Sirens flashed blue and red against the alley way, giving those working there an eerie glow. Detective Samantha Rider had been fast asleep between her 300 count cotton sheets when her beeper went off.
While disturbed sleep was a frequent occurrence, murder in the sleepy town of Rosemount certainly wasn’t. So she had pulled her flaming auburn hair up into a bun, donned her uniform black suit and popped on some bright red lippy before racing to the scene.
Other than the blaring lights, the first thing she noticed was the smell ...metallic... instantly making her think of death. A damp scent also floated towards her as well as the smell of the decaying garbage lying in the large waste bins to her right.
Closing her eyes and breathing deeply she started to count to ten in French… une, deux, trois, quatre… she let her mind become free and she quickly entered a meditative state. It was a ritual colleagues had thought was weird and slightly eccentric, but with a success rate like hers many were now in awe.
A dripping sound, cars passing and the hum of radiators came so close she felt she could almost feel them.
The vision came swiftly. She could feel the accelerated heart rate of a woman, she could feel the victim’s firmly fastened long winter trench coat and mohair scarf tightly tied.
The woman was aware she was being followed, her breathing was becoming raspy with fear, and she tried to pick up her walking speed, which proved difficult in her cheap vinyl stilettos.
Just before she reached the alley, she turned her head to look at the man who followed. He was a few metres away. His gaze pierced her deeply, fear choked in her throat. She stopped, mesmerised – that’s when the hand reached out of the alley and grabbed her roughly about the mouth, dragging her backwards into the dark.
Samantha’s body shook and her eyes flew open, two deep breaths, another two and she was starting to feel grounded. The fear from the victim seeped over her, hanging in the air like a fog, Samantha could also smell the acrid sweetness of the sweat of one of the attackers.
Taking one last deep breath, she walked forward into the alley, knowing that what she would find would be grim, and knowing that they needed to find not one perpetrator but two.
“Boss, it’s not a nice sight,” muttered her Junior Sargent, Jacob Wrendt.
“Murder never is!” Samantha replied. “What did the coroner say? It looks like she had her throat cut like a cattle beast?”
“Cause of death was result of a significant knife wound to the neck, cut right through a main artery. Not a nice way to go, but quick at least.”
A gold locket glinted through the blood. With the woman’s hair covering her face Samantha hadn’t made an ID on the victim until that moment. Samantha’s heart stopped.
Writing order: Ray Stone (Cyprus), Joe Labrum (USA), Suraya Dewing (NZ), Jasmine Groves (Aus), Diana Labrum (USA), Hemali Ajmera (India), Anthony Smits (Samos Island), Suraya Dewing (NZ), Suraya Dewing (NZ), Abhinmanyu Jamal (India)
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