The first thing Jack heard in the blue and white hallway was the music. Jack liked music, especially country and hip-hop(not together of course.) He wasn’t such a big pop fan though. But the music coming from the room at the end of the basement hallway was about as popish as pop songs come.

The singer was a male, presumably in his late teens or early twenties. His voice was nice enough, in a better time he would probably have been gainfully employed as a castrato. The lyrics of the song (the title of the horrid melody thankfully eluded Jack) contained such gems as

“I love you because I need you because I want you because I need you”, with each space between “you” and “because” filled in with a loud electronic crashing sound.

There were only two people Jack knew who liked blasting such idiotic dribble at such an inappropriate time and place , and one of them was supposed to be relatively far away. With little miss verbose hopefully fast asleep in a lonely parking lot, there was only two possibilities left. The first was that a Bensen Police Officer just didn’t care much for professionalism. Not necessarily a bad guess, cleaning up the vomit of self-entitled brats every night and giving tourists/over enthusiastic parents directions to mundane locations on campus every day would make Jack not give too much of a fuck about his job too.

But there was a flaw in this line of thinking, and that was assuming that Bensen would hire people who took the job for money and the need to consume food instead of boy scouts who frothed at the mouth when presented with a chance to work at such an amazing place like Bensen. No, the odds of any member of the Bensen Campus Police being obnoxious and blasting this abysmal music were probably close to nil.

The second possibility, well…. Hm. An internet article Jack had read the other day informed him that if one made a guess, and if one found out later that one was correct, one would be rewarded by a flood of endorphins to one’s brain.(The article also indirectly informed Jack to avoid using the word “one” more than one time in one sentence) Jack didn’t necessarily believe the article, but he was always open to experimentation. His right hand fidgeted in his left pants pocket for a bit, creating pressure on the inner seams of his khakis. Two minutes later he withdrew his right hand, apparently satisfied with his efforts.

He walked further down the white and blue hallway, towards the source of the music. He leaned against the locked door and waited. One Minute. Two Minutes. Three Minutes, Three Minutes and a half and… well, he couldn’t feel the endorphins rushing to his brain but they probably were doing some pre-sprint stretches. The door opened with a loud slam, the person who came out no stranger to the gray eyed man.

“Jackie, is that you?” the figure who came from the slammed door asked.

Jack ignored the nickname, and smiled. “Nah, I’m just a mischievous leprechaun who likes to send random texts to short little twenty six year old women. Specifically short women who poke like to poke dead bodies with a stick.”

Mia put her right sleeve over her hand and suppressed a chuckle. “Well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag. How’dya know?”

Jack winked with his right eye and threw his hands up in the air. “Detective’s intuition, I suppose.”

Mia shook her head. “Oh come now, haven’t you ever read any detective novels? That’s not a justification for your conclusion in the slightest.” A sly grin slowly spread on Mia’s face.

“Wait, I get it. Your heart was longing for me, and the unbreakable connection…” (And here the labcoat wearing lady tapped Jack on the shoulder with her index finger) “we share made you know I was here.”

Jack’s face went from its usual pale white to a tomato red in about five seconds flat. “Uh, um, no, that aint it. F-f-f-fine, fine, I knew you were here cause of the, the, uh the emptiness.”

Mia placed her pointed finger on Jack’s shoulder as well. “The emptiness… of your heart?”

Jack scratched his neck nervously. “No, ah, c’mon now stop teasing me. No, no, the emptiness on this here freshmen campus. Things only get like that during spring break, and considering there ain’t any news of kids getting their stomach pumped on the tv just yet I figured that some poor sap must have bit the bucket.”

Mia let out a throaty laugh. “It’s “kicked the bucket”, Jackie.”

“H-hey I told ya it’s Jack. Always will be.”, Jack protested.

Mia just smiled.

“Oh shush you, I know that. But you’re just so CUTE when you’re flustered hon.”

Jack straightened his tie and backed away, clumsily, from the short black haired woman. He loudly cleared his throat and straightened his tie for what was probably the fifth time in two hours. “Anyways, if the Fop knew he didn’t tell me. Mind giving me a quick 401 sesh? It’s been a bit of an… odyssey for me to get here, and I really don’t wanna talk to these Bensen jerks.”

Mia sucked on her left thumb for a few seconds, then nodded. “Sure thing, I mean you –were- gonna find out eventually. Also Jack, basic laws of spelling and grammar still apply when you text, you know…”

“You can critique my poor phone etiquette later, just tell me why you’re here.” Mia raised an eyebrow. “I live thirty minutes away, that’s why I’m here. Just like you and Travis are here because y’all are the closest idiots in suits around HQ could find. But as for who I’m doing work on, well, she’s an athlete. Or rather, was an athlete. Can’t really be much of an athlete now, y’know, with the whole “being a corpse” thing taking up most of her time. I’m trying to determine the circumstances behind her death right now.”

Jack scratched his head. “You don’t know that yet?”

Mia lightly slapped Jack’s hat. “Heck no! The girl died of bleeding from a severed femoral artery, the question is not who killed her, or what killed her, the question is –why-.”

“Nothing against you Mia, but that isn’t really your department. The Fop takes care of that stuff, along with me technically.”

“Yeah, your silver tongue and gentle disposition really just reaches out to people Jack, it must be a gift.”

Jack scratched his left ear with his right hand for a few seconds. “I did say “technically Mia, lay off willya? But anyways, what’s the big puzzle? Some nut stabbed a poor girl, she died, end of story right?”

Mia shook her head. “It ain’t as simple as that. The girl who did it… and she DID do it mind you, had no motive for the crime. She’s also been babbling inanely for the past twelve hours.”

Jack starred into space for a few seconds. “A nut not making a whole bunch of sense isn’t something too unheard of, little lady.”

“You think I don’t know that?" Mia asked, grimacing. " But they usually have a justification for it. Hormonal or chemical imbalance, use, voluntary or not, of a psychosis-inducing drug, the government trying to get them… y’know, something like that … but this girl had nothing of the sort. I know, I’ve done the tests. Only thing out of wack with this co-ed killer was the occasional night terror and panic attack.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Mia leaned against the wall and let out a weighty breath. “None of which explains the murder, unless we're assuming some fight or flight psychosis."

Jack shook his head. "Where's the fop?", he asked.

Mia snorted. “You mean your partner, Travis Davis?”

“Yeah, the Fop. He’s talking with Miss Stabby right now, I’d figure.”

The short lady rolled her eyes. “I’m all for gallows humor Jack, but that was bad even by my tastes.”

“Ah hell, you’ve said much worse things yourself. You gonna lead me to where Twiggy McHipsterglasses is or not?”, Jack asked, impatient.

“I was just about to go see him myself, actually." Mia said. "Here, you hold on to this.” The labcoat lady tossed something at Jack. Instinctively he tried to catch it, managing to secure the object after a bit of fumbling with left hand and well-needed assistance from his right.

Mia clicked her tongue. “It’s a good thing you never tried to be on the cheerleader squad in high school, Jack. You’d end up killing half the squad whenever someone tossed you the baton.”

Jack grinned. “What’s a “high school”?” His question was rewarded with another smack to his head, one that actually sort of hurt.

“Oh shut up. Your sarcasm makes you as much of a hipster as Travis is. Let’s get a move on.”

Mia headed back into the room she had come out of. The room, which the sign on the door claimed was a kitchen, looked like nothing of the sort. Mia or some other person with OCD had covered the walls and floor of the small room with plastic sheets and filled the space in the food storage room with copious amounts of medical equipment. Jack had seen the metal table in the middle of the room several times before, heck he’d even been on it once himself.

The metal table was simple looking enough, it looked like an examination table one might see at any old hospital, but it had one distinctive feature in the form of a pink heart with capital letters M, I, and A inscribed in the middle. The table was not unoccupied. There was a still figure underneath some sterile plastic sheets resting on top of the table… Jack didn’t really need to guess who it was. Mia jogged over to and opened the door at the opposite side of the kitchen turned laboratory.

“Hurry up Jackie, Travis will be done questioning her soon.” Jack shook his head and followed Mia out of the kitchen. The door led to a staircase, the staircase to the main lobby, the main lobby to a marble staircase, the marble staircase to a second floor. Jack followed Mia past a rather posh looking lobby at the main entrance of the second floor, down a hall to the left. The hall was filled with about twenty doors spread on either side of the lonely corridor. On each door they past was printed two words.

From the pairings “Jessica and Isabella” on the first door to the right and “Kyrie and Akane” on the first door to the left Jack deduced that he was in an all-female hall. Jack wasn’t totally into segregation of halls by the sexes, but he recognized the biological necessity behind that drove the concept. He never used public restrooms himself, yet could understand that those who did wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about the prospects of sharing such an intimate room with a member of the opposite sex, even with the infamous “lid up or lid down” debate aside.

With that understanding, extending the concept to rooms and halls where students would sleep (allegedly) wasn’t too ridiculous. Jack and Mia strolled down the hallway. They passed the bathroom, which had a bit of light trickling out from the crack of the door. Jack didn’t pay the excess light much attention, the folks at Bensen wasting electricity wasn’t exactly a difficult concept for him to grasp. They were the type of folk to pay five hundred thousand dollars for revolutionary new green toilets only to sabotage their own efforts by providing the students with as much toilet paper as possible. It was all a show.

The appearance of being green was probably more important to those in charge of the building than the specifics of actually being green. Not that Jack cared about the environment; he drove a jeep and barbequed every other day. It was just the mechanical oppression of the place. The University to Jack was like a theme park, at first glance lively and phenomenal but empty and mechanical upon further reflection. After passing the bathroom, another set of doors came into view, once again covered with pairs of co-ed names. A thump came from one of the rooms at the end of the hallway. Jack noticed Mia’s amber eyes open in alarm, and without saying a word to her sprinted down the corridor as fast as his five foot eight frame could take him.

The wooden door had the names “Danielle” and “Emily” on it. It sounded like someone was hammering a piece of wood to the door or something. But wood doesn’t tend to grunt out in pain after being hit for the third time, nor does it make a wheezing sound, unless the person doing the hammering has latent tree whisperer powers. Jack pulled on the door in vain, it was locked. The knocking noise that probably wasn’t knocking continued, along with the groans and grunts. Jack pummeled the handle of the door with his right fist, doing very little besides causing a few nicks and scratches to form on his glove.

With his punching method rendered ineffective, Jack tried kicking the door open with his nice shiny black shoes. Mia had caught up to Jack now, panting a bit but still managing to keep her cool.

“Hey, that’s not gonna work. You stay here and I’ll go fetch the security guard, he has a key.”

With that, Mia ran off in the opposite direction. The kicks had made the door budge a bit, causing the entry way to tilt towards Jack ever so slightly. But the hammering noise continued, and the grunts did as well, but they were getting softer and softer. Jack covered his left hand with his right hand, pressing his left hand into a fist. He firmly shut his gray eyes. He observed the door; there was a small indent on the middle of the door that he had made with an earlier kick. Jack pulled his left fist back, as far as it could possibly go. He counted in his head. One. The muscles on his bicep swelled. Two. His left shoulder twitched. And on the third number his left hand rushed forth, making a loud impact with the door. The door didn’t seem to take much damage, not even a scratch was visible on the spot where he had made contact with the painted wood.

At first. The moment Jack moved his left hand back the door fell back. A somewhat loud crashing sound was made as a large person collapsed on the floor seconds after the door did. It was Tra- … the Fop, whose head had apparently made less than desirable contact with the floor the moment Jack knocked the white wooden door off of its hinges. In the room beyond the face down fop and the fallen door was a teenaged ebony skinned girl, holding a pair of scissors whose blades probably shouldn’t have been red. Jack starred at her for a moment, before she screamed and rushed at him.

Without really thinking about the future consequences, Jack quickly hit her in the stomach with his left fist. With a surprised yelp she collapsed face down on the tiled floor. She seemed motionless at first, sprawled out on the ground with her arms stretched out and legs pressed tightly together. Jack gingerly shook his left hand up and down in the air. The two punches had been more of strain on his arm than he had expected. Of a more pressing concern was the twig. Jack took a closer look at the tall body. The battered man seemed to be breathing, but his clothes were torn up and his arms and face were covered with welts and red marks respectively. His suit pants had rips in them, and were damp. Not with urine(at least Jack hope), but very much so with blood.

The cuts on his pants were numerous but not too deep or bloody. Using more than a bit of effort, Jack flipped over the twig’s body. The back of the Fop’s body seemed fine, minus a bit of frizzled blonde hair where the back of his head had made contact with the door. The twig was probably pinned against the door during the entire unseen altercation, then. With his “partner” seemingly ok, Jack turned his attention back to the co-ed he had just pummeled. She was no longer motionless, her back moving up and down slightly. Jack’s ears twitched, he heard running heading towards the dorm room. Jack stepped over the door and the twig’s body and walked out into the hallway. He saw Mia dashing down the hall towards him, hands full of medical supplies and mouth biting onto a key.

Her face was about as flustered as Jack had ever seen it. “Mmmgh – mmhmn mnng”, she said frantically.

Jack raised an eyebrow. Mia spit out the key and caught her breath. “Is, uh, is everyone ok?

” “See for yourself.”

Mia looked first at the man reclining partially on the fallen door. “Oh god, it’s Travis! Ugh, he took one heck of a beating, we’re going to have to move him for some first aid if he doesn’t get up by himself soon.”

She gently dabbed the fop’s face and cuts with what seemed to be a wet lemon scented handkerchief. As she digged into her bag, probably to get more supplies for the unconscious idiot, she caught a glance of the face down freshman.

Mia looked incredulously at Jack. “How did you know that cylinder I gave you was a sedative?” Jack put his left hand behind his back and tried his best to avoid making contact with Mia’s face.

“Uh, detective’s intuition, I suppose.”