The Soothville Murders.

Chapter 1: In Soothville Baptist Church

The church was grand. It had a large, carved door made of solid oak wood. The walls of the church was dressed in white-painted wooden boards. Large glass windows covered much of the walls. White curtains were hanging in the windows. 

Alan and Peyton carried Frank Baker up the stairs to the front entrance. The first policemen had already arrived at the scene and had secured the church. They were both standing outside the door, looking pale. 

"Where's the body?" Baker asked, and one of the officers nodded towards the church hall. Detective Baker had expected the men to follow them to the actual crime scene, and Alan thought he looked a little irritated. "Care to join us?" Baker asked with a frown in his face.

"I'd rather not," the officer answered. "I've already thrown up once." The other officer agreed. The three detectives entered the church alone, while the policemen kept guard. 

The church hall was a beautiful room. The walls inside was natural oak with natural colour, the brown colour making a beautiful contrast to the walls outside. The flooring was coloured grey, resembling granite. The church benches was made of the same wood material as the walls, an they were fitted with white pads so they wouldn't be too hard to sit on during sermons. The gable roof was kept up by three mainstays. In the front of the room there was a large stage made of oak wood. It was covered by a white carpet. The same type of carpet was also stretched from the entrance of the room, through the center of the room, between the two bench sections, and to the stage. The whole church was stunning. Only one simple thing broke the idyll. A blood trail followed from another room in the church and down the white carpet, ending up right below the middle mainstay. About one meter above the floor, a body was hanging from his hands. He was faced against the stage, but the detectives could understand why the policemen didn't want to enter. The body was of a young boy in the beginning of puberty, Ruby judged looking at the body's height. The pants of the body was removed, and the legs were blood-red. Under the body, a large blood-pool had coloured the white carpet red. Blood spatter covered a few benches, and it made a nice bow around the front of the body. 

Peyton Chamberlain became nauseated. She ran out of the room, and the two detectives remaining in the room could hear a door open, followed by the sound of vomitting. 

Peyton Chamberlain was throwing up outside. Frank Baker was stunned and mute. Alan Ruby didn't know what to do. In front of the two detectives, the body of a young boy was hanging from the roof. Under the body, a large blood-pool lay colouring everything it touched red. The boy's pants were gone. Alan lifted his camera and took a picture of the blood-pool, and one of the body's back. He documented the thick blood-trail coming from another room. He then turned to the front of the body. Frank Baker had to go back around all the benches to get his wheelchair there. 

If the first impression of the crime scene was grotesque, Alan Ruby did not know how to describe what met him when he saw the body's front. The first thing he noticed, was that there was a large, bloody hole in the boy's groin, and there were no genitalia present. He couldn't look at it. He turned to the face instead, but it was very mutilated too. Where the eyes used to be, there now was to black holes of blood. The nose was visibly broken. The tongue was hanging out of the mouth, halfways cut through. Multiple wounds on the trunk of the body was also visibly through the cuts in the boy's shirt. Alan noticed that every finger was removed too, leaving nothing to identify the body on except DNA. And they had enough blood to do that. 

There were no sign of his pants or his removed body parts. The detectives decided to follow the blood-trail, even without detective Chamberlain, and they followed the drag marks to the pastor's office, in the entrance hall. The door to the office was unlocked as well. They entered, and found the trail leading to a new door. They opened it to find a bathroom. The floor had blood all over it. The walls too. The only places that was stainless, was the shower, and the toilet bowl. The toilet seat was bloody, but not the toilet bowl. The shower was also clean for blood, but it was still wet. Alan took pictures of it all, before they entered and started searching the room for evidence. Alan Ruby took samples of blood from every blood-pool and and spatter in the room. Frank Baker searched the garbage bin, where he found the victim's wallet.