Crying Quietly

Prologue

June 17, 2018

The sirens rang, the lights flash. People whispered amongst themselves, each coming up with their own theory of what was going.

Why is Sally Hall close? Why is the police here? Where those gunshots? Did someone get hurt? Is class going be canceled tomorrow?

It didn't take long for the dean of the school to walk out of the building next to the chief of police. Both of their faces were pale and sweaty. They were both tired. It was well past midnight and the night seemed to be even longer after the events.

"Students," the dean said through a megaphone. "Go back to your dorms. There is nothing to see here."

The students were quiet for a minute but then their whispering restarted louder than ever. The dean sighed and returned the megaphone to one of the police officers. The officer started yelling at the rest of the corps to push the students away, back to their dorms.

"What a disaster?" the dean said to himself. "Like this school needs more scandals."

He sat down on a bench and buried his face on his palms ready to pass out from exhaustion. The chief of police's boots didn't allow him to though. The boots made a metal-against-metal sound every step he made.

"Are you ok? You can go back home if you want. We don't really need you here anymore anyway."

The dean rubbed his hand with his palm and slapped himself a few times gently. "I'm fine and believe me, I need to be here. The board would kill me if I wasn't."

The chief nodded and walked off. The dean sighed again and followed him.

Inside the building, the CSI's carefully labeled everything and took pictures of the crime scene. Sally hall was a science building full of chemistry labs and chemicals. Those chemicals spilled during the crime making the crime scene harder to decipher. All the evidence was either burning with acid or contaminated with some other chemical. The body, however, remained untouched by the corrosive chemicals.

He was a young man. No more than twenty. His eyes were open looking to the door, probably watching his aggressor leave as he died. His skin was chalky pale. His clothes were torn and stained with blood. His was wearing a set of black jeans and an unbuttoned red flannel. Under it, he wore a white wifebeater which hugged his body so tight it was easy to see how skinny he was. On his shirt pocket, he had a pair of vintage broken glasses.

"Grotesque," said the dean when he walked in and saw the body. "Who could be so brutal to another human being?"

The dean could not handle the brutality present in the body's injuries. His nose was broken, his wrists were broken, his left knee was bending the wrong side, he showed bruising in all visible patches of skin unless of course they were covered by his blood that ran from large gashes in his upper body.

"You would be surprised. According to our preliminary inspection he died from a gunshot to the back of the head but I think that was the least painful thing he felt in the hours leading to his death. It is very possible he was tortured."

The dean turned to the chief of police. "I'm assuming we cannot keep this in the low."

"I mean, we can try but you saw all those students with their phones. Social media will make the story whatever it wants unless we make an official statement."

"I just don't want to insight fear on the student population," he said turning to the body. "Look at that. I will have nightmares just from looking at it. How will students feel once they know someone is out there and they are very capable of committing such a heinous crime."

"You could assure them that we are doing the best we can to find the culprit but until then you suggest that they travel in groups during the day and stay in their dorms during the night until further notice."

"That sounds like a good start. I'll go write my statement and inform the board of trustees of the event."

The dean walked out without saying anything, writing his statement on his head. The chief of police stood there by himself looking around until a CSI approached him.

"What can you tell me?"

"The victim did not die here. There would be more blood if he had. Also, we think he may have died of internal bleeding over dying from the bullet shot."

"Really. But why would the attacker shot him once he was already dead."

"That's the thing. We think the bullet was shot premortem but somehow missed all vital points of the brain. We don't know if that was intentional or not but if it was-"

"Then we might be dealing with someone with deep knowledge of human anatomy, or more exactly, the brain. Maybe a neurological science student or a professor. Any luck ID-ing the body?"

The CSI looked at a police officer standing by the door and handed him a bag with a school ID. The ID was surprisingly clean except that it was stained with blood on the lower left tip. That is the only evidence showing that it was ever in the body of the victim.

"Ok then. I'll send the dean the name and information so that he can put it on his statement and provide us with the victim's information."