Title: Dream of Me

Chapter 12: Scent of Darkness


KARAKURA

When Ichigo and Chad reached their destination, they ended up having to park quite a ways away because of the ring of reporters and bystander traffic loitering thickly around the murder scene. As they both walked to the taped off scene, a series of light bulbs went off and a couple of reporters tried to shove microphones at them, but they skillfully avoided each thrust with a side step away.

There were already a whole series of crime scene investigators combing the outside and inside of the small town house. They checked for foot prints on the grass, finger prints on the windows, and on any nearby parked cars.

Ichigo and Chad both ducked below the tape blocking the door. However, before they could completely enter the home, they were immediately waylaid and asked to place their rubber gloves on now and wear booties over their shoes so that they wouldn't contaminate the evidence further. Once they were both booted and ready to enter, they found out why the booties were so important.

Ichigo's gut twisted at the scene. Dried blood speckled the walls from ceiling to floor. He didn't think it was possible for this much blood to come from a single body. He was correct in his assumption when he saw the taped outline of multiple dismembered human body parts carefully arrayed around the room. The amount of duplicate body parts equaled more than one body.

His eyes widened in shock however, when he saw the wall behind him. Underneath the dried blood was a mark as if it had been burnt on the wall with a fine precision blow torch. He couldn't help but unconsciously touch his sleeved forearm with his other hand.

Inlaid on the wall, was a picture of a large pentagram in a circle. He couldn't quite make out the symbols embedded in each line, but he was inwardly relieved that it looked subtly different from his own branding.

However, one cracked picture frame drew his eyes as it lay forlornly on the floor. It was a picture of a pink haired toddler on top of the shoulders of a man they knew extremely well.

"Shit! The Captain is not going to be a happy camper."

When Chad glanced at him in confusion, he looked where Ichigo jerked his chin to. He commiserated with Ichigo, as his normally stoic faced morphed into a grimace as well at the thought of being the bearer of bad news to the picture's occupant.

Both Ichigo and Chad slowly perused one end of the room to the other in minute detail, cataloguing specific things in their heads and in their notes. Time of deaths would have to wait for the coroner's analysis, because judging by the dried blood the massacre had taken place probably anytime from midnight to early morning.

There were no obvious signs of forced entry either through the windows or the doors down stairs; nor were there signs of even a possible murder weapon blunt or otherwise. For all intents and purposes, the entire room was staged to look like a while animal had torn into the bodies because no clean cut could be determined to the visual eye judging by the jagged edges of the exposed flesh. All the parts were raggedly torn asunder from its original occupant. The strength required to pull apart a body like that would be inhumanely phenomenal without the use of instruments; and yet, not a single fucking clue could be found in any trace of the dried blood.

The one main irritant that really bothered Ichigo was that other than a few knocked over items, the pentagram on the wall, and the bloody coating of everything; the entire room was basically left intact. Theoretically, even if some wild animal had been loosened on the room, there would have been more destruction to the surrounding area. In this case, the majority of the room was left undisturbed. Leaving that mystery alone for now, they wrapped up their observations of the murder scene before heading upstairs.

In contrast to the bloody chaotic massacre that was downstairs, upstairs was pristinely spotless. However, the massacre downstairs occurred, the murderer or murderers mysteriously walked up and down the stairs without leaving some sort of bloody evidence.

Even if they wore some sort of hazmat suit to conceal their evidence as they killed the victims, the perpetuators would have had to take it off before coming upstairs. But neither Ichigo nor Chad could find a single drop of blood beyond that initial killing spree room. Absolutely none could be found on the steps either. They even resorted to using special lighting equipment to check the floor and walls in case the killers had cleaned the blood off. But nothing, they couldn't find zilch. The worse part of their search was that the last impressions on the carpet were obviously made by a child.

The upstairs held 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, one bedroom was obviously a child's room in its pink walled glory, and the other was obviously her mother' room.

Looking through the adult room first, Ichigo and Chad rifled through the dressers and through the small office desk. They found some marijuana leaves in the back of one dresser drawer, and even found multiple packets of possibly methamphetamine taped below another drawer. Not ruling out the possibility of a drug deal gone bad scenario, they bagged the evidence to analyze later.

Ichigo, however, hit pay dirt when he located a client list of contacts hidden inside a ledger concealed in a hidden compartment within the desk. Whether it was the fortune teller's list for official clients or the one for the possible drug trafficking, he wasn't able to extrapolate. There was always the possibility that the victims were killed in anger over clients unhappy with their fortunes as well. Nothing could be ruled out. They did find some smoking pipes, so obviously the victim had been a user of her wares as well.

The bathroom yielded nothing out of the ordinary. The other investigators had already dusted the room for fingerprints and checked for blood in the washing areas. It all came out negative as well.

In the second bedroom, the child's room, nothing appeared out of place; even the bed was only slightly mussed as if the occupant had simply just got out and slid down the bed by herself. There were still a couple of strands of obvious pink hair on the pillow, but nothing in the room looked out of the ordinary. In fact, there was no trace of any intruder having entered the room whatsoever.

Even the window was safely secured from the inside, so whoever grabbed the child couldn't have escaped that way. To walk in and out of this bedroom without leaving a single mark from the bloodshed downstairs was near impossible. They would have to wait for the full analysis from all the evidence gathered at the homicide scene later.

For now they were at a road block with the actual crime scene itself, so they spent the next several hours gathering as much intel from the neighbors and any possible witnesses that they could. But for all intents and purposes, both Ichigo and Chad were completely baffled.

Apparently one or more perpetuators or possibly thing had entered the premises without any signs of forced entry. Then they had proceeded to tear the occupants to pieces while performing some sort of satanic ritual on the wall. Afterwards, they had taken the child and soundlessly left as they came. None of the neighbors recalled any unusual noises or disturbances. In fact all the neighbors were surprised when asked; the only thing unusual about the noise was its lack thereof. They all commented that last night, everyone slept soundlessly and had the best night's rest they have ever had in their lives.

Something about that tickled the back of his mind. But when his memories pulled Rukia's image to the fore, he got sidetracked from his current train of thoughts by the peeking interest of the little guy downstairs. Immediately, he banished her image out of his thoughts as much as he could, people would think he was a sick bastard if they caught wind of a detective getting wood at a homicide scene. So not appropriate . . . .

The only reason the scene took so long to be called in was because there was nothing unusual from all outward appearances with the small town house. In fact, the only reason why the scene was called in was because a walking passerby taking his dog for a leak had lost control of his pet. The pet had run barking towards the fortune teller's home. When its owner went to retrieve the dog, as he bent over to pick up the small Chihuahua he caught a glimpse of a dismembered body part through the window. After emptying his stomach out in a nearby bush, he immediately ran to the neighboring house to borrow their phone to notify the police of his horrifying observations.

Having gathered as much information as they could at the crime scene, Ichigo and Chad headed towards the station to type up their findings in a report to their superiors and to contact the other districts for any links to their own Zodiac serial murders.

Where were all the missing children, and what were the killers planning to do with them?


HUECO MUNDO

Inside his locked cell, Jinta was still trying to finagle the lock on his door with his tools, but he couldn't quite get the right leverage.

Suddenly loud inhuman tortured cries rang through the walls, directly on the heels of those eerie sounds; a loud vibration rocked the ceiling so hard that dust particles rained down on them. The absolute silence following afterwards was even more frightening than the earth quaking vibrations.

Jinta's show of bravado instantly evaporated. He gulped down the dry lump in his throat hard, and went towards the area where his cell divided with Ururu's. He sat next to her as close as he could. Simultaneously and wordlessly they reached for each other's trembling hands through the bars separating them.

They were next.


A/N:

Enough drama, suspense, and mystery?

Everything will be quickly clicking into clarity soon, if it hasn't yet.

Please drop me a review and let me know what you thought of the latest chapter.

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed or marked this story on their alerts list, I really appreciate it.

I'll strive to get the next chapter out before Friday. I'm scheduled to receive cortisone shots for my tendonitis on Friday, so I'll be off the computer for 5 days while I heal somewhat.

Next Chapter: Rukia's POV