If Jessica should name one thing she hated about her new job as a chief it would be the paperwork. Not the phone conferences with the supreme command, not the agents that permanently asked her for something, not even the training of new agents. Just the paperwork.
This moronic, monotonous work that piled up every evening. For hours she had to sign papers, read through reports of agents and wrote her own reports about the report. That mostly leaded to the fact that she was the last one who left the office.
After doing this a few days the suspicion grew in her that somewhere in this immense amount of papers some kind of hostile intelligence was hidden. Something that doubled itself when she was tired or hid parts of itself, that she needed, just to keep her in the office as long as possible.
Often she heard herself asking how Kitty was able to stand that every day. Maybe she had some kind of trick to make this a bit more bearable. Like singing a song or something.
Jessica looked furtively around. Nobody was here, so nobody would care if she would belt out one or two of her favorite songs.
"Mama, take this badge off o' me"she started, more humming then singing. "I can't use it anymore…" quickly she averted her gaze from the papers and looked around. She had actually thought that right in this moment someone would enter the office and catch her singing. Of course, now she had luck. But speaking about catching, if it comes to catch Scratch all her luck left her.
The best example for that is the whole idea with Kitty in his gang. That operation was a failure. Johnson was dead and they had no evidences that he did that. The only thing they had were some weird scraps of something that you couldn´t even call a conversation. Also they haven´t seen Kitty or heard of her since then.
And even if she knew that Scratch wouldn´t do any harm to her due to their history, there was still a rest of uncertainty in her if something happened to Kitty.
A loud self-talk from the other side of the office door let Jessica ignore the paperwork. Keswick was talking there.
"He is talking to himself… okay, now he´s finally gone crazy." Mumbled Jessica amused and focused back on the papers, even if she knew that Keswick would burst in the room next and wanted to talk to her. And exactly like she prophesized it, it happened. Keswick walked into the room and sat down on the chair on which he always sat. He ignored his boss completely, totally concentrated he talked to someone on his cellphone.
"And you really a..a..accepted this offer?!" Keswick breathed shocked. "Why that? I mean where is the s..s..security… You trust him?! Kitty, are you d..d..drunk? …You understand his situation now?! Don´t tell me that you f..f..forgive him for everything he has done… Thank god that m..m..means you´re not totally insane… Wait, wait, you serious? He had a h..h..hard time too? You got to be kidding me! You better come back to the HQ and then we t..t..talk that through… What do you mean, you have a date soon? You´re s..s..still on duty!..." Keswick took the phone away from his ear and starred on it in disbelieve. "She hung up!"
"Let her…" sighed Jessica. "She won´t help us in her current state anyway. She has to sort some things out, maybe…"
"What has this psychopath done to her?" Keswick took his glasses of and ran with his hand exhaustedly over his face. "He must have b..b..brainwashed her or something."
"Or just persuaded her of his point." Replied Jessica.
Keswick tilted his head confused. "How can you be so calm about that?"
"Because I have work to do."
"Work? Well then…" Keswick stood up and tossed all the papers from Jessica´s desk. "Now you´re f..f..free."
"Are you totally insane?!" shouted Jessica angrily
"There are m..m..more important things than paperwork right now!"
"And what do you want from me now?"
"You wanted to c..c..catch Scratch!" meant the scientist. "You wanted to get a promotion! D..D..Do something, make a plan!"
"You´re the genius here, why don´t you make one?!"
"Because you´re the chief, you make the plans!"
"Okay okay." Jessica leaned back in her chair and stared thinking at the ceiling. Keswick was right, she wanted to catch the psychopath and she was the chief. But frankly, the longer she had worked as a chief the less she wanted this job.
It was like being in the ivory tower and the people who really thought crime were outside of it. The only thing she did was giving advice, and signing papers. That was never what she wanted. She had believed that this job would mean that she could pick out the very interesting missions and leave the other stuff to her subordinates. Well, of course she could do that but there is just no time for a field mission because of the paperwork. All in all it was boring.
"Keswick… what do you think… if Kitty is what you called, brainwashed… would she return to Scratch?" she asked with an idea growing in her mind.
"Probably." Speculated Keswick. "I mean I´m not a t..t..therapist but the chances are high. Why?"
"Because, it´s easier to find Kitty than Scratch. And if Kitty knows where the bastard is and returns to him…"
"We´ll c..c..catch him." Completed Keswick grinning.
"Right" confirmed Jessica.
"Then what are we w..w..waiting for? Let´s go."
Keswick jumped out of the office and ran towards the staircase. Jessica looked for a brief moment after him, then she opened the drawer, get her gun out and followed him.
Maybe this time they would get Scratch. At least if Kitty would return to him. What both of them couldn´t know was that Kitty had no idea where Scratch was. No one knew that, except himself of course. After the things that happened this morning the partnership between her and him ended.
She helped him with this one job, now he didn´t need her help anymore. Even if they still had a deal. And Scratch knew that Kitty would help him to get the mastermind behind all of that. There was no certain reason why he thought so, he just had a feeling.
But right now he rather concentrated on the job than on any feelings he had. And this job was a one man job anyway, even if he had liked to have Parva´s support with that. But she was somehow like fallen off the face off the earth. Maybe she was concerned with the honeypot right now.
Whatever it was, Scratch had no time to think about it. He was too preoccupied with watching his third victim. Leroy White. A monkey in a suit, that permanently had a look on his face that reminded of someone who is followed. The man seemed paranoid… not a really easy aim. Scratch thought of every trick by the book to let the murder on him look like an accident.
But this guy had far to less vices to do what he did with Johnson and he also couldn´t use the environment against him like he did it with Robson. So Scratch had to do this in a very classic way. He would let it look like a mugging that went wrong. Not so smooth like the other murders but effective as long as Scratch wouldn´t mess it up. And that was completely impossible.
The monkey was maybe paranoid and always watching his back but he was had one weak point, and that was his underground parking lot. An old garage without cameras, ergo a perfect place to hijack someone.
Scratch just had to wait for his victim, like a spider that waited for the fly to hit its net. Even if the spider was maybe a bit more used to the temperatures outside. It was damn cold in this garage and Scratch stood her already for about two hours. And still White hadn´t shown up.
Scratch rubbed his cold hands. "Do they have an air conditioner down here." he said with chattering teeth. "It´s about ten degree colder in here than on the street. Dammit White, where are you?"
And like he said some magic words to conjure a daemon lights suddenly flashed up and Scratch could jump into a dark corner in the last moment.
A grey limousine approached to him and parked on the empty space right beside Scratch´s hideout. Out of the grey limousine a man in a suit, that had exactly the same color like the car, got out. He fixed the knot of his also grey tie, which was just distinguishable from the suit because of the white shirt he wore, with the always shivering hands and headed for the elevator. That was Scratch´s chance. Soundlessly he glided behind the monkey and laid the blade of his shinning knife against his victim´s throat. "Mr. White, finally we meet."
"Who are you? I have no money… I…"
Before White could say anything more Scratch pulled him into the dark corner and pressed him against the wall. Of course not without holding the knife on his throat.
"But Mr. White, I thought you know me."
"Scratch" he gasped as he could finally see the face off his attacker. "But is it possible! How did you passed my guards?"
"Guards?" asked Scratch a bit confused and then admitted. "There were no guards."
"But… but…" White´s face lost all his color in this second.
"No buts Mr. White." said the psychopath with a calming voice. "Today is payday."
"No please Scratch, don´t kill me! I give you everything! Money, power, everything!"
"I had that already! I´m not interested" replied Scratch baldly. "What I really want is information. Then I think about not killing you."
"Okay…" White´s breath calmed a bit but it was still on the threshold to hyperventilation.
"I want to know who is behind that all. I want the name of this damn bastard!"
"I don´t know…"
"That is not the correct answer." Meant Scratch and lunged out with his knife.
"No! Wait no!" screamed White. "I don´t know his real name! None of us did. We call him just the voice because he communicates with us over the phone. The only person who had contact to him was…"
"Mathew Richards, I know." Sighed Scratch. "Mr. White, I need more to let you live."
"Okay, okay… how about this. We recently got an order from the voice…" White closed his eyes and tried to make his panicked brain describe the information correctly. "It wanted us to hire a killer to get rid of a man called Peterson."
"Peterson, the former city council that is trying to become the governor?"
"Yes!" confirmed White. "And we have to get rid of him."
"Why?" probed Scratch.
"I don´t know, the voice told us that he has chances to become the governor and that this would hinder it from its business."
"That´s nonsense!" shouted Scratch. "Peterson has almost no chance to win. He´s a good guy and has good ideas but he would need a miracle to win the election!"
"I know!" cried White. "That also made me wonder. But the voice seems to consider him as a danger. So we hired this Killer, this guy helped creating the massacre back then too. We call him Mr. Wonderful because he always says wonderful so often… I mean, you want to take vengeance on those who helped making the massacre, right? This guy is responsible too!" White hadn´t even realized that the last sentence of him was very negative against himself.
"Hm…" Scratch stepped away from White. "That are some pretty good information. Now just tell me the name of the killer."
"I don´t know it… I hired him over the internet. But on my computer I have a picture of him. Willson meant we should take pictures of him just in case we need a lever."
"Good, now just tell me the password of your computer."
"It´s 'VOICE' in capital letters… why?"
"You already said it, I want to take vengeance on those who are involved in the massacre." Said Scratch smiling and rammed the knife into White´s stomach. Shocked stared the monkey on the face of his murderer. As Scratch pulled the knife out of the wound it was like somebody pulled the ground away underneath White´s feet. As he lay on the ground and the darkness around him rose his last words were "I thought… you wanted to let me live…"
"I lied." Scratch wiped the blood away from his blade and put it back into its sheath. He took some time then to make it look like a mugging. He took the wallet removed the money from it and threw it onto the body. Also the set of keys with the car key and the key for the apartment Scratch took. After he got the picture of the killer he would take White´s car and park it somewhere outside the city. Luckily he didn´t need to think about fingerprints. He wore gloves.
The apartment was on top of the building. As Scratch entered it he realized that White wasn´t a friend of decoration or furniture at all. The rooms were barely furnished what made it very easy to find the desk with the computer on it.
Scratch turned it on and entered the password. The file that contained the picture wasn´t easy to find. It took him a few minutes until he found a file called 'Peterson project.'
As he opened the picture his eyes widened.
He couldn´t believe it.
-Well, what did Scratch find on White´s computer? I think we´ll find out in the next chapter.-