The Soothville Murders.

Chapter 8: Friends.

Chapter 8: Friends.

It was a new day. Birds were singing outside, and a fresh, cold breeze hit Chester Andrews in the face. He could only feel it on the right side, though. The nerves on his left had been gone for a long time. 

Chester Andrew's room had been empty since his room partner had decided to try mixing every pain medication he found in the building. It hadn't ended well. His room partner, Elijah, had been one of his many best friends. Now, he was dead. Chester Andrews missed him. He missed all his dead friends. But, he was still alive. He had to be the guardian. He was destined to be the guardian. To protect his friends from those who brought harm. 

There was a knock on the door. "Breakfast," a woman's voice sung. It was Rosa Blake. Chester liked Rosa, with her broken arm. She was a good nurse. He ate his Cornflakes and drank his orange juice, before he logged on his computer and started playing his 37 hours long save file of Age of Empires II. He liked that game. To be the mastermind behind wars. Send people he didn't need to die. And to subdue the enemies. This was going to be a good day.

 Alan Ruby woke up in his apartment with a familiar taste in his mouth. It was the aftertaste of his favourite drink: Coca Cola Cherry. He loved that kind of soda. It was a college friend that had introduced it to him. He still remembered her name. Emily Ella Leyland. The beautiful girl from Canada, that he had considered one of his closest friends, until they had moved different ways, her heading for Europe to work in Scotland Yard.  

Alan looked around the apartment to make sure he was alone. It didn't surprise him. He was always alone. He wondered if he would ever get a girlfriend. He had passed fourty already. Would he ever become a father? Was it safe to become a father, with his heart condition. He didn't want his children to get the same thing.

Yesterday had been tough. They had been busy with a murder case all day, uncovering a second victim too after a while. Two young boys had been killed by a man called Oliver Hearst. It wasn't the killer's real name, detective Baker had checked that on his giant computer, and they had no ties to the killer. He always used cell phones belonging to the victims, or using other means of communication like notes. 

The case had escalated, too. The killer's targets, a gang of youths, had all been informed about the murders before the police. Oliver Hearst had contacted them. This scared Alan Ruby. It scared him, because he had seen what had been done to the victims. After Jason Ravens had disappeared from the hospital, kidnapped by Oliver, the detectives had gone back to the station to go through what they knew. There, they had gotten the two autopsy reports. Thaddeus Jasper Dale had been tortured. Beaten and stabbed multiple times, destroying multiple vital organs in the abdomen. Having his genitalia removed, bleeding out through the aorta in the thighs. The killer had also taken away his eyes, slit his tongue and throat, and cut a symbol in his back, resembling the letter "E" without the middle line, or an "L" with a line on top too. 

The second victim, Tonio, had a different death. His eyes were removed too, and he had also had a knock to the head, but his genitalia was intact. The killer had cut a muscle out of his right arm, between the shoulder and the elbow, and stabbed him on the left side of his neck. Both the muscle and the eyes were weirdly removed post-mortem, in opposite to TJ, who had lost everything while he was alive. On Tonio's back, the killer had made a new cut. It was a symbol resembling a line moving like a wave, starting down at the right, going up, down and up again on the top left. 

The detectives still didn't know why the symbols was written, or what they meant. The missing body parts had still not been found, and it was assumed that the killer took souvenirs. The police was on the look-out for Jason Ravens. He was gone with the wind, kidnapped by Oliver Hearst. They were also looking for Oliver, but were lacking good descriptions. He had been seen by David Emerson at night, wearing black and having a burn scar on the right side of his face. They believed him to be the killer because he had been walking around the church where David was hidden in a bush, spying on his friends. David Emerson had also claimed the man was carrying a knife around.