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He’d always been known by the agents at the station as ‘the glass cannon’. For a man of his age, he was exceptionally muscular and could chase down a suspect like a greyhound. Some even said, when he drew his pistol, his aim was like that of Hollywood gunslingers; true and straight. There hadn’t been a case he’d been on where a suspect had escaped. When it came to cases that needed physical force like the SWAT team, he could almost always handle it by himself with only his two arms and maybe a tazer. The force always knew that when faced with a suspect that could (and probably would) endanger the public if confronted or take hostages, they could sent him to the scene and come away with all parties involved alive. But with such amazing skill came a questionable bill of health. His left wrist was scarred from a suicide attempt that still would haunt the deep recesses of his mind. His immune system, unlike himself, would let many diseases and viruses inside to infect and prohibit his maneuverability and livelihood. Ailments like the flu would turn into something more serious when contracted. Simple headaches would turn into migraines before he knew it. It was as if the world made up for his almost supernatural abilities by striking him down with the smallest weapons known to man. Some in the force urged him to quit due to his constant injuries but he wouldn’t comply, citing the police force as the only thing keeping him going. He was against treatment for so many years, claiming he could do it himself, but after the previous chief stepped down due to scandal, his son took up the mantle and immediately demanded that he get treatment for his illness. His frailty was something the chief’s son could not let inhibit his work. Especially with the onslaught of new and bizarre cases each month that had dangerous suspects at their helm. So, he used his own money and time to take and accompany ‘the glass cannon’, Riff Raffit, to a trusted family doctor, Jizabel Disraeli.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Raffit. Sir Hargreaves.”
Riff looked up from his position on the all too familiar patient’s chair to acknowledge the doctor. He wasn’t one to emote even in the presence of someone he now considered a close acquaintance. It was still a very professional affair to him. Cain Hargreaves, on the other hand, returned the greeting with a firm handshake and a relaxed grin.
“Afternoon, Doctor. How are you?”
“Ah, same as usual. Busy with widow’s house calls and other patients.” He returned the handshake. “How about you two?”
“I’m doing great.” Cain answered, retaking his seat close to Riff. He gave him a small nudge with his elbow. “How about you, Riff?”
He grunted. “I’m fine. Don’t treat me like a child, Cain.”
Cain placed his hands up defensively. “Sorry!”
“You seem almost giddy today, Sir.” Jizabel chimed in, pulling up his own seat in the form of a swivel chair. “It’s almost scary how . . . chipper you are. Why is that? Is your father finally in jail?”
Cain’s almost fake smile fell at the mention of his father. He pressed his hands against his chin with a sigh. “News gets out fast, huh. Yeah, his trial was today and he was found guilty of fraud and money laundering.”
“Quite amazing for a former police chief.” Jizabel gave Riff a knowing glance as he opened a drawer that contained modern thermometers, pulse readers and a blood pressure cuff. “I’m still amazed and baffled how he got away with it for as long as he did.”
“Well, there was a lot of inside jobs and threats from what I saw.” Cain’s golden green eyes seemed to glow with a bit of disdain as he spoke. “I wasn’t there for a lot of his illegal activity but I know he would threaten death or false accusation on those who didn’t agree with him and would constantly bribe others to keep everything under the radar.”
“Including yourself, correct?”
Both Riff and Cain winced a bit at the cutting remark. Cain watched for a few seconds as Jizabel ran a sensor over Riff’s forehead to check his temperature. “Yes, including me.”
Jizabel tapped Riff’s shoulder reassuringly as he pressed his fingers on his scarred wrist. “And you were one of the first to speak out?”
Cain nodded. “Someone had to do it. Riff encouraged me too after I opened up to him about it.”
“Did you?” Jizabel gave him a gleaming smile. “Oh, right! You two are dating now, right.”
Riff blushed at the mention of their relationship, staring back at Jizabel’s fingers as he finished checking his pulse. “It’s been about four months.”
“We just didn’t make it public until about two weeks ago.”
“To protect Riff’s involvement in the case, right?” Jizabel laughed a little. “You’re such a martyr, Cain.”
Cain scoffed. “Disraeli, stop assuming things.”
“I’m not wrong, am I?”
He pursed his lips together in almost a childish pout. “Yeah you’re not wrong. I didn’t want people to assume we were making another conspiracy. I just wanted to get my father out of his position. Even if it meant I got killed because of it. Riff needed to stay out of it.”
A moment of heavy silence followed. All that could be heard was the squeezing of a pump as Jizabel took Riff’s blood pressure. Cain’s hands fell back at his side while his gaze wandered to an unimportant spot on the wall.
“Well, you’re vitals are fine.” The doctor broke the silence with a satisfied sigh. “You ready for a blood test?”
“Yeah sure.”
He stood up and walked over to another drawer, peeking inside. “Cain, may I ask you something?”
“What?”
“I’ve been hearing a bit on the news about there being a serial killer in town. How true is that?”
Cain swallowed a lump in his throat and stood up. “A lot of that is confidential, Disraeli.”
“Oh I know. I just want to know if it’s true. I know sometimes people blow up a few murders and call it a serial killing. The media likes to dramatize everything. I thought if I asked the source I could maybe calm my fears about such a terrifying thing.”
Almost as if they were thinking the same thing, Cain and Riff’s head fell, a silent few words being exchanged through their eye contact. “Well,” Cain began, “It’s big enough that both Riff and I are on the case. Does that do anything for you?”
For a moment, Jizabel paused, only one sterile rubber glove on his hand. “Both of you? My god.”
Riff nodded. “The news is right. It’s not just a few fluke murders. We have a cold blooded killer. The worst possible kind too.”
Jizabel sat back down in front of Riff, both gloves on his hands and a few implements in his left hand. “From what the news had to say, it didn’t seem like they were a child killer or anything. The victims they mentioned were just put in odd places like a public garden and an outdoor mall.”
“Correct. None of their victims so far have been under the age of eighteen. There’s only three confirmed victims so far, in accordance to the killer’s patterns, though with a lot of tips about maybe other ones.” Cain crossed his legs as he watched Jizabel take a blood sample from Riff’s finger. “They all have one thing in common that’s concerning us.”
“What’s that?”
“The way they were displayed was . . . gruesome. Almost as if the killer wanted them to be found. Their confident in their actions and probably highly intelligent. Nothing was seemingly done carelessly. It all seems too perfect. It’s almost like they want to play a game in being found.”
Jizabel placed the small contained sample of blood in a plastic bag while he pressed a cotton ball into Riff’s finger. “Interesting. And concerning. Having someone smart enough to even foil you, Cain. This must be a great challenge for you.”
Cain’s lips curved into almost a mischievous smile. “It’s exactly what I need to vent my frustrations after the incident with my father. I’ll prove to everyone that I’m better than he ever was. I don’t want to be known as ‘Hargreave’s son’. I want to bury his entire existence in the sin and toil he deserves. I don’t care if that man finds his way to hell and the Devil himself doesn’t want to see him; that’s exactly what his pathetic life is worth. I wouldn’t care if even I had to kill him with my own two hands just to rid the world of his filth! This case will help me prove who I am and who my father wasn’t! If I focus on this I can--”
“Cain, please.”
He pursed his lips together to stop his words at Riff’s command. Jizabel stared at the two men warily, an eyebrow raising as he saw genuine concern on Riff’s face. Amazing, really. He’d never really seen Riff show any sort of emotions like that except in the presence of Chief Cain. Nor had he seen the fire of vengeance and destruction course through Cain’s body like it was now. He could almost see little horns sticking out from Cain’s silky black mop of hair. He could feel his fingers outstretching, wanting to stoke that fire within the boy’s body and cause it to explode in a fury. This case and his father’s imprisonment was causing him to almost crack under the new pressure he was experiencing and prove he could piece it back together and be not just a shadow of his old man. It was so admirable; it made him sick.
“I know you’ll solve it.” Jizabel loomed over Cain’s figure shaking in bitterness. “In all the years I’ve known you and your father, you were always the smarter one. The more resolved one. You outshone your father on so many occasions, I cannot believe the world hasn’t yet seen your wonderful glory. If anyone can solve this case, you can, Cain.”
With Riff’s hand to steady his shoulders, Cain tilted his head upwards to smile at Jizabel. “You really think so?”
“I know so, Cain.”
“T . . . thank you, Doctor. I know this is supposed to be Riff’s checkup but--”
“Don’t worry. I’m here to help anyone who needs it.” He glanced at the sample of blood and then back at Cain. “If it means calming your nerves about a potentially psychologically damaging case, I’m more than happy to oblige. If things get tough, go see a therapist though, Cain. There’s only so much I can provide and Riff already has my full attention.”
“Thank you, sir.”
With that, Jizabel turned on his heels. “Well, I’m going to send this to the lab. I’ll be back shortly to finish your evaluation but things seem good so far. Let me know if you have any concerns about your health, Riff.”
Medical school opened his eyes more than he would have expected. He only knew he wanted to become a doctor to study the human body. Ever since an incident when he was young, he refused to make any animal suffer but found an almost unhealthy obsession with the inner workings of Homo Sapiens. The medical field was there to make his strange carnal desires seem a little less malicious and teach him more about this wonderful thing known as the human machine. Learning more about surgery and the anatomy behind it, he was shown the cadaver labs in the school’s lab. At first, the thought of humans who had donated their bodies to education almost made him squirm. Who would be so grossly selfless to let someone prod around their corpse a year after they had died? But the more he thought about it, the more he realized the selflessness was for him. They had died so someone as hopeless and useless as himself could learn. His first time seeing a dissected cadaver, he almost felt his heart skip into his throat. The swirling colors of red and pink from its body cavity were gorgeous to look at! Each part of the body, from the organs to the skin, served a very deliberate and important purpose and one could easily see that just by looking. He furiously sketched what he could of his newfound discovery when he realized something. It looked no different from the many raw parcels of meat he saw lining grocery shelves. Was it true that what humans had inside really was the same things inside innocent animals? Psychologically, no. Humans were disgusting filth that took the world from the grasp of nature and corrupted it so far that species that never even saw human life were affected. The insides might be the same but the brain of a human was so different of that of a cow. Would humanity really miss these souls as they were used like meat to teach others how to keep the filth of the human race alive? It was on that fateful day that he began to ask the question that would fuel his true purpose for life: was eating a human less sinful than eating an animal?
This memory had only come back to him over dinner as he thought about the events that had transpired in the checkup room in his small clinic hours before. Cain Hargreaves. He’d known the boy for years as he saw him grow up in the shadow of his father. During many checkups, he would find wounds on the boy’s back reminiscent of slave’s lashings but said nothing to the overbearing man that was Alexis Hargreaves. It was obvious to him from an early stage that Cain was being abused, both emotionally and physically. He used his son like a tool to aid in convincing everyone he was a single father with the burden of tough criminal cases while taking care of a son. He expected the boy to follow in his legacy only hiring private tutors and educators. So much care put into just one son. It was disgusting what a man like him was able to accomplish without consequences that came too late. He angrily slid his fork into another morsel of meat, stuffing it in his right cheek to distract himself from the myriad of negative thoughts that began to cloud his mind. The human race . . . how despicable they were! And now Cain was seeing it. He was seeing how humans were the scum of the earth. Or at least he was seeing how his father had caused so much grief and pain to the general public of town and had ruined countless lives. Such a brave child. He truly was excited to see how the case would unfold with him at the helm and Riff his stalwart servant. Taking the last bite of his meal, he stared down at the residue on the plate and smiled.
“Mrs. Hunter. You were lovely to have tonight. Maybe I’ll make a nice lunch for the staff tomorrow so they can also experience how tasty you are.”
“Cain, I have a question.”
Cain looked up from the digital files on his computer with a frown. “What about, Riff?”
“The Garden incidents.”
Cain gave Riff a bored looking expression. “Is that what they’re calling it now?”
“What would you prefer? The mysterious murders happening over town? Not that murder but that other one in the garden.”
He chuckled. It was rare to see Riff smile and joke like that so he cherished each time he did. “All right, what is it?”
Riff placed his arms on top of the cubicle wall. “Why do you think the killer wanted us to find those bodies? Do you really think it’s a game their playing?”
Cain nodded, pushing himself back on his chair. “Why else would they? You remember the official reports about the bodies, right? Fully clothed, bludgeoned to death but with their stomachs removed. It’s too precise to just be someone who likes killing for the thrill of things. They purposefully removed organs which is not something a death-obsessed person does.”
“So you think they’re trying to play a game with police?”
“Either that or they’re trying to send a message. I’m actually surprised we haven’t gotten any cryptic letters yet. I’m fully expecting them.”
Riff nodded, watching Cain go back to scanning case files and criminal records. “Why do you think they were removed? This isn’t Jack the Ripper.”
“No clue.” The conversation trailed off after Cain’s remark as he seemed distracted. With a shrug, Riff wandered back towards his cubicle, hoping a call would come in on his radio so he could be out on the field.
“Riff, wait. Come back.”
“What? What is it?” He hurried over to see Cain pointing at a picture on the monitor. It was a picture of an older woman with a girlish looking face and greying hair.
“Another missing person. This is the sixth one reported in three weeks.”
“Yeah. People get reported missing all the time. Do you need me to investigate this one?”
“No, it got investigated this morning . . . but look.” Cain pulled up more reports of missing people in the area. He traced his finger over each residential address in each file to highlight his point. “They all live within blocks of each other. I never noticed it before. And they’re all still missing to this day.”
“So are you saying we’re having serial disappearances now?”
“No, it’s certainly connected to our killer. We just haven’t found the bodies. It’s all too coincidental.”
Riff’s eyebrow raised. He shuffled into the cubicle with Cain and placed himself over the screen. “What else is there? There’s a connection. We just have to find it.”
Cain began to click back and forth between the various files without a word. He looked at relatives and family members, occupations, if they had children in common, age, and most importantly, where they were last seen. His brain began to scrutinize every single bit of witness evidence and create a timeline in his brain. All of the dates were perfectly spaced out in a way that each disappearance was exactly the same amount of days before or after the other one. There wasn’t any real trend when it came to the people who had been disappearing except for that two of them were older women who lived alone and weren’t reported until they didn’t answer the door for relatives. There was no evidence of break in at those homes as well as every other house where the missing person should have been. There was no gender bias but it seemed like none of them had children living with them in the household. He began to sink closer and closer to the screen, his entire body tense with determination. His mind was like a grid and each input created a new picture that he would then cut and crop to the relevant information. Things were all over the board but any similarities he just couldn’t forget.
“Riff, go ask for a search warrant for these two houses. I have a feeling these will have the most clues.”
“But they were already searched.”
“Not well enough. I’m not letting this bastard get away. Go renew the warrant.”