I Bet on Losing Dogs

𐒡ɘㄷꝈוֹℴր ¹: ℬɘɡוֹրրוֹրɡꕶ 4

The motel I stayed in was pretty cramped. Luckily, there was enough room for my crime setup, consisting of a huge map of the town, followed by a smaller map of Washington. I clicked open my computer, checking for more hits to the scanner along with the program Sam installed into my computer a week before I left. There hadn't been anything on radar for days, and what I had to go off of wasn't enough to start tracking. Checking back to my map of forks, I checked and rechecked the stickers I'd placed as markers for the sixteen reported killings. There seemed to be no pattern, no schedule that this killer was following. There were three bodies found at 4 am, time of death two hours prior. Each body was found within weeks of each other.

The other thirteen were also found at scattered times, scattered locations, with scattered T.O.D's compared to when they were found. This vamp seemed to be doing this in their spare time, taking bites to eat whenever they could spare a moment. This, of course, had to mean that this bloodsucker was working a job or somehow otherwise engaged. They had to be integrated into the town, unfortunately meaning it could be anyone. There was one link that connected all of these victims, aside from the bodies drained fully of blood: They were all women, each with at least one daughter.

In the morning, I packed my maps away and folded them carefully into the briefcase I'd (very intelligently) stuffed into a faded yellow suitcase. I'd also stacked nearly thirty pages of evidence I'd compiled, along with a notepad and four pens. I previously had spent an hour making myself look as reporter-ish as possible. Finally, one month after I'd accompanied Jacob to the tribal story retelling, I'd been able to schedule a meeting with one of the police officers who'd been working these cases. Since I'd been living with professional con-artists, credit card thieves, and government official impersonators for my entire life, I knew my stuff. Currently, (and as Jacob saw it) I am working as a paid temp with a news station from Palo Alto, California. According to my cover story, the news station I worked for set me up with a program that fast-tracked me through high school because of a lucky scholarship that I'd accidentally applied for. I took the job, and now worked as a research assistant for ABC7. The smartest cover I'd come up with so far, to be honest. It was completely airtight. My name couldn't have been run through a program, because 1) the scholarship was disbanded (since I had "won it" already), and 2) because I was a research assistant, the only way I could have even been found was through asking the reporter I worked for, of which you'd have to go through their assistant, who would be Sam on the other line throwing a fit and acting insanely bothered, but defensive of my position.

In other words, there was no way this could fall apart. I had my fake badge, my information, and my lucky white shoes. I packed everything away into the car, deciding against sliding my gun into my waistband and opting for hiding it underneath the driver's seat.

When I entered the police station, the secretary hardly even looked at my badge before pointing me towards a back door. I knocked gently, peeking into the window and waiting to see if the officer would notice. After a second, he glanced up, smiling and beckoning me to enter. As I entered, I was surprised to find a man who still looked pretty young to be working as the head of this department. Still, he managed to look professional, with brown hair combed neatly into tufts on his head and a very prominent moustache. He looked similar to Sam, actually, minus the 'stache, and really gave off a 'dad of little kids' vibe.

No wonder he's a cop, looking like that, I couldn't help but think, giggling to myself but suppressing it into a friendly smile.

"Good morning officer, I'm the researcher who's been emailing you about the current open cases from the past few months" I said, shutting the door.

"Hey there, come on in. I'm sure you have a lot you want to discuss" He said, holding his hand out to me. "I'm Chief Swan, but just about everyone calls me Charlie".