The Fatal Uncovering

Chapter 2

I'm sitting on the kitchen table, doing my homework. I usually study on the desk in my bedroom, but today I wanted to eat some crisps while I study and since my mom doesn't let me bring snacks in my room, I chose to settle here.

My mom is cooking supper. I think we'll be having spaghetti tonight, judging from the aroma that is spreading in the room. Jacob is in the living room, playing on his Ps4. It's really rare that he's home and I appreciate the few moments that he is. I wish we would've been closer. All my friends are close to their siblings and sometimes, I really envy them. Jacob and I barely talk and when we do, it's just to ask each other small questions like where Mom or the Tv remote are. I guess this is just how life is, we can't always have what we want, but we should be grateful for what we have. At least I have a sibling. I sigh.

I hear my dad enter the house.  I can tell from the sound of his keys jiggling. He says hello to Jacob who mumbles hello back at him and then he enters the kitchen. "Hello my sweeties" he says. He kisses my mom on the forhead and turns to smile at me. "How was your day?" he asks me.

I look up at him and shrug my shoulders. "Oh the same stuff everyday" I say. "Yours?"

He smiles. He knows I love hearing about his job. He must have something interesting to tell me. "Oh it was alright" he says, picking up an apple from the basket on the kitchen counter and taking a bite into it.

I put my pen down. "Anything new happening?" I ask.

He smirks as he sits down accross me. "Maybe" he says.

"Dadddd" I plead. He's just teasing me. I can tell there's something interesting he's working on and I'm burning with curiosity. "Tell me"

My dad laughs and takes another bite of his apple.

My mom chuckles. "Daughter like father" she says.

"That's why we're cool" my dad says, winking at me.

I smile. I love him so much. My dad and I have many similarities. Our interest in crimes being one of many. We both love boxing, soccer and tennis. I also look more like my father  than I look like my mother. I have the same dark brown wavy hair, hazel eyes and long nose as him. Our skin tone is olive colored compared to my mom, who's skin is fair. Bodywise, I ressemble my mom. Well, I couldn't look like my dad anyway. I have a generous breast size like her and an hourglass figure. "Tell me what you're working on, Dad" I beg him.

My dad sighs. "Remember this is entirely confidential" he says in a serious tone.

I nod. I know very well how private this information is. My dad didn't want to share any of his work with me at first, but I guess I'm good at pleading my way to getting what I want. He doesn't give me a lot of information though, to my great disappointment. Sometimes, I want to resolve the "mysteries", due to the effect of the tons of mystery books I've read, but I don't have enough information to get on it. My dad knows he can trust me by now, it's been two years he's been sharing the cases he's been working on with me and I find them really interesting. If you think that reading mystery books is interesting, you have no idea to what extent real life mysteries are.

"Okay so," my dad takes another bite of his apple which is already half finished. "I got assigned a case where there have been four murders that occurred in New York in the past year. All of the victims were killed in the same way and for every one of them, the murderer has left a specific mark at the crime scene. We're assuming that this is his signature mark. We're trying to find out what his motive could be, but to what it looks like, the four victims were completely unrelated and were killed for no apparent reason."

Oooh. This is so exciting, don't you find? It sounds like a mystery case in a book I've read and I had loads of fun "resolving" it through the narrator's point of view. And this is real life. I'm burning with the trillion questions I want to ask him. "How were the victims killed? Who were they?" I ask excitedly.

My dad throws the remains of his apple in the dustbin and shakes his head. "Can't tell you more than that dear" he says as he gets up and goes to the bathroom to wash his hands.

My face falls. This just sucks. I hate only having part of the information... But hey... The coolest part about resolving mysteries is discovering the information by yourself and putting the pieces together. My dad won't tell me, but maybe I can find out some facts on my own. I'm already excited by the idea. I look down at my homework and groan. I have something more exciting to do. I snap my books close and grab all my stuff, climbing up the stairs two at a time to my room.

There, I throw my books on the bed and settle in, drawing my laptop on my lap. I go on a news website and type in the search bar, "Four mysterious murders in New York, serial killer, signature mark". Loads of articles appear. Some of them are about ten year old, some five or three, but I don't find a recent one.

I groan. I'm not anywhere near giving up, though. When I set my mind to something, I don't give up on it until I get it, no matter how hard it is or how long it takes. I see it as a good thing because I think that giving up gets you nowhere. You just start things you won't finish if you let yourself give up. And how far is that going to get you in life? I'd feel incompetent if I'd ever have to give up on something... Which is something I will never allow myself to feel. Some people- scratch that- most people see it as a bad thing. My friends just roll their eyes and call me stubborn when I get onto something. I love watching their surprised expressions when I finally acheive something they thought I never would. The feeling of satisfaction I get out of it is simply priceless. This is why I've set my mind to uncover this mystery and I won't let anybody come in my way.