The Books that Never made it

Gone

He was dressed from head to toe in an orange garb and steel handcuffs around his wrists. From what I could see past his scraggly blonde hair was a pale face, absent and empty.

        Beside me my partner and ex boyfriend, detective Tommy Garson snorted. “Real piece of work this guy is.”

I gazed at him again, unconvinced. “I don’t see what you’re getting at, Tommy. He looks fine, I almost feel sorry for him.”

Tommy looked at me, his jaw gaping open. “You can’t be serious?”

I shrugged. “I have nothing to take seriously, Tommy. Look at the guy. It’s hard to believe he did any of this.”

        “Sarah, you’re out of your fucking mind here.”

        “I want to talk to him.”

Tommy gripped my shoulder, staring at me as if I were off my meds. “Sarah, you know what this guy is capable of?”

       “I don’t know,” I challenged getting annoyed with Tommy’s crazy paranoia. “Tell me, Tommy.”

Tommy’s dark brown eyes held me, flashing irritably. He turned away from me with a tired sigh. “Fine, go ahead.”

I swallowed back the lump that grew in my throat and gripped my hand over the doorknob.

        “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

        I closed the door softly behind me as I came over and sat at the end of the table. The chair squeaked loudly like nails on a chalkboard as I pulled it from the table and sat down.

        “Hi, I’m detective—”

        “I know who you are.”

My gaze flashed over to him. I hadn’t noticed he’d raised his head. His fiery blue eyes stared at me almost hungrily as they flashed down to the paperwork in my hands back to my eyes.

        “You’re Sarah.”

I tried not to think about how he knew my first name and focused on being the smartest one in the room. “Yes, but you’ll call me, detective Brown,” I said firmly.

The convict smirked and sat back in his chair, his chained hands, clasped together in his lap. “You know, I find this funny.”

        “How in any circumstance do you find this funny?”

        “Your all detectives,” he said his gaze flashing to the window. “Detectives find things, but you haven’t found anything.”

I ignored him and flipped open the file. “Francis Haughton, but everyone calls you Fox?”

He smirked. “I walk on my toes, don’t get caught and nobody actually knows what I do or say.”

        “In your record you have about a dozen speeding tickets, unpaid parking tickets, disturbing the peace, assaulting a police officer, stealing and finally now murder.” I shook my head, “Yeah, nice walking on your toes.” I flipped several pictures of the crime scene and mutilated bodies towards him. They all had weird symbols carved on their foreheads and eyes burned out of their sockets. Fox sucked on his lower lip and kept his stare on me.

        “What?” I said. “You don’t like seeing your own work?”

Fox pushed his tongue to the side of his cheek and dropped his gaze down to the photos. He stared at them for a while, glancing over each and every small detail.