The Fairy Tale Ending

Poor little Granny, as sweet as her treats. Has now met her end, she is now deceased. Her Fairy Tale, like the others, were all well and good. But good doesn't last long in this neck of the woods. Who knows, who knows when the storybook will conclude, but I hope you'll stay with me, through and through.
-Your Author: T.B.W

No. This was not what I was expecting when I first arrived at the crime scene. I had only just arrived about an hour or 2 ago, settling into my hotel and grabbing a quick bite from the Quick-E-Mart in front of it. Then I got a call from the guy that hired me in the first place to come down to this small street in Willow Grove. The scene was absolutely bizarre. The house was torn apart and in her bed, sleeping peacefully, was 78 year old Abigail Lightly, covered in an ungodly amount of blood. To make things worse, 'Granny', as most people called her, was discovered by her 8 year old granddaughter. She was sitting outside being comforted by local officers. I, however, was in the middle of analyzing the crime scene when one of the local deputies walked in.
"What the- How did you get in here?" he asked.
"The door," I said plainly, continuing to take my preliminary notes of the crime scene. There appeared to be no signs of a struggle, and considering it was almost sunset, I wouldn't blame Granny for ta-
"This is an active crime scene. You can't be in here," he said, interrupting my thought. Which I didn't really appreciate.
"Officer, let me ask you something. If I'm in this room, that means that I had to either sneak through the back door and get into this room or go past all the police outside. Meaning I snuck past the sheriff, the medical responders and the dozen other officers only to be caught by you. Now does that seem even remotely plausible?" I ask not really trying to hide my annoyance. As I was saying. If Granny was asleep--
"Well when you put it like that..." he said, with a hint of embarrassment in his voice. I let out a sigh and rolled his eyes before I turned to face him for the first time.
"The sheriff let me in. He called me to help with the problem you guys have been having," I explained calmly.
"Oh, you're that PI everyone's been talking about, Detective Hicks?! In all honesty I was surprised that the force could even hire you!" he said, a sudden spark ignited in his eyes.
"Oh trust me I was too," I said with a friendly chuckle. Then I turned away and continued looking at the scene. Dammit what was I thinking about? Oh right. If Granny was asleep it would make sense for there to be a lack of a struggle, but why would she be sleeping if her granddaughter was coming by. Unless the granddaughter was earlier then she was supposed to be. But I don't see any signs of entry into this room except for this door. This room doesn't look ransacked either. So why is the outside a complete mess? As I thought and took my notes it occurred to me that the nice officer was still here. He politely told me about how he wanted to take pictures of the crime scene from the back of the house to the front. I let out a sigh and walked out of the house. I wanted to speak with the granddaughter anyway.
Out the house I went and I saw the granddaughter sitting on the back of an ambulance and talking to the sheriff. The sheriff saw me and his eyes widened. He approached me and asked, "Find anything?"
I shrugged, "One of your officers is taking pictures and I don't want to be in his way. I was wondering if I could have a brief moment with the girl."
He looked at her for a moment and then glanced back at me. He let out a sigh and said, "Make it quick, they're about to take her to get checked out."
I nodded and walked past him to the child. She had pretty tan skin and short dark curly hair. She was wrapped in a blanket which almost made me miss her red jacket. It's moments like these I wish I had my usual companion, but he was busy on another case. I kneeled down in front of her and said as nicely as I could,"Hi there. What's your name."
She looked me dead in my eyes. I'll admit my heart broke a little, all I could think of was my little sister when she was this age. It took her a while but eventually she said, "Roja.... Roja Caperucita"
I nodded and gave her a friendly smile and chuckled. "Similar que la cuento de hadas, ¿no?"
"¿Lo conoces?", she asked, her eyes lit up. She was probably surprised I knew spanish. Then the cruel irony dawned on me and my heart dropped.
"Sí. Estaba la favorita de mi hermanita cuando era ella joven," I said calmly.
"Granny didn't speak much spanish. She just called me Little Red," she said.
"I'm terribly sorry about your loss. I just have one question for you. Was your grandma expecting you to come today?" I said, pulling out my notepad.
She nodded, "Yes sir. I usually come here everyday after school."
I took note of that and I gave her a friendly smile, "And how are you feeling?"
"My head hurts..." she whined.
My heart ached for her and I said, "Alright, you get some rest ok?"
She gave me a friendly smile, showing a few missing teeth. I sat up and waved before I turned around seeing the sheriff head my way. I approached him and said, "Sheriff Barnes let me ask you something."
"Yessir?"
"There were no signs of a struggle and no signs of tampering with the body, correct?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Yeah that's right," he said, looking at me curiously.
"That doesn't seem weird? Why would she be asleep if her granddaughter was coming, especially if she comes over all the time?"
"Something I also noticed. Listen, thank you for coming out on such short notice," he said, putting away his notepad.
"Of course," I said,a yawn escaping from me.
"Right, you just got into town. Listen, we're going to finish up the preliminary stuff. Why don't you come into the precinct tomorrow and you can go over a lot of the details then. I'll also keep a couple people here in case you want to check it out tomorrow. I know you're tired," he said.
I rolled my eyes in annoyance but I had to acknowledge that he was right. I wasn't going to solve anything this damn tired. So I agreed and I headed back to my hotel room. The second my head hit the pillow my phone rang. Fuck. I looked over and saw that my husband was calling. I was tired and honestly really didn't want to talk to him. But I guess he would have gotten worried if I didn't answer, so begrudgingly, I answered. He was an English professor and today was midterms so he was absolutely exhausted. So I tried to help him feel better.
"It's honestly whatever, I just can't wait for the weekend to start. Of course, you would pick this weekend to go out on a case," he chuckled.
"Don't blame me, Redgie. I must answer the call," I said jokingly.
"Be honest, you forgot didn't you," he replied.
"I'm a detective, I don't forget anything," I commented sharply.
"So you didn't forget about our anniversary dinner on Sunday?"
"Of course not!," I lied.
Shit. I actually had completely forgotten about it. I don't know how, it's been the same damn day for the past 12 years. Unfortunately this put my investigation on a very strained clock. I had a little more than 2 days to solve these crimes. Sure, I've done harder in less time before, but usually I have my best friend Barry to help. But, I chose not to think of it. Instead I shared a chuckle with my husband and I listened to him bitch more about his English class. The poor professor. After that I talked to him about the case and the crime scene today as I flipped through TV channels.
"....Usually I try to keep myself pretty distanced from these things but man she looked just like Gracie," I finished, mindlessly flipping through channels.
"I could imagine. Little Miss Red does sound like a nice little girl though. Can't imagine the hell she's going through." he commented with a heavy sigh.
"Meh, I mean, it happens," I commented plainly, tossing the remote aside in defeat.
"Not to everyone," he reminded me. I sighed. He was right, not everyone looks at this type of shit everyday. When you've been doing it for as long as I have, it does look like it happens to everyone. To me, this is just good money and every now and then again a really fun puzzle. To these people it's their entire lives. We talked for a little while longer but honestly, I can't remember what about because I fell asleep while we were talking. I woke up the next day and he sent me a text saying 'Have a good day at work :). Remember, these are people too'. I rolled my eyes and sighed and did my usual morning routine of showering and picking out my afro before I headed out. The first thing I was going to do was give the crime scene one more actual look before I had to rely solely on crime scene photos. That and I didn't want to keep the officers that the sheriff had looking over the place. They needed to do their actual jobs. It was fairly early in the morning, around 5:30 or so, and the officers looked like they were ready to go home. They looked like they wanted to watch the back of their eyelids more than the crime scene. Good thing I showed up early.
I greeted the officers watching and they half waved back. I rolled my eyes and put in my headphones and started to do what I always did best. While tons of shit was thrown all over the place in the living room, I can't see anything stolen. See, if they were looking for something, the mess wouldn't look so..... incomplete. There would be more things being opened and dumped on the floor. And if this was a robbery, more things of value, like this broken vase, would have been stolen instead of smashed. It's safe to assume that this is more of a crime of passion than a burglary, which coincides with the other two murders. This means we now officially have a serial killer of passion. Excellent! Unfortunately at the moment I didn't have enough data to even try to find the connection.
This thought made me let out a sigh as I moved onto the grandmother's room, now missing a grandmother. The room stank of dried blood, a nostalgic stench that I've learned to block out long enough to conduct my work. As I suspected, absolutely nothing in this room was touched or ran through. If they were trying to make it look like a robbery, they did an awful job. I took note of this in my notepad and I walked into the final room in the back. This room looked untouched, or at least that was what I thought at first. I assumed based on the small dolls and uncanny assortment of red that this was Little Red's room. How cute. My sister also had a recurring theme of colors. Hers was orange instead. Wait, I need to focus. I was about to leave when I saw that the closet all the way in the back corner of the room was cracked slightly open. No 8 year old girl I know leaves their closet cracked 'slightly ajar'. If the grandmother wanted to close it, why didn't she close it all the way? It wouldn't hurt taking a look. I peeped inside the locker and it was full of toys. As expected of a child's closet. However, the closet had a high top shelf that had some boxes on it. It looked like the dust had been slightly removed from each of them. Was the target one of these boxes? One had the lid adjusted lightly and it had less dust than the others. It made me raise an eyebrow. I grabbed the box and it immediately lifted. An empty box with little dust and a slightly adjusted lid. What was taken from this box? There was no writing on the box indicating what was actually inside of it. Interesting. I made note of this in my notebook and put the box back. I looked in the boxes to see that two of them were filled with older books. Like books for toddlers. The other box contained photos of what looked like Little Red. I made note of this in my notebook and I left the house.
I pondered a lot of thoughts as I headed toward the precinct. Primarily about Little Red. I wonder if she's ok. I certainly hope so. The inside of the precinct was nice enough. It's only so much smaller than the one back at home, but it was alright. The sheriff,who wasn't there for some reason, gave me a desk and the reports on the case so far. Which was great because this was the information I was called out here for anyway. The cases that drew me out here originally were Marianne Trainer, local bakery owner and mother of seven. Seven kids? Jesus... The other victim was Jebediah Priest, a Kindergarten teacher at the school just around the corner. Then again everything in relation to the precinct was right around the corner.
Based on the little bit of research I did before I came here, I learned that a majority of this community actually spawns 4 really small towns. Woodstock, Edinburg, Columbia Furnace Alonzaville, and the even smaller communities like Willow's Groove and Calvary in between. The locals around here call it 'The Woods'. Which brings me to the notes. Accompanying each murder was a very weird note. Each of the notes mention 'The Woods' in some sort of way, which is why he was dubbed 'The Fairy Tale Killer'. Honestly, the press has such an embarrassing hardon for names that get clicks or drive up ratings. Kinda bullshit if you ask me. It trivializes the hell out of everyone that died, not to mention it's just straight up obnoxious. Wait, I'm getting off topic. I was reading through the cases and I came upon the actual notes that were left.