Just Another Murder

Arm bent backwards, fingertips laced with gore, bruises scattered along the calves, strangulation marks wrapped around the neck and liquid frozen still at the edge of the mouth. She lay there bathing in a pool of blood, eyes empty, staring deep into his soul, no sign of a flinch as raindrops shoot onto her pale skin or as the occasional flash of photography commences. Her lip twitches not phasing the man at all. Just another night, just another murder. The darkness lights up, burning almost, fading with each breath turning into smoke. The man conceals his lighter and sighs as he massages his fists. Flashes of blue and red mask his tiredness, the constant case of murder has numbed his mind.

A second man approaches the first "Well Parker, we're gonna have to wait for forensics to get back to us, but from the looks of it, this wasn't planned, she got roughed up pretty bad," Parker exhales a cloud of smoke, not speaking a word, "shit like this really gets to you, y'know? No prints, no DNA, nothing. Poor thing. Left here, washed up like a dead dog and she doesn't look any older than twenty. For a murder so messy, he somehow left his mark clean, I wonder how he..." The words fade into mumbling, noise cancelled out from the sky flash, shaking the earth beneath them. Parker lets out one last heavy sigh before he replies to the man.

"Ok Smith, let's pack this up and head back before the weather gets worse." Parker says in that of a monotonous voice, wanting Smith's endless chatter to cease. His footsteps, careless, spray water onto the woman as the rain grows heavier, drowning out the sound of Smith giving out orders, demanding witnesses to return to the station.Just before he reaches the car, the rear view mirror blinds the corner of his eye. He turns and notices something wedged between the alley dumpster and brick wall; opposite the corpse. Smith questions what Parker's noticed, but he shrugs him off walking toward the curious glint. "You head on back, I'm gonna check out the area one last time." Parker attempts to suade Smith in leaving, he's hesitant but soon agrees.

His hands grow clammy as he makes a clearer image of the object, perhaps it was the rain? His guilt ridden face would say otherwise. He frantically pat his pockets down checking, hoping it was on him. His jaw hung, departing from the lung-killer, spitting sparks off the cold cement, slowly losing life, flickering until death. Parker kneels, mind stricken with fear, he swallows his feeling of trepidation.

One blink and he finds himself at home, in his single bed, glaring at the ceiling threatening it to tell him that this was all merely a coincidence. After a disgruntled sigh, he emerges from his bed tying up his shoes, directing his eyes at the clock back and forth, attempting to register the time. '10 O'clock' He thinks to himself. The past few hours were a blur. He'd wondered if he'd been staring at the ceiling the whole time, or if he were asleep. A loud beep enters the atmosphere followed by an automated voice message. 'Mr Sorenson, it's Doctor Hudson, it appears we may have to discuss your condition, if you've been experiencing blackouts please come in immediately, from what I've seen you have history with this medical condition, considering what happened to your wife...' Just as he reaches for his keys, his pants vibrate emitting the chime of bells. He answers his phone, switches the machine off and is greeted with a yell. "PARKER! We've got another one! Down by the nightclub, we've run forensics and I think it's connected to last night's murder. I'm gonna need a hand, can you come in?" Parker replies with a tired 'Mhm' and heads out to the station.

As he walks into their office he is intruded by a crazed Smith. "Ok, so I've been going through all our evidence and it has to be connected..." Parker's face, flushed with fear, flicks between the photos of evidence hoping for nothing on the object he'd discovered last night. "...As you can see here, this new death, had signs of strangulation around his neck as well as his legs being covered in bruises. Just like the first one. The man however hasn't got his arm bent, it's rather, twisted," Parker listens piecing together how it happened, how this was done. "The blood doesn't match any human, so it's a dead lead. But get this, this guy's an ex-cop and the lady's his girlfriend. We had him as the initial suspect of her murder, but his alibi checked out and well his death kind of just tops it off." He stops his sentence and asks, "You feeling ok? You don't seem yourself today."

Parker leans against a wall, attempting to disguise his anxiety with a somewhat lax look. His hand slides into his pocket revealing his lighter, he then rubs his thumb against the trigger to light the new found cigarette hanging from his lips. "Yeah, I'm fine." He puffs a cloud of smoke in the direction of Smith. He raises his eyebrow and pushes the cigarette to the edge of his mouth to hang by a thread. "D'you find any more evidence at the first crime scene?" Smith shakes his head and says 'No', confidently, almost too confidently. He then proceeds to look through the evidence files. Parker blows another puff of relief. "So what? We lookin' at a serial killer?" Smith's finger runs across his chin as thought bubbles emerge from his mind.

"I don't know. This guy seems inexperienced, through his sloppy kill style, but the fact that there's no trace of him just sends mixed signals." Parker agreed, it was rather odd that his killings were done horribly however the act of leaving no trace was almost genius. "We're missing something, I can feel it, something...vital." He was right, they both needed to find something important, unbeknownst to Smith, Parker may have already found some key evidence.

As Parker drowns his cigarette into his old coffee, an officer bursts into the room, holding a recognisable object sealed in a ziploc bag. Before the officer spoke Smith interrupted "Just what I thought, a cop. That badge is what we've needed." He then gave the officer commands, "Now, I want you to get me a list of every cop that wasn't on duty around the time of both of the murders." Parker's pupils begin to expand, it was the glistening item, the one that rested behind the bin, but Parker had thrown it out, how was it found he wondered. In the corner of Parker's eye, outside of the office; through the creak of the door, he spotted a figure. It was someone from the morgue, looking at Parker, eyes filled with fear like they'd just stared into the face of death. Parker apologises to Smith and heads out to question this mystery person, before he speaks a word the person stutters.

"Please j-j-just leave me alone, I did what you w-wanted..." The morgue worker darts off leaving Parker speechless in the dust. A warm hand on his shoulder brings him to a certain state of mind.

Smith speaks, "Who was that?" Parker ignores the question, and replies with a mortified face.

"I'm gonna head to the roof for a cigarette." Smith acknowledges him and returns to the office lost in a world of wonder, stroking his chin reflecting on various thoughts, when the officer returns with a sheet of paper. Freshly printed with one name embedded; underlined in thick red. He clasps onto the edge of the sheet, "But how? And why would he..." He sternly looks at the officer, "I need you to check the connection between him and the victims." Smith clenches the bottom of the sheet and rushes towards the roof ready to share this information with Parker.

Smith bursts through the entrance to the roof, only to be greeted by the breeze of the afternoon air, scented with burnt ash. His eyes scope out the roof to notice on the edge, a cigarette choking on it's last source of air, slowly fading, blacking out. As Smith peers over the edge he drops the piece of paper. It flutters toward the bottom, almost gracefully, free at last, immune to the surrounding screams, landing in a pool of blood, sinking, slowly concealing the name 'Detective Parker Sorenson.'