Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever own Mononoke. I am merely toying with its main character to suit my own fangirl-ish tendencies.
Author's Note: Okay, it's not a first draft for once! This chapter has been fully edited and beta'd! Wheee!
EDIT 9-20-2011: Turns out there was a word choice error in this chapter, adn. Thanks to Tuulikki for pointing it out!
I just want to thank my beta ElisiansBane for being working with me here, and I want to thank my best friend Donna (aka Inkheart37) for helping me work out plot issues. You both are awesome!
Himitsu Shinu
Chapter 2
Washington, DC
February 8, 2011
9:46 PM, EST
David sat at his desk late into the night. Nearly everyone else had gone home, save for a few stragglers and the occasional security guard. A stack of old Painted Face Murder files sat open on his desk. He shifted through them, reading over all the little details he had long since committed to memory.
Some of them were digitally enhanced copies of decades-old files that had long since become too faded to read otherwise. Those were little more than vague details scribbled down by people who wrote everything off to a combination of trauma, anxiety, and superstition.
As the years had gone by, the files slowly became more detailed. There were several in a row, occurring in during the late 1950's and ending sometime around the early 1970's, that had all been put together by the same person. That person, a now-retired detective named Nathan Stiger, seemed to have come to the same conclusion David had: the Man with the Painted Face is the one behind it all. Or, so David liked to believe. He wasn't entirely certain, to tell the truth.
A few years before, David and Alex had visited Mr. Stiger.
"Don't know if there's much I can tell you," Stiger had said, studying the both of their faces intently. Stiger had been an old man nearly in his nineties, unable to walk and confined to a wheelchair, but his tongue had been sharp and his mind bright. His voice had been slow and clear, and had carried a strong southern drawl. "Seems to me like you two know more about this than I do."
"I don't know about that, Mr. Stiger," David had replied. "You worked on these cases for more than twenty years."
"And all without a thing to show for it," had been the reply.
"Mr. Stiger, there was one thing that we had been meaning to ask you," Alex had asked. It had been the first time she had spoken since they had arrived at the assisted-living facility where Stiger had resided. "Looking through the cases you investigated, we couldn't help but feel that something was missing."
"And?"
"And we were wondering if there was anything that you neglected to include in the files."
"Hmm…" Stiger had been silent for a moment as he thought. "There was one thing… But I can't tell you."
"Mr. Stiger," Alex had interrupted firmly. "We are investigating a string of serial killings. If you do not give us the information we need, information we know you have, then we can hold you accountable by law."
"Calm down, missy! I ain't gonna keep any information from you! What I was gonna say was that I can't tell you much more than what's already there in those files. All I can tell you is that things ain't always as they appear. There are things greater than us that we can't even begin to understand, and that by getting to the bottom of all this, you two are meddling in things that don't like to be meddled with."
"You know something, don't you?" David had asked eagerly.
"Damn right I do. And I wish I didn't know any of it. What I know can't be put into words. It simply can't. There ain't no way to describe it. You want my advice? Leave all of this alone. You're not meant to know any more than that. Hell, you're not even supposed to know as much as you do! None of us are. Chasing after this is like chasing a ghost. Even if you do catch a glimpse of the truth, you'll never be able to catch hold. More than twenty years, and God knows I never managed it. Hell, I even spoke to him, and I'm just as clueless as I was before I even laid eyes on any of those cases!"
"Him? Who him? Who did you speak to?"
Stiger had looked at David with disdain. "I said too much already. You wanna know the truth, kid? You might as well find it on your own. Because I can't help you."
The old man had refused to say any more after that.
However, despite his insistences that he could not help, Stiger had provided David with to right motivation to keep pushing forward on the case.
But there was one thing that always left David wondering: who had Stiger spoken to? David had a feeling that it had been the Man with the Painted Face, but he could not be sure.
He had tried going back a few weeks later to speak to Stiger, but the old man had refused to see him. David had tried again, of course, but with no luck.
The third time David had gone back, he had been told by the staff of the assisted-living facility that Mr. Stiger had suffered a stroke and passed away.
David closed Stiger's old files and set them aside in favor of the three most recent ones. The first was from two years prior, the second from ten months ago, and the most recent from less than two weeks ago.
At the moment, the ten-month-old file was David's personal favorite. Why? Because it featured a composite sketch of the Man with the Painted Face.
The drawing showed a young man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties, give or take a few years. The man was fair-haired and pale-eyed, which was unusual, considering how the drawing showed him as being distinctly Asian. From what part of Asia, it was not clear. David could guess, of course, but composite sketches were not always the most accurate.
It was the way his face was painted that had David intrigued. Pale eyes ringed in some dark color, with tears of that same color drawn in below his eyes. A line of that same color decorated the bridge of his nose. His upper lip was painted, too, but with a lighter shade.
Aside from the occasional blurry security camera image every few years or so, the composite sketch was the only indication of what the Man with the Painted Face actually looked like.
Glancing over at the clock on the wall, David found that it was nearing ten o'clock. He sighed as he put the files back into the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet.
Time to go home…
Albany, New York
February 9, 2011
1:08 PM, EST
"I still think you're obsessed," Alex commented absentmindedly as she read the newest Painted Face file for what felt to her like the tenth time (and it probably was).
"Obsessed? What do you mean?" David replied as he drove.
"David, come on. We've been through this already. You act like these cases mean something to you."
"They do," David insisted. "Anyone would want to be the one to solve a string of serial killings."
"True," Alex agreed. "But you've been letting this take over everything you do. I told you yesterday that you make these cases a priority over all of your other work. It'll consume you if you're not careful."
David was silent for a moment before answering. "I'll be careful, you know that." She gave him a look that clearly said that she didn't entirely believe him. "Really, Alex, I will."
She shook her head, still not convinced. "Once this case is over with, you need to take a break for a day."
"And do what? I just took a vacation."
"Which you spent locked up in your apartment with the Painted Face Murder files."
"So? I didn't come to work."
"That didn't stop you from doing your work from home, though, did it?"
"Seriously, Alex, what would I do if I were to actually do this 'going out' thing you speak of?"
"Oh, I don't know. Go to a movie, get a drink with a friend or two, get yourself laid…"
"Are you offering?"
"What? No!" Alex slapped his arm. "My point is that you need to do more than work your ass off."
"Fine, fine, point taken."
They sat in silence for the remainder of the drive.
2:31 PM, EST
Snow crunched under the tires of their car as they pulled up the driveway of the crime scene. It hadn't taken them very long to get any information they needed from Albany's police department, mainly because they already had most of the information on the case already.
A police officer trudged across the snow-covered yard towards them.
"Thank you both for coming over here," the man said, shaking both of their hands. "No one here can make heads or tails of this mess."
"Well, I'm sure we'll be able to figure something out, Officer—" David paused.
"Carson," the policeman replied. "And you must be Agents Burke and Ortiz?"
"That's us," Alex confirmed.
"Excellent. If you'll come with me, I'll show you around here." Carson led them to the door, which had caution tape stretched across it, but was otherwise unlocked. "The scene's been cleaned up pretty good already by our people, but we haven't been able to find much of anything." Carson opened the door, and allowed them to step inside. "We've tried to preserve it as much as possible, though."
The stench of stale blood was immediate. It was splattered across the walls and floor of the entryway, with a trail of it leading further into the house. What was even more interesting was that nearly all of the walls were dotted with what looked like little rectangular pieces of white paper. Much of the paper was charred and some of it had been almost completely burned away.
A thin line of salt ran along the floor in the hallway that separated the kitchen, dining room, and living room. It was unbroken save for one place directly in front of the living room door.
"One of the bodies was found there," Carson said, pointing to a particularly bloody place on the floor outside of the salt line. "The other one was found in the living room, stuck to the ceiling. Took hours to get the poor man down."
The living room was the most decrepit of the, all. More blood trailed around the room, and there was a dark splotch of it in one corner that seemed to be the source of trail they had seen first walking in.
The blood was not the only thing. What looked to be claw marks had been gouged in practically every surface, from the seat cushions of the couch, to the lampshade, to the hardwood floor. There were more paper scraps on the walls, even more than had been in the foyer, some of them also rent with claw marks.
What was most intriguing, however, was the wide, black burn that seemed to go in a horizontal strip across the very center of the wall. Anything standing in front of the wall also had a burn, leaving the wall behind those objects perfectly blank.
'Just like all the others,' David thought to himself.
"The people who were involved in this," David began, eyes still scanning the room, "Where are they now? Would it be possible to speak with them?"
"They're staying in a hotel on the other side of town, I think," Carson replied. "I don't know the address, but I can see about asking my superiors to call them up, maybe even get them to come by the station so you can talk to them."
"That would be great," Alex answered. She bent forward to examine one of the paper scraps more closely. "We'll let you know when we're cone looking this place over," she added. Carson nodded, and left the room.
"What do you think?" David asked after a moment.
"Well, the report said that Destler had been killed along with a fourteen-year-old girl that had been a guest the day this all happened. Carson said that the body stuck to the ceiling was a man, so it's safe to say that that was Destler."
"Which means that the other spot was the girl."
"Yeah," Alex agreed. "Poor kid."
"I'm not sure about this one," David said pointing to the third bloody patch in the corner of the living room. "The report said that the three who were left alive managed to escape with only a few minor cuts and bruises."
"And we know that there was only one other person at the scene." They exchanged glances.
"Seems like Painted Face was hurt pretty bad," David concluded, a glint in his eye.
"And judging by the amount of blood, it probably weakened him."
"Meaning he couldn't have gotten very far."
David grinned. 'This time,' he thought. 'This time, for sure.'
Albany, New York
February 9, 2011
8:29 PM, EST
'A little longer,' he told himself. 'Just a little longer, and everything will be alright again.'
'You don't know that for certain,' that ever-present voice in his head muttered.
'Shut it,' he replied irritably. 'I need to concentrate.'
He glanced around to reassure himself that no one was watching. The aisle he stood in was deserted, and he couldn't see any security cameras from where he was standing. Good.
The voice in his head seemed to sigh. 'I'll let you know if anyone is coming,' it said in a resigned sort of tone.
He reached out, picked up a package of bandages, and tucked them into his coat as discreetly as he could. Several more bandages followed along with a bottle of painkillers.
'Someone's coming,' the voice warned. 'You'd best move it along.'
He hoisted his bag into a more comfortable spot on his shoulder and walked down the aisle as calmly as he possibly could. It took nearly every ounce of his concentration to keep his expression neutral even as stabbing pain shot through his side with every step.
He turned into another aisle a few rows over where an employee was rearranging items on one of the shelves. The employee gave a suspicious look as he walked past, but simply shrugged her shoulders and resumed working when he did nothing.
'This might be a good time to get some food, as well,' the voice urged. 'You haven't had anything to eat for almost a week now, and it's starting to affect me, too.'
'I don't want to risk taking too much and being noticed,' he argued as he began making his way to the store's exit. 'It's already hard enough to keep from dropping all of this. And besides, you remember what happened the last time we got caught by the authorities.'
'That was forty years ago,' the voice retorted, 'And you were able to talk your way out of it.'
'But there's no guarantee that I'd be able to do it again. Humans become more paranoid by the day.'
'True, true,' the voice agreed before falling silent once more.
He was almost at the door. Just a few more steps and he would be alright.
A trio of humans walked through the store's entrance, all talking loudly about something that made little sense to the former medicine-seller. One of them bumped into his right shoulder, elbow accidentally jabbing him right in the center of his wound. Taken by surprise, he cried out, dropping the items he had been hiding in his coat. A couple of the items skidded across the floor and through the alarm gates in front of the doors. The loud, high-pitched beeping of the alarm rent the air. The sound was painful to his sensitive ears; he tried to cover them both with one hand while clutching at the wound in his side with the other.
People were shouting. The man that had bumped into him took hold of his arm, possibly to help him up, possibly to restrain him.
Panic took him. He struck out against the person holding him; he felt his hand connect with the person's head. The hands gripping his arm let go. Blood was dripping down his side again and onto the floor, mixing with the thin layer of soapy water left behind by a recent mopping.
He tried to run. The hands grabbed hold of his arm again.
More shouting. More of it, now; louder.
He slipped on the wet floor and landed hard. His head cracked painfully against the floor, making stars flash before his eyes.
There were more hands on him, restraining him.
One pair of hands clamped cold metal onto his wrists.
Author's Notes: Poor Kusuriuri-san got caught! I feels sorry for him. But, then, if he hadn't, I wouldn't really have much to move forward with, would I?
And we start to see a little more on the side of David and Alex. More from them to come.
Next Chapter: Alex and David dig deeper as they try to get to the bottom of things. And what happened to Kusuriuri-san?
Please review! Constructive criticism is preferred, but any kind of feedback is loved and appreciated!
