CHAPTER 5: THE NEW CASE
(Told through the narrator)
Night matures as Frank drives away from Rochester and into a secluded town that has no buildings or homes. The sky is free of clouds, making the full moon look grand and vivid behind the towering trees. He cruises his way down a pitch-black road with his headlights glaring.
He continues to drive down this lonely road until a faint light can be seen, peeking through the trees from afar. He slows to a halt at an illuminated area blocked off by two squad cars, an old pickup truck, a couple of sedans, and burning road flares. Frank sees three state-troopers, an old man, and this tall casually dressed fellow talking together.
The tall man, who is dressed in a light-gray suit, approaches Frank and greets him as he exits his vehicle.
“What happened here, Jones?” Frank asks the tall fellow as he steps out of his car.
Jones shrugs his shoulders and shakes his face with a mystified expression.
“It looks like an animal attack, but I’m not sure. It’s a bad one. Something is really strange about this shit Frank,” Jones talks as they cut between the squad cars and walk into a lit trail that goes deep within the forest.
Ten minutes later, they arrive at the scene of the incident where four people, two men, and two women, are examining the area for evidence. Frank sees the body of the victim resting awkwardly on the forest floor. This body belongs to a twenty-two-year-old college graduate named Adrian. She has short blonde hair and crimson lipstick.
Her outfit is shredded and covered in blood, and her eyes are frozen in absolute dread. Her blood is still fresh enough to appear crimson on her clothes. Frank studies the body and calculates the time of death in his head. He estimates that she died around four to five hours ago. He also begins to consider other things. He studies the amount of mud on her boots, the twigs protruding out of her clothes, and how her personal belongings are not with her.
This tells him she had to be running for a while before her death. Also, her face is frozen in absolute terror.
“We found her just like this,” he informs Frank. “Her personal belongings are at a camping area a half a mile from here. We have no clue where the other five are.”
Frank kneels next to the woman’s lifeless body, which is constantly being illuminated by camera flashes. He then takes out a small flashlight from his pocket to observe the area better.
“Any I.D?” he asks.
“Adrian Singleton is her name. We already notified her parents.”
“Hiking?” Frank asks.
“Yup. Their family hasn't heard from them since they left.”
Frank takes out two latex gloves from his blazer pocket and puts them on. Using a pen, Frank lifts her ripped shirt while holding the flashlight in the other hand. The light reveals a series of claw marks around a large cavity in her torso. Flies scurry from her deceased body and disappear into the night as Frank waves them away.
“Holy shit,” Frank says automatically when he sees the gaping wound.
He covers her wound again and takes a second to gather his thoughts. The sight is so gruesome it manages to stupefy Frank. For someone in his line of work, that doesn’t happen very often. As he stares at her frightened eyes, his mind attempts to form a scenario of what could have happened, but he can’t seem to connect the dots.
“What do you think about this?” Jones interrogates.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Frank replies with confusion.
His eyes search around the forest floor for clues. He begins to prowl close to the ground; his eyes are appearing more observant than ever. He scatters some twigs and sees several boot prints. He continues to observe his surroundings while a scenario plays out in his mind.
“She ran for some time and was caught,” Frank says as he continues to use his eyes to hunt for clues.
He leans towards her bruised face and opens her mouth.
“We got three missing teeth and a possible broken nose. She was hit by something.”
“I noticed that too,” his partner replies. “There’s some blood on the tree.”
Jones nods at a tree to guide Frank's eyes. Frank looks at the tree and looks back at the woman’s battered face.
“Are you suggesting that she just bashed her face against a tree?”
“I will get a blood test done, but that would explain her missing teeth,” his partner replies.
Frank bathes in his thoughts for a moment before responding.
“Did you find any of their belongings?”
“Yeah. All of their stuff is at a camping area not that far from here.”
“This shit isn't adding up right,” Frank says with a blank expression.
His brain is so misconstrued that he can’t figure out what to think or feel about any of this. Nonetheless, confusion to Frank Lancaster is like gasoline to a fire. Confusion only motivates him to think even harder. Using a small flashlight and some determination, he hopes to shine a new light on the situation.
It doesn’t take him long to spot something unusual on the ground. He freezes and keeps the light concentrated on the area. There’s a large footprint on the ground.
“Someone was here. The person was barefooted.”
As Frank leans closer with the flashlight, he can't help but notice the odd shape of the foot.
“These aren't human footprints,” Frank says. “Have you ever seen a footprint like that?” Frank asks his partner with a baffled expression.
Jones bathes in his thoughts for a moment.
“It gotta be some animal?” Jones blurts out the first thing that sounds reasonable to him.
“Whatever the hell it was, it tracked her down. She held her ground and fought it. It didn’t work out in her favor, but there was a bit of a struggle here. She wasn’t alone though. There's another set of boot prints here. Someone else was with her, trying to fight this thing off,” Frank tells him with a hint of remorse towards the end of the sentence.
Frank stands to his feet with his partner and looks around for more clues. Suddenly, a better scenario is created inside of his mind. His imagination forms a clear vision of what happened. He looks forward and can see an apparition of her running in his direction.
“Something came to the campsite,” Frank explains as he tries to imagine what lead to the young woman’s untimely demise. “She was being chased, and her boyfriend was with her; both running away from something.”
He then forms a visual picture of a young man running with her.
“She fell or tripped into this tree,” he says while carefully stepping around the area of her body. “Her boyfriend tried to fight this thing off, but it ended too soon.”
“Fighting who?”
“Who would suggest a person did this. This was no who. This was a what.”
“Okay then...What do you think did this?”
Frank peddles faster in his mind, only to come across another roadblock. His mind is scrambled with ideas that lead to no reasonable cause.
“Now that’s a good question,” Frank replies. “A question I can’t answer. I got a better one though, where the hell are the other bodies?”
His partner puffs out air and shakes his head.
“I have no fucking clue.”