Hellhound (Supernatural #1)

3: Movies from Another Time

Movie, noun.

1. the exhibition of motion pictures
2. motion-picture theater.

***

The weekend was pretty uneventful.

It was like the murderer had heard my conversation with Tate in the cafeteria Friday and had decided to take it easy for the next two days. Either that or they had decided that two murders were enough. Let's be real though; one murder was bad enough, if you are going to keep killing people, you don't stop at measly number two. Regardless of why no murders were committed, Saturday was spent at the kitchen table, going over everything Dad had on the two cases for far. It was like a father-daughter bonding moment; hunting killers together.

Only we didn't get very far.

In order to hunt, you need to have something to point you in a certain direction. Clues. Hoof prints in muds. A broken twig. A piece of fur caught on a low-hanging branch. Well, we weren't hunting deer or any other kind of animal. We needed footprints in the mud. A cigarette butt. A shell casing. Anything to help us along. Footprints might give us a direction the killer had left in. A cigarette butt told us the killer smoked and might still contain some DNA. A shell case might lead to the size of the gun used, which might then lead us to a list of possible suspects.

As I had looked over the files, it had become clear to me that these two homicides were going to be a bother. There was almost no evidence. Not only had the rain washed away what trace evidence the detectives could have possibly found, but Dad said it was like someone had cleaned up the crime scenes. No footprints. No cigarette butt. No nothing. To illustrate his point, he told me there hadn't been a single finger print on the dumpster Mr. A. Emerson had been found in. At first, I thought he meant they hadn't found one that could be of interest to the case, but he really did mean none. Not a single one. Like, how is that even possible? Aren't dumpsters supposed to be the most disgusting things you can find in an alley? Shouldn't their surfaces be covered with a hundred different fingerprints?

He said the first guy, who turned out to be some kind of drugs dealer on the bad side of town, didn't have an apparent cause of death. No bullet wound, no strangulation marks or whatever else medical examiners used to determine strangulation. He hadn't O.D.ed on his own stuff. Actually, he hadn't even had any stuff on him; Dad didn't even know what the guy sold. It wasn't until the medical examiner cut open his chest and found the drugs dealer's heart crushed. Like someone had wrapped their hand around it and squeezed. That was beyond creepy.

Mr. A. Emerson, Dad suspected, had been attacked by some kind of animal, dispelling the theory of a serial killer. He was hesitant at first but eventually showed me the crime scene pictures, revealing why he would have rather not shown them to me. Mr. A. Emerson had been torn to pieces, literally. They had to search through the trash to find all four limbs, his torso, and his head. The animal theory wasn't unexpected as it did look like the man had been used as a chew toy. It was quite a gruesome sight at first. However, the longer I stared at the pictures, the less real they appeared to be.

"And yet, the bites look too precise," I pointed out. "A dog would just chew and chew and chew, right? Or go for the soft bits. These look like there was only one bite to separate each limb from the rest of the body." The pictures looked like they could have been photoshopped and make anyone who saw them believe they were fake. "And the bone snapped pretty cleanly. If whatever attacked him only needed one bite to tear through flesh and bone, it must have been really strong. What kind of animal lives around here that could be strong enough for that?" Although the area outside of Saint Faith's urban area wasn't farmland, it wasn't forest either. There were no bears, no mountain lions or wolves. Unless something had escaped from a zoo somewhere, I had no idea what would have done this.