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1:59pm Jan 18 2009 (last edited on 2:03pm Jan 18 2009)
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Normal User
Posts: 2,148
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Just something I cooked up while bored out of my mind. lol. I had spent so long examining the human mind; I had grown to predict one’s moves depending on prior actions. I could tell just what one would say to the sentence, “You’re nothing but a penny pincher!” and from there, anticipate a brawl to ensue. I had figured the human mind out. No one was unpredictable. As a result, I became a Profiler. One who studies the habits of a criminal and foresee what they will do next. I created a person from a stack of papers pinned to a wall, or scribbles on a white board. I was no older than in my mid 20’s when I first hit my big case. A serial killer picked victims at random, or so it seemed.
The hunter had a set parameter in which his prey would be picked. It triangulated in the area within three large land marks, Town Hall at the top of the triangle, the Civic Center to the right, and the only hospital in town on the left. Etched on the large town map was the triangle, sides and a small shaded area with a highlighter in the middle. I kept my silence as everyone around me began to toss ideas back and forth.
“Perhaps this man lives within the area?”
“Unless the man were a homeless man, he wouldn’t live within the area, it’s downtown.”
“He could live in a hotel there, I’m sure this person would be from out of town if they’re randomly picking people.”
I shook my head and turned around. “No, no. There has to be some sort of connection, a pattern of sorts. What ages were the victims?” I enquired my coworker, Elouise Parker. She was the gorgeous one of the group. Her hair was a gentle red that flowed no longer than to her collar bone and created an enticing shimmer, and her eyes a captivating emerald. They were the perfect shape for her face and an exquisite color for her gorgeously pale skin tone. Everything about her was soft, right down to her footsteps, which I counted when she neared. I smiled lopsidedly, hiding the fact that I was captured by her beauty for that slight moment. Elouise handed me the folder and I examined it, reading the birthdates of the people who were murdered.
“There isn’t much of a match here with birthdates, they all seem spurratic and random, there’s people born in the 1970s, 1950s, 1980s, but nothing that create a specific pattern,” I spoke more to myself than out loud, and placed the folder down and turned back to the map. A few minutes of staring followed before I turned back to the folder. “Are these people listed in when they were murdered, from first to last?”
My other coworker, Martin Frank, took the folder and flipped through it. “Yes, they’re in that order.” I smiled to Elouise, she must have organized the folder for me, though my smile went unseen by her as she was busying herself with the stacks of papers on her own desk, which oddly was set in the meeting room. It wasn’t because of budget cuts, more or less, it had something to do with the “thinking space”. I didn’t dare question.
“There is a pattern,” I said as my eyes bore into the contents of the folder. All eyes on me, I moved from my position at the front of the table and walked around everyone, then set the papers down on the table before them. “Watch how the gender differences change between victims. It starts out with a female, then male, then female, then male.” A murmur of agreement washed through the meeting room.
I continued. “This person obviously must be a male; generally they strike first with a weaker target, which is usually a female. And judging by our first victim’s deion, she wasn’t much of a fight, so I believe our target must be between medium build, to slightly muscular, perhaps some one who spends a bit of time in the gym, but he’s no muscle head. I bet he figured, once the girl was dead, and she put up less of a fight, then the male would be his next target. Though the man here put up a much worse fight and put our murderer off for a while, until he decided to try a woman again. After that, he found that, yet again, he was superior, and took on a man, but of less stature than the first male he attempted to take down,” Everyone’s heads began to nod; everything seemed to be fitting together. “And obviously, in this triangle, there has to be something in common, check the male and female workers in all the buildings, I think all three of those places had something significant to our killer. Maybe he’s killing off the number of female and male people involved with him?”
As I spoke, everyone began to pack up and head out to find answers to all these questions, and hope to better understand our killer. Elouise remained, as she was still fiddling with the papers cluttering her desk. I attempted to help, but she shooed me away, saying I didn’t have the same organizational system as she. I laughed and returned to my analyzing.
This man must be insecure about his ability to murder people, because he hunts single targets, not groups, and does not go after anyone in significance to those buildings. Maybe the murders had nothing to do with the buildings? Though it wouldn’t make any sense, to just go around and kill people at random. Then again, the human mind was cluttered, and what I couldn’t predict was meant to remain in their thoughts till they die. Thoughts rushed through my head as I pinned the profiles of the victims up, framing the map. All this information together created countless possibilities. Obviously, this killer would strike a male next, as the last victim was a female. Elouise suddenly broke my train of thought by producing a cup of coffee in front of me. I snapped to reality and gratefully took the cup from her hand and took a sip. The bitter taste of the coffee was deluded down with the sweet nectar of French Vanilla flavoring, creating a deliciously warm aroma that soothed my senses into a soft lull of peace and tranquility.
“This is a perplexing case,” she said softly as she gazed at the info board. I only nodded and sipped more from the coffee. “All those innocent people… I wonder what their families must think of the murderer. Those poor loved ones…”
I nodded again, not knowing what to say in response to her empathizing. I didn’t tend to get my emotions involved with cases, as it caused my tunnel vision thinking to stray off and bump into a road block. The phone began to ring, startling me slightly, though Elouise jumped towards the phone and picked it up rather abruptly. “Hello?” She asked. She remained silent and the color from her face drained. Concern crossed my features as I signaled for a hint. She hung up the phone and returned my gaze. “They know who the killer is.”
“Well? Who?” I asked, excited that the murderer was found so early.
“A man I used to go to school with, Benji Rust…”
The team pulled up everything about Benji Rust they could find. Birth date, prior notations, traffic tickets, last known residence, wife’s name, children’s names, where he went to school, where he worked, and his credit card information. He had one transaction, yesterday at the convenience store on Seventh Avenue. The team was broken into three groups. One would go to his work place, one would go to his home, and the other would go to his wife’s work place and see if she knew where he was, or if he was there as well.
As we walked, I began reading what was on his folder. In 2000, his mother and father were checked into the hospital from a random shooting at the Civic Center. Those are two buildings. The culprits had fled northbound and crashed into the fire hydrant, just outside of Town Hall. The third building, though from Town Hall, the murderers fled into the building and out the back door, not seen once. While in the hospital, the parents died because the doctor had failed to remove all the bullets properly from the bodies of Benji’s parents. That would be motive enough to go on a killing spree.
I was fortunate enough to be in the group heading to the wife’s work place. As we entered her office area, we received a call over our walkie-talkies. “Suspect is home. Door is open.” The wife stared at us shocked, and began demanding an explanation to this, though before we could answer, our colleagues spoke again. “Suspect is dead, I repeat: Suspect is dead.” Lt. Walker spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Did you shoot him?” The reply came back quickly. “Negative.” The wife stared in shock, realizing that her husband was now dead, and she found out the worst way possible.
“Suicide?” I asked.
“Improbable. The stab wounds were slightly slanted up; no one stabs that way when trying to kill themselves. Plus, there’s a gunshot right in the back of the neck, where it paralyzed him which enabled our murderer to stab him without any fighting.”Officer Emmers explained. Taking this all in, some one must’ve known that he was the murderer of all those people.
“Did we release any information about our suspect to the press?”
“No, not a single person.”
Then it hit me. Some one in our case must have leaked information. I began thinking through to everyone who was there. It was like picking which of my children would I have to have killed. I shook my head. My emotions were getting the better of me. I needed to think clearly. Who in our case would have spilled the beans and got Benji killed? “Wait,” I said. “Why would Benji be killed? He wasn’t in the triangle, he was home!” I ran back to the meeting room and looked over everything once again.
There was something wrong with our triangle. I stared around it, in it, through it, everything. Then the thought of one of our own leaking information, and my attention went to the HQ where we were at. No pattern there, the murders didn’t happen at any set place. I looked at the pins where the murders had taken place and I stuck the last one in at the Rust home. It was then that I noticed it. I grabbed a string and tied it around the pins, in the order from the first murder, to the last. All around the police station was a large heart. I could feel my own pounding in shock and I called out for an opinion.
![]() “Elouise, do you think this could mean something?” I asked and turned to face her, though she was gone. She wasn’t around her desk either. I checked the watch. It was very late. I had to get some sleep.
As I walked home, I had my hands in my pocket and my eyes downcast to the ground as I racked my brain for possibilities. Were there workplace romances that I knew about? No, everyone followed a strict code of conduct, where they would greet each other formally and as professionals. Then what Officer Emmers said to me reflected back. “No single person. He must know a couple! He found a loop hole! He must’ve been the informant!” I quickly ran home to call the chief.
When I arrived, my door was unlocked. I always locked my door. I peered inside quietly and pushed the door open slowly, entering with extreme caution. Was I a victim of burglary? No, my alarm system would have started. Some one knew my code, but whom? I never told anyone. Perhaps a hacker had managed to break into my security system and disarm it. I peeked around every corner. Whoever was here, had to still be here. A pair of sneakers were at the front door and they appeared to be unisex, and definitely weren’t mine, as I put my shoes back in the closet. The closet! That’s it! Maybe the intruder hid there. I slowly turned the knob and opened it, nothing was there. I grabbed the Swiffer stick within and used it as my weapon as I examined the rest of my rooms. It was then that I saw the back door open. Perhaps the intruder saw that I had come home and fled, not bothering to pick up their shoes.
I flicked on the light in my living room and dropped my weapon to the ground and rested on the couch. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, playing today’s events through my head. Who could the murderer be? It had to be some one inside. I then remembered to call the chief. As I jumped up and grabbed the phone, I felt a cold point on the back of my neck. I remained frozen and stared at the phone, with my hand stretched out to grab it.
“Hello my love.” The voice was soft and sweet, just like Elouise’s. I turned around and saw her, holding a knife out at me.
“Elouise, what are you doing?” I asked, shock and fear dripping from my sentence, and drowning my voice in its cold liquid, causing it to shake.
She smiled to me, a twinkle of insanity in her eye. “I came for you, my sweet. I came to take you away from this place,” a small laugh came from her lips, it was sweet, but still my fear remained. “I’ll take you someplace safe. You’ll never have to worry about murder or crime.”
I shook my head. “Elouise, what are you talking about,” I decided to go out on a limb and ask her one more question. “Did… did you kill those people, Elouise?”
She smiled more and sighed happily, walking around the couch and sitting next to me, keeping the knife pointed at me. “Oh darling, how many people must I kill before you realize my love for you? Did you not see what I created around our work place? I created a heart with crimson blood. Now everyone will know of my love for you, and what I’d do to prove it.”
Jumping up quickly, I moved away and darted upstairs. She laughed again and called out, though I couldn’t hear what she said over the own pounding of my heart and heavy breathing from my lips. Once I reached the top of the flight of stairs, I found a blockade of all my belongings preventing me from going any further. I turned around to see her standing at the bottom of the turn in my staircase. She leaned against the wall and smiled, holding the knife as she crossed her arms and stared endearingly at me.
“Come back, sweetie. We need to elope.” Elouise spoke enticingly, had I not worried for my life, I would have fallen for her.
“Elouise, you need help. Please, put the knife down and-“ She cut me off abruptly by stomping and screaming loudly. “I do not need help!” it caught me off guard and caused me to slip a bit. I quickly grabbed the railing and gained my footing. She gasped and ran up to me. Though I stepped back more to get away from her.
She began to panic; I could see it in her eyes. Her breath became erratic and she clung to the knife with both hands. “I- I thought you loved me. I thought you wanted to be with me…” She muttered, shaking and staring around as though she were lost and didn’t know where she was.
I took that moment to attack. I jumped for the knife and tried to pull it out of her hands, though she managed to writhe away from me and get to the safety of the lower step. Her brows furrowed and she gritted her teeth. “If I can’t have you, then no one will!” And with that, she plunged the knife into my stomach.
Several other thrusts of the knife finished me off and my body was sent tumbling down the stairs, which she avoided easily. If the blood loss wouldn’t kill me, then surely the feeling of being betrayed, and out smarted would. She came and sat down beside me as I lay bleeding on the stairs, she began toying with the knife and explaining her line of thinking.
“See, I figured you were so confident that you could figure people out, that you would never suspect me to be a murderer. We’ve been together on the team for… what, five years? Half a decade… so long… oh,” she groaned in seemingly ecstasy as she thought about all our times together. I stared at her weakly, forced to hear her continue her story. “I knew you’d find a way to make the pattern, and that would distract you long enough for me to make my plans. To come here and fix up the place so you couldn’t leave, not without me anyway. And then you found the hidden message I wanted to show you. I knew you’d figure that out, you’re smart like that. I gave you so many hints over the years of my love to you, but you spent all your time watching other people and their habits, that you never bothered to see what I was capable of. It wasn’t hard to tamper with the evidence either, or get your ideas to sway the way I wanted them to with those murders. It was like leading sheep to the slaughter. Though I never wanted to kill you! No, no. I want to spend the rest of my life with you… but now you’re dead, or dying.” She glanced down to me, I had my eyes open and my breaths were not as frequent or strong. I could tell my lung was punctured. But I held on. Why? To find out why she’d do this. To give me peace of mind when I died so I wouldn’t come back as a ghost to haunt.
“Ah, dying. Well. It wasn’t hard to figure you out. You had a pattern. Come home from work; enter the key, which, by the way, was so easy to figure out. Putting your birth date as your key is a stupid idea. Then put your shoes in the closet, and come and sit down and watch your TV shoes. While you have tried to figure out how the rest of the world works, you’ve become so basic, so predictable, and I didn’t have to do any of the work at all,” She turned back to me and smiled. “Good night, lover.” She said, and then closed my eyes with her gentle fingers.
As I heard her leave, I counted the steps. They were so quiet and soft, as always. I slumped over onto the stairs and waited for my spirit to leave this agonizing moment. Though before she left, I heard her say. “I lose more men that way…” then close the door to my home, and to my life.
 
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8:15pm Feb 12 2009
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Normal User
Posts: 269
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Wow, talk about a major twist. Love this story, you're beyond talented Whit =D
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10:17am Feb 17 2009
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Normal User
Posts: 2,148
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lol. Thanks Kin. (: I felt this was a refreshing change from my fantasy stories I write. xD
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11:26am Feb 17 2009
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Normal User
Posts: 1,028
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-Hugs-
A very, very nice story. =D
I love the deion at the beginning. My mum is a psycologist, so this sort of thing is bandied about our house frequently.
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4:17pm Feb 17 2009
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Normal User
Posts: 1,895
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I liked it.It was a cool story.You could make a series of this or somthing.Like a book on res.That would be interesting.
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5:31am Mar 2 2009
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Normal User
Posts: 1,117
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Awesome Whit :D Iluuuuuveee it!! Congrats ^^
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9:56am Mar 2 2009
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Normal User
Posts: 2,148
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I would be elated if this was turned into a story on Rescreatu. Although I doubt it will be. lol. Thanks everyone who commented on this. (: I was hoping it'd turn out well. |
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