1- New case

"Bruises on his chest, arms and legs, knife wounds between his legs, this guy was tortured to death." 

~Matthew Romaer

 

"There he is, our walking corpse!" Yeah, that's the kind of greeting you want to hear after two weeks of vacation because you got shot off duty. "Are you sure you're ready to be back here again?" That's more the concern I was hoping for.

While my partner Taylor behaved like the dick he was, at least Joyce, who was also in our team, showed a little more empathy. "If I have to sit at home and stare at my ceiling for one more day, I will commit some mass murder myself." I replied. 

"Matt, you got a minute?" Ah great, a talk with my Sergeant, that's definitely how I want to start my mornings. "Sure." Like the good, obedient person I am, I quickly followed my boss in his office and closed the door behind me. 

Sergeant Rock was pretty much like his name. Rough but I knew that I could trust him, always. As hard a person he is, he's as fair. 

"You got shot." he said. "Yeah, I think I remember." My sarcastic answer only got me a serious look from the Sarge. "Sorry." I mumbled. He sighed and folded his hands together. "How you cope with it, I don't care about that, that's your thing. All I want to know is, can you work?"

Quickly I nodded. "Yes, yeah. I swear, all I want to do is work a new case." I promised and fuck did I mean that. Vacation because of an injury is like house arrest, depressing as shit. 

"Good, Taylor will fill you in on the new case." Yes! That's the first good news today. "Alright, thanks Sarge." I was ready to get out, but he stopped me before I could get to the door. "Be careful on this one, I mean it." 

That always tells me that the new case is fucked up. I promised him that I'd take care of myself and then I was finally allowed to leave. 

"It's good that you're back. This is a case for you." Taylor said and threw the file in my arms. "We got called to a university two days ago. A professor was killed. At first we thought it was a break-in that went wrong but then we saw the corpse." he said. 

Because Taylor felt too good about knowing something that I didn't, he stopped explaining and just looked at the file with his big, excited eyes. It's good he became a detective, otherwise he'd definitely be some psychopath bombing the city. 

"Outch." I mumbled as I went through the pictures. Whatever happened, this was not some guy trying to score test answers from a professors' computer. This was pure anger.

"Bruises on his chest, arms and legs, knife wounds between his legs, strangulation wounds, this guy was tortured to death." Taylor nodded.

"Brutally. But Sophie said that the strangulation wasn't the cause of death. They punched him in the head often enough that it caused bleeding inside the skull. Without immediate treatment he was bound to die." my partner explained.

So this was an act of hate, rage even. This really is fucked up. He was tied to a chair, then got beaten up and even stabbed until he died.

"Do we know anything about the stab wounds?" I asked.

Joyce, who was sitting across from us at her desk answered, before Taylor could. "Small wounds, none of them too deadly. It could've been from a pocket knife, probably meant to scare the victim."

Scaring him, that would imply that he either made a lot of enemies or that he did something that got him into problems.

"This guy taught a photography class. Joyce and Dennis already talked to a few students and they all pretty much said the same thing. He was an asshole and graded students based on how much he liked them and where they're from." Taylor continued.

Race, my favorite motive in a case. Murders like that always feel way worse to solve.

"There's something else." Joyce said but stopped as the Sergeant stepped out of his office.

After he just signaled her to continue talking, Joyce went over to the board.

"A few students and also members of the cleaning staff mentioned that Professor Hover wasn't, well, popular amongst the students, especially not with one from his own class." she said and put a picture on the board.

Sergeant Rock stepped closer. "You know him, Sarge?" I asked. "Yeah, that's Aiden. Aiden West. He's the son of the deputy chief of police."

How nice, the son of a highly ranked cop is our murder suspect.

"Our victim and West were known to get into fights, not only verbally. West had made multiple threats such as 'You're going to get, what's coming for you.' If you ask me, we should talk to the kid." Joyce said.

"But as soon as we bring him in, his dad will probably shut the whole investigation down." Taylor mumbled.

"What if we don't bring him in?" I asked. All three of them now looked at me. "They know Joyce and Dennis, they don't know me. I go in undercover, befriend West and maybe he'll tell me something."  I suggested.

Taylor shrugged his shoulders. "That's as good as anything we can come up with. But if we get you in as the new professor you probably won't have much chance of talking to the boy." he said.

Joyce suddenly smashed her hands together. "We don't have to get him in as a professor. I saw a flyer on their blackboard, their cleaning staff is looking for people. It's not ideal but that'll give you more of a chance."

I was up for it but the Sergeant silently looked at the picture of the kid, his body all tensed up.

"Sarge, I know you probably like the kid and I swear I won't do anything that could harm him. He's our best shot right now." 

My spontaneous but gladly reassuring words made him nod. "Okay, Oliver will take care of a new I.D and get you the job."

 

2- A good save

 "Whatever hell he's in right now, I'm sure it's nothing compared to what some people had to go through because of him."

~Aiden West

 

Our genius Oliver managed to get me the job. I kept my first name in case anyone on the streets or anywhere recognizes me. That way I'm safer.  But now I was Matthew Moore, a member of the Universitys' cleaning staff. 

Getting close to West however was more difficult than I imagined it to be. A few times I was able to talk to him, ask him for directions but nothing that helped with the case. 

Thanks to my luck, the other cleaning members, or at least some of them, loved gossip. Thus I found out that West and the victim used to get along quite okay, until the Professor destroyed Wests' camera. They didn't know why he did it though. 

In hopes of getting closer to West I started registering myself in for cleaning the theater hall, his only club activity. According to the clubs website he was responsible for lights and special effects. 

While they started to pack things up, I came in to clean the stage. "You're early. That motivated?" one of the girls from the group asked. "Minimum wage doesn't pay itself." I answered. It was only partly a joke, the pay here was shit. 

 As I entered the backstage area, the front doors swung open. "Where is he? Where is the monster, that killed my husband?" I didn't even need to fetch a glance to know who it was. What the hell is the victim's wife doing here?

She saw West and raised her finger to point at him. "You! You killed him! Are you happy now?" Misses Hover continued shouting. West didn't react at all, he just stood there and looked at the woman. 

This could end ugly. "Hey, are you coming or what? I told you, I don't get paid enough to clean after your privileged ass!" I shouted towards West. Of course he looked at me confused but after I winked at him he seemed to get  it. "Yeah, I'm on my way." West mumbled. 

Misses Hover continued shouting but West and I both went out the back. "Damn, she seemed friendly." I joked. "Why'd you help me?" Cutting directly to the case. Probably got that from his father. 

"I'm a curious person." I roughly answered. Unconvinced, the boy crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Hey, the woman came in and accused you of killing, are you going to blame for wanting to know why?" I then defensively asked. 

"What's it to you?" he replied fiercely. So the topic is a trigger point, that doesn't make him seem neither innocent nor guilty. 

I sighed and leaned my body against the wall behind me. "Ever since I started working here, they all talk about this dead professor and I don't believe the shit they come up with on a daily basis. It's just one fairy tale after another but all those fairy tales have one thing in common. You." I explained. 

"So what?" Boy he sure most be fun at parties. "As I said, I'm a curious person, never had the chance to talk to an actual killer." I joked. Playing the fool card is the safest right now. 

I tousled his hair. "I'm joking. Whatever they say you are, I really don't give a shit. Maybe I pity you because you got all that negative attention. Listen, if you ever need anyone to talk to, I'm more than happy to help, alright? Here." For a while now I had my number written on a little note. 

He accepted the note and put it in his pocket. "You're weird." West then mumbled. "So are you. What's with your bad mood?" I asked. The kid finally relaxed a bit and uncrossed his arms. "It's not easy to have fun when the whole world thinks you killed a dude." 

If West wasn't a murder suspect I would've probably thought of him to be quite cute. Well, I still do. West was attractive, a bit shorter than me and obviously physically active. 

"What about your little friends in there? They don't seem to think that way." Pushing him into giving me information about the murder would only lead to him becoming suspicious of me. I have to keep playing the safe card. 

"Seem, yeah. They just don't want beef with the only one that knows how to handle the light. You're naive, you know that right?" West said and pulled out a cigarette before brushing it across his lower lip. 

Naive, I know more about you than you. I know when you had your last parking ticket, how you used to steal from a supermarket when you were 16, I know all of it. 

"Maybe, is that so bad?" I asked, leaned my head back and watched how West lit his cigarette. "In this place it is. You were probably told that you should keep your distance from the students, because we 'privileged' kids are so bad, right? The ones you should stay away from are the ones standing at the front of the lecture hall, not sitting in the back." 

There it was, the hate I was expecting. The rage that was so poorly covered up by his silence. 

"Like Professor Hover?" I asked. He took a puff of his cigarette, threw it on the ground and stomped it flat. "Whatever hell he's in right now, I'm sure it's nothing compared to what some people had to go through because of him." West said and with that he went back inside. 

After I made sure he was gone, I picked up the cigarette and put it in a little plastic bag. Because of the cleaner cover-up it wasn't that surprising that I kept a few of them on me. 

Maybe Sophie can get something out of this, according to her there were some DNA traces that didn't belong to the victim. The lab needed some more time to give us a more detailed report. But now I need to find out, how my team could just let it slip, that we're investigating Aiden West towards the victim's wife.

They're not dumb enough to just mention it during a conversation.

3- First contact

"Aiden wasn't the only one that got treated like a bitch by Professor Hover."

~ Olivia Smith

 

"You want to explain why I just had to drag our victims wife away from the main suspect?" I asked partly annoyed, after my partner picked up his phone.

That confrontation may have played into my cards this time, next time she may come with some tools. I don't need my suspect to go into some coma without confessing.

Taylor on the other end of the phone sighed. "Hold up, I'll put you on speaker."

For a short moment it was silent, I only heard a few voices in the background.

"Alright, listen, the victims wife was here today to ask some follow-up questions. We found the professor's camera which he used in his classes. On it were some pictures, with a girl." Taylor explained in his high almighty voice. The arrogant tone he always put on when he found something.

"One of the students!" Joyce shouted in the background. "Mhm, the pics were pretty, let's call it 'intimate'. We thought maybe the wife knows about them. That would give her a pretty hard motive."

Before I had taken a few steps towards West but now I leaned my body against the wall behind me again, my bones were tired. Being a cleaner is way harder than I'd expected it to be.

"Well, did she know something?" I asked because there was no follow-up.

"Nah, she was pretty shocked when we showed her the pics but then she suddenly started talking about Aiden West. She said, he taken those photos." Taylor said.

Those are some hard allegations. If West really took those pictures that would imply that he tried to blackmail his professor.

"Was she able back it up or are we suddenly taking her word for it?" I asked. "Apparently it's the way all photos were shot." Now Joyce had the phone. "It's like some unique angle, slightly turned to the left. Hey, maybe your ex-boyfriend can help us out." she suggested.

I rolled my eyes. One could hope that after being shot in the shoulder I can catch a break from mockery but apparently my team consists of twelve year olds. "Yeah, yeah. Fuck off." I sighed. "Next time update me without me having to ask for it. This could go a lot faster."

"Yeah, sorry man. I'll give you a call as soon as we get something new." I ended the call shortly after and went back to cleaning. The theater session had ended already and almost everyone left.

A girl was still there, rearranging some props. "You need some help?" I asked. She flinched. That's an odd reaction. I mean, of course she thought that she was the only one left but she saw me leaving with Aiden and my stuff was still laying around on the benches.

"I'm alright but thank you." she quickly mumbled. As I started to walk towards the bench she stopped me. "Hey, thanks for helping Aiden with the woman and everything."

Maybe there's someone finally willing to talk to me. "Sure, no sweat. Mind telling me what all the shouting was about anyway?" I asked.

She hesitated but then put down the cardboard tree she was holding. "Aiden is not a bad guy, it's just his temper. The professor knew not to provoke Aiden." This whole thing seemed to burden her a lot. She assumed that I already knew about the professors' death and the beef between him and Aiden.

But I didn't play dumb. The girl was in her own flow so it's better to gather everything important of what she rambles about.

"The Professor, he was not a nice person. All the time he would just start making these comments about how Aiden looked so yellow and if he can still talk Korean after being away for so long from his actual country or when Aiden would finally go back."

I was well aware of the fact that Aiden was adopted by the deputy chief when he was two. Aiden never experienced much of his home country according to the adoption center. He probably can't even speak Korean, nevertheless, it's stupid to ask that.

"He was a racist?" I asked. The girl nodded. "Yeah, a really bad one. The foreigners in the photography class always got the worst grades. They complained about it to the principal over and over again but he never did anything. Aiden was one of the few who actually confronted the professor about his shitty behavior."

Because of my skeptical face she added a quick "But that doesn't make him a killer!" She was right. Up until now all we can do is speculate about who could've done it. We need some actual evidence.

"Was Aiden the only one who got into fights with this professor?" I asked. For a second I got worried that it sounded too much like being questioned by the police.

"He was the only one who dared to punch him. I'm not saying the professor deserved to die but..." she paused. "He had it coming."

The innocent and almost frightened look on her face vanished. Her expression turned cold. Hah, this really gave me the shivers.

"Meaning?" I asked. Out of habit I tried grabbing my gun but I couldn't have it on me right now. Her movements were smooth and calculated as she put the last requisites away.

She grabbed her bag and walked past me. For a second I thought that was the end of the conversation but then she turned back around.

A tear was running down her check. "Aiden wasn't the only one that got treated like a bitch by Professor Hover. Some of us just decided to keep quiet about it. In the end, I guess we all got our revenge, except for his wife. She still has no clue what kind of an animal she married."

Well, that's a statement. It's also the last thing the girl said, before she left the hall. I'm guessing those tears aren't of sadness that the man passed.

No, something happened here and it's not just about some biased grading.

4- Weird angle

 "People leave you alone when you act like a dick, that's all I want."

~ Aiden West

 

At the end of my shift as a cleaner I returned back to the station. "Do we still have pictures of that theater group?" I asked. "Sure, why?" 

Directly after I had that talk with the student I had a hunch. There are only so many reasons why a woman would call a man an 'animal'. "Get me those pictures and the ones from the victims camera." If I'm right then there is another person with a hard motive. 

Joyce brought over the pictures so I could start hanging them on our board. "This right here is one of the members of that theater group, Olivia Smith. She mostly plays the role of the female lead, she also took the victims photography class. And this..." I pointed to the picture with the professor intimate with another woman. "This is also Olivia Smith. During a little chat she mentioned that Aiden West wasn't the only one who was heavily mistreated but others just choose to keep quiet about it." 

Taylor crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I'm guessing she talked about herself." I nodded. "There's two possible scenarios. First, he tells his student, if she doesn't sleep with him, she's going to fail his class, second she seduced and later on blackmailed him." he then said. 

"But why would the victim make someone take photos? He'd technically bite himself in the ass." Joyce mentioned. "Big ego?" Taylor suggested. 

Oliver raised his hand. He was a shy dude. "I might have an idea." he mumbled. "So shoot." the Sergeant said. "Those pictures were taken by a very skilled person so this could be one of the students from the photography class but there's something weird." Oliver said. 

He got up and walked over to the board. "This angle the victims wife described as a unique thing, in this case it's more than stupid to use. You see, because the camera is tilted there's no way to see the victims face, it's blocked by the door frame. If the photographer wanted to capture the faces of them together he had kept the camera straight." 

Right, Olivias face is perfectly visible but we only knew the other person was Professor Hover because we were able to identify him by a tattoo on his shoulder. 

"So you're thinking he was trying to blackmail the girl?" Taylor asked. "No, I think no one was trying to blackmail anyone." Oliver answered. "I don't get it." 

It made no sense. Why show the girls face and not the victims? This didn't serve as blackmail to anyone. If he wanted to continue sleeping with a girl there were numbers of things he could've done. 

"This was never blackmail, it was a threat." I said. Oliver nodded. "Not showing his face but the rest of his body could be a way of saying, 'we don't need to show your face to destroy you'. It's just a theory but maybe the girl told someone that he made some comment." he said.

I sat down on my desk. "Or they just wanted to get back at him. Apparently he was a racist and graded students based on their roots. At a university like that, that's a good reason to get pissed." 

My phone started ringing. "Sorry." I mumbled and quickly looked, who it was. A number I haven't saved into my contacts. "This could be Aiden. I gave him my number but I didn't expect him to call so soon." Oliver, in some type of super speed, typed the number into the computer next to him. "At least that's his phone number."

I quickly walked into one of our interrogation rooms. "Hey, it's Aiden, the guy you saved today." He sounded a bit nervous, at least his voice was shaking. "I thought you were going to make me wait at least another day." 

He laughed. "Yeah, I didn't know when your shift ends so I just gave it a try. Are you free right now?" Over the phone West seemed much more like the young student he actually was. 

"Do you think I would've picked up my phone if I wasn't?" I replied. "Sorry, I just wanted to ask you, when you have a break tomorrow, maybe we can catch lunch. I can invite you, you know, because I owe you for the save today." he suggested. 

That's the perfect chance for me to get him to talk to me about the case.

"I am not that much of a monster that I can just rip off a poor student. Tell you what, I write you once I'm on my break and if you don't have class, let's grab a burger and you still owe me, alright?" 

West seemed to think about my suggestion for a second.

"Why would you be so nice to me?" he then asked.

I couldn't help but smile over this kid. He almost seemed naive.

In my heart I couldn't draw an image of him as a murder suspect.

But there's a reason a detective shuts his heart off when he goes to work.

"I told you already, I'm a curious person. There's all this talk about you, I don't believe a single thing but you can't blame me for still wanting to see who all that talk is about." I explained.

"My classes start in the afternoon, photography is cancelled because-" West stopped. "Yeah, obvious reasons so text me, please." he said. "Where's the hard, cold dude I saved today?" This little mockery seemed to lighten his mood a bit, so I continued.

West sighed. "It's not like I want to be one." he then mumbled. Sure, even tough we're keeping our investigation as privately as possible, we're not the only ones with our eyes on him. "Just easier this way. People leave you alone when you act like a dick, that's all I want." 

While saying that Aiden almost sounded sad. His voice was quite and for a moment I thought to hear it shaking. 

"I can tell you one thing, I won't leave you alone for a while so get used to me. I'll see you tomorrow." 

5- Face recognition

 

"What are you going to do with West tomorrow? Aren't you worried about flashbacks?"

~ Dennis Kappal

 

"You are one hell of a smooth talker man. How come you're never this nice when I call you?" I knew those dipshits were listening in.

Probably waited behind the glass like immature high schoolers.

"Kill someone and let me investigate, maybe I'll be nicer." I replied coldly.

Taylor laid his arm around my shoulder. "But on a serious note, would you two let me get away if I ever killed, like my sister's new boyfriend?" he asked.

At the same time, Joyce and I answered with a sharp "No." before Joyce returned back to her desk. Taylor looked to me, obviously expecting some change of heart.

"I'd shoot you the second I get the okay to do it." I promised with all the sincerity I could gather.

"Matthew, you got a minute?" the Sergeant asked. "Sure." Quickly I made my way into his office and closed the door behind me.

He quietly looked at me so I took it as a sign to report on the phone-call.

"I'll meet Aiden tomorrow. Because I got him out of a confrontation with the victims wife, he owes me." I explained.

Sergeant Rock nodded. "The deputy called today. He heard about our investigation and demanded that we show him our files."

"Do you think he knows about the beef between his son and the victim?" I asked.

The Sergeant shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. Fact is, if he finds out we're placing his kid anywhere near the murder he's not going to let it go. He'll talk his son into lawyering up and we can forget ever talking to him again." 

"If Aiden is the actual killer, I will not let him get away with it, no matter who his father is." I promised in a serious tone.

My boss watched me for a good minute. "You say 'if' like you believe more in his innocence than that he's actually guilty."

"I believe someone isn't telling the truth and I'm going to find out who it is." There's something more going on than just what we are told by the students and the professors won't even talk to us without a lawyer present.

The Sergeant stood up and looked out of his window. "The kid used to come here quite often when he was a small boy. Always clinging to his daddys' leg, looking around with those big, curious eyes." he mumbled. 

So the boss really does have a soft spot for West. "That kid has grown up, Sarge. He's a man now and possibly a killer. I can protect him from someone else, I can't protect him from himself." As long as West was under investigation, there's no way to go easy on him but if we come clean his dad will surely interfere. 

"This case doesn't sit right with me." the Sergeant said. "I don't like it either. No matter who I ask there's a new story unfolding, another fucked up thing the victim is accused of. Never the whole story either, just pieces over pieces." I noticed.

He signaled me to go. Probably needs to process all of this. It always sucks to know someone from a case. 

"What's the word?" Dennis was here as well. Because he was always on the go gathering what he can from his informants. Out of everyone one of us, Dennis has, by far, the most of them. 

"Boss is pissed, case isn't coming along and I'm fucking exhausted." I replied before I let myself fall into my chair. "Did you get anything out of your boy-toys?" I then asked. "Call them boy-toys one more time and I'll make one out of you." Always nice to talk with the guy. "But no, they got nothing. Never heard of the professor before he was killed."

So basically we have nothing but Olivia as a lead. We solved cases with less but we also didn't solve cases with more. 

"What are you going to do with West tomorrow? Aren't you worried about flashbacks?" Dennis asked. Oh how I love my team. "I dated a photographer, doesn't mean I'm going to cry whenever I see a camera." 

Thankfully, he let it go. Partly because Oliver came jumping up the stairs. "Guys, I got something!" He quickly gathered the team. "I couldn't stop wondering about these pictures so I put a face recognizer over it, at first only because I got frustrated. But it found something." 

While Oliver explained he handed me a picture. It was the one with the professor and the girl but now greatly zoomed in. "The camera is so good that even the reflection have a great quality." Oliver said. 

Next to the sofa where both of them were on there was a window and in that window I was able to recognize parts of a face. "That isn't Aiden West." I announced. 

"How can you be sure?" Taylor asked and grabbed the picture. "Because, as I recall, West is a man. The person who took the picture isn't." I replied, snatched the paper from Taylor and handed it over to the Sergeant.

"It is, I let the computer try to find her by going through all the pictures from the universitys' website. Whoever she is, she isn't registered in any class, any club or trips they ever posted on there." Oliver pointed out. 

Joyce sighed and let herself fall back into her chair. "So she probably doesn't even go to the university. Which brings us back to square one." she groaned.

"It doesn't." I said. "Oliver said it himself, whoever took this photo was skilled. Maybe we can't find her on the website because she no longer is there."

Sergeant Rock put the picture up on the board. "You're thinking an old student?"

Suddenly what West said came back to my mind again. About how it's not the students I should stay away from.

"No, I'm thinking an old professor, probably the one that taught the victims class before he died."

6- Lunch with sirens

 

"Do you want me to be a killer?"
~ Aiden West

 

I was nervous. For some reason meeting West had a bigger impact than I thought it would have.

My hands were sweaty and I couldn't focus on cleaning. I had texted him before and arranged a time to eat lunch together.

Now I found myself glancing over to the clock on the wall minute after minute.

I couldn't tell if I wanted the time to pass faster or slower but my behavior didn't go unnoticed.

"Do you have plans, Matt?" one of my female colleagues asked. "I'm sorry." I mumbled. As a newbie it was bad for me to get distracted like

Imprint

Publisher: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Publication Date: 04-05-2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-3807-6

All Rights Reserved