The Archives

By: Apeman (zeni316@yahoo.com)

Case File#6: Dark Wine

“Hh.”

            I was on my way to the diner to meet with Kohta.  The night was cooler than usual, and steam from the apartment buildings engulfed my feet.  I put my hands in my trench coat’s pockets as I looked up at the hanging corpse.  The note read: “_urve ball, stri_e three”.

            “Curve ball, strike three,” I whispered.  “Where’s strike two?”

            “Takeo!” It was my best friend, Kohta, running my direction.  “We have another hanging…”

            “Hh.” I pointed at the hanging body I had discovered and said, “I guess I found this one too early, then,”

I almost smiled.  Almost.

            +++++

            The precinct was chaotic, to no one’s surprise.  Kohta and I walked through the narrow hallway between offices.  I saw Die sitting on a chair having a conversation with Lieutenant Jiro.  Die must have been drinking too much again and started another bar fight.  It’s been like this since his father’s trial.  Maybe he had lied.

            “Got some doughnuts,” Kohta said, as he opened a box of Dunkin’ Doughnuts.

            “Jelly filled?” I asked, and he handed me a doughnut.  “Thanks,”

            “I’ve been looking at these notes,” Kohta muttered.  “And they all have the same letters missing, for the most part.”

            I looked at the notes.  The first read: “_ _ me st_ rt”.  The second: “S_ ri_e one”.

            “’T’, ‘k’,” Kohta started.  “’G’, ‘c’,”

            “’A’, ‘k’,” I murmured.  “Good thinking, Kohta, but we still don’t know what this means.”

            He took a bite out of his sugar- glazed doughnut.  How can he eat those?

            “Yeah, but it’s a start,”

            I waved goodbye to my friend and walked away.  On my way out of the precinct, I grabbed a cup of coffee.  The five letters were engraved in my mind, and I couldn’t think of anything else for the rest of the night.

            “Oh!  It’s you!  Please help!”

            “Eh?” I looked up from my shades.  “Toshiya?”

            “It’s…it’s my husband,”

            Toshiya told me about her husband’s recent inferno of anger towards her, and she told me about the beatings she’s taken since the other day.  I slipped my coat around her shoulders and noticed that her neck was red with burns.  Her cheek was beaten black, and her right eye was swollen shut.  Reminded me of the Shinya case.  I shut my eyes.

            “Coffee?” I asked.

            +++++

            “Hh.”

            The night was still young as it reached the eleven o’ clock hour.  I had left Toshiya in the precinct where she would be safe.  I looked down at the tiny, mutilated corpse that was once a child.  CSI was checking the place out, but there doesn’t seem to be much.  Trash man found the body, cut into pieces, stuffed into a garbage bag in an alley.

            “This one’s ugly,” Kohta muttered, taking a sip from his coffee.

            “Hh.  That’s an understatement,” I took another sip from my cup of coffee.  “Let’s head back,”

            I pictured the little girl, in one piece, running happily through a playground.  Then I thought of Toshiya and her bruises.  I thought that she was lucky compared to Shinya.  Then the letters “a”, “c”, “t”, “g”, and “k” went through my head.  Too much is happening at once.

            I hate my job.

-Cont’d-