Sanford Crow

CHAPTER 36

It doesn't fit his M.O. Frank thought as he stood over the body of a lifeless Panda. His throat was slit open like a peering eye. Frank looked into it, waiting for it to blink. Panda was leaned against the couch. His dead eyes staring at the ceiling.

Why kill his friend? It seems sporadic.

"Because he's a sick fuck," Frank said out loud, but still something about it didn't jive. The motive was clear, especially if Sanford Crow found out Panda had talked to Frank. It was the emotion of it that was all wrong.

Frank wondered what the world would look like through the eyes of a psychopath. If there was no emotional connection to anything, did they see people as a collection of shapes and colors—things that can simply walk and talk?

It hit him hard, on a personal level. He had seen this before; the random kill outside of the killer's norm. It was when she died, the love of his life.

"He had an itch that needed to be scratched," Frank said out loud, completing his thought. The forensics team was in the room, snapping off photos and collecting evidence. Not like it mattered. He knew where the evidence pointed no matter how tired he was. Officer Hemick stood alongside him, also looking half dead while the other half was being slowly kicked along by coffee.

"What's that, detective?" Hemick said in the midst of a yawn.

"He was bored. He didn't want to kill his friend; he needed to."

"You say this like you're surprised that a psychopath is acting like a psycho."

"I'm not surprised, but I'm worried. He's almost done, you see? There's probably one more killing he needs to do. His crescendo. And if there's a family he's after, there's only one family left that makes sense."

"Makes sense? What about any of this makes sense to you?"

It was a fair question.

* * *

The kids were jovial and rowdy. Being the day before Christmas Eve meant it was the day before Christmas break. There was no school until the new year rang in, and when the last bell of school rang out, the little beasts were released into the wild, bursting out of the schoolhouse doors like a stampede.

The bus drove its usual route, with the usual passengers. In the front were always the nerds, not like Sadie cared about such things. She knew that nerds liked to study and do their homework on time. They were always the first ones to raise their hands in class. Something about them seemed cool to her. For as much as they got ragged on by the jocks and bullies—who always sat in the back of the bus, causing a ruckus and the bus driver's blood to boil—they never seemed to care what anyone else thought. They were themselves, tried and true.

She wasn't a nerd and she wasn't a jock; at eight-years-old such tags were already stapled to most of the kids at school. That is until high school rears its ugly head, and those two divine groups get divided into their tinier subdivisions; groups of groups where kids find their niche and where they belong. Then real life comes along and such groups become as meaningless as where they were currently sitting on the bus. This was all according to her father's advice, who she couldn't seem to get off of her mind.

As the bus made the turn onto Sadie's street, she could see the police cruiser parked outside of her home, and an unmarked car in the driveway. Tiny beads of sweat trickled down her limbs as her heart puttered along faster.

"Daddy," she whispered out loud with worry.

The other kids saw the police as well. Collective "Ooo's" and "Ahh's" filled the bus like the studio audience of a sitcom.