Broken Snow

Prologue

The cold air of the evidence room caused Detective Jonathan Waltz to bristle, it was a far cry from the warmth of the upstairs break room which he had left. The light taste of coffee still held tightly to his taste buds, he couldn't wait to get back there, and back to Sarah. His sweetheart, he was hoping to plan their next date during their break. Maybe some fancy restaurant...

"Waltz!" Detective Ryan James shouted, catching his partner's attention, "Pay attention." He demanded. Detective Ryan was an older, grumpier man than Jonathan. He had greying hair and brownish eyes, and a long, scraggly beard, "Come over here and help me." He said, gesturing to the pieces of evidence from case seventy-five.

"C'mon Ryan, you aren't really going to do this again? We've been at this for a week!" Jonathan said, approaching the evidence table. Upon the table were several items, "We've got one unloaded Remington Model 700 rifle, has an advanced night-vision scope, five rifle shells, one unlit dynamite stick, some unrecognizable animal fur, and some busted-up climbing gear inside a backpack, which has been shredded." Jonathan said, not bothering to look at the contents for longer than a second. He'd done this far to many times, "Seems like a pretty simple case to me, some people went up Blackwoods and got mauled by a Bear or Mountain Lion, someone tried shooting it, and got it after the fifth shot." Jonathan shrugged, "Can we close this now?"

"Damnit Jonathan! NO!" The Detective slammed his hand on the table loudly, causing the shells to begin to roll off the table, Jonathan put on a glove quickly and caught them. Can't just let evidence fall. He thought to himself as he did. "Fifteen people went up that mountain, of those fifteen, five are confirmed dead, five are missing. And the last five? Well, two are injured, two are in questioning, and the fifth is insane! And You expect me to believe that a fucking animal attack did that?" Detective Ryan growled, "Fuck that!" He roared, before jamming his finger down on the table repeatedly, like one of those stereotypical cops from cheesy 80s cop movies, "There's something more going on here, something that those witnesses aren't telling us, something that the evidence can't tell us-" He stopped himself and held up the piece of fur, thankfully with his gloved hand, "-look at this shit! The boys over in forensics called in an animal specialist, and no-one can fucking tell us what animal this came from! This isn't a bear Jonathan! This is something else!"

Jonathan sighed and ran his hand through his long brown hair, "Well, what do you think we should do, go up the Mountain ourselves?" He asked, half-joking.

"No, of course not! Don't be stupid!" The older Detective considered for a moment, trying to think, then, slowly, an idea came to his head, "But one of them, the crazy one, he keeps rambling about some old urban legend, The..Snowbreaker I think he called it. Look up that name, there's got to be something with that, there's our lead."

"Sir, I'm not sure how much you know about urban legends around here... But the Snowbreaker is one of them." He looked at his partner,"They say that the higher you go up Blackwoods Mountain, the more dangerous it becomes." He paused to laugh, "But that would be stupid, right? I mean sure, ten of them were camping but we found the campsite only halfway up. And besides, it's just a story, it isn't real."

"Well, obviously. But it does give me an idea. You don't think that someone could be using that old story to cover up killings in the area, do you?" Detective Ryan asked.

"It's a possibility, but we'll need more evidence before we can act on it." Detective Jonathan said after a moment.

"Well, Jonathan, looks like we're going to be stupid." The other man said, putting the evidence away and removing his glove, "I hope you didn't have any weekend plans, because we're going Mountain climbing."

Jonathan groaned. Sorry Sarah, looks like we'll have to try some other time.

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A/N: Just an idea I had that wouldn't leave, shorter chapter this time around, but we'll be getting into the actual meat of the story soon enough. So, tell me what you think! Is it good? Bad? Needs improvement? I'm always looking forward to hearing what my readers have to say. So, that said

Until Next Time True Readers!