Tutor Writing Challenge! [October]

The scene was almost romantic, bathed in yellow light with dandelion seeds drifting through the wind. If not for the body impaled on a stag’s head in the center of the clearing, Roger would have been inclined to break away and frolic.

The woman’s legs were draped over the front of the creature’s skull, and the new blood from her wounds mingled with the crimson spots that were already caked around its nose and eyes. A crow hopped along the length of the torso, underbelly glittering crimson, and its beak was seconds from dipping into an open laceration before one of the investigators shooed it away.

Roger tentatively crept towards the display, hands shaking and mind replaying Crawford’s words. Eight girls, abducted from eight different locations, and here was unlucky number nine. Cassie Boyle, alive one moment and dead the next.

”What do you see, Fladgate?” someone asked behind him, and Roger wanted to list all the things that he couldn’t unsee. Elise Nichols being returned to her bed while the FBI had been searching for her, the feathered creature with antlers that lurked beyond the mist of his window at night, the horrid, red-soaked dreams that recurred each time he closed his eyes.

Most of all, Roger saw a life where he wasn’t tiptoeing around crime scenes, and that was a life he didn’t have anymore.

---

It was all very grand, the way they brought him up to Quantico to teach at the academy. They wooed him with promises of a decent salary, lodging and benefits, better than anything you would’ve gotten down south at Iris Gate. Roger wasn’t particularly enamored with the idea of leaving his school, or any of the kids, and he told them as such. He’d spent years moving from place to place as a child, and frankly, uprooting his life once more was the last thing he wanted when he finally felt like the earth had stopped trembling beneath him.

But they’d seen the glint in his eye when they passed through the library and they didn’t allow him to hide under the covers like a child reading books at night - no, they persuaded him. Said he could teach all about the history of his home right here, while he was teaching the stories of the present day, of disappearances and deaths and how criminal histories repeated themselves. The students at Quantico would be just as bright as the students as Iris Gate, they said, and he doubted it, but he took the job on one condition - he didn’t want to live in the city. He picked a farmhouse out in the woods of Wolf Trap, Virginia, where he’d at least be able to make things feel more like home.

Going from a small classroom to a lecture hall wasn’t pleasant - he never utilized the space nearly as much as other professors, and the thought of students staring down at him like owls in the wings spooked him. At Iris Gate, he’d been sure to make eye contact with each of his students at least once, even if they avoided him. Here, Roger avoided them, even as they vied for his attention.

If there was one thing historians were good at, it was interpretation, and Roger was glad that he was at least able to put his skills to use talking about criminal justice. Talking about motive required knowledge of people and of power, and he had both. Imagination helped too, and in some moments he’d find himself walking in the killer’s shoes, the soft yellow lights of the lecture hall being the only thing separating fantasy from reality, swinging before his eyes like a pendulum. He’d play up the theatrics, watching each of the rows turn bug-eyed as they absorbed the information. They loved it, and Roger could say that he loved teaching it, even though it was nothing like teaching the history of the south.

Once, a student approached him at the end of class, clutching his notes to his chest with wide eyes.

”Have you ever considered being an investigator? You’re always so good at this,” the young man said, and Roger wondered if he was being buttered up. Regardless, he offered a contrite smile.

”I’m afraid I’m not stable enough for that kind of work,” Roger said, sliding his papers into his messenger bag. The student regarded him with questioning eyes before joining the crowd of trainees behind him, a sea of quizzical heads drifting out into the hall.

He got used to living in Wolf Trap. He adopted a dog. And then another. And some more. He wrote letters to his students back at Iris Gate. He adapted.

And then there was a string of murders in Minnesota, and the tectonic plates began to stir again. The faultline had been one Jack Crawford.

”I’m used to seeing people exit the room when class is dismissed, not enter it,” Roger said as the older man entered, a hardy blur in Roger’s peripheral vision.

”One thing you learn with the FBI is to be prepared for surprises,” Crawford answered, extending his hand in greeting. ”Agent Jack Crawford. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fladgate.”

Roger glanced up from his messenger bag, slowly accepting the handshake. ”What have I done to earn this surprise, Agent Crawford?” he asked.

Crawford quirked an eyebrow, and he leaned in conspiratorially. ”Can I borrow your imagination?”

---

Borrow was truly a weak word for what Roger had found himself walking into. He’d been out of his element before, flailing along until he got ahold of what an FBI instructor was supposed to be like, and now he was out of it again, being used in ways he couldn’t have imagined in his past life.

But if Roger knew one thing, it was that the Minnesota Shrike had not killed Cassie Boyle. Most of the disappeared girls were never to be seen again, and even in Elise’s case she had only been seen by her family and investigators. Cassie was meant to be a spectacle, and it unsettled him.

Roger hovered around the edge of the examination room, eyes burning from the fluorescent lighting and bright white floors. A few feet away, the forensic team murmured over Cassie’s still form, trying to make sense of the evidence that had been served up on a nature-made platter. What did they know? Elise’s liver had been cut out and reinserted in her body cavity, and the only logical explanation was that the Shrike had wanted it but it had been no good. There was shrapnel and tissue in her wounds, almost as if something had cut straight through her - and as they had seen with Cassie, it had likely been antlers. And then they had the same information they’d started with - brown hair, pale skin, similar heights - identical in description and in obscurity.

”Fladgate.” The voice was sharp, yet not threatening. Beverly, one who taunted Roger yet regarded him with respect. ”What’s your take?”

He cautiously sidled forward and began to speak.

---

Within hours, they’d traced the shrapnel to a construction site in Bloomington, Minnesota. Nothing had been particularly out of the ordinary there, except one of the workers had recently resigned, leaving no address behind. Garrett Jacob Hobbs - reportedly a nice guy, no criminal record, no disciplinary issues. As far as Crawford was concerned, they’d found the Shrike.

”I want you to head down there, see what’s up,” the man had said, hands folded atop his desk. Roger’s eyes went wide, and he remembered what he’d said to the trainee that day. I’m not stable enough for that kind of work.

”Why me?” he asked.

”You’ve been on this case for days. Made important connections. Now we need you to scope out the scene.”

Roger wanted to protest, tell them to find a new guy, but soon he found himself on a three hour flight to Minnesota, hands gripping the armrests of his seat as the ground disappeared beneath him, familiar territory slipping away once again. Jack had called a car for him and the agent he was traveling with, and it was idling on the curb when they exited the airport into the cool midwestern air.

The ride was about twenty minutes, but it felt like a thousand years as golden brown trees whizzed by the window. Roger’s heart beat slowly but firmly within his chest, all the hairs on his body standing up as they crept closer to their destination. Bloomington police were on standby, Crawford had said. Roger wondered why they couldn’t just swoop in themselves.

The GPS was almost entirely too chipper for the circumstances. Arriving at location on left, it chirped. The car vibrated as it crawled to a stop, maple leaves drifting across the windshield.

”Which one do you think it is?” the other agent asked. Roger glanced out of the window at the idyllic houses, each of them unassuming. Suddenly, the door to one of the houses swung open, and a human form crumpled onto the porch. Roger did not need to see the face of the person who slammed the door to know that it was the killer.

He frantically pulled at the door handle, fumbling with the lock with his other hand. He reached under the seat to find the handgun Jack had given to him, the grip rough and unfamiliar against his palm. Sliding it into the holster, Roger launched himself out of the car and shut the door behind him, hurrying toward the front of the house.

As he neared, he could see that it was a blonde woman laying on the cement, blood spilling from an incision on her neck. Her eyes were glassy as she reached for him, palms coated in red. Roger instinctively grabbed onto her hand, a jolt shooting through his body as he felt her stiff, cold fingers curling around his own.

A panicked cry sounded through the door, and Roger reluctantly pried himself from the woman’s grasp. ”I’m sorry,” he blurted out before rushing into the foyer, fingers slippery as they found the handle of the gun. He released it from the holster, hands trembling as he pointed it into empty space.

”Garrett Jacob Hobbs?” Roger shouted. ”FBI!”

The cries continued, and Roger stumbled through a doorway into the kitchen, where a man pressed a blade to a young woman’s neck. Brown hair. Similar height. Frightened eyes. Alive, but on the verge of death.

Hobbs dragged the knife across the girl’s throat, blood spilling onto the collar of her sweater. Roger aimed for the man’s shoulder and pulled the trigger with a bang, his shoulders rocking backwards from the impact. Hobbs’ arm flew back, and he let out a guttural shout. His body pitched forward and Roger fired again, and again, and again. Droplets clung to Roger’s face as the bullets ripped through Hobbs’ torso, a red spray coating the counter behind him. He wasn’t sure how many times he had pulled the trigger before the man finally collapsed, head colliding with the edge of the cabinet. It was then that the girl gasped out from the floor, and Roger remembered that she was bleeding out.

His handgun clattered to the floor as he knelt at the girl’s side, desperately pressing his hand against the gash on her throat. Blood seeped between his fingers, and no matter how hard he squeezed the river kept flowing.

”Come on, come on,” he muttered under his breath. ”Just hang in there.”

In that moment, the other agent burst into the kitchen, first responders in tow. Someone eventually shooed Roger away from the girl and he fell back against the kitchen table, heart rushing in his ears.

At some point, he found himself outdoors again, staring at the EMTs as they lifted the girl into the back of an ambulance. Only then did he remember who she was.

Hobbs has a daughter, Abigail.

---

Hair dripping and t-shirt clinging to the spots on his body he hadn’t dried thoroughly, Roger still felt unclean. He wandered into the kitchen and began to flip through the mail he had left on his counter a few days prior. A small green envelope peeked out from the mountain of bills, and he tugged it free to reveal familiar curlicue handwriting. It was from Samara back at Iris Gate.

He peeled open the envelope, unfurling the lined paper that was inside.

Hi, Professor Fladgate.

I hope everything’s going alright up in Maryland. Bet it’s a lot more fun than Georgia. School’s not the same without you, though. I miss having a teacher around who cares.

Roger’s chest tightened as he read the words over and over again. Samara, like many of his students, had been alone and in need of support, and he’d tried to be there for her. And now he was miles away, and her needing hadn’t stopped. Quantico trainees may have been just as smart as Iris Gate students, but many of them had had a world of opportunities that his kids hadn’t had. HR could act like they needed him until the end of time, but they really didn’t. Iris Gate did.

But deep down, Roger knew he couldn’t turn back now. Especially not now that Abigail Hobbs was in a coma and both her parents would soon be in the ground, one of which was Roger’s own doing.

He gripped Samara’s letter tightly before slapping his hands on the counter, pressing his forehead to the cool marble. He hadn’t been the one to put the knife to Abigail’s jugular, but he felt like he had been, could feel the pull of his muscles as steel tore against flesh. He had destroyed her life.

Roger’s knees trembled beneath him as he hunched over the counter, tears biting at the corners of his eyes. Abigail was in need, and there was no one around to help her.

He remained where he was for a long while, turning over the week’s events in his mind. Eventually, he straightened up, wiping at his red-rimmed eyes. He couldn’t break down, not now. Abigail was in need, and he would have to be there for her. The only thing that would keep him from being at her bedside would be if she told him to get lost.

One of his co-teachers back at Iris Gate had remarked that he was easily attached to his students, that he was prone to picking up strays. Roger had answered that they weren’t strays if they were his.

---

Crawford was staring solemnly at his billboard when Roger entered, tapping lightly on the door. No response came, so Roger carefully entered the room to stand beside the older man, a cautious breath creeping through his nose.

Eventually, Jack broke the silence.

”Someone told Garrett Jacob Hobbs that you were coming,” he said, arms folded across his chest.

Roger looked over in surprise. ”What?”

”An unknown caller contacted the Hobbs residence shortly before your arrival,” Crawford said, turning to walk back to his desk.

He offered Roger the flask, and Roger shook his head. Crawford shrugged, said suit yourself, and poured the liquor into his mouth.

”You afraid of the dark, Fladgate?” Crawford took another swig from his flask, eyes trained somewhere in the distance. ”’Cause you’re gonna be staring right into it for a long, long time.”

Roger blinked as he absorbed the words. He envisioned himself standing in the front of his lecture hall again, the light of his projector cutting through the shadows of the room, hundreds of faces watching as he inevitably told the story of Garrett Jacob Hobbs, the Minnesota Shrike, and his daughter Abigail who he had killed for. Abigail, who Roger had killed for.

Without speaking, he stuck his hand out, feeling the flask slide into his palm, warm from the other man’s grasp. He put it to his mouth and gulped.