Young Writers Society

Chapter One

He woke up from a nightmare, the screams of a girl were echoing in his own head. James Foster knew that someone had been murdered. He looked at his alarm clock to his right side and found out he awoken at eight thirty seven in the morning. It was a cloudy and cold day in Springfield, Illinois. Detective James Foster lived in a small apartment that had a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, and one bedroom. He was wearing a blue men’s night gown and wore white socks. He changed into khakis and a white collared shirt with a black tie. The only thing he didn’t change was his socks. He went out of his bedroom and looked at the window and saw rain falling down. His phone which had low battery started to vibrate in his pants pocket. “Foster,” he said.

“James it’s me, Ben. Listen, we found a body in the woods near north east of town.” Ben Kingsley said.

“I knew it,” James thought to himself.

Ben Kingsley was the Major of the Illinois Police Department. He’s forty seven years old with two kids and a wife. He liked it when people bought food for him at the station but suddenly despised the idea after getting sick from a pizza that someone gave to him. He looked at James and thought of him as a good detective. A good detective, but not a great or top class detective.

“Can you give me any other details?” James asked.

“You’ll have to come down to see for yourself.” Ben replied.

Wow, James had thought.

“Alright, I’ll be there in twenty.” James said.

“See you there,”

He hung up and made some coffee from his kitchen, James always seemed to need coffee at the start of the day. Otherwise his energy would be drained and lack of motivation would come his way. He got his leather jacket from the coat rack and left his apartment to the crime scene.

______________________________

“What do we have?” James asked.

The rain was pounding onto the ground like cereal getting poured from its box into a bowl full of milk. James Foster was standing in the woods with yellow crime scene tape surrounding the dead body. There were tall trees with wet dark brown bark from the rain. Leaves were on the ground and they were scattered everywhere.

“We got a fourteen year old girl here, multiple stab wounds on the chest and neck, the body looks like a day old to me.” Robert replied.

“We’ll let the ME determine that for us,” James replied.

Robert Jones is James’ partner in the homicide division of the police department. He had dark brown hair with black rectangular sized glasses. He wore a yellow rain jacket with the hood over his head and blue jeans.

“We’re going to start wrapping up the body anyways,” Robert mentioned.

He noticed there weren’t any yellow signs with numbers, which meant there was no evidence or items around the girl’s body. The killer left no trace of evidence when he murdered her. Which means no leads, and no leads means the case has just token a dramatic turn.

“Have we got an ID on the body yet?” James asked.

“Yeah, her name is Amelia Phillipson.” Robert replied.

Robert and James had a handful of things in common. They both spoke in monotone with their voices. Both of them are also single. Neither of them liked the chief, and they both had similar interests when it comes to music.

“You sure there isn’t anything we can use as evidence around this area?” James asked.

Police were swarming the woods with flash lights, looking for evidence that might be good for the case. Like a piece of clothing or blood that hasn’t been washed up by the rain. Most of them had doubts about finding anything in the first place. The tracks of footsteps were either covered up or there were none to begin with, and the rain washed away any blood that could have belong to the killer.

“No, we’ve been searching for at least an hour and there’s nothing to be found.” Robert reported.

Robert looked around and saw cops all around him, he noticed that they were seemingly hopeless in finding anything and they were about to report back to the station with nothing. James knew there was a lot more work to be done after this.

“Alright, let’s get this body down over to the ME and start from there.” James said.

“What are we going to do in the mean time?” Robert asked.

James paused to think, he wasn’t sure what step to take in this case, or in which order to perform the procedures.

“Let’s go send officers knocking on doors and ask around the neighborhood and see what we can get.” James replied.

“Good idea,”

James called all the cops over and told some of them to go back to the station and some of them knock around doors near the area of the woods.

“By the way, who is the guy that found the body,” James asked.

“It’s a she, and her name is Anna Farrington.” Robert replied.

“Where is she?”

“She’s over there,” Robert pointed to her.

Anna Farrington was sitting on a log and was wearing a pink jacket with buttons and a long blue dress that almost went down to her feet. She had brown eyes and had blond hair that went down to her shoulders. James approached her in a friendly matter, and started to ask some questions.

“So how did you find this body?” James asked.

“About two hours ago I was taking a walk in the woods and I stumbled upon this dead body, it was pretty scary.” Anna replied.

“I bet it was,” James replied.

So you were just taking a walk when it was raining and in a skirt that could’ve got ruined by the rain? James thought.

“And what time did you find this body?”

“About 8:18 this morning, listen I think your partner over there already asked me a bunch of questions, so can I go now?” She asked impatiently.

Now you want to get away and you can’t stand if I ask you more questions?

“Sure thing, but tomorrow you’re going to need to come over at the precinct downtown for making your official statements.”

She walked away and disappeared into the streets while James was taking notes of the environment around the dead body. Several men placed the body onto a sheet and wrapped it and carried it over to a van. Anna had a boyfriend and had a thing for nature. She didn’t like cops for whatever reasons but she doesn’t mind park rangers. James walked over to his partner and saw him talking to another cop.

“So how did it go with her?” Robert asked.

“Not good, she was eager to get out of the question and her presence being here in the first place is strange.” James replied.

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know, someone taking a walk on a rainy morning. It just doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Well maybe she just likes rainy walks in the morning,”

“Come on, let’s get back to the precinct.” James said.

________________________

Both of them were sitting at James’ office. It had a desk with a few drawers and gray boring walls with a white floor and a white board attached to the wall. The room itself was spacious but humble itself. James didn’t care about the size of his office nor did he care how it looked. All what matters to him is a place to get his work done.

“So where do we start?” Robert asked.

“I’ll call up Jonas and see if he can check in the databases if there were any other killings in the woods.”

Jonas Williams was a technician and was in charge of the databases. He was twenty seven years old and desired to have a girlfriend like most men who were in their twenties. Jonas had blonde hair with a Mohawk style and wore glasses that made him look like a nerd, but at least it made him look more professional. James made the call and now he’s waiting for an answer.

“So he waits for his prey in the dark then stalks it and then goes for the kill.” James continued.

“Wait, what if predator become prey?”

It was usually that time of the day when Robert would come up with ideas. He secretly liked the idea of the chief getting fired but it was unlikely that it would ever happen. Robert looked up as in if a light bulb popped over his head.

“We can get someone out there as bait and then the killer goes after the bait and then we go after the killer and catch him.” Robert said excitedly.

“Yeah, but who the hell is going to volunteer to be human bait? Hey everyone, doe’s anybody want to volunteer to be human bait and get chased by a killer and have a slight chance of getting stabbed in the back? I mean, come on, Robert.”

“Well, I know someone will do it.”

“But once the word gets out the killer is going to know were onto him.”

“Then we can have someone from the force,”

“Not happening, Robert.”

James’ phone suddenly rang which had almost surprised Robert. The call was from a cop that James asked to call him when he needed to report to him.

“Yeah, what’s up?” James asked.

“We knocked all over the neighborhood, mostly nothing from everyone, but there is one guy who says there is a strange man around the block.” The cop said.

“Okay thanks Jonathan send him down here.”

“You got it,”

A few minutes later a man named Derek Dye was sitting in a chair in one of the interrogation rooms. He had a beard and spiky hair with green eyes. Derek was relevantly tall, he was wearing a black jacket with a green t-shirt and wore jeans. He didn’t seem to be intimidated by cops or any figure of authority. Derek had a girlfriend but the relationship wasn’t too serious. None of his relationships were too serious anyways. The door opened and both James and Robert came into the room.

“Good afternoon, detectives.” Derek said politely.

“Good afternoon to you too, mister Dye.” James replied.

“Please, call me Derek.”

Derek felt a little nervous about where this conversation was going to be headed with the cops. He wasn’t exactly sure if what he was going to say was actually going to assist the detectives in their investigation.

“There’s a guy I’ve seen lately around the block, and he kind of acts strange a lot.”

“So you think he could have killed her?” Robert asked.

“Well I wanted to talk about you about him because I heard you guys are desperate for leads.” Derek said nervously.

“Where the hell did you hear that?” James had asked.

“It doesn’t matter, anyhow, I had one conversation with this guy, and his name is Joe.” Derek replied.

“So what makes this guy so suspicious?” James asked.

“Well, sometimes when I see him walking, he kind of turns around and looks back often.” Derek replied.

Once he heard that James knew this guy wasn’t going to help in the investigation at all. But James wasn’t sure if his real intention was actually to help them with their investigation or to just screw around with them. It didn’t matter in the end because James knew this guy was useless. Suddenly his phone rang. James excused himself and then got out of the interrogation room to take the call.

“Yeah, this is James.”

“Hey, it’s Jonas, I found this killing on the database that took place in the woods seven years ago.” Jonas said.

“Alright can you gather the info into a file and leave it on my desk?” James asked.

“Sure thing,”

James thanked him and hung up, during the whole call he could see Robert talking to Derek through the one way window. Robert didn’t seem to be also satisfied with his answers.

“Alright, hang tight, Derek. I’ll be right back.” Robert had said.

“Sure, no problem.” Derek replied.

Robert got up from his seat and went into the other room that James was in.

“This guy is a scam,” Robert said to James.

“That’s what I was thinking,” James replied.

James and Robert both knew this investigation wasn’t going anywhere, but James knew there was a chance if he could get his hands on the file of the other murder in the woods.

“Alright, get him out of here.” James said.

Robert thanked Derek and escorted him out of the building. When they came back James found the case file on his desk. He was hoping he could get something out of the case file.

“What is that?” Robert asked.

“That my friend, is a case file from another murder that took place in the woods.” James replied.

“So, now were going to rely on the environment of the murder?”

“You got any better ideas?”

Robert was silent, probably because he was thinking. James opened up the file and saw photos of the dead body. It was a female with blonde hair and she had stab wounds and not gunshot wounds. The body looked like a day old just like the other body they found. While Robert was looking at the photographs James looked at the report of the case. The investigation was conducted by a man named Theodore Sharma. After reading his notes James found out that the case was never solved and it went cold.

“He’s still out there,” James said.

“What?” Robert asked.

“I think these two cases connect,”

“What makes you say that?” Robert asked.

“The body condition looks the same, both bodies had stab wounds and they were both in the woods.” James replied.

“If that’s true that would probably mean the killer didn’t know the victim.” Robert said.

“I’m not sure if we can jump to that conclusion yet.”

James thought they were jumping the gun when it comes to conclusions. He knew the only way to avoid going down that road is if they learned a little bit more about the victim.

“Come on let’s take a little trip.” James said.