Seer: The Blessed Child

Monster

Wolf stepped out of his Mustang. Shielding his eyes, he glimpsed the last remnants of the amber rays of the sunset streaking across the sky before it disappeared on the horizon. He had received an alert that the manager of a Mom and Pop bar found a body near the dumpster.

Overcome by the heat, he wiped his sweat-slicked face with the back of his hand.  A sweat bead dribbled into his eyes stinging them with saltiness.

Grumbling about the unpredictable Cleveland weather, he took off his overcoat. A gust of wind blew making him shiver as it wafted through the damp spot on his shirt that clung to his back.

He knew that he smelled like days old vinegar. Ignoring that nauseating fact, he took out his notepad from inside his coat pocket. He had work to do. 

For a moment, he watched as the crime scene unit sealed off the area near the dumpster with yellow crime scene tape.

Wolf surveyed the area. The high-velocity blood spatter on the steel panel gates made it clear that a savage beating had occurred to the point of overkill.

Scratching the stubble on his chin, he approached the body. Though he had seen his share of grisly crime scenes, he felt sick to his stomach at the barbarity of the killing. The dark-haired man was unrecognizable, beaten to a bloody pulp; his skull crushed. The killer wasn't after money. The man's wallet—his identification, cash, and credit cards—-were in his back pocket.

Wolf knew the culprit was The Copycat Killer; his instincts told him so. The killer was lashing out like a cornered animal with the hysteria sweeping the city. Not only that, he was getting sloppy. He didn't leave the usual MP3 player or generic wristwatch at the scene.

From the tires marks on the gravel parking lot, he'd left in a hurry. A plaster cast impression was made to get the make of the tires.

Wolf looked over his notes and profile of the killer he had gathered so far. The killer is someone with rage issues and possibly abandonment issues. He targets dark-haired young people. In his killing patterns, he has killed a male, female, and now another male. He didn't have to be psychic to know who the next intended victim will be; someone female.

He approached the manager, a woman in her forties with sharp features and light brown eyes, leaning against the door. Wearing cut-off shorts, she bent her right leg at the knee and took a drag from her cigarette in her tightly clenched fingers.

"You found the body?" Wolf said as a statement, not a question. "Yeah," the woman said still in a state of shock.

She dropped the cigarette to the ground, stomped it out under her shoe, and tucked a lock of her salt and pepper hair, untangling from her bun, behind her ear. "I came out for a smoke when I saw Stu laying there on the ground."

With trembling hands, she reached inside the pocket of her short-sleeve button-up shirt for another cigarette, lit it, and took a long drag from it.

"I thought Stu was drunk and had fallen and bumped his head," she said blowing the smoke through her nose. "When I took a closer look, I realized that he was dead. 

"How did you know Stu?" Wolf asked. "Just as a patron," the woman replied. "He was a regular and always came in on the weekends to shoot the breeze. He was a nice guy. Space Oddity was his favorite song.  He'd sing it off-key."

Nodding, Wolf pressed on. "Did you see or notice anything out of the ordinary?" 

Though he tried not to, he found himself focusing on the tobacco stains on her teeth whenever she opened her mouth to speak.

"Yeah," the woman said. "I saw a silver Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme pull into the parking lot earlier when I came out to grab a lighter from my car. I couldn't see the driver because the windows were tinted." 

"A silver Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme?" Wolf repeated. She nodded.

The description that the woman gave seemed familiar to him somehow. He flipped through the pages of his notepad until he found it. He wrote about seeing a silver Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme parked a few blocks down the street from the Starlet residence—-thinking it odd. It was the same day that someone sent a box to the house with an alarm clock inside as a prank.

There was no way that any of this was a coincidence. He always trusted his instincts. They were telling him that there's a connection. Along with that, he also felt an increasing sense of dread. Excusing himself, he took out his phone and placed a call. 

"Seer, where are you? On your way home? No. I'm...,"

He looked around at his surroundings. "I'm at a crime scene. The Copycat Killer made his move. No." He said holding up his hand in mid-thought. "Don't come by the office. I'll see you tomorrow after school. There are some things that we need to go over. Okay bye."

He ended the call and shoved his phone back inside his pocket. If he was sure of anything, Wolf knew that he had to act quickly. The killer, at this very moment, could be targeting his next victim.

The problem he faced is how can he prevent the next murder when it could be any dark-haired woman at any given moment. Wolf was in a predicament.