Chapter One
Blood dripped from every wall of the bungalow. There were three bodies, all bled dry. The sight was so horrific that even the toughest police officers started to feel sick. One of them had already vomited and left the scene.
“Detective, these children were murdered with the same weapon. Just like the previous ones, they were brought here and left to bleed. The stab wounds are the same,” said the forensics officer.
Detective Lawman Octa nodded his head and stood there silently, staring at the dead bodies. He had solved many cases and had even earned recognition for some of them, but this was the first time he had been assigned to such a gruesome case. This was the fifth murder of the week. All the victims were children—twelve children in six days.
The murders started six days ago, on the first day of 2000. The first two victims, a small boy and a little girl, were stabbed repeatedly and hung from a tree in a national park in Florida. The only indisputable fact was that the murders had taken place at the crime scene itself with a knife that was still missing. The only other clue Detective Octa found was a teapot, half-filled with the victims’ blood. How this teapot fit in, he wasn’t sure.
None of the dead children had yet been identified, nor had they been reported missing. Perhaps each was from a different country as there was no pattern to their race or ethnicity, which is unusually mixed. Someone might have brought them to Miami, Florida for the purpose of murdering them. Or, maybe they were abandoned children. Ten days later, another murder was reported.
Detective Octa was extremely passionate about his work. He missed meals and sleep was often only an afterthought. He had no family like to speak of as he spent every minute trying to solve this case. He lost count of the days that rolled by, and hit a dead end every day. His supervisors were beginning to panic and amped up the pressure on him, so they could report progress in the case to the curious press.
Three weeks later, when Octa was going through the case files, his boss, Scarlet Albany, called him into her office. With coffee-colored skin and gray eyes, Scarlett wore her hair loose, its length touched her lower back.
“The case has been transferred to the FBI,” his boss said. “It has become much more than we can handle.”
“I just need more time,” Octa said. “I can handle it, Ma’am, don’t give away the case.”
“No, Detective, you know very well where this is heading. You were at the crime scenes. You saw with your own eyes how ghastly they were. More time will only result in more dead bodies. Let those bodies be on them and not on us. I have been instructed to keep our numbers in check. I will follow my orders and so will you. Do not go near those files again, Detective! If you disobey my orders, the consequences will be harsh,” Octa’s boss warned. He could be stubborn and rule-bending in these cases, she thought.
Octa nodded reluctantly and left the office.
Octa had never given up on an unsolved case. He went back to his office, pulled out his phone, and messed with his stocks. Octa had stock portfolios, and he messed with them at lunch and on breaks.
After he checked the markets on his phone, he picked up the files and headed home. Later that night, when he sat down with the case files, his mind drifted to another unsolved case—a more personal one. He was twenty-three years old at the time, and was returning home to give his father the good news that he had passed the test and had become a policeman.
Instead of finding his father in the drawing room, however, he found his mother’s body in the kitchen, murdered. His father was nowhere to be found, and after ten years, was still missing. Since then, he had never learned what happened that day. A murder and a dead-cold trail all in a day. There was no evidence, no letters, and no hint of anything wrong, and his world changed forever. In his spare time, he
Blood dripped from every wall of the bungalow. There were three bodies, all bled dry. The sight was so horrific that even the toughest police officers started to feel sick. One of them had already vomited and left the scene.
“Detective, these children were murdered with the same weapon. Just like the previous ones, they were brought here and left to bleed. The stab wounds are the same,” said the forensics officer.
Detective Lawman Octa nodded his head and stood there silently, staring at the dead bodies. He had solved many cases and had even earned recognition for some of them, but this was the first time he had been assigned to such a gruesome case. This was the fifth murder of the week. All the victims were children—twelve children in six days.
The murders started six days ago, on the first day of 2000. The first two victims, a small boy and a little girl, were stabbed repeatedly and hung from a tree in a national park in Florida. The only indisputable fact was that the murders had taken place at the crime scene itself with a knife that was still missing. The only other clue Detective Octa found was a teapot, half-filled with the victims’ blood. How this teapot fit in, he wasn’t sure.
None of the dead children had yet been identified, nor had they been reported missing. Perhaps each was from a different country as there was no pattern to their race or ethnicity, which is unusually mixed. Someone might have brought them to Miami, Florida for the purpose of murdering them. Or, maybe they were abandoned children. Ten days later, another murder was reported.
Detective Octa was extremely passionate about his work. He missed meals and sleep was often only an afterthought. He had no family like to speak of as he spent every minute trying to solve this case. He lost count of the days that rolled by, and hit a dead end every day. His supervisors were beginning to panic and amped up the pressure on him, so they could report progress in the case to the curious press.
Three weeks later, when Octa was going through the case files, his boss, Scarlet Albany, called him into her office. With coffee-colored skin and gray eyes, Scarlett wore her hair loose, its length touched her lower back.
“The case has been transferred to the FBI,” his boss said. “It has become much more than we can handle.”
“I just need more time,” Octa said. “I can handle it, Ma’am, don’t give away the case.”
“No, Detective, you know very well where this is heading. You were at the crime scenes. You saw with your own eyes how ghastly they were. More time will only result in more dead bodies. Let those bodies be on them and not on us. I have been instructed to keep our numbers in check. I will follow my orders and so will you. Do not go near those files again, Detective! If you disobey my orders, the consequences will be harsh,” Octa’s boss warned. He could be stubborn and rule-bending in these cases, she thought.
Octa nodded reluctantly and left the office.
Octa had never given up on an unsolved case. He went back to his office, pulled out his phone, and messed with his stocks. Octa had stock portfolios, and he messed with them at lunch and on breaks.
After he checked the markets on his phone, he picked up the files and headed home. Later that night, when he sat down with the case files, his mind drifted to another unsolved case—a more personal one. He was twenty-three years old at the time, and was returning home to give his father the good news that he had passed the test and had become a policeman.
Instead of finding his father in the drawing room, however, he found his mother’s body in the kitchen, murdered. His father was nowhere to be found, and after ten years, was still missing. Since then, he had never learned what happened that day. A murder and a dead-cold trail all in a day. There was no evidence, no letters, and no hint of anything wrong, and his world changed forever. In his spare time, he
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