The Baskerville Effect

It was the twelfth death in three years; like the eleven deaths before, the victim perished by the sudden strike of a fatal heart attack. The death was ordinary and bland, not meant to acquire much attention, but what battered interest was an unusual recurrence of a pictured symbol found at all of the previous scenes. It was the sketch of a black dog-like beast imprinted on one side of a small paper card. The hound had a beady eye the colour of hellfire; its dark fur shaggy and unkempt with jagged fangs showing ominously from its mouth. The other side of the card was left blank, and this tag was always left in the ownership of the departed.

Detective Arthur Brett troubled himself by tracking the crime scene with the eagerness and energy of a rowdy child. His spirit was easily observed through his thoroughness and the graveness of his features suggested something profound—driven by a daunting determination. By countless relapse, the detective could recite sharply through his head the lack of imperfectness; mapping flawlessly each death linked to a killer he knew he could not catch solely on what the crime provided. And yet he hunted, returning with the undying hope that there would be a flaw somewhere in the puzzle coding.

There still was none. The dead body displayed no harm, besides the failed heart, and the card revealed information as if it had never been handled. The location, as well, showed no foreign change. The victim’s flat was heartwarming but hardy; the trinkets and knick-knacks were untouched collecting dust and suited for the style of both a man and a woman—but there was only one body: the woman’s.

After traipsing around the rooms for some time, the detective again met the level of the victim and found himself retracing his progress. His eyes worked and his hands worked, but to no avail until he came across one of his errors: a small strand of paper was embedded in the inside of her shoe. It was doubled a few times and cleanly cut, but what seized the attention of the detective was what was written on the inside of the unfurled paper. There was an address, time and date printed in a dainty type. Brett recognized the address to be that of a refined restaurant not far from the victim’s flat, which she would have gone for a late dinner that night at ten o’clock. Hastily the detective wrote the same information from the card into a personal memorandum, refolded the paper, shoved it into his trouser pocket and left with little good-bye’s to the others left toiling.

‘What they don’t know won’t hurt them, hm?’ and, besides, who leaves reminders in their shoes? He heard a distinct chime speak the words but blamed it was his own madness and guilt, and shrugged it away.

The detective was exhausted, sitting motionlessly in his flat his mind reeling. Ticking away, the clockwork beat at the machinery ruthlessly—left to grind endlessly until one of the gears failed the unit. For hours he could have sat there searching, planning; worn and in need of sleep with no closer answer, but deep in his consciousness Brett knew he just needed to waste time. Thinking uselessly, endlessly until the clock called him.

Footsteps, somewhere in the home, were heard faintly, but the noise was blocked by the detective’s thinking. They shuffled slowly over the wood, gradually to the tired man, until their rhythm stopped and spoke sincerely: ‘I made tea.’ From the sound of his friend’s voice he knew that the statement was not something meant to be declined, so he gratefully took the hot cup and thanked his flatmate. Arthur’s friend, James, settled himself in a chair across from the other man and became baffled himself with no concern.

‘You’re going to kill yourself trying to capture this man,’ James said sipping from his own cup.

‘If it’s what has to be done,’ the other man said seriously. The two of them idled there in their seats. The air was thick, weighed down by the flow of thinking, and the silence was immovable. James saw the toll of fatigue faintly written on his friend’s face, how much he needed rest, but instead of advising the detective he leisurely shuffled away leaving his flatmate to master his game. Before James left the room the thinker shot up from his chair, realizing the lateness, and made his way out the door with a brief adieu.

Cold, dry and sharp the air outside stabbed at the detective’s skin as he paced his way down the endless streets and thoroughfares. He moved quickly as everyone around him became a blur and the lights from the shops became distorted as well—the only thing that was keen in the man’s sight was his intention, purpose and quest. At the moment those were the only things that mattered; he saw no reason in observing the population’s leisure lives. Their babble and rouse drunkenly danced leaving no break anywhere, but it all hushed after the detective shut the restaurant door. It was quieter, but the room was not silent. The women sang with low laughter in their fine dress and the men gossiped along with the joking women. Chatter of dishes and silverware came from rushing, labouring waiters and busboys.

‘May I help you, sir?’ said the coal haired host.

‘Why yes. I’m Arthur Brett, Detect—’ he was cut off by the host saying, ‘Ah, yes, detective. Your table is this way.’

The host hailed a waiter and whispered for him to lead the detective to his table. Brett gave no fuss that he did not explain his situation, but it crossed him as odd that they were expecting him. There was a small table, seated for two, with one of its occupants already sitting. The man was young, no older than thirty-five. His skin was formed tightly around his features, its hue of a startling paleness, and his dress was of an acute fashion. The buttoned shirt was whiter than the flesh it was placed on, but it contrasted against the black colour blazer he wore over it. Wavy, tousled hair caressed the head and neck, and was the shade of the darkest raven; blacker than the deepest abyss. Burgundy eyes peered from under the locks, staring at nothing with a wistful expression.

The waiter gestured to the table and the detective let out a shallow ‘thank you.’ He sat down across from the younger man, and linked their sight. They both fashioned smiles upon their faces, but the other man’s grin was crafted with canine teeth and seemed strangely satisfied. The wavy hair man spoke first, calm and controlled: ‘Good evening, detective. Gorgeous night isn’t it?’—he outstretched his right hand over the table—‘Blake.’—the detective shook his hand respectively—‘Caleb if you prefer to be informal while addressing me. Obviously you didn’t trouble yourself all this way to make small talk with me. I understand you’re on quite the nerve-racking case, so I don’t plan on wasting your valuable time, but it would only be polite to know who I’m talking to, of course.’

Sternly he answered, ‘Brett. . . . Arthur Brett. It’s a pleasure acquainting you Mr Blake. Clearly you understand the situation I am in. May I ask a few questions?’

‘Certainly,’ said Blake, ‘It would be a wasted outing if I say no, hm?’

The words Caleb Blake spoke had the sharpness of knives that cut through the detective like paper—cleanly and easily. Their tone was of a distinct precision Brett thought he crossed not to long before, but he had never seen the burgundy eyed man before the night.

The two men talked and questioned until their meals came, and when they were finished Brett questioned once more. He asked who Blake was, his relations to the victim, and how he knew the detective was coming. None of the answers seemed apprehensive or illogical, they were perfect explanations. Blake claimed the victim and he formed a relationship and often ate in each other’s company. While he was coming back to his flat, after hearing information about the twelfth killing, he had seen the detective with the note, with such a determined expression, and changed the reservation. There was an occasional observation from the detective, but nothing that could not be answered with clever judgment and the truth.

The younger man took a small blank card from his jacket pocket and scribbled various numbers on one side. He rose from his seat, held it in front of Brett and said sincerely, ‘This doesn’t quite cross me as an official interview, so if you have any further questions, please, phone me.’

Concerned, the detective took the paper card and read the numbers, but became startled by the ring of his mobile phone, and dropped the card before he could finish. He grabbed hold of his phone and pulled it out of his coat pocket, but before he saw the screen, the detective silenced the ringing. His eyes caught the sight of something more interesting and frightening, the card flipped over, exposed on the floor, with the most startling image printed on the unwritten side. A chilling red eye glared back at the detective from a sketch he knew too well: the disheveled hellhound icon he studied at every murder.

Without hesitation, the detective violently rose, but settled soon after when his nerves grounded; realizing that the man he so passionately hunted disappeared into the shroud of night, concealed by the masses. Burning anger grew in a sea of misjudgment, but the rage of diverse sensations caught hold and distorted his true emotions. He drowned quietly searching for anything stable to seize his mind, to grasp actuality—nothing came. No lifeline crossed the detective’s way, so he sat there paralyzed from a sense of disappointment, and grieved without a tear or cry, too burdened from the night’s affair.

After then the detective saw the burgundy eyed man in glimpses, shades and illusions; and in seldom encounters the game raced to riveting heights. Both men outwitted, outplayed, carefully calculating each others movements; waiting for advancement or blunder, but the only blunder made occurred far before the night at the restaurant. The relationship was coursed for ruin, but Caleb Blake saw a potential of amity that could only have been by a different course of events. Sober grit powered the detective and beat at him with self-destructive reason. Years into the vying the strain and tension of the chase ceased one day abruptly, and the cold cases of a perplexing killer only known through the mark of the ‘Doom Dog’ regained interest of the media. The opening article of the sudden concern ran as:

Detective Arthur J. Brett was found dead in the middle of the night by flatmate, James Harris, when returning home. He had found him sitting in a chair with a large, black dog lying at his feet. The animal was old and died soon after Harris arrived, and the detective died of a heart attack caused by psychological stress. What seemed to be a natural occurring event turned for the queer when Harris came to the inspectors saying that they ‘have never owned nor seen that dog’ as well as finding a small, paper card with a hound printed on one side and the words, ‘GAME OVER’ on the other in Brett’s possession. After years of being dormant, the Doom Dog killer seems to have taken his last victim.