Chapter 4. Murder on the Waterside

The streets are dark with the dimming lamps and lightless windows of homes that had now gone to sleep. With the cold setting deeper into the night air, the man gives a harder sniff as he continues to patrol the streets and alleys. His feet were turning into blocks of ice as he shuffled along the frozen cobbled stone. Though he was thankful that the height of the brick buildings blocked most of the biting wind.

The sky was starting to brighten with the deeper hues of blue when there are running footsteps and panting. “Ehh?” the man mumbles as he turns around to have a younger fair-skinned man, red scarf trailing behind his black coat, jumping towards him as he yells with a child-like voice, “Brother!”

The Hunter immediately sticks his hand out to have the lad’s face meet his palm, stopping him in his tracks. “Kai, I hope you weren’t running like that throughout town,” the man asks. The younger man gasps as he steps back, rubbing his nose, and he took several panting breaths as he replies, “You really think I wasn’t careful on the way here? I just wanted to surprise you.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Also…” and Kai’s child-like voice became slightly deeper with a serious tone, “There’s been a murder.”

The Hunter’s dull look is replaced with keen eyes, and he asks, “A beast?”

“Yeah,” and Kai looks away for a moment, “but… it’s one of the worse ones.”

“Tell me on the way there,” and the man starts walking at a brisk pace from the direction Kai came from.

The young Hunter-in-training manages to keep up with the older man as he starts, “Earlier this morning a local fisherman reported signs of a break-in at one of the dwellings in the waterside district. Police went to investigate and found the body inside.”

“No one’s touched it yet, have they?”

“No one brave enough. So far it’s just been cordoned off. A couple other Hunters have already been sent to the scene.”

“Hmm, and you were sent out to get me?”

“Yeah,” and Kai slows down a bit as he yawns and comments, “they woke me up super early for that…”

“How long has it been since the initial report?”

“Oh I dunno… An hour?” and the man quickened his pace. “Hey!” Kai calls as he trots after him.

As the sky becomes a brighter blue, the distant bell rings clear to signal the morning hour. The two Hunters are met with the sun’s light winking across the horizon of the strait as they cross over to the waterside district. The outskirts of the city were never pleasant areas, the smell of raw fish prominent long before entering and adding to the deterrent. The district had a few dozen people lumbering around early in the morning, and several boats were already out in the faraway lake for another day’s work.

The constancy of the wooden ramshackle buildings was broken by the small crowd of bystanders around white ribbon marking off a small shack. The ridiculous top hats of the city police were sticking up like sore thumbs as they kept the civilians back. Both groups of people quiet down and part ways as the two Hunters step through. “Hunters?” the crowd starts to gossip, “Yeah, I saw one of them already go inside. It must be bad. So how long is this going to take?”

The man walks past them with a cold face, while Kai bows his head and half-mumbles, “Excuse us, thank you.”

“About time,” a deeper voice calls from inside the darkened shack, and a much taller Hunter squeezed himself through the doorway. “I was worried you might have fallen asleep on the way here.”

“Plenty of time to sleep when we’re dead, am I right?” the man jokes as he walks up and clasps hands with the larger Hunter.

“Hope the graveyard shift didn’t leave you too drained. Either way, this will perk you up.” The man takes a light sniff, sifting through the various scents of the district, and he comments, “That’s a lot of blood,” noting the tinge of iron in the air.

“So you can smell it too?” and they are motioned inside to reveal near frozen puddles of blood that have long since congealed on the floor and caked into the wood grain of the walls and ceiling.

“Well, someone had fun,” the man comments, and there was a gag from Kai.

“I thought you said you broke the kid in.”

“I did.  He has a short memory.”

“No, it’s fine,” Kai quickly replies, bringing his flat cap down over his face. “I… apologize.”

The man gives a sigh and turns to Kai. “You think you can ask around, see if anyone saw or heard anything?”

“On it!” and Kai ran off.

The two Hunters carefully make their way deeper into the shack, where a torn and bloodied corpse lay on the hard floor beside the blood soaked bed. “This is a fucking mess,” the man continues. “Everything’s been torn open, organs are all over the place, marrow’s been sucked dry, and the heart is missing.”

“I’ve done some looking around and,” the larger Hunter goes over to one side of the room, stepping over broken glass, and points up, bringing attention to the broken skylight in the ceiling. The man adds, “Seems he also had someone over,” and goes over to the upturned table with the two broken glasses and wine bottle in pieces on the floor.“You think it’s the culprit?”

“Hmm… well let’s start from the top; some beast broke in here, tore this poor bloke apart, then proceeded to have themselves a feast. I’m thinking ghoul, wendigo, or werewolf. They’re the only ones savage enough and sneaky enough to have done this in a populated area.”

“I suppose checking the latest moon cycles will narrow that down, along with looking for signs of their activity.”“Brother!” Kai calls from the doorway. “I’ve found some leads!”

The Hunters reconvene outside the shack, and Kai holds his notepad as he continues, “Let’s see here; a couple hours after midnight, several people claimed to have heard loud noises involving something breaking, others heard snarling and promptly locked themselves in their homes waiting for Hunters to take care of the issue. Oh, and this might be unrelated, but there was a strange person spotted in the district here.”

“Define strange,” the man asks.

“Well, witnesses say that there was a well-dressed woman in high heels and long blonde hair seen nearby the shack. It would have been a few hours before midnight.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to track her down,” the larger Hunter hums in thought, “A well-dressed woman. Are there any other details on her?”

“Not really.”

“Anyone see her leave?” the man asks.

“Mmm, no.”

“Alright, then for now let’s have the police take the body to a coroner; we need to know exactly how this guy died.”

The young lad fervently nods. “Then what do we do?”

“I’m getting some sleep,” the man states.

“Ehhh?!” Kai exclaims. “B-but, what about the woman?”

The man rubs his own head and asks, “Kai, do you know how many women are ‘well-dressed with long blonde hair’?”

“And heels,” he adds.

“That’s besides the point! If she’s involved, she’ll turn up again, no doubt about it.”

“Oh yeah, and how do you know that?”

“It happens often; call it luck.” The man gives a yawn and stretches as he finishes, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting back to headquarters for a drink and nap.”

It was another dreamless state of rest in the dark void; quiet, comforting, and-

“Brother!”

The man grumbles as he groggily opens his eyes, feeling them ache from exhaustion, and he draws his flat cap down. “What?”

“We have to take the cart out! Come on! Do you want Mom to get mad at us?” and the man’s heart jumps.

“What did you say?” the man starts as he sits up with his mind on full alert, and Kai repeats, “I said ‘do you know any doctors?’ Usual coroner isn’t available, so we gotta find another man to get the job done.”

“Oh,” and the man yawns and rubs his eyes, “What time is it?”

“A little after five.”

The man stands from his chair and comments, “Well damn. Guess we do have to get moving.”  He picks up a bottle from the table he sat at, holding it up to realize how empty it was as he continues, “So where’s the poor sod?”

“… Eh?” Kai sounds confused.

“The body?”

“Oh right! It’s in a cart, waiting out back. It’s still fairly cold, so it’s been holding together alright.”

“Fantastic, then let’s get going,” and the man claps Kai on the back, making the lad jolt. The two climb out from the underground stairs of the headquarters, out into a stable, and walk over to the cart sitting just off to the side. “Kai?” the man asks.

“Yeah?”

“Where’s the horse?”

“What horse?”

“You know, to pull the cart?”

“Eh? I thought we were pulling it?”

“Do you seriously want to wheel this thing around town while we’re looking for a doctor?” the man asks as he points to the cart with the wrapped corpse, already soaked red. “It could take hours!”

“Well how else do you think I brought it here?”

The man turns to Kai. “Wait what?”

“Yeah, so should we get going then?”

“Or, we find the doctor first, then we lug this thing over,” the man suggests.

“I’m going to be the only one pulling it along either way, aren’t I?” Kai argues. “I can bring it. Besides, maybe we’ll get lucky and find a doctor right down the street. You know, sort of like the luck that we’ll find our mystery lady.”

“Keeping an eye out for someone whose routine overlaps with the case, and looking for a specific person are two different things,” the more experienced Hunter retorts. “If you wanna be the beast of burden then go right ahead.”

“Just leave it to me!” Kai says as he gets in front of the car and grabs onto the bar handle. “I told you before, your younger brother will make sure everything is easier for you!”

They had made it several streets out from the police station, an hour into their search for a doctor, and Kai was left wheezing with the snowy slush in the streets parting as he continued to weakly push the cart along. “Huh, who would’ve thought that we’d end up going back and forth, up and down the streets?” the man comments.

“Oh shut up,” Kai breathes, white mist dancing. “I’m not even close to being done! Let’s keep going!”

The man sighs. It wasn’t even a matter of locating a doctor; it was finding a doctor that would be willing to work with them. The kinder ones would just say they weren’t interested, and the ones that gave out false hope would say that they were ‘too busy to help out’ or to ‘come back another time.’ No self-respecting doctor would want to be associated with Hunters, or risk coming into contact with anything exposed to a beast, lest they risk taking a step closer into that world of monsters.

So of course the two Hunters are eventually sent over to a doctor who spends their days secluded in their office with barely a reputation and hardly any patients. Kai sets the cart down in front of the townhouses and bends over panting as the man says, “I’ll go inside and see if I can talk with them. You wait out here in case it’s a dead end.”

Kai shakily lifts an arm to give a feeble thumbs-up.

The man walks in to see a young woman in a simple black dress and an apron, sweeping the floors; a maid? “Excuse me?” he calls. “Is there a Dr. Alex living around here?”

The woman nods and looks up, pointing to the next floor. The man walks up the sturdy rug-laid stairs, barely a creak, and he knocks on the first door to have an elderly woman in a gown and robe open the door. She squints as she looks up and greets, “Oh, hello sir,” her voice small.

The man takes off his cap and softly says, “Good evening ma’am, sorry to disturb you. I was wondering if the doctor was in?”

“Doctor?” her brow furrows. “Oh, you must be looking for Alex!” and she shuffles across the hallway to knock on a door. It soon opened and the old woman continued, “Alex dear, this man seems to be looking for you.”

“Apologies for disturbing your evening, sir…” the man trails off as he walks up to see her; well-dressed and blonde. But no heels. Wait, the old lady said ‘Alex’; Alex as in the ‘Dr. Alex’ he was looking for?

“I take it the matter is important if you’re interrupting me right before I head to bed,” the woman asks as she stands at her doorway.