Chapter I: Present Day
Detective Barnes poured his coffee from the office machine. He thought it tasted like it had been strained through gym socks. But beggars can't be choosers, and he didn't have the money for a good cup from the corner store on his way into work.
The dispatch radio rattled away, as the criminals of the inner city ran from being caught. The office was cluttered with stacked case files and unfinished cases. He was the head of the internal investigations group, that double checked the other investigators work. He always ended up checking the files that led to dead ends. He chuckled to himself as he always did at the thought that his bosses thought something was missed and there would be a break in the case because it hit his desk. In his 20 years in the force, he had only managed to solve 2 cases completely and get a conviction. He was a laughing stock.
They joked about him, his cases, his weigh. He heard them more than once when they thought he couldn't hear them. He knew though, he could just feel that there was something... something big one day. He would open a file and it would be the biggest break through since the Slasher bust. Country wide exposure and he would be the one at the front of the case being solved. His day would come.
He added three sugar packets, ripped the tops off, and poured them into his cup. It read "Bad Ass" on the side of it. It was a gift from his son for his 50th birthday. His son was doing very well, he had grown from a snot nosed kid into a military gift child. Top of his class in everything, it made him swell with pride when he thought of his son. And he did everything he could to live vicariously through his sons accomplishments in the military. Special forces, fluent in multiple languages... his achievements had been recognized by only the most honorable of government agencies.
Barnes went by Barny. Everyone called him Barny, his family and the others in the station. He didn't mind other than Ron in the lab was a prick and called him Barny Five. They had known each other since high school, and they had always been at odds. So it was easy for him to pass it off as a Ron-tard problem, as a matter of fact anything that involved Ron was Ron-tarded. He chuckled to himself over a sip of coffee.
Barny walked by his desk looking at the stacks of files as he went. Each stack represented a separate type of case, some were based on date, as others were in stacks due to the type of case. As it was this way he could try and match crimes and perhaps also match evidence. When the folders went from date piles into type of crime piles, Barny knew it was one step closer to a solution and a breakthrough.
As he approached his desk, he noticed a new pile of folders on his desk. He set his coffee down on the edge of the table so he could grab the top file. Barny had never seen a new stack of files this high on his desk before right when he walked into the office. The top file was labeled Johnathan Jacobs, with a large deceased stamp over the folders surface. The mans picture clipped to the side looked like a bad version of Luigi from super Mario, but strung out on something bad. It was a heavy folder.
He flipped through. Criminal record a mile long. Armed robberies, money laundering.
"Mornin Barnes." It was his boss. He had slipped in the door behind him, and was leaning on the door, as he usually did when he had something big. "Big pile?"
Barny choked out the words, he had been caught off guard, "Yeah, what is this stuff?"
"Thats your new project. Everything else has to be put aside, get on it right away we have officers coming from Dc with Fed badges. Get what you can out of those before they get here."
"Wow." Barny couldn't believe what he was hearing. He had never had a serious case on his hands this big. Out side of one or two phone calls about some information perhaps, or a fax. But they were on their way? "So what is this all about? In a nutshell? What am I looking for?"
"Well as far as I understand," he paused as he poured some coffee into one of the old cups drying by the sink. "There has been a series of very brutal killings of criminals in the surrounding area, and witnesses have all reported a strange creature or ghost thing or something. It has the local authorities in an uproar and they are having a hard time keeping it from the media. We don't want a panic."
"But they are criminals? Looks like the guys is doing us a favor."
"You don't understand Barnes, whoever or whatever this thing is has got people freaked out. The Feds are coming here as they got wind of it. We need to figure out who this vigilante is before our name finally ends up on the map, but for the wrong reasons. We need to find this guy. As of yesterday."
"OK, I understand. I am on it." Barny sat down in his chair still shuffling through the pages.
"I am setting up a group to work with you on this. They are our best and some from the other branches. Work together and get this asshole, I want this solved before those agents get here."
"Gotcha. Who are these other agents?"
"There will be a briefing in one hour and everyone will be here. Brush up on this stuff so we don't look like idiots. Most of them were working these cases to begin with and they are the ones responsible for these files getting in your hands. They believe there's something MORE to this. Find out what that is. Get started, and I will see you in an hour." with that the Commander left the room complaining about the quality of the coffee.
Barny came across the documents about the victims actual death, and the account of those that made a report, he became engrossed in the account, and began to slip into a simulation of the events as they took place....
{It was midnight at a local convenience store when the clerk saw a strange overweight man come into the store. The clerk was suspicious of the man as he was wearing a Grey trench coat and was acting rather odd, talking to himself and laughing.
The man picked out some beer, and a bottle of wine and approached the clerk. He watched the clerk with a twisted look while the items were being scanned in. There were no other customers in the store and the air grew tense.
"That will be $21.97"
The man looked at him, and wrinkled up his face, "Give me your money in the till."
"I don't keep more than $50.00 in the till, you welcome to it though."
"What about the store safe? Open it." The man spat, he was visibly dirty. Grime covered his face.
"I don't have the safe key, all I have is the $50.00"
The man grabbed the wine bottle and swung it at the clerk hitting him full in the head. The wine splashed across the register and the counter and all over the floor. Shards of glass everywhere. The clerk grabbed the side of his head that was now bleeding, and reached into the till scooping up all the money for the would be robber. The pain was intense and it felt like several pieces of glass were still in his scalp, he was not about to give this guy any further resistance.
The robber then grabbed the money from the clerk grabbed some candy bars and stuffed them in his pockets and rushed out the back exit. The clerk waited a few minutes to make sure the guy was gone, locked the store up and called the police. When police arrived, it didn't take them long to find the robber, he was dead 30 yards from the stores back door. The authorities held the clerk in custody for the murder as the clerk refused to admit that he had touched the guy. They found it hard to believe and had held the clerk for over a year through investigations and appeals until other such cases began to appear and the clerk was released.}
Victims cause of death, was that his skull had been spun a full force of 180 degrees. His head was literally turned backwards. And when he was found the stolen items had been forced into the victims orifices. A truly grueling torture, as the autopsy stated time of death was after the insertions were done. The man was alive while object were forced into his body, and this included his beer, the candy bars, and the money. Stuffed into his corpse. Johnathan had a very unhappy ending. And as Barny read through several other files he saw the similarities, these people were severely tortured before during or after death. And they were all criminals in the act of a crime.
He also noticed it didn't matter what the severity of the crime. One was a husband murdered for beating his wife. Thieves, Bank Robbers. Hustlers, but they were all slaughtered in the act of their bad habits. It was a very perplexing thing. How could someone know this many different people in different areas of the country that were into different things. This was a very impossible looking case.
Barnes looked up at the clock. It was time to head to the meeting. The radio was still crackling away in the other room, people shuffled about. It was time for him to refill his coffee...
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