Peter could be pretty jealous at times. It wasn’t a resentment that he felt, but a longing. When a happy young couple said hello to him in the morning he’d smile and wave back, yet at the same time feel a tinge of regret and remorse for never getting to have a serious relationship. Peter figured it was the price he had to pay for ignoring his biological imperative. However, he felt like he could be excused for that line of thinking. Humans are social creatures, and sexual ones at that, so it’s only natural to feel uncomfortable around happy couples. So Peter felt that his jealously in that regard was justifiable. There were some things that he just wished he could have out of greed, though. Youth was one, hair was another, but those two things only became a concern as he grew old. Those two desires were as much jealously as they were a form of persisting nostalgia, really. He had one sinful desire, something he wished for the majority of his life. And that was to be tall. Peter felt tallness was like playing life with a sizeable (if you would forgive the pun) handicap.
People looked up to you (lo siento), they hardly ever talked down to you (gomensai), and you could really reach new heights (sega) . Now, Peter was of average height for a man, five feet and ten inches. It was useful enough, because being of average height he was taller than most women, who typically average out at five feet and four inches, give or take an inch. It meant he could assist most people who needed assistance. Yet, he still envied those behemoths who stood at six feet or higher. Twas simply a personal desire that Peter would never get to fulfill. So it was of no surprise that Peter took almost an instinctive dislike of the blonde haired twig sharing the women’s restroom with him.
A mere glance at the blue eyed young-un confirmed some of Peter’s less charitable views on “government men.” The boyish man before him was dressed in a neat black suit with a neat blue tie and wore neat little glasses on his neat little head. Peter barely got up from his folding chair when the twig started to barrade him with questions.
“You Officer Garret? What happened here? And why didn’t you call me?”
Peter sighed and rubbed his left knee.
“Easy boy. Yes, I’m Officer Garret. As for why I called for your group’s assistance, well, that’s a bit of a longer story.”
The taller man adjusted his glasses and glared at Peter.
“I drove two and a half hours to get here, so trust me when I say a lengthy story won’t be a major concern for me.”
Peter continued to rub his knee. “Alright, Agent Travis… Davis is it? Well, to put it bluntly, someone died last night.”
Travis flinched for a second, and then regained his composure.
“Oh wow, and you thought it would be a fantastic idea to leave out that little detail till now, right?”
The blonde man was agitated. Truth be told, he seemed to have an antagonistic aura about him even before he entered the room.
Peter coughed. “I can explain my reasons for that.”
Travis sighed. “Fine, I’m all ears. While you’re at it, mind explaining why the heck we’re in the ladies restroom?”
Peter began pacing the bathroom’s tile floor, limping slightly as he did.
“Alright, I’ll make it short for you. Last night I was on patrol. The power went out, so I had to go into the residence halls to make sure everyone was ok.”
The tall blonde chewed on his left pinky.
“Is that power outage related to why most of the doors here are wide open?”
Peter nodded. “Yeah, we use an electronic lock system. Most kids are out of the dorms around my patrol, but there’s always a few who end up locked in.” The agent’s eyes light up.
“Oh, I get it. Some poor student got locked in an tightly packed area without access to an inhaler or something and died, right?”
Peter’s brown eyes rolled back. “If that were the case, you wouldn’t be here. No, I’m afraid what happened was not quite an accident, although I can’t say for sure that it wasn’t an accident either.”
Davis looked puzzled. “Might I see the, er, body?”
Peter shook his head. “Nah, a nice young lady from another branch of yours is looking at it right now. Autospies are not exactly our thing. We’re the local police force, but we lack the resources to perform any real fancy stuff. Besides, the coroner lives very close to the school anyways, so we found it prudent to accept her aid.“
The blonde man nodded his head., apparently taking Peter’s statement at face value.
“Yeah, you guys sure are lacking for money here at Bensen. How nice of the government to provide y’all with some aid.”
Peter continued, undeterred by the twig’s barbs. “Well, anyways, you wanna see the body you talk to that black haired lady later. As I was saying, it was not quite an accident. I checked the basement for students, there were none. Went up here, and I discovered two girls. At first I though they had too much to drink, they were both outside the bathroom and lying down on the floor…”
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“Freshmen will be freshmen”
“-but then I noticed something that didn’t smell like alcohol. And when I got close enough, I saw that the girls weren’t lying in just a pool of regurgitated fried chicken. The one to the right, she was fine. Fine in the sense that she wasn’t injured.”
The Agent played around with his glasses. “Oh really? Tell me more about this “uninjured” girl.”
“Well, she was crying, shaking, as anyone would be in her situation. I wasn’t of sound mind myself.” Travis glared at Peter again, with his icy blue eyes.
“Yet you seemed to imply there was something wrong with her…” Peter scratched at his collarbone for a second.
“Well, she started yammering about a man being right behind me who was apparently preoccupied with stabbing me. At the time I thought it was hysteria, but…”
The twig held up his hand and cut Peter off. “We’ll get back to that later. Tell me about the other girl.”
Peter sighed. “As I’m sure you’ve figured out by this point, the girl lying on the ground, she.. she wasn’t really doing so well.”
“How so?” Agent Travis Davis asked.
“The first thing I noticed was the large volume of blood. It was coming from the girl’s mouth, you see. But it wasn’t quite blood, I figured a bit of it was mucus, and from the smell vomit as well.”
The agent adjusted his glasses yet again. “Was she injured in the stomach anywhere?”
Peter shook his head. “Nope. I thought the same thing at the time, but the only wounds on her were on her thighs.”
“What type of wounds?”
“Lacerations. Cuts on her thighs.”, Peter answered. He quietly left the part about the victim's eyes being cut out, figuring that Agent Dipshit would be informed of that by the autospy.
“Well, what the hell did they look like?”
“You’ll get the chance to see that later on when you talk to the young lady performing the autopsy. But… the wounds were caused by scissors.”
The man closer to the door raised his boyish voice. “Oh?” And just how do you know that?”
“Because a pair of them were sticking out of her thighs.”
“And you didn’t remove them? Or at least try to stop the bleeding?”
Peter clasped his hands and met the tall man’s focused blue eyes with his mildly watery brown ones. “Well first off, you never just pluck out intruding blades of any sort. Doubly so when they are stuck in as deep as these scissors were. Second off, I checked her pulse, she wasn’t breathing. Third off, I did compress the wounds using a cloth and called for the campus EMT. They pronounced her dead when they arrived on the scene. I’m old, Agent Davis…”
Peter tightened his face and scowled “…but I’m not stupid.”
The tall blonde twig in a suit took out a lighter and a cigarette. “Mind if I?”
Peter raised an eyebrow. He’d lived in the south all of his life, and he never really could get smoking. Well, smoking of tobacco, that is. Drinking and cannabis, he understood that. But tobacco seemed pointless, because it had all, if not more, of the health risk of alcohol and weed without any of the, er, “benefits.” Also, and this was Peter’s biggest issue with smoking, most people who did it did it to look cool. It was sort of like a person who insists on wearing an awful looking hat to stand out, but a hundred times worse.
“Of course I mind. Besides, the alarm will go off you dol-”
Agent Davis flicked the lighter, and took a drag on his cancer stick. “Funny Officer Garret, ain’t no alarm going off now.”
Peter scratched his gray hair. “Just how the heck did you know that alarm wouldn’t go off, son? Did you tamper with the electronics before you got here just so you could get your nicotine fix?”
The smoking man shook his head slowly. “Nah, I wish that were the case. Just wondering Officer Garret, these EMTs, did they show up in an ambulance, golf cart, something like that?”
Peter shook his head. “Actually, no. They’re about fifteen minutes out, which usually means they’d drive over here someway. They just came in through the back door. All the better I suppose, it prevented them from making a scene.”
“Perhaps, but their tendency towards subtlety may have also prevented that girl’s survival.”
“I don’t follow you. Anyways, the time didn’t matter, the EMTs said the girl was long dead. A few minutes wouldn’t have mattered” Agent Davis took another long puff on his mint filtered tobacco roll. “Well, tell me what you know about the girl. The dead one, first.”
Peter raised his eye brow. A girl had died, and the smug jerk was regarding her as he’d regard the weather. “I didn’t know much about her. Didn’t even know her name really. Apparently she did track or something.”
Agent Travis Davis nodded his head slowly. “Alright, tell me about the girl with the hysteria. What was she going on about?”
Peter chewed on his cheek, and then cleared his throat. “Well as I said, she was yammering about a man who was stabbing me. Said he had stabbed the girl on the ground. At first I was spooked out of my mind, but then I realized she was just seeing things. Found out later that those scissors on the floor, they belonged to her.”
The blonde man took one last drag out of his breath defreshener and crushed it underneath his shiny black shoes. “I take it she’s in custody right now?”
Peter half-smiled. “Sort of. We don’t want to make a big scene, not just yet, so she’s locked in her dorm room with another officer. She’s been asleep for a few hours. Neither he nor I have been able to get anything sensible out of her.”
Travis smirked.
“Which, I figure, is why I’m here with my sunflower of a partner. Alright, well, I’m going to go talk to that girl.” Peter frowned. Even without either of them outright saying it, the truth of the previous evening was fairly evident. A bout of insanity had ended not one innocent life, but two. As Peter watched the tall, mildly smug man exit the room, he prayed to any deity out there that things wouldn’t get anymore tough for the poor girl unconscious a few doors down.
“Wait, Agent Davis… before you go…”
The blonde man looked at Peter with a somewhat puzzled face. “throw out that goddamn cigarette.” Agent Davis blushed, scooped up the crushed debris, mumbled an insincere farewell and went on his way. Peter wondered if Agent Davis was an actor, because he played the role of the “Pretentious Federal Agent” very well. Still, the man was craftier than he seemed. His smoking, Peter figured, wasn’t done out of a need for a nicotine fix.
Peter opened his old mouth and let out a good old yawn. There was more work to be done, and hell to be paid once the little incident got out. He and his force had done a good job of keeping things under wrap, but that was mostly due to the “serendipity” (if one could even call what happened the night before serendipitous) of the power failing. The only people who knew anything about the death of the athlete were select elements of Peter’s police force, the EMTs, and these federal know it alls. Still, Peter had a feeling soon everyone on campus would learn of the gouged out eye murder.