After a most excellent review from last chapter, I have decided that y'all can address me as Your Majesty from here on out. That was some crazy stuff last chapter. This chapter will definitely be calmer... Yeah, I'm not lying.

The song for this chapter is Funeral March by 2WEI. Don't come at me; their music is perfect for setting a certain kind of scene.

Connect with me!

Twitter: teamdemonmonkey

Facebook: teamdemonmonkey fanfiction

Disclaimer: I'm only doing this for a friend. I don't get anything from it but her undying appreciation. I certainly don't get to have fun with Emmett and the boys in my head.

Chapter Twenty-Six: Funeral March

Charlie POV

I sighed tiredly, rubbing my eyes as I took a break from the open casefiles in front of me.

Normally, I loved my job. Forks was a pretty quiet town, with minor disturbances. We usually saw a lot of lost hikers and campers. The occasional domestic dispute (or neighbors quarreling and using my office as their attempted method of punishment). Sometimes, we had trouble with tourists passing through but for the most part, this was a pretty easy gig.

But in the last few months, my job had become very different.

When the sheriff in Walla Walla had died in a fire, the state police had reached out to me, looking for an extra pair of eyes to assess the case and the recent string of crime in the area. I hadn't thought much of it. It appeared to be an accident but there were suspicious elements.

The night we'd had dinner with the Cullens, my new non-emergent dispatcher had called me in a panic because she received a call from an untraceable number that she said I needed to listen to the recording of. So I'd left dinner and headed straight to the office, sure that she was worrying over nothing. But when I arrived at the office and she played the recording of the call, my blood froze.

"Forks Police Department, this is Cassie. Who am I speaking with?"

"Hello, Cassie. I'm calling with a message for Chief Swan."

"Your name, please?" A sinister chuckle echoed across the line.

"Now where's the fun in that?"

"Sir?"

"My message for your beloved chief is this: I'm new to town. I've been new to lots of towns and cities and everytime I arrive, I do my due diligence and give advance notice that I plan on doing crime in your little Forks."

"What kind of crime, sir?"

"I'd hate to spoil the surprise. But needless to say, you'll know I'm here. To Chief Swan I can only say this: Stop me. I dare you."

"Sir, I-" The line went dead.

After the first few days passed, I began to wonder if it was a prank call. Some bored college student or high schooler who had too much time and maybe some drugs. But then I'd been called out to a home invasion in the center of town. Magda Jenkins had lived in town for longer than I'd been alive. We found her with her hands and ankles bound behind her back, a red bandana around her mouth, gagging her. The house had been trashed and a few possessions stolen, nothing really valuable. She didn't know how he'd gotten in. But she said it was definitely a man whose face had remained completely covered. He'd spoken to her, polite and calm. He informed her of everything he was doing before or as he did it but threatened that if she screamed or refused to cooperate and obey him, he would kill her.

The crime scene was havoc but taped to the fire extinguisher in her kitchen, he'd left a note, addressed to me.

Chief Swan,

Such a charming town here. I hope you enjoyed my entrance. Magda is such a darling, bless her heart. But this is only the beginning for you and I. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, then how can you claim to uphold the oath you swore to the people of this town to protect them? I plan to fell many trees, Chief. The question is, are you smart enough to get there before me?

See you soon.

We'd managed to keep the crime under wraps, even convinced Magda to go visit her sister in St. Louis until we had this psychopath behind bars. And then we'd hit the ground running. We processed every single thing we found at the crime scene but there were no fingerprints. Canvassing ended with no leads. No one had seen anything unusual. No one leaving the premises or entering and no one that matched the description Magda gave us. We started processing the call he'd made when he arrived in town and the note he'd left for me. But a lot of it was just guesswork and profiling.

His use of the phrase 'bless her heart' led me to believe the perp was Southern or at least spent a good amount of time there. I was bothered that he referred to warning us of his intent to commit a crime as his 'due diligence'. He obviously had run-ins with law enforcement. But it wasn't until Bella had been telling Alice and Edward about some obscure law in Arizona that made it illegal to cut down or move a cactus that I wondered if this "notice" was an absurd law somewhere. One internet search later and I had pegged our guy for a Texan.

I had my team start running down possible perps but it wasn't a lot to go off of. I had a visit from one of the state investigators over the Walla Walla case and while we were discussing the possibility of the other unusual crimes committed within a few weeks of his death being related, I realized that it seemed similar. The investigator checked if the sheriff there had received a message similar to the one I had received and a week later, we knew we were dealing with a serial killer. The state investigators reached out to the feds to see if his M.O. matched any of the crimes in their databases but that was a time consuming process. I knew in my gut that this guy was the same one who had murdered the sheriff in Walla Walla and I would bet my whole pension that this wasn't anywhere close to his first time doing it.

With that in mind, I focused on the note he'd left for me, trying to get into his mindset and figure out what it meant. This guy was obviously clever. He wouldn't have left a note if there wasn't some hidden message to keep his game of cat and mouse going. I spent day after day trying to decipher what he was trying to tell me before someone else got hurt. I felt bad about how often I was leaving Bella, especially since I couldn't tell her anything about this. It was a small comfort that Carlisle's family had welcomed her into their fold and so I knew she wasn't abandoned as this began to consume my life.

I finally thought I had cracked the code with the note about two weeks after getting it. I was pretty sure that he was referencing one of the logging outfits outside town. I didn't have anything solid to go off of and so I went out to investigate for myself and see if I could catch him before he could hurt anyone else or do any damage.

I don't know if he was watching me or my timing was just lucky. As I walked around the logging site, looking for any sign of tampering, I'd noticed that there was a light flashing on a knuckleboom loader that was placing logs in the pile. It was clearly an incendiary device but before I could warn everyone, the damn thing blew and unleashed hell.

I was stuck in the hospital for a couple days and forced to stay home for the rest of the week. I know I was lucky that I wasn't more seriously injured, but I also knew that every minute I spent at home, the crime scene was getting colder and my perp could potentially disappear. I needn't have worried. As soon as I got back to the office there was a voice message left for me on my private work line.

"Well, Chief Swan, wasn't that exciting? That's the closest anyone has come to stopping me since I started playing this game. I'm impressed. But you still failed. Maybe I should raise the stakes next time. After all, I'm burning with curiosity to see how close you can get to me before you crash and burn. Not unlike your buddy on the other side of the state. You see, Chief, I've challenged many officers like yourself and no one has been able to stop me yet. Will you be any different?"

I hit the ground running even harder. Carlisle had told me the extent of the damage from the logging accident and I certainly didn't intend on allowing a repeat performance by this guy. His message also confirmed my suspicions that he might have been in Walla Walla before coming to Forks. I spent hours and hours trying to find the hidden meaning in this message. We were burning the candles at both ends, trying to ID this guy and get ahead of whatever sinister plans he had for my town.

I had a strong hunch that his next target was the elementary school building. I suspected that he planned to burn it down just like he'd done in Walla Walla, kids inside and all. We didn't want to cause a panic because I figured that's exactly what a criminal like him wanted. Chaos, notoriety, attention. We got in without raising a fuss and found makeshift combustibles in a custodian closet. One of my deputies used to be bomb squad and he got the thing dismantled before it could blow. Added bonus was we finally got the dirtbag on video. He was still masked up but now we had a body type and build to go off of.

That had been a few days ago and we still hadn't heard anything from him, which seemed out of character. I didn't slow down, hoping that we would finally catch a break and bring the asshole in.

"Got something for you, Chief," one of the deputies said, carrying in a thin manilla envelope. I sighed and held out my hand, taking it and looking at the front. Just my name. Great. I undid the brad on the back, already wondering what Bella was making for dinner tonight and debating if I should try and make it home for once. I pulled the contents out of the envelope and set them on my desk.

I looked down and froze.

Pristine, clear pictures of Bella stared back at me. Taken from a distance but high quality, one showed Bella in the school parking lot, talking to her friends. Another was of Bella sitting in one of her classes, taken through a window as she bent over a book. The next was Bella, coming down the stairs at home, headed to her truck. The last was Bella sleeping in her room.

It had been taken from inside her room.

A sticky note was stuck to the top corner of the last one.

You finally get to walk your daughter down the aisle. Only she's in a casket instead of a white dress. Not the image you had in mind, is it? You haven't stopped me, Chief Swan. You just changed the game.

I jumped out of my seat.

"Who left this," I thundered at the deputies, running for the front. Everyone stared at me bewildered.

"A messenger," Coons, the one who'd handed it to me, said. I ran out the front door, looking all around the parking lot and street for a messenger van or bike.

No one was there.

Officers followed after me, asking questions with their hands on their weapons, alarmed by my manic display.

That bastard was targeting Bella.

My baby girl was in danger.