. I know you love the attention."
He watched Carl eat contently, considering him as he tried to ignore the silence of the house.
He thought about eating something, as well, but food seemed like such a bothersome task these days, just like sleeping. Occasionally, he drank honey in water, and strong coffee alone had gotten him through multiple days on difficult cases. But the stew at the Grey Fox earlier made the stale bread and dried meat in his house seem like unpalatable fare.
Beneath the blanket he ran a hand over the musculature of his stomach, his body had become lithe, sinewy these last few months. And he knew he should eat something, but his mind had already moved to other things.
Emmett idly told himself it was duty alone to check in on Miss Monroe soon. Anna…. Only that, nothing more. But he felt something alarming and unexpected within himself and quickly categorized it into something safe, stored it away.
In the library, remnants from yesterday's fire remained, a glowing pile of orange embers dimly showering the curtain-drawn room; and he lit the oil lamp and leaned back in the chair, sorting through the case notes laid out neatly in separate, chronological sections. To the latest pile, he added yesterday's notebook.
A case's notes went with him everywhere like a well-traveled corner of his mind, they were lain out at work then at home, then work again, becoming the focus of all his thoughts until each case was solved.
But at this point he didn't need to read them, he h ad all the particulars of this case memorized. A man. Tall, wiry, then thick and heavy, depending on who you asked, which meant no one had truly seen him. The crimes had no geological, celestial, or chronological pattern, but the scenes were always the same. And the victims very similar in age, appearance. Status played no role, the poor had died just alongside the wealthy, all equal in his eyes. So appearance was everything, the face. The frame beneath the façade that denoted wealth or poverty, the flesh itself. He took the greatest pleasure in the obliteration of beauty, of depersonalizing to mere material what many would consider perfection. He was the god of their destruction.
What could cause a man to embrace such depravity, to think the complete evisceration of other humans could ameliorate everything that boiled inside of him? Was he reliving a trauma, addressing an anger long past? Did something break him beyond salvation and these murders were the fallout?
Emmett didn't know, at least not yet. But he knew that people could recreate themselves into something that saved them, or at least sheltered them from their pain.
It was always so quiet. Sometimes he could almost imagine her voice echoing down the narrow brownstone hallway. But it never had.
In the nightstand, bound together by a tied leather strap, were Emmett's early case drawings. He was an excellent artist, not by his own standards but by most at headquarters. It was his early foot in the door so to speak, his meticulous images of evidence, crime scenes, and suspects.
And in the nightstand underneath those early work drawings, another neatly bound set of images were holed away, all in black ink and hidden in a worn brown case. Sketches of a young woman, some drawn during her life some after, and a small baby.
Images of that baby at four, at nine, pulled solely from imagination, for the baby had never seen those years. As time passed, the drawings became fewer until Emmett stopped drawing altogether outside of work. Save his wife and son, and just once a year on their death day. It was the only moment with those thoughts he allowed himself anymore.
When Emmett and Helena married, he'd just joined the police force, a new recruit from the academy and a star pupil, ready to take on the city. But he was more interested in love and the prospect of the large family that both he and his wife dreamed of, both coming from small families and wealthy but cold upbringings in the city as they had.
They bought a small country home on the edge of the city and a wonderful horse his wife named Hedges and two sweet milk cows that loved attention. They had everything they ever wanted in a small flock of chickens for eggs, flowers in the garden that bloomed that spring in yellows and oranges and soon there was a baby on the way.
But he was gathering firewood on a Saturday morning when he heard Helena cry out; then almost as quickly as the labor began it ended and with it, two heartbeats, their new hopeful world disappearing with her death and the baby's.
Emmett sat broken with the still bodies of the only woman he'd ever loved and a tiny boy that he couldn't bear to name. The grief and guilt nearly destroyed him. He'd failed them both.
The baby had his mother's eyes, blue as the country sky sheltering the outskirts of Baltimore but still and unmoving, like a doll's eyes. And Emmett wondered if the baby saw his father during those few brief breaths, when that tiny fist clutched around his finger. Did he see anything? And if so was it only the grey expanse of the thatched ceiling and the wooden rafters? Emmett could only hope that he saw in that short moment how much his father loved him.
The fall days felt like years, and Emmett soon realized that he couldn't live alone in the confines of their home, tending the animals and looking at the hillside views he once shared with Helena. And so he moved back to the city, into a small brownstone near police headquarters, the majority of it accommodating his workroom and den - dank, undecorated and austere, with the noises of city just outside his door, distracting and relentless.
And he threw himself into the arms of work, who proved to be a needy companion. Never fulfilled, no amount of time ever enough.
He rose through the ranks quickly and quietly, earning little respect from the older ranks initially but soon proving his worth in case after case. They grudgingly acknowledged that the city needed young Emmett.
He was clinical and precise, with deductive capabilities that most of the other officers knew they'd never have. He had a mind you couldn't build. And over time it didn't necessarily wear him down, it just made him different. Harder, more detached.
With every blood-strewn crime scene, his mind went deeper into itself, living in the minutiae. And when he did sleep, he dreamed mostly of clues, his subconscious mind still pouring through evidence.
Fields had readily given his life to the police force. Perhaps he was running from a past too painful to live with but the city depended on him, as did the mayor and the mass of people who breathed life into the heart of Baltimore. It was his duty to keep them safe; and in an ideal world they'd never know the dangers that could have befallen them.
But everyone knew about the Keeper of Death case, it topped every newspaper, the headlines getting larger and more harrowing as the death toll mounted. And the city's collective fear reminded Fields of the Ivan case from a scant year ago.
But Ivan's crimes mimicked the written word in a very precise clinical fashion, translating Poe's syllabic horrors into macabre dioramas. The murders fulfilled a desire to absorb genius. But Ivan titillated himself, where the Keeper of Death murdered in the throes of hatred. He wasn't constructing art, he was deconstructing life. The bodies…reduced to unrecognizable meat and skin and puddles. There was a deep and insatiable evil whetted by the crimes. And that, Field's knew, made him more dangerous than Ivan.
Ignoring his grumbling stomach, Emmett shaved and found a set of fresh, starched clothes then dressed and headed the few scant blocks to headquarters.
Like so many of his days, the hours poured together - scouring the town and revisiting the crime scenes, his pen scratching out notes and drawings while the slow rain continued to pour.
Then once again it was 2:00 am, the rain falling heavily, loudly, in straight windless torrents as he stood under the awning of The Grey Fox, a closed umbrella in his hand. The door rattled open and Anna Munroe came around the other side, fumbling silently with the lock and the old, fidgety key.
And as Anna turned quickly, thinking only about her class exam in the morning, she nearly jumped out of her skin with a start.
"OH! Detective Fields! I…."
Her hand landed on his chest but she quickly pulled it away, holding it with the other as she tried to catch her breath, horrified at the impropriety.
They both knew that the nightly escort she'd agreed upon was nowhere in sight, as she locked up to return home that early, dangerous morning. And Emmett allowed himself a small smile to reassure her.
"Miss Monroe, you appear to be on the way home without an escort at 2:15 am."
Without taking his eyes off of her, he opened the umbrella and held it over them, offering his arm silently as they walked out into the rain.