It was brutal, to say the very least. In my modest career as a homicide investigator, I had come across more than my share of gory, gut churning scenes but this was on a different level altogether. The body was of a young man in his twenties, who must have been quite a handsome one in his time. There were multiple bullet wounds to the chest, mostly the thoracic area. The larynx had been broken, possibly with a heavy, blunt object and both the eyeballs of the victim had been gouged out. Both ankles had been twisted and then drilled through. This man had not died an ideal death. "Robert! You need to see this," rang the voice of Inspector John Reimers from the bedroom of the small apartment we were in.
"Says here, the victim's name is Arthur Bach. A geology student at the Canterbury University," said Reimers as I walked into the room to see him holding a wallet. "Also, two tickets to the local cinema for tonight." "Poor lad must have had a date," I said. "Did you check his phone records?" "Yeah. Some calls from his mom and plenty of impatient texts from the girl he was presumably gonna go with, a Samantha Delacour," said Reimers. "Alright, then. I guess we're done here for the day. Forensics will take over now so we should get going. Bring in this girl to the headquarters tomorrow," I said, glad to leave this place behind. We parted company at the front door and I walked outside to a chilly, winter's night. I spent the rest of my walk home and most of my night reflecting on the tragedies in life and the desperation that drives people to such an extent as to take another human being's life. The next morning was mostly spent in coaxing out the little bits of helpful information from the continuously sobbing, traumatized figure that was Samantha Delacour. She insisted that Arthur was never involved in any sort of tussles or even arguments with anyone whatsoever, from the time that she'd known him. That was the most I could get out of her. We then paid a visit to Mrs. Bach to inform her of her son's untimely demise, omitting the gross details of his death. Reimers went around to the neighbours and friends of Arthur while I headed towards the apartment to look for clues we might've missed out on yesterday. After lunch, I met up with Reimers at the headquarters. "Well, the general confusion among everyone is as to why anyone would take the life of someone like Arthur. Everyone testified that Arthur never picked fights," said Reimers, confused. "Yeah. Poor lad...." I muttered. That evening the postmortem report came in. The victim had died due to severe trauma and blood loss. No surprises there. However, the forensics team had uncannily enough, not found the weapons or tools used to commit the crime or any fingerprints apart from Arthur's himself. A week passed and no lead presented itself. The case seemed to have come to a standstill. At the inquest, the coroner declared death by murder as the cause and effectively, the case was closed. The funeral was held a week later. Not my first dead-end case, though, so I wasn't really disappointed but Reimers chose to drown his sorrow over a mug of beer at the pub. I reached home, took off my overcoat and poured myself a glass of bourbon. I sat down on the armchair, staring at the objects on the table in front of me.
A Glock .45 Pistol, a mallet, a cleaver and a chisel- the last two still coated in dried blood. Now I could safely get rid of them without the department snooping around for clues. This one had been comparatively easier than the previous ones. The poor soul had gone down without a fight. The confusion among people could be considered legitimate- after all, his only fault had been that he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had been taking a smoke in a dark alley, and once he had been drugged it had been relatively easier to take him to his apartment and do the dirty job. The clean up job of fingerprints later had been a real pain, though. In the end, however, Phoenix City Police Department 's Detective Robert J. Perry's tally had risen to 23.
