The Collector

Introduction - Act 1 - Faith POV

1968, New York state. 4:44 PM

  Four blocks away was where the crime scene was located. Usually I'm not called onto assist with these types of smaller jobs, but this one was apparently special. 

   Detective Williams was originally given this case but he dialed me up and said that if I assisted him, might help me with the Successful Peoples Disappearance case.

   At least, that's what I call it. Technically it's not a case, as when I told the Commissioner about it, he simply laughed and ignored my thoughts. Just recently, your average easy-going fellas in our state started being successful. At first glance, there's nothing wrong with that. People working hard and becoming successful in their jobs? Nothing malicious about that, I thought.

   But then strange things started to happen. All of these suddenly successful people started to die. Most of them died to accidents, but the most notable of the deaths were the murders. The ones who were murdered, the killer hasnt been found yet. In fact, at any of the crimes scenes, there wasn't the tiniest bit of evidence. The only thing that could come close to what happened to the murder victims was a knife to the gut in the same spot, every time. 

  So perhaps there's a serial killer on the loose, right? Well, it turns out that all of these accidents and murders happened within two weeks of them becoming successful. We could be dealing with a very organized serial killer, but none of these deaths have any correlation with each other. 

   One victims name was James Cornsfield. He was working as a janitor for his cousins convenience store after being caught three times for petty theft, his cousin was the only person in his town that would actually hire him. Three months later, his cousin steps down as the owner and James becomes in charge. About two weeks later, the business is blooming and he's started a massive chain of convenience stores all across New York and some branching out of the city. He died at the very end of those two weeks, the cause of death being a stab wound in the gut, same as the other unfortunate murder victims. 

   The next victim died by accident, his name being Ryan Swede. The guy was a total bum, wasted all of his money on casinos and such. Then one day, he walks into the Golden Lash casino, one of the most Luxurious casinos in New York and goes to the blackjack table. He takes all of his money, and he bet it all. He won. He took his winnings, and he won again. Soon enough, he had accumulated about $77,590 from that casino alone and over the course of two weeks he went from casino to casino, always coming out a winner. At the end of those two weeks, he was found dead on the streets due to alcohol poisoning. Funny thing was that he didn't even drink. He was also found with a stab wound in the gut, but the autopsy shows that it didn't kill him, and that in fact he was stabbed after death. The death was shown as an accident suicide. 

I believe that all of these deaths have some correlation with each other, as there's no way that these random unsuccessful people would suddenly become the greatest at what they do at a certain job yet die exactly two weeks later. I think its too coincidental, and I think that these 'accidents' are actually murders as well. Something special about a lot of these accidents that have occurred is that every time we've found an accidental death, the body was never completely found. For instance, one of the accidental deaths was Johnny Stove. We were able to ID him, but just barely. His car had crashed into a tree, but the entire car exploded. Almost burnt down a couple trees. The body was in bad shape, and it would be too gruesome to go into entirely but there was no way to tell exactly what killed him. Same goes for a lot of the other accidents, meaning if their bodies were still intact, I think we would see the same stab wounds on the people who died in accidents as we did on the obvious murder victims. 

Then again, I may just be crazy. The only two people who believe me is Detective Williams, of whom is a massive dick. The other being my previous partner, and he isn't the brightest person ever. 

Regardless of whether I'm crazy or not, the main factor is that I don't have solid proof yet. I'm hoping that Detective Williams crime scene will give me a lead, because so far I've only had conspiracies. 

Suddenly, the car stopped. 

"Hey Lady, is this the stop?" 

"Yeah, one second." 

The cab driver took a sip of his drink from the cup holder, probably alcohol from the spell of it. I looked at the window and saw an old broken down apartment building. Not a person in sight. I checked the picture that Detective Williams gave me of the building and it matched up with the place. I felt a little bit sketchy of the place, but if there was even the slightest chance I'd find a lead, I was going to take it. 

"Lady, you good? Better be pulling out a wallet if you're taking that long."

"Yes, sorry, this is the place. Thank you." 

I opened the car door and pushed it out. Right when I began to get out of the car, I felt a hand cling onto my arm and felt a pull. The force pulled me right onto the car seat. I could feel sharp twinging pains digging deeper into my arm. I quickly turned my head to see that the cab driver had turned around in his seat and was grasping onto my arm. I tried to pull away but it wasn't happening. He opened his mouth to speak, but I twisted my body to face him in an attempt to get him to let go but that only pulled him closer in. As a desperate attempt to get away,  I brought up my left leg and threw it at him. The heel hit him directly in the eye.

"Jesus Lady!" He yelled as he let go fell backwards. A hand instinctively went to his eye, as if this had happened to him before. I took that chance to launch myself out of the car onto the curb. I quickly got up and started to sprint toward the old building but before I could even get to the gate about 6 feet away, I heard a click. 

The sound was too easy to recognize for a detective such as myself, it was the cocking of a gun.