It Started Out Fun.

The day Hailey Rolland entered the police station was a busy time. Detective Green remembered it clearly. A local robbery, a domestic disturbance, a suicide, a woman claiming she had murdered when the victim turned out to be her late gold fish, which she flushed down the toilet. It was frustrating, and Detective Green’s attention had to be directed towards last weeks reports, which had somehow gotten lost in a mix up. He was in a bad mood, grumpy, irritated, so when a young woman entered the station claiming some absurd tale the detective was irrationally angry with her from distracting him from his duties. It was protocol to listen, so he took her into a questioning room to hear her story, although his mind was on the reports stacked neatly upon his desk.

“You claim you know the whereabouts of a wanted criminal?” Detective Green had asked skeptically. His mind flashed to all the tv teenage dramas where young girls did ridiculous things to gain attention. She quirked her head to the side from across the table, her long strawberry blond hair falling like liquid gold onto her left shoulder.

“No, sir. I don’t believe I wrote that.” The detective felt a flash of irritation, but when he looked down at the table, where the report she filed lay open and exposed, he realized she indeed hadn’t written that. He cleared his throat, uncomfortably.

“You claim you’ve been in contact with Jason Galleretta.” He blinked again down at the name. Jason Galleretta. The name sent a shudder down his spine so violent he was sure that she saw it. “Im very sorry, miss… but I find it difficult to believe Jason Galleretta would be in contact with…” With what? He struggled to find the words to describe his skepticallity. Jason Galleretta was debatably the most wanted man in the world. With over one hundred and sixty murders under his name, sixty two major bank robberies, and a number of other crimes maiming his reputation. He was young too, the man was only twenty-four, and was possibly the most dangerous person Detective Green knew of. Jason Galleretta was a criminal genius, why would he ever leave a loose end like this girl able to speak information? He wouldn’t, the detective had decided, which left only one option. The girl was lying.

Now, looking back, one of his biggest regrets was leading Hailey Rolland out of the police department. If only he had listened. If only he had believed her.

Hailey Rolland went missing a week later. Detective Green was on call, he was the one who responded to the missing persons report. Hailey had been almost twenty, her apartment was a wreck. A window was broken, tables overturned. She had been cooking soup when her attacker entered, the food was now all over the floor. Hailey Rolland’s favorite color was green, she had a puppy and was applying to a job at a local company in town. On her message machine was a message from a friend, asking if she wanted to go to the movies. Detective Green felt sick, even sicker when he made his way out to her garage which was converted to a art studio of sorts. Huge canvases hung from every corner. Many of them were beautiful landscapes of the ocean coast, some portraits of people he recognized as family, young neighbors, her dog. And then, as he made his way carefully towards the back, dodging between magnificent paintings balanced on easels, Detective Green stopped in his tracts. Because in the back, hidden behind a sheet, were four paintings of Jason Galleretta.

Each one was different, a different pose, a different activity. The detective had only ever seen one mug shot of Jason, one that was taken when he was eighteen—his first and last arrest. All other pictures were blurred and nearly indistinguishable.

But these were clear, they were affectionate and beautiful. In these paintings Jason Galleretta didn’t look like a murderer. He looked normal.

In the first painting Jason was sitting in a sunny field of grass, Hailey’s little puppy in his arms. A radiant smile graced the man’s surprisingly handsome light face, the sun shining down through a clear sky. The detective had to force himself not to be persuaded by the picture, to believe that a man like Jason Galleretta could be like this. The next was similar, but different at the same time.

The criminal was standing at a dusty table, working diligently at something in front of him. Papers spread out across the table; he had his shirt rolled up to his forearms, a pencil gripped in his hand and an expression of complete concentration. This painting was more whimsical, the strokes less clear and more artsy, as if Hailey had been experimenting with colors. Quick, thick strokes painted the background, which seemed to be some sort of dark warehouse. The entire piece took on a more shadowed, silent, still life aura than the first, which seemed happy and full of laughter.

The next was sickening in a secretive sense. At first glance it appeared to be Jason sleeping on a tattered sofa, his shirt intimately open with his hand limply hanging off the edge of the purple couch. But as Detective Green approached the smaller painting, he realized with a jolt that blood maimed the serene picture. On Galleretta’s white shirt were dicreet splatters of blood, his hands too, seemed to be dripping the red substance. On the floor was smoking gun, black and glinting in the dull light. The scene seemed as if the man had just come in after a brutal kill and fell asleep upon dropping exhaustedly upon the open sofa.

So Hailey knew. Knew what kind of man Jason Galleretta was. But of course, Detective Green rationalized, he knew that already. He had, after all, turned the girl away when she came to him. The middle aged detective sank to the floor, feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt washing over him. The police had already marked these paintings, he could see the red tads signaling for them to be taken back to the station. As he took deep breaths, and pressed his body to the floor, he spotted under another easle, something the police had missed. As he reached into the dusty shadow of Hailey Rolland’s last painting, he pulled out a small red camcorder, still open as if she had been recording when it was dropped to the cold floor of her studio.

Back at his office, Detective Green’s hand was poised above the play button, almost waiting for an excuse not to press it. As if he were waiting for someone to burst through the door and interrupt him. No one came. A minute passed. Until Detective Green was swearing at himself for being such a coward. What ever fate Hailey Rolland had suffered, he may or may not have been the reason for that outcome. With that gut clenching thought in mind, Detective Green let his finger drop onto the small red button.

The scene opened with a flash of sunlight, and soon a face appeared on the screen. It was a girl with dark hair and blue eyes, her expression curious and amused.

“What’s with the camera?” The girl asked, again, very amused. The scene jiggled, as if the recorder were moving, until the scene was zoomed out and it could be seen that the dark haired girl was sitting on a slouchy purple armchair. The one from the painting, Detective Green thought. The scene stopped moving, and suddenly another girl appeared in the image, and this time The detective recognized her as Hailey Roland. Hailey danced onto the screen, sunlight streaming in brightly behind her from an open window. The room was filled with light, the aura so different from the bloody painting. Hailey grinned roguishly at her friend, her expression almost as light as the room. She plopped beside her friend on the couch, bouncing slightly with the after shocks.

“I have decided to re-evaluate my life.” She declared with a flourish of her hand towards the camcorder, which seemed to be placed upon a table of some sort. Detective Green recognized the room from Hailey’s small home.

Her friend quirked a brow and glanced at the camera. “With a video camera?” The girl asked, and Hailey nodded, jumping up to pick up the camera. There was a view of the floor for a moment and then Hailey aimed the camcorder on her friend zooming in on her eyes.

“Yes, so say hellooo…” She quipped, and then laughed, setting the camera on the top rim of the couch and fussing about it for a minute. “I figured I need a different perspective on the way Im living. You know, a fresh outlook.” Her friend laughed, and Hailey feigned being offended. “What? Just think of it as a video diary. Something I can revisit and evaluate. It’ll be fun.” Hailey smiled winningly, and the dark haired girl laughed again, glancing into the lens of the camera.

“Like a documentary.” The girl smiled again.

“Exactly,” Hailey agreed. “Too bad my life isn’t that exciting.” Her dark haired friend
shrugged jokingly.

“You never know.”

“Well, Im the only one that’s going to see it anyway.”

“Maybe not, maybe someday it will be like famous. Diary of a young artist.” They both laughed.

“Suree…” Hailey said, laughing still. “But for now, it will just be me, my camera, and I.” She grinned towards the camcorder. “Right my beautiful, ridiculously expensive video recorder?” The scene went black.