“I told you I don’t want a party,” Ian stopped him. “I just want to get out of here without any fights or any trips to the hospital.”
“Okay, that was only one incident–”
“I don’t care. I just want to make a quiet departure.”
“Yeah, okay,” Drake said, as he shook his head and mouthed the words ‘it’s still on.’ “Okay, no party, but if there was a party I’d want everyone to start working on gathering attendees.”
Ian rubbed his eyed and sighed, “Fine, we’ll have a party. But if anything bad happens, I’m not paying for anything. No medical bills, no fines, nothing, got it?”
“Did you think I’d leave you with the bill? It’ll be my, or my father’s, pleasure to take care of expenses.”
He sighed, “Whatever. Just let me know when it is. I’ll just show up and pretend like I’m enjoying it.”
“That’s the spirit.” Jordan mocked, “Don’t get too excited, Ian.”
Nick stretched and fished his worn cell phone from his jeans and read the time. Rachel saw him check and asked, “Are we keeping you from something?”
He hesitated to answer, but said, “I-I’ve got to get home s-soon and I-I need to get some groceries b-before then. N-Need chicken, t-tuna…”
“Your mom or dad can’t get that themselves?”
Nick stared at her for a moment before he let out a breath and said they couldn’t. He grabbed his things, walked to his bike, and left without another word.
Rachel saw the expressions on the other three boys’ faces and asked what was wrong.
Jordan told her that Nick’s mother died in a car accident on the first of July and that he was still coping. “And his stepdad’s a drunk who doesn’t give a damn about any of it. Nick struggles to barely keep them fed, considering how busy his older brother is working.” Jordan cursed again and apologized for not warning her.
The four sat silent then. Drake picked up a small stone and tossed it in the air above his head while his eyes remained on the exit Nick had taken; he had hoped he might return. Ian’s gaze passed by Drake as he watched a small group of children play tag. Rachel gripped Jordan’s hand tightly and picked at the grass in front of her. Jordan just looked away from the group and toward the forest.
Drake finally threw his rock as far as he could and hit a trash can near one of the covered dining areas. He stood up and spoke, “Well I’m getting out of here. My job’s done, get the word out and I’ll let you know of any changes and updates. Ian did you need a ride back?” Ian told him he wouldn’t mind one, and the two left.
Rachel let out a deep sigh, “That did not go well.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.”
“No, I feel bad about it.”
“Nick’s resilient,” Jordan told her, “He’ll get over it.”
She sighed, shaking, and told him she needed to smoke. “Do you have anything with you right now?”
“I thought you’d never ask. C’mon, let’s do this in the woods.” She agreed as she rose and walked past the worn Blyth Park entrance sign, and once they had crossed the field they entered the dim forest.
Empty cans, bottles, cigarette butts, torn pizza boxes and occasionally lost, soiled clothing littered the forest. Giant, twisted roots hindered them as they continued through the woods. They came to an opening where a group of lawn chairs stood surrounded by a far larger amount of trash than what they saw on the trail. They took two chairs and Jordan took out a small paper bag. He retrieved two plastic lighters, his was red and the one he tossed her was green. Once Jordan passed her a few hand rolled white cylinders, they each lit up and took long draws. Neither of them said a word for quite some time.
---*---
8:45 PM
Baltimore, Maryland
Sage sat at his desk, and stared at the newspaper photo of his fellow officer, Brett, as he accepted the first place trophy from the mayor’s daughter. There were thirty-seven people in the photo, Sage and Felton had spent a whole day identifying them all, trying to find out anything and everything they could about each one of them. The results proved fruitless. Ryan began to worry about the amount of time he had left to find the next potential victim. He was not having any luck.
He tossed the photo back into the file that lay spread over his desk, rubbed his temples, and tried to figure out what his next move should be. Sirens blared outside, which had become a regular occurrence in the city, police and medical assistance mainly, due to the continuous violence throughout Baltimore. It wasn’t as if there was chaos at all times, the average citizen wasn’t involved. It was merely the gangs they had to stop, the theft, and the rivalries.
The case before his wasn’t moving, and with the pulsing headache he couldn’t shake away, the detective thought it was as good a time as any to grab something to eat. Sage left his office and headed toward the break room where he found a box of doughnuts he guessed had been there since the morning. He selected one he believed to be suitable enough for his taste, refilled his coffee, and headed back toward his office. Sage took one bite and nearly spat it out. The stale doughnut and the sweaty frosting didn’t mesh well, and though he thought the coffee to be enough to help wash it down, he believed he might end up tossing the pastry, as no one could stomach it if he couldn’t.
The detective had hardly taken his seat when he was met with Chief Johnson who walked over and took a seat at the table as well. Chief Johnson set an evidence bag with a bloodied sheet of paper on the table and told him there was another victim in his case.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got another victim,” the Chief told Sage. “Caroline Reynolds, age fourteen. Dead from what looks like a broken neck, although this note was pinned to her skull with a kitchen knife. This is all just assumption at this point, but we’ll know for sure after an autopsy.”
Sage asked, “Was anyone else injured or killed?”
“No one else was home when it happened. Apparently her folks were out for the evening and left her home alone.”
“So he knew she was alone…” Sage paused for a moment before he asked how the killer entered the house. “Were there any signs of forced entry?”
The Chief shook his head, “Caroline answered the door herself. It’s assumed the man killed her shortly thereafter. No signs of a struggle either.”
Detective Sage finally looked down at the piece of evidence and found one word scrawled across the page in blood, Cladis. He studied it and asked the Chief if he happened to notice the mark he’d found on all of the previous victims.
“Yep, burned into her, just like the rest of them.” Johnson watched Detective Sage’s eyes while he mulled over the document. “Do you know what it means?”
Sage shook his head, “Possibly a name, an alias he wants us to recognize him by…but beyond that no, I have no idea.”
“Who found her?”
“Neighbors noticed her front door was open and happened upon it. They called us, I grabbed Murdock, and we rushed out there to see it for ourselves. We called in Brown, Maguire, and a few others to simply keep a line until we could get forensics and the coroner out there to get the body.”
“Is there any chance I could get copies of notes and photos from the crime scene?”
“Sure thing.” Chief Johnson told Sage a number of pieces of evidence outside of the note he held would be available to him to investigate shortly. “I’d like to ask you to begin a full investigation of this and the previous murders.”
“Of course.”
“For starters, I need you to head out to her house and talk to her parents. Try to get as much information from them as you can. Tomorrow you and Felton can go around the neighborhood and ask around about any suspicious activity they might have noticed over the last few days…or however long the time period between her murder and Officer Foster’s.”
“Right. Felton’s already gone for the evening, did you want me to call him?”
Johnson shook his head, “Grab Mu
rdock if you think you’ll need someone. Just call Detective Felton and inform him of the situation and update him tomorrow when you both tackle this thing head on.”
“Got it.”
“Good, now,” he swore under his breath, “We need to get out to the Tuscany-Canterbury area to talk to her parents about the murder of their daughter, and I need to think up a way to tell Commissioner Schmitt that we have a serial killer in our city.”
---*---
6:15 PM
Bothell, Washington
Rachel sat relatively alone in her well-worn lawn chair with a cigarette in hand. The marijuana always made her nauseated after only a short while and it usually lulled Jordan to sleep for some reason. He always took more than her, usually double at the very least, and even though Rachel wasn’t about to ask, she always wondered what sort of things were intermixed within it. He always bought for them both, even before they started dating exclusively, which often worried her, as she never knew what sort of people sold it to him.
He slept soundly in the chair next to her with his head propped up by his hand that stood erect from the placement of his elbow on the edge of the right arm of his chair. She gave him a once over shortly before taking a final puff from the cigarette between her ring and middle fingers.
Rachel tossed the butt away, exhaled, and rubbed her eyes. It was all they ever seemed to do if she scrutinized what they had together; it was truly the only thing that brought them close in the first place, that and the physical aspects of their relationship. Her hopes for a truly dynamic romance died before they even met, seeing as her notion of a fairytale love story failed to exist. If love did exist it was solely from a physical standpoint.
Jordan stirred in his seat, his balance failed him, and the subconscious awareness of his fall woke him just in time to catch himself. He cursed under his breath and resituated himself in the chair, though Rachel mentioned how she wanted to leave and robbed him of another opportunity to catch sleep. Jordan stashed his lighter away, Rachel left hers, and they started out toward the main area of the park side by side. They hardly made it halfway before they heard the laughter of a small boy.
He sat up on one of the lower branches of a great gnarled tree and looked out at the people who played and resided at the park. A wide, crooked, and somewhat toothless grin spread from ear to ear on the young boy’s face. “It-ty, bit-ty, twit-ty, wit-ty, ant-ties.” he quietly said to himself in the tree. “Heheheh…scurry, scurry, hurry, hurry!”
Jordan looked up at the kid and asked what he was doing. “You’re going to fall,” he told the boy resolutely.
The boy ignored him and glanced down at Rachel. He gasped and quickly cried out, “You’re killing me!”
Alarmed, she took a step back and asked what the hell he meant.
The lad immediately smiled once more and thanked her. He pointed to the small leaf she had previously stood upon. He then whispered his thanks to her before he returned his attention to the park-dwellers and commented, “All the little ants aren’t marching right…” he took a brief pause before he asked, “What’s missing? What’s wrong…and who are they?”
Jordan looked out over to where the kid peered but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “He’s nuts,” he murmured, “Let’s just get out of here.”
“Wait,” the boy stopped them, “Why are they here? Why are they there? And what are they all here for?”
“Are you talking to us?” Rachel asked him.
The pudgy boy looked at her and said he could ask her if she wanted him to. “Do you want me to? ‘Cause I will.”
“What are you talking about?”
He giggled to himself and asked if she was one of them too. “You don’t look like one, but who knows? Ants come in different shapes and colors and sizes and smells. You might be…but you’re nothing like me…except for the smile, maybe.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t tell…” he smiled.
“You can’t tell me because it’s a secret, or because you don’t know?”
The boy suddenly frowned and admitted he was as lost as she was. He hopped down from his perch and led the way out of the forest with Rachel and then Jordan behind him.
The three arrived at the entrance shortly and within a moment a young woman situated in a wheelchair rushed over to the group and called out the young boy’s name. “Michael, where have you been?”
The boy smiled and said he needed to see the way things were. He examined her face and quietly asked why she was so sad.
She frowned and told him she wasn’t sad. “You worried me Michael; you can’t wander off on your own, okay?” Michael failed to make a promise and instead left his sister and ran back over to where his father and grandmother resided near the swing set toward the entrance. The young woman apologized for her brother and thanked Rachel and Jordan for their help.
“It was nothing,” Rachel told her.
The girl in the wheelchair took one look at the couple and figured out their earlier activities. She thanked them again and left them to return to her family.
“That must have been pretty freaky,” Rachel said as soon as the girl was out of earshot.
Jordan didn’t add anything to her comment. He only let out a breath and remarked at how he loathed that young woman. “She ratted me out once after I cheated off some kid’s paper in a chemistry course I took last year. The bitch basically gave me a failing grade and two detentions.” Rachel offered apathetic condolences and urged him on toward his car.
They passed the family at a distance a moment later. The young boy, Michael, waved to them, but neither one returned his sign with anything more than a slight smile.
---*---
7:25 PM
Bothell, Washington
Ian sat in his room as he flipped through a photo album. The book contained pictures taken of his, though only one of which had him in it. That photograph was of a trip he’d taken with Drake, Jordan, Nick, and Nick’s brother Victor on a camping trip the five of them took two summers ago. Only the four boys were in the picture, as Victor took it with Mount Baker in the background.
The rest of the photos Ian took of people and places he had seen, many of the photographs were in black and white, only a few were in color. He flipped through the images of angry commuters, majestic mountains, trash-filled alleys, and one of Jordan when he was in a fight in Tacoma.
His album was only half-full, and once he reached that point he set it back on his desk, adjacent to his bed. The walls of his room were bare, the shag carpet was free of clutter, and everything was in its place. He fell back to his bed, closed his eyes, and tried to think about his day, rather than an excuse to get out of the part Drake planned. He thought of how someone could be hurt, that an argument would arise, and how it wasn’t worth the effort…though Ian knew Drake would reject any and all reason or justifications Ian might dream up.
There was a quiet knock on his door before Ian heard his mother ask if he was hungry, “Dinner’s ready honey. I made a tuna casserole and rice.”
He told her he was and that he’d be out to eat with her in a minute. Ian stared at his ceiling for a moment before he brought himself to his feet and out to their small dining room. The casserole and rice sat out in front of two place settings. Ian neglected to mention that Drake bought a late lunch for him, Jordan, and Rachel, but Ian knew he couldn’t abandon what his mother prepared for him. He looked at the two place settings again and felt another frequent dagger of guilt when he imagined his mother alone each night for dinner.
Ian’s planned exodus to London weighed on him. The notion came to him from one of his high school teachers who took a year to travel and live abroad. Ian heard tales of the adventures and of what his instructor learned from that time away and Ian wanted that for himself. Ian worked a part time job and saved everything he could for the rest of his high school career, and with a little additional help from his mom Ian managed to have enough money for the move. However, Ian failed to c
onsider his mother in all of his planning. He tried to call off the whole endeavor, but his mother wouldn’t allow it. His mother was a relatively small woman, with fading brown hair, and had what Ian considered a frail constitution. She was, however, one of the strongest women he knew.
She smiled and asked about his day. Ian took a breath and told her about what happened, how Rachel mistakenly insulted Nick, and how Nick stormed off. His mother frowned, “That poor boy’s been through a lot…”
“I know.”
“You don’t spend very much time together though, do you?”
He shook his head, “I really only know him through Drake. Other than that I can’t say I have any real connection to him.”
“Yes, but wasn’t his brother your English teacher last year?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s something.”
He only nodded, and tried the casserole.
---*---
7:32 PM
Lynnwood, Washington
Nick clutched two grocery bags to his chest as he slowly rode home. It was his first attempt at riding with anything and as such his heart raced. He took the roads slowly and took the turns with the utmost care. When he finally arrived home though, he found only his stepfather’s car in their driveway. Nick’s heart sank.
He opened the garage door, parked his bike inside, closed the garage door behind him, and crept into the house. His stepfather was a heavy drinker and smoker, and because of his habits, there was a wall of stale smoke and liquor in the air every time anyone walked into their home. Nick made his way to the kitchen and emptied the tattered bags on the counter near their fridge. A loaf of bread, six cans of tuna in water, a head of lettuce, a few tomatoes, a brick of cheese, a bag of frozen chicken, celery, six apples, and three cartons on cigarettes.
Nick grabbed the cartons and went into the living room, where he found Paul with a beer in hand and his glazed eyes fixed on their television. Paul’s hair receded but retained its jet-black color, though Nick suspected he dyed it regularly. Paul wore a dirty, stained gray tee-shirt along with a pair of tattered brown shorts. The dancing light from the television cast distorted shadows across the man’s face, partly due to the stubble across his face and neck.
Impact (Book 1): Regenesis Page 4
