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Thursday: "Stopwatch" by Mandatory Volunteer

Chapter the First

Sodium Chloride or sodium chlorate?

“I don’t think that’s a subject you need to be discussing right now.” The chief of police had appeared behind the two newest rookies to the field and watched them mumble apologies before scattering off to perform their allotted duties. “Newbies…” He shook his head and took a short sip of his coffee before he heard his assistant rush in and looking absolutely flustered with papers and files falling out of his arms, his glasses askew, and this air about him that screamed urgent business. In fact, his assistant did indeed scream urgent business.

“There’s been another murder!”

—

Atticus Joseph Stalin. Yes, Stalin was his last name, Joseph was his middle name, after the famous dictator Joseph Stalin, he knew. His parents were thoroughly drunk when they had named him, but Atticus never really complained about his name; it was better then being named Adolf Hitler junior, he’d really catch some flack about that.

Atticus was old. He didn’t look old though, he seemed to be in the prime of his youth, barely to the age of twenty-one, he had chiseled dark looks that everyone either hated or everyone annoying liked. He was forever stuck as an emo boy as the stereotype called it.

He had black hair that he had cut and styled in a spiked version, his bangs were long, but it often annoyed him to have it hang over his eye so he cut it just so it was barely long enough to reach his eye. The longer hairs on the sides of his head were dyed a shocking white, and a dark red at the tips. His eyes were dark blue, and always seemed to be full of mischief, and lazy glances, almost over shadowed by his long eyelashes. His left ear was pierced numerous times and many different hooped earrings were protruding from them, and at the very top of his left ear through the cartilage was a key shaped earring. On his right ear, he had a bar sticking straight up and down through his ears, and numerous studs and such along with some hoops as well as pirate and ninja stars.

His face was pale, very pale, without a trace of tan on it at all, and it was smooth and free of lines, except for maybe the faint traces of crow’s feet in at the corner of his eyes. He had two lip piercings, black hoops extending out over his lips and disappearing into his mouth.

He had on a white dress shirt with the cuffs unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up messily. The shirt itself was wrinkled and the shirttails hung messily over a black studded belt. The white of the belt shone through the fading black sharpie that he had had used to color over it in the first place. His tie was a sleek solid black, and was tied very loosely around his neck.

His hands were crammed into the pockets of his jeans, which were torn and raggedy. The knees were completely gone, and since the edge of the jeans came under his converse as he walked, there were large holes where his heels had worn them away. His shoes were also broken in, and falling apart in a decrepit manner, but he still wore them all the same.

The way he stood and the way he dressed, it radiated a casual sense about him, yet somehow he seemed like an expert at his profession, which he was, and there was a timeless quality, a charm as one might say, that seemed to make people like him. That, or either hate him.

Atticus was currently taking a nap at his desk in his office. He was slumped over, his head leaning on his arms, and one could hear the soft sounds of snores coming out from over the mountain of paper work that he had yet to finish. “Sir? Uhh… sir?” His assistant leaned into the doorway of the quaint little office and knocked gently on the frame. “Sir?”

Atticus’s assistant went by the name of Deidrik Yesvit Hornsfeld, or Ricky as Atticus preferred to call him. He was a man around Atticus’s age, a little more lanky than Atticus was lean, and tended to be more shy and introverted. Deidrik often wore thin black-rimmed glasses, which accented his green eyes. His hair was medium length brown, and flipped out at the ends. He complained about the cold often, so he always wore some sort of beanie over his head.

He wasn’t as pale as Atticus, and quite preferred to be a ‘healthy color’ as he referred to it, and liked his clothing to be a little tighter and form fitting than baggy. To him, that was what comfortable dress was. Deidrik had no piercings, at least, none that he had ever revealed to anyone, and his current dress was a black beanie, a black t-shirt with the words ‘Live to die’ written on it with red lettering, and a pair of tight jeans and skate shoes. He was rather tall, taller then Atticus about an inch to an inch and a half, and radiated this air of cuteness and awkwardness whenever he spoke or just by the way he acted.

“Sir? I- Oh dear….” Deidrik stepped into his superior’s office and promptly crashed into the table and fell back onto the blinds, which made a tremendous crash, and in the process, almost knocked over the moving fan in the corner. Currently, the air conditioning was broken in the office building, and the fans were the only things keeping the building cool in the heat of summer.

Atticus’s soft snores were interrupted with a small sighed as he yawned and sat up from his desk rubbing his eyes and stretching his arms up over his body. “Jeeze kid, try not to destroy my office. I’m not that hard to wake up from a nap.” Atticus smacked his lips together and gave Deidrik an amused grin. His grin bore two elongated canines and always made Deidrik uneasy.

“I’ll keep that in mind sir…” Deidrik shifted nervously in front of the desk while Atticus leaned back in his swivel chair and put his feet up on the desk. He laced his fingers behind his head and popped his neck twice before addressing the other man. “So, what’re you here for?”

“We’ve been assigned a new case…”

—

The Paranormal Investigation Team, or P.I.T as they were commonly referred to as, arrived on the scene of the murder only five minutes later than they had anticipated, which was very timely for the department which was notorious for always showing up much later than they ever predict.

The chief of police was waiting outside the taped off crime scene with his arms crossed waiting for the pair of Atticus and Deidrik to arrive. He wiped away some sweat that beaded on his forehead and shirked away from Atticus when they approached him. The chief was one of the people who didn’t really enjoy the other man’s presence.

“Stalin. Hornsfeld.” He nodded curtly to the two boys and glanced over to the house. “Another single homicide. Parents came home and found her dead on her bed, same MO as the others. Gruesome.” He shuddered again before Atticus raised an eyebrow and adjusted the backpack that was slung over his left shoulder.

“I’m sure it is. Maybe you’ve got a weak stomach chief,” Atticus said as his cold laughter rang out and seemed to make a cold chill go down everyone’s spine that was within hearing distance. Atticus glanced over at the house and he could see the forensics team finishing up in the upstairs room facing the street.

“We won’t be long, Chief. We’ll go in, collect what we need and we’ll get out of your hair. C’mon Ricky.” Atticus took a single step towards the house and disappeared from sight. The chief of police closed his eyes before blinking quickly to make sure he hadn’t gone momentarily blind.

“Don’t worry about it sir. He’s just a weird and creepy guy. What else do you expect from a vampire? Especially one of his stature…” Deidrik couldn’t really imagine the kinds of things that his superior had gone through to get to where he was today, but he could think that it was a long and horrible process.

“Ricky! Could you hurry it up a little?” His voice floated outside form the bedroom window that caused the other boy to jump and quickly head inside and up the stairs.

—

As soon as Deidrik entered the room of the murdered victim, the smell of blood quickly overwhelmed his senses and made his stomach lurch violently before he could calm it down to keep himself from losing his salad that he had quite enjoyed for lunch.

“Hey hey, keep it clean Ricky. What do you see?” Atticus stood at the foot of the murdered girl’s bed with his hands in his pockets and leaning comfortably on one foot. Deidrik was Atticus’s assistant for his powers of observation, his thinking outside the box, and his uncanny ability to piece things together in his mind. He was going to make a great psychologist one day, and soon, he’d be able to have his own office and his own assistant.

“Don’t wander off now…” His voice brought him back to reality as he turned around and looked around the room.

It was a normal teenage girl’s room from what he could see from under the mass amount of blood splatter. Sick freak. He saw the movie posters, and musical posters that lined the wall, and pictures and notes that the victim and her friends had written to each other, a small white desk at the front of the room with a tweety bird clock over it, a nightstand with an alarm clock flashing midnight, and numerous shoes and flip flops under the night stand.

The sheets looked like at one point in time, they weren’t bloodstained, and in fact were white with light colored stars on them. There were various stuffed animals positioned at the top of the bed on the pillows, and a few folded up blankets as well.

His eyes swept over the dead body of the girl, she was pale, laying on her back with her dead cold hands holding open her ribs that the murderer had split clean open. Her internal organs were all in tact, and the blood that had been exposed to the air was coagulating. Deidrik did notice, however, that the insides were dried up a bit and small white grains stained with blood were present on the cracked open ribs. Salt?

He raised an eyebrow before getting closer to the girl to get a closer look. There wasn’t a spot of blood on her except for where she was cut open. It didn’t look like she suffered any, and it felt like she was still there in the room. Deidrik straightened up and hurried over to the mirror next to the bed. He looked into the background of the mirror and saw the girl’s spirit sitting sadly at the edge of the bed with her hands stroking her dead legs.

“Oh gosh… Hey you,” Deidrik said softly as he gazed at her sadly. The spirit in the mirror looked over at him and sighed before heading over to the edge of the mirror. “I suppose you wanna know what happened before I died right?”

“It’d be nice if you could remember anything.” The girl looked at him with sad eyes and pressed her hands against the mirror and leaned her forehead on it. She turned to the side and shook her head. “I was in my room writing my boyfriend a note like I always do. Then something in the window pane caught my attention and so I walked over to it and saw this girl dressed in this beautiful dress, it was raggedy at the end, and the girl was so pale, I thought she was drawn on a piece of paper…” She sank down to the floor of the reflection on the mirror and sighed before she looked up at Deidrik and continued. “She saw me and smiled so happily, like I was a messiah or something and shushed me. Then she walked across the windowpane and then I knew that she wasn’t on my lawn. We had a brief conversation about dreams and the imagination and then suddenly she screamed and that all I remember before… well this.” She gestured around the mirror and the people reflected in the mirror. Deidrik shook his head and let out a long sigh.

Atticus watched the boy work and walked over to the general spot where the spirited girl was sitting and gave the air a pat, exactly where the girl was reflected in the mirror. “I can’t see you, but I feel your pain… I’ll find your killer. We’ll figure out what he’s after.” But in reality, Atticus already knew what the killer was after, and if it was what he thought it was, then things were only going to get harder after this.

—

“It’s the same killer isn’t it?” The silence of the car ride back to the office was broken by Deidrik’s question to his superior. Atticus’s face remained impassive for a moment before he nodded and popped his neck again. He took a right and continued driving down a neighborhood road. There were children out on the streets, on the sidewalks, and on their yards, playing and laughing without a care in the world. It pulled some of Deidrik’s heartstrings and made him ache a little inside.

“It’s heartbreaking isn’t it? The world these children are growing up in. And yet they still retain that innocence that makes them children.” Deidrik shuffled his feet nervously and didn’t reply. Atticus sensed his unease and took a heavy breath in and out. “What do you make of the killer?”

The assistant hesitated at his question for a moment before replying. “The killer is looking for innocence. He probably believes he’s doing these people a favor by killing them before their innocence is stolen by something else.” His mind wandered back to the girl at the murder scene.

“I could feel the innocence radiated from the girl’s spirit in the room. It was pretty strong, almost like a beacon for wayward sailors. That how I found her.” Atticus stopped abruptly as a ball bounced into the street and a little boy and a little girl ran into the road to retrieve it.

Deidrik was thinking it, but Atticus was the one who said it out loud. “Innocence can end any time, any place, and in any way. Be it physical or emotional…” In the rearview mirror, Deidrik saw Atticus’s eyes slide out of focus for a moment as he slumped back into the seat.

“What exactly does this have to do with the killer?” As soon as those words left his mouth, he felt a chill pass over him, and he was afraid of the foreboding answer.

The children who had run into the street earlier were back on their lawn and bouncing the ball back and forth to each other. Atticus watched with sad eyes and processed Deidrik’s question before giving a formal reply.

“Our killer is searching for something; the embodiment of pure innocence. Something, someone that is innocence itself.” He paused for a moment as the two on the lawn giggled while they threw the ball back and forth.

“A child?”

Atticus started driving down the street again and turned to his assistant as he was driving. “In a sense. Do you remember anything about the Dream Scribe?”