{ PART 1 }{ PART 2 }{ PART 3 }{ PART 4 }{ PART 5 }{ PART 6 }
[INCLUDES SEXUAL VIOLENCE]
He was sobbing for the last 15 minutes. I tried calming him down and helping him get better. It wasn’t working. If I was about 10 years younger, I would have told him that real men don’t cry. I have learned, witnessed, and gone through a lot since then and realized how stupid that actually was. I tried giving him some liquor, but it only made things worse. It usually worked the other way for me. I guess we are all different no matter how similar we are. I remember talking to him when his face suddenly went pale, and he only asked one question. He asked me, “Where is Olivia?” Olivia was his girlfriend. He started sobbing after I told him what happened to her. But the important part was the information he gave me before that.
“Why did you try to blackmail me?” I asked him after we were finished talking about the scar and the nightmares.
“I’m an addict, man,” he replied. “Sometimes my mind doesn’t work properly.”
“That’s all?”
“There’s more. Captain knows of all of this. He gave me the idea to blackmail you. He was the one who found the pictures of you and Clara.”
I can’t say that that was the most surprising thing I heard that day, but I also can’t say that it didn’t make me stop before replying.
“He is in on all of this?” I asked.
“He somehow knew I was the one who took the coke, so he told me. I got scared and begged him not to arrest me. He blackmailed me but said that if I do my job right, he’ll defend me and maybe even give me the rest of the coke.”
“So, he’s corrupt. He was the last one I expected… except Kaley of course.”
“I’m telling you, man. He’s much more dangerous than he seems and much more… well… evil… if you can call him that.”
“Why did he want you to blackmail me?”
“He wanted the money. That’s all he said. Why he chose you, I have no fucking idea.”
He remembered Olivia after that, and you know the next 15 minutes. He even hugged me at one point. He managed to calm down and stop crying but his eyes still stayed teary.
“What should we do now?” he asked.
“These killings are somehow connected to Ewan Loringer and I believe that finding out how would help us solve the case. There isn’t anything in the files but there must be more to it. I wanted to ask the captain to talk to his wife about Ewan’s inheritance. Someone who inherited his… well… everything might be connected to this since all of Ewan’s children are dead.”
“I could ask him, but I think that it might be the best to give him the money he asked for.”
Johnatan was right. The captain would be angry, and the entire situation would probably result in both Johnatan, and I being locked up.
“Okay,” I replied. “I’ll give you the money, but you should ask for the favor before giving him the money.”
“Are you sure that’s the best idea?”
“You should show him the money, ask him for the favor, and then give him money. If he decides not to help you, give him the money anyway. We’ll have to find out who the money went to by ourselves.”
He nodded. We went outside to go home and realized that we only had Johnatan’s car.
“Where’s your car?” he asked.
“The battery went out. Lights stayed on too long.”
“What now?”
“Do we have time to go to my house? And then you go to yours.”
“Yeah, yeah. I think so. How are you going to get to the station then?”
“Shit, I forgot about that. Can you maybe pick me up?”
“What should I tell Kaley?”
“I don’t know. Tell her that my car is at the mechanic for some problems, I guess. Oh yeah, tell her that we had a talk and bonded or some bullshit.”
“Did we?”
“What?”
“Bond?”
I looked at him with a serious face. After a short pause, both of us laughed and sat down in the car. Johnatan brought me home and I ran into my house. He sped off home to get there in time. I could only hope that he wouldn’t be pulled over. I gave Micky some food, but he didn’t seem hungry. His bowl was also dirty, so I thought that I gave him some food the night before and had forgotten about it. It didn’t take me too long to get myself dressed for the job and to prepare everything I needed. I made myself some breakfast and coffee hoping that it’ll help me stay awake. However, I also wanted to look like I was awake the entire night because of the captain. Suddenly, I heard a horn from the outside. I looked through my window and saw Johnatan’s car. I put on my jacket and ran outside.
Kaley was looking at me while I was entering the backseat. She had a confused smile on her face and her arms were closed.
“What?” I asked smiling a bit.
“Nothing,” she shook her head slightly. “It’s just that you two hated each other yesterday.”
“Well hate is a strong word, Kaley,” Johnatan said as he started driving.
“Is that so?” she turned towards Johnatan.
“You asked me to talk to him, didn’t you?” I told her. “We talked. That’s all.”
She turned her head towards me and then back at Johnatan.
“Did you guys go out for a few drinks?” she asked.
“Don’t tell the captain,” Johnatan told her.
Kaley looked at me, but her smile changed. This smile looked like she tried showing me the joy and love she felt towards me. I returned a little smile.
“I’m so tired,” I said. “I needed to drink three cups of coffee.”
“Where’s your car, Elijah?” she asked.
“Uh, it’s at the mechanics. Didn’t Johnatan tell you?”
“No,” he answered. “She didn’t ask.”
When we arrived at the station, Kaley was the first to leave the car. As soon as she closed the door, Johnatan turned to me.
“I hope the plan works,” he told me.
“It will.”
He was about to open the door and leave the car when he stopped and turned around once more.
“And please, invite Kaley out for a dinner on Friday. She needs it and I need some alone time… to think about Olivia.”
“But you two don’t live together.”
“We have this tradition that she comes to my house on Fridays. I can’t tell her the truth about Olivia, but I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.”
“Okay,” I replied sighing. “What’s her favorite restaurant? Send me a text.”
I left the car and took a look around hoping that the captain wouldn’t see us leaving the same car.
“What did he tell you?” Kaley asked me.
“Nothing,” I smiled. “What would he say?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he tried to scare you or something.”
“And you think that he could scare me?”
“No,” she stopped for a second. “I know he can’t.”
All three of us walked up to the building. Johnatan stayed outside to smoke before his shift started while Kaley and I went inside. Before we reached our offices, I called after her and gently put my hand on her arm.
“Hey, would you… uh… like to go to dinner with me? Tomorrow?”
“That’d be great,” she smiled. “Which restaurant?”
“I’ll text you.”
“Can’t wait,” she started walking backward and turned around after a few steps.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered to myself. “I did it.”
The morning went on pretty well. I was happy because I got a date with Kaley but I still had to think about the entire situation with Johnatan and the captain. It seemed like it was distracting me from finding out about the murders, but we needed to please the captain to be able to get to the information about Ewan Loringer. Knowing who inherited everything from him could help us find the murderers and this was the only way to that information.
An hour before the end of our shift, I saw Johnatan stand up. He looked at me with disgust. It was acting so that we wouldn’t look suspicious to the captain. It worked. I mean, he didn’t even look at us or care how we interacted with each other, but we still kept acting. I noticed him knocking on the captain’s doors and I turned my look away. I didn’t want to seem like I was following him. After about 5 minutes, Johnatan came out of the office and went back to his seat. I didn’t even look at him or the captain’s office. I tried acting like everything was normal. It was so hard.
I waited for another hour for the shift to end. When it was done, I packed and went outside. On my way outside, the captain caught up to me.
“Did you find anything new about the murders, detective?” he asked me.
“I didn’t, but if I do, I’ll go to you immediately,” I answered.
“That’s good to hear. However, I heard that you started looking for the connection between these murders and what happened with Ewan. Is that true?”
“Most certainly.”
“May I ask why?”
“Well… the wounds on the corpse are somewhat similar but the same sign was carved into the bodies. I don’t know what that sign meant. Maybe it was a cult, maybe it was a summoning symbol, maybe the symbol Ewan wanted to be remembered by. It doesn’t matter which of these it was because in all the cases, someone is clearly trying to continue whatever Loringer started back in 1994.”
“And you’ve told everyone?”
“Right,” I nodded. “I mentioned it to the other detectives, but they seemed to disagree with me.”
“Johnatan doesn’t.”
I put on the most realistic confused face I could. He was suspicious about Johnatan’s request even though he got the money.
“At least we can agree on something for a change.”
“By the way, Elijah, I haven’t seen your car in your usual parking spot. In fact, I haven’t seen your car at all. How did get here?”
“Well, by bus, of course,” I answered.
“And how are you going home?”
“I told Kaley that my car is at the mechanics, so she convinced Johnatan to take drive me home.”
“Uh-huh. You also seem awfully tired. Did something happen last night?”
“N… No. Just… just some family stuff.”
“Family stuff?”
“Yeah, yeah… it’s… uh… my cousin. He’s moving to a different state, so he organized a party.”
“And you went to it knowing that you work today?”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“Don’t do that again, detective,” he told me turning around.
“I won’t. You have my word.”
Kaley and Johnatan were already sitting in the car when the captain and I were done talking. Kaley smiled as she watched me approach while Johnatan had a suppressed look of fear.
“What did you talk about?” he asked as soon as I sat down.
“The captain told me that you took interest in Ewan Loringer,” it told him.
“Well, you were convincing.”
“Ewan Loringer?” Kaley asked.
“Elijah thinks that these murders are connected to Ewan Loringer. These murderers aren’t just copycats. It’s much more than that.”
“Why would the captain talk to me about it?” I asked him.
Johnatan knew that I was asking him what the captain told him.
“I asked him if he could find out who inherited Ewans… well… everything that was left. He said that he’ll ask her and send us the information as soon as he can.”
“That’s a really good idea,” I put my hand on Ewan’s shoulder. “Good job, man.”
He chuckled and slightly shook his head left and right.
Johnatan dropped off Kaley first because her house was on the way to mine. I also left the car so that I can sit next to Johnatan. Before I sat down, Kaley grabbed my hand.
“I’m looking forward to tomorrow,” she told me before turning around and walking up to her front door.
“She’s happy,” Johnatan told me when I got back into the car. “During the break, she told me that you invited her to dinner tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t have invited her if I didn’t want to.”
“Glad to hear that. Anyway, about the deal with the captain.”
“What happened in there?”
“I told him I had the money and that I needed to ask for a little favor before I gave him the money. He got angry and told me that he’ll take me to court. I ignored it and asked him. He was clearly surprised by it, and I believe he was a bit suspicious about it. He accepted, though.”
“That’s… better than I expected. I thought that he’d kill both of us as soon as you asked about it.”
Johnatan chuckled.
“He was very suspicious of me. It seemed like he believed we were hiding something from him,” I told Johnatan.
“That’s not good, I guess. I only hope that he’s more afraid of the murderers than us taking him to court.”
“He should be.”
“What do we do now?” Johnatan asked me.
“I guess we wait and just live our day-to-day life. Oh, that reminds me, you want to come in for a beer?”
“Eh… Okay. I could use one even though I’m tired like hell.”
When we got inside, Micky instantly ran up to us. He went to sniff Johnatan and he crouched down to pet him. I took out two beers, opened them, and put them on the table. I put some food into Micky’s bowl, and he ran up to it after Johnatan was finished petting him. Both of us set down by the table and took a sip out of our beer bottles. I was just about to say something when both of us felt pain in our right arms. I lifted my sleeve and realized that my scar was bleeding. Johnatan lifted his sleeve and started hyperventilating.
“Calm down,” I told him carefully. “This just means that another person was getting the scar.”
“O… Okay,” he said as his breathing got slower.
“Follow me to the bathroom. We need to clean the wound up.”
After a few minutes, it was all finished. Johnatan was still scared, but he held it inside. I called Clara and she told me that she cleaned her wound as well. We decided to meet in the diner to talk about the whole situation because we needed to do something about it.
“Come on,” I told Johnatan while offering him my hand. “We’re going to meet with Clara.”
“Why?”
“We need to discuss the entire situation. We don’t know what it is and why it’s happening to all of us.”
He grabbed my hand and I helped him stand up.
“And by all means, do not tell her that I was the one to kill Cameron. Is that clear?”
He nodded. We were the first to get to the diner. It was much earlier than the time I usually went there, and this was the first time I saw it in the light of the day. I looked toward the place where I saw the figure last time. Thankfully, there was nothing there. We went inside and ordered a cup of coffee for Clara. Johnatan and I just got a glass of water each. I just wasn’t up for anything else. We waited for some time. I heard the bell at the door ring, and I saw Clara come in. I stood up and hugged her when she walked up to us.
“Who’s this?” she asked me.
“That’s Johnatan… my coworker.”
“I’m glad to meet you,” Johnatan offered her a handshake.
“I’ve heard a few things about you,” she told him. “Not the best things.”
“I’m sure Elijah will be happy to take them back,” he said looking right into my eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s not important now. Sit down, Clara,” I said. “We have to talk about the scars.”
“What happened?” she asked me.
“Nothing special… I mean, the same stuff as before. Someone got the mark and that’s all.”
“Then why did we have to come here?” Johnatan asked.
“People are getting these marks for a reason. People aren’t just chosen for no reason. We need to find out why we were chosen, and we need to find everyone that got the scar,” I explained.
“Everyone? Didn’t just a single new person get the scar?” asked Clara.
“Today, yes. But the thing is that we don’t know if I was the first to get the scar.”
“How do we find people with the scar?” Johnatan asked.
“I have no clue. You guys acted weird and scared. I acted like that as well. I guess we can assume who got it judging by that.”
“I don’t know, man. It seems too… vague,” Johnatan complained. “We can’t just walk up to people who are scared and assume that they got the scar.”
“What do we do then?” Clara asked. “Maybe we just talk to them, and they’ll tell us about their nightmares.”
We didn’t manage to find the solution for the next three hours we talked and argued. Johnatan and I became too tired, and our heads started to hurt because we had both suffered a blow to the head the night before. We told Clara that the murderers jumped us and knocked us out and she got really scared. She tried checking my wound, but I told her that it wasn’t needed. We took her home and Johnatan and I went home as well. I was so tired I jumped onto my bed at 8 PM and fell asleep instantly.
{ PART 8 }{ PART 9 }{ FINAL PART }