The Taste Of Ink
MysticShadowWanderer

Disclaimer: When you're right, everything else you messed up just might be wrong, you're wrong all the time. So far, so good, cause no one knows I'm faking. I wish I could show you the toll it's taking. Sometimes I live as if there's no tomorrow. So far, so good.

Chapter Two: Standing with your spotlight on me

The Kamiya girl didn't lie when she told me that I would have extensive details on her case by this morning. Having woken early, it seemed sensible to get a head start on work, although my reasoning behind that particular sentiment really isn't very logical. For someone who hates their job, it seems foolish to go to work early. But I figure that the sooner I get there, the sooner I can leave. Little did I expect to find several large folders' worth of documentation sitting on my desk, awaiting my arrival.

"Jesus," is this only thing I can think to say as I let out a low whistle. This from a non-religious man.

Flipping through the files, I can do nothing but stare. Yesterday, she told me that whether or not she committed a murder depended on if I could defend a murder case successfully. These people are dead any way I look at it, and I'm gazing at them every way possible. Some of these bodies don't look remotely human anymore. Even to one such as myself, an artist of destruction whose canvas is a human corpse, the photographs are a bit off-putting. Only a bit, though.

My finger taps raptly on one of the pictures, a man who appears to have been strangled with a piano wire. Fascinated, I lean closer to get a better look at his lifeless face, which is extremely pale and has a slight blue tint to it. The method is slightly messy, I think to myself, but effective. It's easiest to tie each end of the wire to a block of wood, similar to the design of the thin pieces of wire that artists use to slice a section of clay away from the rest of the brick. When the device is pulled tightly around the victim's neck, it strangles them and slits their throat at the same time. Death by asphyxiation and loss of blood simultaneously. Quite creative, I muse.

I am such a sick bastard. Any normal lawyer would be looking at these photos in disgust, possibly even turning away to avoid disgorging their breakfast and/or lunch all over their desk; it's that bad. But here I am, ever the morbid freak, finding the merits and faults in the style of murder and allowing myself just the slightest amusement in some cases.

Somehow it's hard to believe that the proper, kind looking girl that sat in my office yesterday is the same one who drove a knife through this particular child's left eye and halfway through his brain. That photograph is the only that I find truly disturbing; I don't believe in killing children. To take the life of an innocent, someone who has the potential to help shatter the ideals of the modern world, is repulsive to me. At least I have some sense of a moral code, even if, for the most part, it's pretty fucked up.

So, the question that remains to be answered is this: Is Kamiya Kaoru clinically insane, or is she just psychotic in the sense that I am? Or, is she just tired of the way this world works and willing to go to extremes to prove a point? I can't stand protestors.

'Leave it alone, Himura,' I prompt myself. 'Don't immediately make any conclusions. That's the kind of shit that loses cases.'

Alright, so I'll work off the information I have sitting in front of me. Setting the pictures aside where I won't be tempted to examine them for the entire day, I pull the stack of folders closer and take the first one off the top of the pile.

"Where better to start than the beginning?"

Five hours later, I sit back in my chair and press my palms into my closed eyelids. Even if Kamiya isn't insane, I soon will be if I read any more of this. Why? Because there's nothing. Absolutely nothing. I've been given records of everything she's ever done in life, the schools she's gone to, the jobs she's had, the awards she's received. Yes, that's right, awards. For someone who's killed thirty-seven people, the girl has a shitload of pointless and superficial awards that, to the rest of the world, say that she's a prime example of a perfect citizen and student, not to mention artist. Painting, sculpting, two-dimensional and three-dimensional arts that I've never even heard of in my life (what the hell is batik?), creative writing, journalism, the list is, frankly, sickening. Currently, she's working as the head of the graphic designing department of a huge corporation and making almost as much money as I do, including both of my jobs. It's in-fucking-credible, if you ask me.

"So what the hell is her problem? There has to be something here..." Up to my elbows in papers that I've strewn in different piles, my own system of organization, I dive back in to go through the things that I've already read.

Suddenly I stop. Her parents. What about her parents? There is, as far as I can tell, nothing in here about her family. There must be something. I rack my brain, trying to remember seeing anything about her background. With a sigh, I begin to sift through every single document AGAIN. Now I just came to a realization. This is what hell would be like, if there were such a thing. I don't technically believe in hell, but if I did, I would be forever condemned to sorting through papers on some perfect bitch whose record is so spotless I can't find anything to help my case. Life can be such a pain in the ass.

"Goddamn it," I hiss through my teeth as I reach into my desk for the bottle of aspirin that I always keep at hand. "Could she be any more of a perfectionist, suck-up, mindless slave to society?" Definitely time for headache prevention.

Tossing back four aspirin with a swig from the water bottle in my bag, I settle back in my chair to get some more work done. Though I don't like to admit it, the whole case is captivating. It's one of those things that some heartless, son of a bitch, self-important Hollywood director is going to turn into a wicked movie someday. Like Helter Skelter, but creepier. I've seen a lot of strange cases, they come and go, but nothing like this. This is the kind of thing that the general public eats up, that they can't get enough of. I have a feeling this is going to be a very high profile trial. Just great; that means television crews and all that bullshit to deal with. I don't do very well with those sorts of things. I wonder how much it costs to replace a new network's smashed camera...

Another six harrowing, stressful hours of work on this case that seems to have been sent to me straight from the bowels of hell itself, and I'm ready to call it quits for the day. A glance at my wristwatch tells me that it's now four in the afternoon. I got here at five in the morning. That's entirely too long to sit in one office, even if I did put myself through it by choice. I'll just think of it as making up for the whole two hours I spent here yesterday. That makes it seem a bit more tolerable.

There's more work to be done tonight, I remind myself. This morning, Iizuka actually had something to say to me that made it worth my while to listen. He was pissed off that I hung up on him the previous day, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. It's not as if I actually like the man or want to talk to him. His only useful purpose is to inform me of when I have missions.

I have to kill again tonight.

A/N: I hope you don't expect the chapter lengths to be the same as they, more or less, are in my other stories. I just write until I decide to stop, for whatever reason, whether it be artistic or because I'm just too damn lazy. I realize I probably just disturbed some people with a few things, which means... My job here is done. :beams up: Tengo un gato en mi correo. .......FIESTA. Huelo una enchilada vieja. BYYY the way, the artists' clay-cutting wire and the brick of clay thing isn't random, it DOES have symbolism. Think about it. Just thought I'd throw that out there...