Ch.1: Friday: Part Two

After my meeting with some very perturbed upper management, I made it home, driving the whole way in my bare feet of course. I once heard that driving barefoot was illegal, didn't know for sure. Wonder if I could get out of the ticket if I explained to the cop I accidentally stood in someone's brain matter and threw the shoes away. I had to pull over and catch my breath. I was dizzy and on the verge of hoarking all over again.

Once home, my truck all locked away nice and safe in the garage, I sank into the sofa, my body and mind trying to let go of all I'd seen. Mike said the murder was consistent with the other three, but the dumping wasn't. I tried to erase the picture permanently scorched into my memory, I tried to convince it to wash itself away but without any luck.

My living room was silent. Like I like it. No sounds except for what was happening beyond my walls and my breathing; there was nothing to accost my hearing and make me jump. I began to relax further into the couch, letting my thoughts wander which I never should have done, no matter how tiring it was to block out the earlier event. I fought with my subconscious and I lost. I fell asleep with a waking nightmare in my mind.

*beep* *beep*

A car alarm being set. Breathing. Heavy breathing.

"What the hell?!"

Someone didn't sound too happy. I got closer, I felt really dizzy, nauseatingly dizzy. I didn't feel like I belonged there at all. I felt so out of place, I didn't even feel like myself. I reached down to touch my arm and it tingled, reverberated. What the holy hell? I held my hands up so I could see them and they were shimmery, they didn't look right. My examination of my situation was interrupted.

The man's car wasn't starting. I heard the door open and slam shut. The hood was popped open. I got closer, "Do you need some help?"

He didn't seem to hear me.

"Hey, guy! Everything ok? You need a jump?"

He pulled out a handful of wires. They looked like a rat made a meal of them.

"This is just effin great!" He slammed the hood and punched it. Why did guys always overreact to cars? Was it in their DNA? Since early man. A horsey got a limp and it got an uppercut?

"Howdy, mister, looks like you're havin a bad day. Whatcha got there?" She smelled different. She really wreaked. Her eyes flashed a brilliant red in place of the blue and her pupils were gone. That was so not right.

"Sir, she's ... there's something not right with her!"

He ignored me and laughed sheepishly, running his free hand through his hair. His hair. Oh shit! His hair!

My phone is ringing! I needed to tell the man to run, albeit from a happy lil southern belle, but he needs to run and my phone is ringing.

My phone was actually ringing outside the messed up dream. Shit. Mike. Obviously calling to discuss the fax. I send the call to my voicemail and sigh. He'd probably show up. The time on my cell says eight. Eight? PM? Crap.

I made my coffee, turned the television on and flipped through all hundred plus channels. Nothing. So, radio it was. At least until ten. That gave me time to check email, maybe find something that resembled food and start reading the entire forest that Detective Hart sent me. Well, he sent Mike and I accidentally may have given the wrong fax. Ohh! I should remember that for later I thought.

Ch.1: Friday: Part One

Dammit. Why had I condemned myself by staying up so late? I heard the alarm go off but it didn't register until it had already been going off for over twenty minutes. My body and my brain were taking turns scolding me with various headaches and soreness as I forced myself to get moving. Have you ever noticed the later you are the slower you seem to move? I think I was in over slow motion. At least I was dressed without incident. My hose went on without putting my big toe through them and I didn't trip when I put my heels on. Yay me.

Remembering my promise to Tif to drive to work, I sighed to myself, as I walked to my garage to get my truck. The morning air was warm for Montana in the fall which only made my driving all the more horrible. These kind of days could disappear at any time and I had sold my soul to a worry wart. I was not pleased with my decision and reminded myself not to answer the phone next time there was a rash of unsolved homicides in Great Falls. Especially when the next day was turning out to be gorgeous.

I hit the coffee shop on First and was happy to see that I wasn't going to be increasing my tardiness by getting the first of many quad mochas that I knew I would need throughout what I knew was going to be a long day. There was a Trib opened to a mid-section on the murders. I snagged the paper and rushed off to the office hoping my fax would be there rather than a detective on a warpath. Hopefully he could wait to his little appearance until the afternoon, even better would be if I were gone for the day.

My Chevy is an '82 Chevy Stepside, decked out in navy blue with chrome trim. She is my pride and joy, something I earned when I graduated from law school and moved home to practice. Parking my baby in one of the parking garages took a lot of guts, almost worth the parking ticket not to leave her all alone and unattended. More than once I had to take the Chevy to Kyle, a local body repairman, to get the scratches buffed or sanded out, so much so that he had my color in stock. I drove up to the sixth story of the garage and shut her off; I stepped slowly out of my girl, turning her alarm on before begrudgingly leaving her to the elements and fate. So what, I love my truck.

Unfortunately the elevator in the ramp was out so I had to take six stories of stairs to the street level and then walk another block or so to get to Katter & Assoc. The time I thought I'd made up was quickly turning back into late. The stairs were packed with people. The closer I got to the bottom, the more the throng grew until I realized the mob on street level were policemen and E.M.T.'s. And in front of them, legs. The elevator was parked on top of the legs; good reason for it to be out.

Taking in the multitude of faces I finally located the one face I knew was going to be severely pissed later in the day. Now, though, I wanted to know whose legs and why the witch theme from Wizard of Oz was playing in my head. I wish this kind of crap wouldn't happen to me. And I was sure as hell no one could read my mind or they'd think I was the biggest bitch ever.

"Mike!" I smiled my most dazzling smile and inched closer to him, raising my hand just in case he hadn't seen me. "Mike! What's going on?"

Detective Timothy's gray eyes looked coldly over at me as his brow knit together before he realized it was his future imaginary wife. His face changed into a more relaxed expression as he cut me off. Just in time. He yelled for me to stop and not move. I looked down. Shit.

I was standing in the middle of what appeared to be goo. Gray goo. And the smell of sewer and rust. Oh shit! Shit! I looked at my shoes. Crap! No way I was standing in someone's brain. Oops. Here comes the coffee. And I ran, not an easy task in high heels, to the door to let my mocha come back.

"Hey, you okay?" Mike's hand was on my shoulder, probably not sure how to handle a girl in this situation.

"I was just standing in somebody's memories, Mike, how the hell do you think I feel? Back up. I need a Mentos or three."

Mike handed me a pack of gum.

"Toothbrush?"

"Sorry, Amber, just the gum."

"Who is that?"

"We aren't sure yet but from what we can make out, it looks like the others. We can't get the elevator to move. The metal is twisted in the bottom and the brakes look warped or something. Not something I usually see."

"How often do you see four murders here?"

"I guess things just aren't normal all over. How you feelin? Can you make it by yourself to your office?"

"I think I'll go pick up a few things and call it a day." The few things being the fax meant for Mike. I took my pretty, black heels off and tossed them in the trash. I couldn't stand to wander around in someone else's thoughts all day. And with that I ran back to the door and lost what was left in my stomach. Strike 2 for the chic.

"Gum?" I said holding out my hand. "Got any water?"

"Dorsey. Bring me a bottle of water for Amber."

The uniform brought me a bottle of cold water out of the pop machine on the other side of the mess.

"Thank you. I'd look at you but I'm not doin do hot. Sorry."

"That's ok, ma'am. You shouldn't be here." He kind of glanced sideways at Mike and turned back toward back to his job holding off the crowd of onlookers.

"Mike, I don't know how well I can handle this, but I saw legs sticking from under the elevator. How did what I was stepping in end up opposite?"

"That's not something I can really discuss."

"Oh, whatever, you've already told me a lot more than you should have probably so let me know this too."

"I don't know if you really want to know."

"Mike." I wanted to know for the sake of the fax and to know how the mess ended up this end of the legs.

"We think he was decapitated, the head dropped of the fifth, his body dropped down the shaft after some more cutting and the elevator sent down on top of the chaos of what was left of the guy. We're not even sure the elevator could get that kind of speed to cause the kind of damage that is done to the elevator. But we know what we see."

"Who the hell can do something this sick?" It was a question more to myself than the stumped investigator. "Mike, I need to go."

"I'll call you later and check on you. Make sure you don't go into shock."

I blinked at him and wandered off to walk the three blocks on the cold cement. I was glad he didn't offer me a ride. I might have gotten sick all over again.

When I got to the office, the fax was already piling up near my desk. And that was a lot of paper. I filled the personal fax and slumped down into my chair to wait for the documents to finish. While that was printing I may as well explain that I was taking the day off and why. Did I mention the brain part? Yes. My bosses needed to know why one of their attorneys was taking off due to a murder victim she didn't even know.

Chapter One: Part Three

Before I knew it there were two things I'd found. The first being I was up way past my bedtime thanks to Tiffany's introducing me to the triple murder mystery. I looked over at the wall clock to find it was 4 in the morning and I had to be up at 6. That meant two things of course. One: that I would get to suck down loads of quad mocha breves and two: my concentration ability would be nil. Obsolete.

The second "thing" that I'd found in my all-nighter was that there were strings of the same such murders happening all over this side of the Mississippi. One detective in Arizona also pointed out that even though it was some kind of serial killing that came and went, the murders seemed to have come and gone over the last 100 or more years. Nice. Copycats, literally, from hell. There was also a detective handling cold cases in Nevada that was overjoyed in a sad sort of way to find out that he had a lead here. Meaning the murderer from a case in the 80's he had just reopened had a resounding flag in the Great Falls deaths.

Detective Hart in Arizona was an old school cop, retired, doing the occasional PI gig. Hart retired in 2006 when he was 50. Kind of young but the pension was good and the blood pressure wasn't. At times, I hated that people just told me randomness out of the blue. He asked if he could message me via MSN. So we talked for an hour and a half.

In the two hour MSN session I heard about his daughter joining the force, his wife being perfection and his drinking habit that he battled. I also learned from Det. Hart that these murders he'd looked into, that resembled the latest in Great Falls, usually involved the same facts (lending to the serial killer or killers theory). Single males and females both. No families. Some homeless, most just hermits with no friends or family to miss them. Neighbors didn't even know them.

The same over and over for more than a hundred years, in different states for about five months then nothing for a five or more years. The bodies were all mutilated. Some people looked at as the aliens dissecting the people; Hart and I agreed that aliens just probed people and dissected the cows.There was the usual of the government doing experiments and covering it up with the mutilations. The police from Washington to Texas had everything from secret satanic societies to a Hills Have Eyes type family that travelled.Much like a freaky circus where the clowns ate the spectators. Hart was a bounty of information.

RetDetHart: Miss Wright, you need to know that this won't last much longer and no one will be caught. And you should stay out of the investigation.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: I'll take that into consideration, detective, but I doubt anyone will know beyond us on the forum. No worries.

RetDetHart: There aren't always just the good guys on the forums, darlin. There are some not so good guys hangin around there.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: I know.

RetDetHart: Lately I've gotten some pretty cryptic shit in my inbox from those not so good guys. Warnings to let these cases die.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: How long have you been snooping in these cases?

RetDetHart: Since '92. I'm in for the long haul. I made promises.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: To who? You said most of these people didn't have any social links of any type.

RetDetHart: I said most. Not all. The third one down here was a girl in her teens. She wasn't real pretty, didn't have any friends to speak of but she had a mother.

LawLuvn_Harley_Babe: I'm sorry. How's the mother now?

RetDetHart: Disappeared about five years after her daughter's death. She packed up and left. Neighbors didn't even know she left.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Probably heartbroken over her daughter's death and when no one was brought up on charges, couldn't take the pain and took off. I could speculate all night but I would never be able to pinpoint what parents think when they lose a child.

RetDetHart: No. We couldn't. Miss Wright, I can send the information I have to your local PD as a favor to you but you need to let the law handle it.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: I am the law. Sort of. Come on, Detective, I can take care of myself. Besides, I don't fit. I have a life.

I paused in the conversation there. I had a life in more than one way. I was alive.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Sorry, I wasn't thinking.

RetDetHart: Who do I send this to?

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Detective Mike Timothy the fax is: 406-555-8383 You want his email or his direct number?

RetDetHart: Probably the direct number. So he doesn't get a pile of papers that he has no idea what he's looking at other than a pile of headache. lol

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: lol True. Mike would definitely not be too happy with that. His number is: 406-555-1181 ext 131. He works from 7am to when he decides to go home. I've given him some information here and there when I visit the forums. He doesn't have a whole lot of time to be surfin the net.

RetDetHart: Oh I remember what it was like. I'm not that out of touch with the long hours and the dinners away from home. You going to take my advice and just go to work and stay safe?

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: I said I'll take that into consideration. Detective, has there ever been a decent lead in this freakish mess? How many files will Mike be getting?

RetDetHart: All of them. From as far back as I could go. I think the first one was in 1891. There are over 200 cases. I stopped counting at 220. I've just kept compiling, collecting and reading.

Over 220 cases, unsolved, serial killer type murders for over a hundred years. Unbelievable. I wondered how pissed Detective Timothy and Detective Hart would be when they found out the fax was going to my office? Guess I'd find out later.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: It was nice to meet you. Terrible circumstances, but still, I hope we can talk in the future. Maybe in happier times. =)

RetDetHart: Me too. You better be getting to bed young lady.

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Hey now, I'm not that much younger than you. lol Night, Hart.

RetDetHart: Night, Wright. lol Great I'm a poet and I didn't even know it. lol

Lawluvn_Harley_Babe: Ha ha.

I closed the chat window and shut down for what was left of the night. I stared at the page in front of me. Over a hundred years of mutilations and no one had put it together besides Detective Hart and now a detective in Nevada. I think he said by Reno somewhere. I'd given him Mike's actual fax. Of course, I hoped that Hart would fax the papers then call for Mike or Mike wouldn't answer his desk phone. Maybe Hart wouldn't wonder why I didn't give him the cell.

Detective Mike Timothy and I went to high school together. He was on the Track and Field team, I wasn't. We barely noticed each other in the halls even, that is, until I graduated from law school and moved home. I went to one of Tiffany's dinners and that's where Mike and I were formally introduced for the first time in almost twenty years. He was one of the types (not sure what the type is exactly) that just let me have his life history. Glad it wasn't boring.

He told me how he decided to be a cop and his dad was not happy that he didn't want to take over the construction company which was the family business. Montana has a lot of blue collar family businesses that were passed down to the sons or daughters to carry on more than the family name. Proud families. I can imagine how pissed his dad must have been. As the night progressed, Mike's drinking did too. Pretty soon he was trying to talk me into coming back and checking out his cuffs at his house. I opted to drop him off. Nice guy, just not my type of nice guy. That and he was way too drunk to stand up. Now him and I are just friends with him staring now and then or being bitchy when I can't go bowling.

I did a few more searches and ended up leaving a message for an ex one night friend at the Dark Knights website. Gotta love the 21st century. Even motorcycle clubs had a WWW. I asked James if he'd heard anything about some debts needing to be paid. He knew I wouldn't say anything because for one he never gave me more than a hypothetical and two this was the first time there were dead people involved. Usually the guilty bill evader just got his ass handed to him and he paid up. This bloody mess didn't even fit that MO.

That's when I looked up and saw the clock glaringly showing me how bad I'd screwed up. I shut the computer off, turned on the nightlight in the bathroom and padded off for an hour, maybe I'd luck out and get an hour and a half, nap. I was looking forward to my fax. Not so much the ass-reaming from Mike, but he'd live another day to love me. Unrequited love. Ew. Maybe I could set him up with that weird secretary at work. My thoughts seemed to jumble the more tired I became. When I finally passed out, I knew the next day, after my slight joke of a nap, would be the least fun I'd had in a long time but it was Friday. Which meant I could cuddle up on the sofa on Saturday, watch some movies and read through files I had no intention of handing over to Mile until I was through with them while I slept now and then. That's what I get for doing my own thinking. Saturday was going to turn out worse than Friday's hell.