Status: Active
Homicide
Ascending Angel
I stepped onto the scene early morning, a Sunday, what was suppose to be my day off. However the chief described this one as a murder that “only the best could handle.” Little did I know that such a simple and peaceful day would be the start of something that would be the most important case of my entire career. It had been five hours since they found the scene and so far they had nothing. As little as I wished to go to work on my one day off in over a month I couldn’t help but go in order to find out what could possibly have my fellow officers stumped. It wasn’t as if I had a wife or kids to spend the day with, not anymore anyway… This Sunday was little more than any of the days before, to most it might seem plain or boring but to those who knew where to look there was always something happening. But in order to see what you want to find you must always look in the strangest of places. Sometimes ignoring the larger details in order to find the smaller ones that in the end mean much more than the rest.
The scene was located in the basement of an abandoned house located at the corner of Smith St. and Rayne Ave. on the outskirts of what the other officers had nicknamed the 23rd District. The name came from the average number of deaths in the ten mile radius in the past ten years, so another body in this location wasn’t that big of a surprise. But that wasn’t what made this case interesting, I hadn’t been told much over the phone but what I had been told both shocked and intrigued me. When I arrived I saw the blindingly familiar blue and red lights and the yellow police tape flapping in the light breeze. The sky above me a dull shade of bluish gray which in my opinion just seemed to set the mood for a murder. People die everyday but no one seems to appreciate when someone dies on a good day. In all my years I had seen plenty of people die on cloudy days, rainy days, and the like. I always thought it would be nice to die on a sunny day perhaps sometime in June when the sun would be bright for weeks to come. But I suppose that doesn’t really matter if you don’t have anyone to miss you.
I made my way past the few civilians and the yellow tape and stepped into the house. I soon followed the voices of my fellow officers down into the basement, the bright lights they had illuminating the once black room and outlining the shadows of everyone inside. It gave the walk down the stairs a sort of eerie feel with the blank silhouettes moving past and before me. The basement itself was old fashioned with one of the walls just plain dirt while the others were laid bricks that had lost their sandy red color and now appeared almost gray. Almost as if the color had died away with the years that had past and even the rest of the basement seemed to seem dark even under the blinding lights that were standing in several corners. Other than a few crime scene investigators there were only three other people besides myself. The chief, Dennis Rodgers, a tall burly man with a full beard and a look that said 'I could kill you with one punch' but a smile that belayed any threatening appearance, my partner, James Marco, a young man with shaggy dirty blonde hair and a critical thinking ability that no one could ever dream of matching, and the corpse of Anne Kipner, a twenty year old woman who lived over thirty miles from where she was killed and had gone missing earlier yesterday morning. She was laying naked on her back on the floor with her arms crossed over her chest and her head tilted back. Her skin looked pale and that made her stand out from the gloom of the floor. Something that immediately caught my interest was that there wasn’t a single mark on her body. No wounds, no signs of struggle, nothing. But there was plenty of blood all around her body drawn in the pattern of two magnificent crimson wings extending from her shoulders, giving her the appearance of some demonic angel. I turned to the Chief and Marco, both of whom were staring at the scene but only Rodgers looked confused. Marco had that look like he always wore when he was thinking on a whole different plane than everyone else was.
“So what do you have so far?” Rodgers turned to me while Marco kept himself lost in his thought.
“Well nothing more than what you can see Green. It appears to be a religious killing of some kind but there aren‘t any markings that would prove it. So far we have no cause of death but we place the time at about ten hours ago. Other than that your guess is as good as mine. Right now we‘re just about to have the body taken to the lab for autopsy so maybe then we can figure something out.” He went about his way leaving Marco and I basically alone, I approached him and began to probe his mind. After working with him for two years I still could only barely understand what went on in his head.
“What are you thinking James?” He didn’t look at me when he replied calm as he always was,
“Its beautiful wouldn’t you agree Edward?”
“What do you mean?”
“Its almost as if she were an angel ascending to heaven, her purest form now free from the troubles of the world rising to a better place.” He traced the design of the wings in the air with his fingers as he spoke.
“Surely you can‘t be calling this murder beautiful now can you?” He turned to me his curiously black eyes watching me as they did everything else, studying every tiny detail and absorbing the information and finding all the connections of that information. What went on behind those eyes was a mystery to everyone except James himself. He was the only one that could make sense of all the nonsense that he seemed to come up with but yet somehow it always connected and it always was correct. I couldn’t explain it but no matter what it was after James got a hold of it there were no secrets left unexposed.
“That’s exactly what I‘m calling it. Edward, wouldn’t you agree that the person who committed this crime did it this particular way because he saw it as a form of beauty?”
“I suppose so…”
“And wouldn’t you also agree that this person wanted his ‘art’ to be seen by others. We did only find this scene due to an anonymous tip after all. Otherwise in a secluded place like this with almost no human activity it could have remained hidden for weeks, months, or even years. Whoever committed this crime wanted us to find it quickly and feels confident enough in himself that he can get away with it that he would give it up without us even having to look.”
“So basically we are dealing with someone who thinks they are above the law? That they are smarter than us?” He nodded. “Alright then, I guess I‘ll go with the body to the lab and see what we can come up with there. I assume that you have a little more investigating to do around the here?”
“Of course, you know me so well don’t you Edward.”
The scene was located in the basement of an abandoned house located at the corner of Smith St. and Rayne Ave. on the outskirts of what the other officers had nicknamed the 23rd District. The name came from the average number of deaths in the ten mile radius in the past ten years, so another body in this location wasn’t that big of a surprise. But that wasn’t what made this case interesting, I hadn’t been told much over the phone but what I had been told both shocked and intrigued me. When I arrived I saw the blindingly familiar blue and red lights and the yellow police tape flapping in the light breeze. The sky above me a dull shade of bluish gray which in my opinion just seemed to set the mood for a murder. People die everyday but no one seems to appreciate when someone dies on a good day. In all my years I had seen plenty of people die on cloudy days, rainy days, and the like. I always thought it would be nice to die on a sunny day perhaps sometime in June when the sun would be bright for weeks to come. But I suppose that doesn’t really matter if you don’t have anyone to miss you.
I made my way past the few civilians and the yellow tape and stepped into the house. I soon followed the voices of my fellow officers down into the basement, the bright lights they had illuminating the once black room and outlining the shadows of everyone inside. It gave the walk down the stairs a sort of eerie feel with the blank silhouettes moving past and before me. The basement itself was old fashioned with one of the walls just plain dirt while the others were laid bricks that had lost their sandy red color and now appeared almost gray. Almost as if the color had died away with the years that had past and even the rest of the basement seemed to seem dark even under the blinding lights that were standing in several corners. Other than a few crime scene investigators there were only three other people besides myself. The chief, Dennis Rodgers, a tall burly man with a full beard and a look that said 'I could kill you with one punch' but a smile that belayed any threatening appearance, my partner, James Marco, a young man with shaggy dirty blonde hair and a critical thinking ability that no one could ever dream of matching, and the corpse of Anne Kipner, a twenty year old woman who lived over thirty miles from where she was killed and had gone missing earlier yesterday morning. She was laying naked on her back on the floor with her arms crossed over her chest and her head tilted back. Her skin looked pale and that made her stand out from the gloom of the floor. Something that immediately caught my interest was that there wasn’t a single mark on her body. No wounds, no signs of struggle, nothing. But there was plenty of blood all around her body drawn in the pattern of two magnificent crimson wings extending from her shoulders, giving her the appearance of some demonic angel. I turned to the Chief and Marco, both of whom were staring at the scene but only Rodgers looked confused. Marco had that look like he always wore when he was thinking on a whole different plane than everyone else was.
“So what do you have so far?” Rodgers turned to me while Marco kept himself lost in his thought.
“Well nothing more than what you can see Green. It appears to be a religious killing of some kind but there aren‘t any markings that would prove it. So far we have no cause of death but we place the time at about ten hours ago. Other than that your guess is as good as mine. Right now we‘re just about to have the body taken to the lab for autopsy so maybe then we can figure something out.” He went about his way leaving Marco and I basically alone, I approached him and began to probe his mind. After working with him for two years I still could only barely understand what went on in his head.
“What are you thinking James?” He didn’t look at me when he replied calm as he always was,
“Its beautiful wouldn’t you agree Edward?”
“What do you mean?”
“Its almost as if she were an angel ascending to heaven, her purest form now free from the troubles of the world rising to a better place.” He traced the design of the wings in the air with his fingers as he spoke.
“Surely you can‘t be calling this murder beautiful now can you?” He turned to me his curiously black eyes watching me as they did everything else, studying every tiny detail and absorbing the information and finding all the connections of that information. What went on behind those eyes was a mystery to everyone except James himself. He was the only one that could make sense of all the nonsense that he seemed to come up with but yet somehow it always connected and it always was correct. I couldn’t explain it but no matter what it was after James got a hold of it there were no secrets left unexposed.
“That’s exactly what I‘m calling it. Edward, wouldn’t you agree that the person who committed this crime did it this particular way because he saw it as a form of beauty?”
“I suppose so…”
“And wouldn’t you also agree that this person wanted his ‘art’ to be seen by others. We did only find this scene due to an anonymous tip after all. Otherwise in a secluded place like this with almost no human activity it could have remained hidden for weeks, months, or even years. Whoever committed this crime wanted us to find it quickly and feels confident enough in himself that he can get away with it that he would give it up without us even having to look.”
“So basically we are dealing with someone who thinks they are above the law? That they are smarter than us?” He nodded. “Alright then, I guess I‘ll go with the body to the lab and see what we can come up with there. I assume that you have a little more investigating to do around the here?”
“Of course, you know me so well don’t you Edward.”