User blog:Joeaikman/Wiki - Chapter 1

Alexa’s desk was piled high with paperwork as she strived to find a lead in the new case that she had been given that evening. Her hair was held behind her head in a ponytail, a purple scrunchie holding it together. The precinct was closed at the moment, the only light in the main room coming from the screen of her computer. Usually this room was bustling with police and prospective criminals, as well as witnesses and victims. Now it was silent, and it was rather unsettling, but this was the kind of environment that Orion had to put up with all the time. He was her partner, and he always did the night shift, making sure that the precinct ran smoothly during the night. She had asked him to get her a list of all the known criminals in the area believed to be potentially violent, but instead he had gone to make her a coffee. Usually she didn’t have any caffeine, but tonight she needed to have her wits about her and needed to stay up late. This was a strange case, in that the town of Wiki didn’t experience much crime, certainly not of this kind of nature. Finding potential murderers in this town was unnaturally difficult.

The screen in front of her displayed the known information on a man called Kung Fugi, a recluse from the outskirts of town and the best friend of one of the victims of the GIR murders. He had lost his long term partner just before the deaths, and Bran dying in the warehouse had caused him to spiral down into alcoholism. If anyone had a motive for killing Drak then it was him. He hadn’t expressed any public distaste for Drak, unlike several other members of town. She thought that made him less of a suspect in the case, but Max insisted that she investigated the man, saying that he thought he was the standout suspect. He had been picked up twice for aggressive behaviour, but charges hadn’t been put forward on either occasion. Beyond that all she could find was that he had been investigated in the death of a police officer a year before she had joined the force. There was nothing worth looking into here, but she supposed that she could drop by his residence and have a few words with him.

Orion entered then, a tray with two coffee mugs sat upon it in his hands. He smiled at her as he came in, and she smiled back, somewhat awkwardly. She wasn’t sure what it was about him, but he always made her flush slightly. He was the complete opposite of her and that was what made them such a good partnership. The rest of the police force didn’t like him, going as far as to shun and avoid him. He didn’t take the job as seriously as the others, which was his problem. He tried to make a joke out of serious situations. The doctors told her it was some kind of coping mechanism for some unknown trauma he had experienced as a child. She had asked him once what it had been, but he had simply dodged an evaded her questions. She had been upset that he hadn’t trusted her, but maybe he just wasn’t ready to tell anyone about whatever had happened to him. She trusted him to tell her when he felt comfortable sharing about his past.

“Milk and sweetener, darling, just the way you like it.” He placed the mug in front of her, a small smirk on his face. He was quite handsome in his own way, but he had never shown any sort of romantic interest in anyone. He was quite happy with just being single, which he found somewhat unusual. One day she hoped that she could find someone to spend her life with, even if she didn’t want that just yet. She was still only twenty five and there was time yet for a romance outside of her career. She looked at his face, slightly, sneaking a peek. Maybe he would be the one to help fulfil her life. That made her blush slightly, and Orion looked at her sceptically, his eyebrows raised slightly. “Are you blushing for any reason in particular?”

“N-no. I was just thinking that we should go visit this guy tomorrow, question him on what he thinks about Drakan. Max seems to think that he is a likely suspect. We need to see what he has to say.” Orion had picked up an apple as she was talking, and had just taken a big bite as she finished speaking. He took a while over chewing, making all kinds of faces, but Alexa stayed quiet because she knew that he was about to say something. Usually when Orion wanted to say something about police work you stopped to listen. He never took anything particularly seriously, and now it seemed he was about to have a rare moment of true inspiration.

“Surely you see that he has no real motives. He has no track record of speaking out against the victim. He has very little in the way of criminal background and absolutely no criminal convictions. He’s a recluse, meaning that he likely doesn’t care about the town. On top of that he’s almost always drunk, which makes it highly unlikely that he managed to quietly kill a man and then string them up in a noose in the middle of a park. Forensics came through, by the way. It seems that Drak had been stabbed through the neck and stomach before being hanged. They reckon he was already dead when he was put in the noose. Doesn’t really change very much, but it likely meant that our killer was in complete control when the action was committed. I would rule Kung out of this, but we should be investigating friends and relatives of those involved in the murders. They have motives worth looking into.”

He wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t even thought of the drunkenness factor. She doubted that a drunken Kung would be able to take on Drakan in a fair fight. Of course the fight wasn’t necessarily fair. It was entirely possible that Drakan had been ambushed down a back alley. The man barely left his house, though, and that posed one of the harder questions within the mystery. Where could Drakan have been killed? There were no signs of a break in outside the house, and nothing to suggest a struggle within it. Maybe someone had been able to lure him out, except that seemed unlikely. Drakan knew how unpopular he was. He would surely have suspected something was up if he had been asked to leave the house. He did have some friends, however, so it was possible that one of these had betrayed him. If that was the case then she wasn’t sure how they would solve it. The people who had visited Drakan tended to keep themselves quiet else they would be victimised also.

“Have Banfa and Jamahl recovered the knife yet?” Orion said, leaning back on his revolving chair and continuing to eat his apple. “We can’t really do anything until we have it. I doubt it will have much in the way of DNA on it, but its location might give us a clue as to where the murder actually took place. That could be important information for us. I doubt he was killed in the park. I reckon he was killed somewhere else, bundled into the back of the van and put in the noose as quickly as possible. It’s possible that we are dealing with two people here, one who killed Drak and another who set up the faked crime scene. Just a thought that might be worth considering.”

“I think Jamahl says that they are going to get on that tomorrow. I told him that he should do it straight away, but Max overruled me. You know how he favours him. I’m certain he will name him as his preferred successor if ever he does get the promotion out of here.” Jamahl was a lazy cop who would rather sit on his backside than to actually solve the crime that he was given. Somehow he managed to outrank her despite this. He did have five more years of experience than her, that was true, but that didn’t remove the fact that she solved more crimes in a month than he did all year. One day she hoped to be a police chief, but she wasn’t sure whether she could survive here if Jamahl rose to the position. Banfa was technically Max’s second in command, but it was standard policy that the departing police chief got to choose their own replacement.

“We should check out some more potential suspects. Let’s start by looking at familial relations and then we can move onto close friends tomorrow.” She turned back to the computer, but all Orion could concentrate on was finishing off is apple. When it was gone he started on another, all whilst she was working. Wach had a daughter before his death, she was still in town but had no past crime violations. She had only just left school. Alexa doubted that there was any murderer there. Joe had a brother but he hadn’t been in town since the funeral. There was no way that he was responsible for the actions. Flats and Nail had no family, with Coupe having an estranged wife in a foreign country. None of them had any blood relations trying to avenge their deaths.

“We should still go see Wach’s daughter, I think, as a formality, of course. I don’t think she had anything to do with this, but it will get Max off our back if he thinks we are talking to potential suspects. We can go see her after we visit Mr Fugi. Neither will tell us very much about the actual murder, but we can get out of the office and get a feel of the attitude around the town. That can be an important factor in solving a case. If we find out what other people think then we may pick up some intriguing leads.” Orion stood up from his hair. “Before we do that, however, you should get some sleep. Jamahl may be a lazy excuse for a cop, but he is right in thinking that you need some sleep if you want to investigate a homicide, darling.”

-

The black car was waiting for him outside his house, as it always was first thing on Monday morning. Norm was stood next to it, his Starbucks coffee in his hand. He passed it to the mayor as he passed, fussing around him as he got into the car. He nodded to the driver after they were both in, and the journey began like that, entirely wordlessly. He knew where there destination was. There was no need to convey that through words. The mayor was dressed in a white shirt with black suit, the classic outfit, but this morning he had chosen to not wear a tie. Norm had told him the previous day that it made him look distant from the normal people of Wiki, and with an election fast approaching he needed to look his best.

“Do you have any important news for me this morning?” Every day he asked his personal assistant the same question, and every day there was never anything worth reporting. Usually all it would be was that a megastore had opened in one of their nearby towns, or that an old lady had tripped and fallen, which would no doubt be followed by him visiting the old dear so as to make her feel better, or that was what Norm said. Really it was just to curry favour with the voters. It was one of a number of schemes that Norm had forced him to sign off on in the build-up to the big election.

“Y-yes, sir, there is news. All of the local papers and journals are reporting the same story. Last night a boy from the local high school found something in the park. You remember Drakan, the recluse that tried to talk to you during the last campaign?” He wouldn’t forget Drakan in a hurry. Why was Norm even asking? The man had come to one of his rallies and launched a tirade against him, all on the behalf of his opponent. Usually these kinds of people were scruffy vagrants, but what had stood out about this man was his choice of dress. A shirt and suit, not unlike the one the mayor was wearing now.

“Well, Mayor Ansono, he’s been murdered.”

-

The newspapers didn’t write themselves, and Tim Mitty had been in since word first broke of the death last night to make sure that the story was out by them first. The Wiki Reporter had used to be the newspaper of choice for the entire town, but since the events so many years ago it had gone downhill. He had only been a junior reporter then, learning from the likes of Joe and Brandon about how to truly write. They had been minor celebrities in the town, interviewing all kinds of people. Their myth hadn’t faded, and he was yet to meet anybody that could write quite like they could. Most of the work was left up to him now. They couldn’t afford any other writers, only the occasional intern or work experience student from the local high school. They were always idealistic, thinking that they could use a career in journalism to change the world. They always left the offices of the Reporter disappointed, having been taught a harsh lesson about the cruel world of print. You couldn’t save lives, you couldn’t change the world, and you couldn’t do anything but sit back and live in the long shadow cast by Josef and Brandon.

Not even news of a murder could get him excited. It was most likely a non-story. Drakan had too many enemies in this town for him to have survived too long. The fact that it had taken someone this long to kill him was in itself a miracle. No doubt the police would launch a half-hearted investigation, never really trying to get to the bottom of the case. If there was a story he would be beaten to it, likely by the Five Stars Journal or the Drawer Daily Standard. The bastards over there could afford to hire upwards of seven writers on top of their editors. How could he ever hope to match that? All he could do was sit here and report the news to any old citizens of Wiki who still bought the Reporter out of a sense of pride and tradition. Maybe one day he could retire and live out the rest of his life in a different kind of monotony. Until then, however, it was back to the presses. The news wouldn’t report itself, not yet anyway.

-

Jorn Holl was not a brave man, yet here he was, heading out to meet up with a hitman on the orders of a major gang warlord. He would never have seen this as being where his career would take him, not when he had been Head Boy at the high school a little less than four years previous. Back then his life had been so full of hope and the light at the end of the tunnel was visible. Then the exams had hit and the drugs had followed shortly after. Originally they had been to help him stay awake late into the night, or that was what he told himself at the very least. He had been kicked out when the school had found out and now his journey had brought him here, to the café at the corner of the park.

The man he was meeting didn’t take too long to reveal himself. No sooner had he sat down at the table but a shady man in a trench coat and flat cap stepped out of the shadows behind the café and seated himself opposite. He was older than Jorn had expected, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties. His clothes were all khaki coloured, except for his flatcar which was a dark, navy blue. He was smoking a large cigar, no doubt bought by some rich and thankful patron to keep him quiet after a successful job.

He slipped the documents that he had been given across the metal table, held together in a sand coloured folder. They were likely the details of some target that his master wanted dead. It could be a rival gang lord that was encroaching on his territory, maybe a snitch that had found his way into the protective custody of the police force. He was too low down on the pecking order in the business to have any knowledge of the identity of the target. Whoever it was could consider themselves as good as dead. Billy Tiel was the most notorious of the hitmen in the local area. He was an assassin feared more than any other ever could be. His ability with a sniper rifle was legend and his ruthlessness was of great accord.

He rose as soon as he gave the documents to the man, not wanting him to take an issue with his presence and fearing that he may have been followed. If he was discovered by the police then he would likely be sent to jail for a long time. That was only if Frank didn’t send someone like Billy after him, aiming to rid him of his life before he spilled the beans on his entire operation. He would be dead no sooner than he entered the gates. Frank could have no weak links in his chain. He could have no one that may spoil his most lucrative business for him. He remembered another gang member, went by the name of Nacho, who Frank had brutally gutted in a prison shower because he was worried that he posed a threat of betrayal.

Delivering those documents wasn’t the only job that Frank had set him that day and Jorn was eager to impress the higher ups. He was, however, anxious about this one. It took him back somewhere that he didn’t want to be, somewhere that always reminded him of the darkness of his past. Conquering the past that had troubled him so may prove his loyalty to the cause and convince his superiors that he was to be trusted with more pivotal tasks. He looked up at the building that caused him so much pain. Then he walked forwards.

-

“I am speaking out to all members of the general public when I say that, as your mayor, I want to make sure that you all feel safe in your homes and out on our streets. I am here to protect you, and I will do exactly that. No man, woman or child should feel that they are at any risk of being attacked on the streets. I will be working with the respected and accomplished chief of police, Max Falcon, and the many great officers who work under him. We will find justice for the man that has been taken from this town, and we will work even harder to make sure that our police force fight so that nothing of this kind will ever happen again whilst I am in charge of the streets that you walk on!”

Mayor Barry Ansono stepped down from the podium after making this speech to the cameras and reporters from all the major news stations in the area. Norm was waiting just off the stage to greet him, his notepad out and at the ready as it always was. The boy was a dedicated assistant. He had been a good choice to employ indeed, with a good knowledge of the political system and what the people wanted to hear. He would be a useful asset in the trials that were to come.

“We have a meeting with Max this afternoon, sir, but first Tim has asked you to talk to an interviewer from the Reporter. I have sent your lunch up to the suite. I can send the reporter to meet you there if that is what you wish, sir?” They had already started walking as he spoke, leaving the City Hall’s specialist Press Room behind. He wore his curled hair long and tucked behind his ear. Norm’s hair, however, was short and dark, the same colour as his black eyes. He wore glasses over them and often held a nervous look on his face.

“I will see the reporter. Go to him and send him to the suite. I will eat whilst I can and wait for him there.” He hated the constant need to talk to impetuous reporters, all of whom believed themselves to be better than he was, just because they had the job of twisting everything he said so that the public would hate him for the next time he needed their votes. The Reporter was better than the others. Tim didn’t take his job as seriously as other editors. They were always his preferred newspaper of choice. Their questions were easier than others and they rarely pressed into areas that he would rather not talk about. He was hungry after giving his speech and that led him to near run up the stairs. He had no sooner entered the room and sat down than Norm came in, a dewey eyed reporter at his back. “Mr Mayor, sir. This is Trent Kidst. Tim sent him down to ask a few questions about the unfortunate incidence with Drak. He’s here on the behalf of the Reporter. Would you like me to occupy him whilst you have your lunch?” He couldn’t keep the reporter waiting. What if Tim published that he had kept the press waiting so that he could enjoy his lunch in peace? That headline could end in disaster for his electoral campaign. He had to talk to the damned journalist, and he had to do it now.

“That’s quite alright, Norm. I will see Mr Kidst now. Could you go tell Max that I will be through to see him as soon as I’m done here.” Norm left then, with the reporter from the Reporter taking his place in the small room. He had never met Trent before, and he could instantly tell that he was one of Tim’s interns, likely just having graduated from high school and going into journalism to report on the issues that matter. Now he was here to ask him questions about a murder that would never be solved.

“H-Hello, Mr Mayor, I’m Trent Kidst, a-as Mr Tigris s-said. I’m here to interview you for Mr Mitty.” The boy was clearly too nervous to actually ask him any questions that could remotely trouble him. “I was there for your speech to the rest of the press earlier, b-but I was just wondering something. H-how do you think you can trust your police force to solve this murder when not only are they poorly trained but also they have named their k-key suspect to be a man that not only has an alibi but also has no real motive?”

“Well, to be honest with you Trent, I’m yet to talk to anyone from the police, so I cannot yet speak about who is on their list of suspects. After I’ve talked to Max, which I’m doing after this interview has ended, then I will be more able to talk to people like you about matters that concern the police and their investigation of this case.” Fuck, that was a close call. He hadn’t expected such a strong question at the start of the interview, and certainly not from this mite of a journalist. He sighed as he sat back in his chair, hoping that this new punishment would be a quick one.

-

The shack that Kung Fugi called home was falling into a state of disrepair when Alexa and Orion arrived on the scene. The wooden walls looked near to collapsing from decay and there was all kinds of rubbish in the front garden, making it look like the playground of a mad child. There was a rusted, red bicycle lying to the right of the door, which itself looked like it was crumbling. The brown paint on the door was peeling from the rain and the exposure to the wind. Orion stepped towards the house first, with Alexa cautiously standing back. He pushed on the door, watching it swing open with a loud screech. Inside the house was dark, mould growing on the walls. It was evident from little more than a look that there hadn’t been anyone living here for a long while.

She walked back to the squad car slowly then. She had never really believed that Kung was a suspect worth investigating, but his absence from home led to him maybe becoming more of a suspect. She already knew that Orion’s counter argument would be that this house had very clearly been abandoned a long time before the incidents that had befallen the town in recent nights. It could have been a preconceived plan to throw them off his scent, but it seemed more likely that he had just abandoned his home, that was falling apart. They would have to track the man down, hunt him to see if he did actually know anything. They both got in the car and their task began.

-

There was a person dressed entirely in black stood on the platform at the train station. They were waiting for someone, that much was obvious. They wore a black hoodie and jogging bottoms, their hair and face obscured by the hood. Just then a train pulled into the station. It was a new model, which was unusual for the small town of Wiki. The doors opened and only one person stepped off, fitting for the almost desolate train station. She was in her forties at least, with brown hair that was carefully shaped and cut. It surrounded her face and even from here you could see the red lipstick on her face. If she looked to her right then she would definitely have been able to see the figure watching her silently. She was back.