Mermaid

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Detective Nathan Benning sat in his office, his fingers interlaced resting near his mouth as his dark brown eyes remained glued to the static of the screen. He had watched the surveillance tape at least three times already, and it still lead to a dead end, the guard on duty, the one who heard the crashing, and was now still in the hospital, kept claiming that it was some kind of strange girl that did it.

He leaned back in his chair and titled his head back towards the ceiling, as he ran a hand through his reddish brown hair. What the security guard said didn’t sit well with him.

Earlier today he went to the hospital and spoke to the man, who was still being examined and could not see anyone for a long time, so Nathan waited outside the man’s room, patients was a virtue, and if he wanted an answer he’d wait for the chance to talk to him.

By doing so he headed over to the scene of the crime, even if that did sound overly cliché. He watched the workers do what they could; cleaning everything up, trying to get all of the evidence that could be found while trying to keep the vultures that was the press away from the site. This is why he always hated the press; some would become too arrogant and end up touching or picking things up that they shouldn’t and destroying evidence in the process.

Nathan was watching the police while leaning on a nearby pillar, close enough to hear everything, but far enough to not disturb any of the C.S.I’s work.

“Any idea on what could have done this?” a woman with coffee colored skin and short blond hair walked over to him with her hands shoved deeply into her coat pockets. Samantha Ashley, Nathan’s partner, looked to him, hoping to pry and answer out, she was always the kind of woman who wanted to know everything from everyone, and it was one of the reasons why she was always so determined with her work.

“No not yet. But this kind of destruction is strange, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of motive to it.”

“Do you think it’s like that same case nineteen years ago?” she asked him, making the man go completely still. That was more than enough for her. “It is isn’t it?”

“This case and that one are completely different; for starters, there weren’t any dead bodies here, just mindless destruction.”

“Don’t you mean that there aren’t any bodies yet?”

He looked to her.

“Oh come on Nathan that has to be the reason why you’re so close to the crime scene, you wouldn’t be if it were just vandalism.”

“I honestly don’t know.” He admitted. “But it feels familiar, but the bigger question here is, how the bloody hell do you even know I worked that case nineteen years ago?”

She pointed at him with a smile spread across her face; her expression was like one who believed the person they were talking too had just fallen into their trap. “One, you just told me, two, I read your case files, and three, I was about to enter middle school when it happened, so of course I’d know about it. It was all over the news for a long time. The only ones who don’t know are the kids who were born around that time.”

That much was true, the kids in high school now these days never knew of the events that had accrued many years ago before they were born.

Nineteen years ago there were a number of incidents that spread across the country like wildfire, a sudden increase in deaths. However these deaths were neither accidental nor suicide, it was murder, but it wasn’t normal. The bodies of the people who were killed lost almost all of their blood, was gone, barely any left on the ground, and many of the bodies looked as if they had been eaten after their necks had been snapped. Almost all of the victims didn’t know what hit them. Almost all because there were a few that were tortured while still alive, with some kind of sharp blade, but it was a blade that had never been seen before, tests after tests had been done but a match was never found. One of the men was a publisher who, in later discovery, had been stealing other people’s works and claiming them as if he had done it taking the writers hard earned money. The man had been ripped to pieces, like a child pulling apart a doll.