Haunted // Alice

[Aidan O'Riley]

Aidan had always known that a few of the boys down at the precinct were working for the wrong side. He’d seen money exchanging hands on a couple of different occasions, and been turned away from crime scenes a few more than that. It hadn’t taken him long to get used to looking the other way. It wasn’t unheard of when an officer needed a few extra bucks to charge a shop owner or two for protection. This was a dangerous city, and places like that could use the extra security. As he stood in the archway of what used to be a family’s dining room, Aidan finally understood how dirty some of those cops really were. He tried not to look at the crumpled bodies lying in their plates, or the broken figure on the floor next to her mother’s lifeless feet. He overlooked the hutch of bashed and broken china that looked to have been passed down over several generations; the handmade lace curtains stained with crimson. Instead, he focused on several pairs of footprints tracked through a mixture of food and blood on the floor. They led Aidan down the hall to a small office which had been relentlessly turned upside down. It appeared that the intruders had been looking for something, as every file from the cabinet had been scattered around, and the desk had been rummaged through. Aidan picked up a file from the floor and glanced through it. The only name he recognized was that of the murdered private eye he’d seen downstairs. He’d heard rumors that the private dick had gotten his hands on pictures of the one of the cities top crime bosses doing some dirty business and was trying to sell them to the highest bidder, and the young detective had known the guy was going to land himself in trouble. Who knew the trouble would be to this extent. None of this carnage told him anything different than the cops he had overheard talking about the poor schmuck. All they’d known was that the boss had gotten wind of the pictures and was looking for someone with balls to take care of it for him…a little bird had told them a couple of the uniforms had volunteered for the position. Aidan shook his head and pulled out his cell phone. So the private eye had stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. The man’s family didn’t deserve to die like this. The dispatcher at the precinct answered on the first ring. “Yeah, this is O’Riley. I need a car over here right now. The address is...” A noise from the dining room drew his attention from the dispatcher and he looked up, squinting at a sudden movement from beyond. Aidan relayed the address to the woman and hung up, pushing his cell phone into the pocket of his jeans before making his way slowly out toward the motion. A flicker like a ruin movie flashed across the dining room and he winced, noticing the youngest victim from the crime scene. Aidan heard her quiet sobbing as it moved deeper into the house. The noise and occasional glimmer of the spirit led him to a door at the back of the property. He kicked it open and leaned down to glance into the darkness. The doorway led down into the basement, where a stench assaulted him like corporal punch to the middle of his face. Aidan gagged in revolution and covered his nose and mouth with a palm, trying the stairwell light to no avail before heading down to investigate the pungent odor. He recognized the smell. It was the smell of death. In the basement the male victim…or…the murderer had apparently received a fatal gunshot wound to the abdomen before being able to escape with his pictures. Photographs of the scene had displayed an empty drawer open in the hutch in the dining room where the family had been murdered, and gun shot residue on the wife’s hands, but no pistol was ever retrieved. The knife that had been used to kill the family had been blatantly left at the scene; devoid of prints. Aidan bent next to the stinking corpse and used a pen from inside his jacket to lift the clammy hand still clung to the gun, and the scene replayed itself in his head as if he had been there. The intruder came upon them suddenly, overtaking the woman’s husband before he’d had a chance to respond. A few blows to the head and neck with the butcher knife and the guy ended up a pool of worthless on the floor. He’d turned towards two screaming brats at the dead guy’s right just before he heard the woman shuffling through the silverware drawer in the cupboard, and felt the warmth in his gut before he heard the blast ringing in his ears. Spinning to face her, the executioner had ignored the pain long enough to split her from belly button to breast; watching the light fade from her wide horrified eyes before she hit the ground too. The kids were next and he took his time with them; or tried to at least before the dizzy in his head got real bad and he started to forget what he was there for. He found the pictures real easy, but by then the gun shot wound that he’d been to arrogant to worry about before was threatening to take him out. The cops would be here soon. He found a door to the basement and knocked out the single light bulb that illuminated the stairwell before finding a dark corner to hide out in for a while. All he needed was some rest. He’d be fine and then he could get back to playing with those little bodies… Aidan shook his head and the scene ended. He rubbed his eyes and strained to see the blood stained pictures the Perp. had clutched in his opposite hand before standing and moving to lean against the wall. Those memories hadn’t been his own…but they felt too real. After collecting himself the detective took the pictures and the gun from the body of the perpetrator and filled in the uniforms once they arrived at the scene. A migraine was growing in his head like a weed, so the young man dropped the evidence off at the precinct before heading to the coffee shop on the corner opposite his apartment. He was too shaky to go home alone tonight. Something had rattled him to the core. Had taken hold of his soul…and wouldn’t let go. Good thing the murder scene had upset Lucy enough that she was giving him some space too. He ordered his coffee and smiled half-heartedly at the woman behind the counter before finding a window booth in the corner of the place. [bg=black][atrb=border,0,true]