Contractbound - Chapter 17 Another Day Another Case

It was Monday; eight in the morning. Graham Hymes was sitting alone in his usual spot at Don’s Pancake House. The small diner was showered in the morning sunlight, lightening up the mood. The homey feeling that the family-owned diner had was reinforced by the smiley faces of its patrons who were enjoying their food while chatting and laughing. It was noisy, but a kind of noise that made someone want to stay longer.

Graham was enjoying his breakfast of buttered toast with hagelslag and a cup of hot chocolate. He bit into his warm toast and let the melted chocolate sprinkles and butter touched his palate, and down to his taste buds. The sweet chocolate and the slightly salty butter created a delectable harmony inside his mouth. It was a flavor that he was very used to; one that he really liked.

After enjoying his little moment of pleasure, Graham came back to his serious mood. He had come to fill his empty stomach. Earlier in the morning, he found Valentine’s handwritten note about the nightmare he had had last night, and the way to appease his deity. Graham was slightly surprised by how similar their requirements were.

“Val, I believe in coincidence, but this is such a convenient coincidence. Do you think there is more to it?” he said in a low voice while chewing. He occasionally dipped his toast in his hot chocolate, doing it carefully to avoid dropping any sprinkles.

He was taking his time as he was in no hurry. Right after waking up, Graham had divined what would happen today and his fire scrying ritual had shown him the diner. He was not sure what would or when it would happen, so he might as well stay around and wait.

Graham sat in silence and was lost in thought. He didn’t even realize Mirjam had come over to his table. When she took a seat, he was mildly startled and when he saw it was the freckled woman, he smiled at her warmly. He somewhat enjoyed her company and wouldn’t mind one now.

Mirjam looked at Graham in a friendly manner and spoke to him.

“What are you thinking about, Graham?” her voice was warm and soft, without any hoarseness in it.

“Just some case. It’s not really important.” he brushed aside the topic. It was not really something he could discuss with a normal person.

“Are you sure it’s not about some girl?” she started teasing him. It was done in a friendly way, with no hint of malice in her tone.

“No, it’s not. Why do you care? Are you jealous?” replied Graham. He had made a promise with himself that he would not play by her rules. He must be the one controlling the flow of the conversation.

“Yes, I am very jealous actually. When are you going to ask me out?”

Her answer was in no way serious, and Graham knew that, but her brutally upfront response made Graham blush. Mirjam was smiling the whole time; her eyes reflected her mischievousness.

“Why are you even here? You have other customers to serve.” Graham changed the topic. He had admitted defeat by not responding directly to her good-natured chaff.

Mirjam was looking at Graham for a while as if analyzing what the detective might be thinking. She then smiled cordially left his table. She walked triumphantly back to the counter, sunbeams shining through the windows lit up her path. She was ready to serve other customers.

Graham was back to sitting alone in silence. He somewhat regretted it, but he didn’t mind it. He was very used to being alone, with Valentine as his only company.

Graham was watching the people walking about outside the diner from his spot. The street was busy because it was Monday. Most of the people walked fast, trying to reach their destinations as quickly as possible. Not a lot of individuals were out there to enjoy the beautiful, sunshiny morning.

The sound of people chattering was suddenly broken by a scream.

“Help! Someone is dead! Help!”

It was a man in a suit and an untucked shirt underneath. He was running frantically towards where people gathered, trying to get as much attention as he could. The busy diner was not spared from his effort.

The man ran into the diner and at the doorway, he screamed once again.

“Someone’s dead!”

He looked to be an ordinary office worker, but all the screaming and running had quickly deteriorated his appearance. His face was panic-stricken, as if he had seen a ghost. His body was not sweating that much, meaning he hadn’t run that far, but he was still panting for air. His office life must have been mostly sedentary with little to no exercise.

His distressed cry had garnered the attention of both people in the street and the customers at the diner. They failed to react to the man’s dramatic action, seeing that nobody else did. They were just watching, waiting for someone to take an action first before deciding what they would do themselves.

Graham saw his eyes and he could judge right away that the man wasn’t just screaming for attention for the sake of it. He stood out and spoke to the distressed office worker.

“You need to calm down because you’re causing a scene,” he spoke with a calm voice. Graham’s eyes were glowing red under his contact lenses; his voice carried a sense of spiritual dominance.

The man did as Graham told. He took a breath and tried his best to calm down. He seemed to be a very ordinary person with an ordinary life. Something extraordinary like what he had seen was enough to cause his world to turn upside down. Once he had calmed down, Graham spoke to him again.

“I’m a detective. Tell me what you saw,” he spoke assertively.

“There is a dead body near the dumpster! I was just going to throw away my coffee cup before going to work and it was there!” the man said with a loud voice to make sure everyone could hear him. He kept pointing somewhere.

“Please take me there,” he requested to the man and then turned back, “Someone please call the Police.”

The man led Graham and a bunch of other curious bystanders to the dumpster where he had found the dead body. It was in an alley; a different one from where Valentine had planted his blood-covered pen. From the diner, it only took them around five minutes of walking to reach the dumpster.

The horrid smell of urine and feces struck everyone’s nose. Only a handful few were able to keep it together and approached the scene. They were curiously trying to find out what happened, to satisfy their desire to be in the know. Graham sternly instructed everyone not to get too close and not to touch anything around the body. He needed to preserve the scene until the Police came.

He observed the dumpster from a distance with his strengthened vision. There was a body of a man lying near it. It hadn’t started decomposing yet. His lifeless eyes and mouth were wide open as if the last thing he saw in life was something terrifying. His fingers were scratching his face, leaving obvious scratch marks under his eyes. It almost looked like he had tried to gouge his eyes out to stop seeing what had been in front of him.

The dead man had no facial hair, and he looked rather young, judging from his feature. The clothes he was wearing were a normal warm outfit like half the people who were there. There was no visible wound, at least from what Graham could see from that angle. Besides the scratch mark on his face, there was no other injury, not even a scratch on his exposed skin. The jacket that he was wearing had no bloodstain either. It would be up to the Police to determine the cause of death; he could only offer his assistance if necessary in that aspect. Even though there was still no solid proof, it was very likely that it was not a mere accident.

Graham felt the strong need to find the culprit. The accident happened around his neighborhood, so it made him, to some extent, concerned. If it was really a case of homicide, people he knew or even himself might be the next victim. He needed to solve the case not for a sense of justice, but rather a sense of security. He was also secretly hoping the Police might reward him for helping them catch a criminal.

Not long after, the sound of police sirens came in the distance. The domineering swirling of blue and red lights could be seen getting closer and closer; with each second the sound of sirens got louder and louder. The sound of chattering stopped once the convoy of police motor carriages arrived. Many men in blue coats came out and started to secure the death scene. They didn’t approach the body for they were still waiting for the medical examiners to arrive. They set up a police line and started interviewing the people around, including Graham.

“Are you the one who secured the area?” asked one of the officers after seeing that most bystanders were standing at a distance from the body.

Graham nodded. He noticed that it was the same officer with a friendly smile that had interviewed him about Naomi Bakker.

“Thank you,” the officer shot Graham a warm smile, “Has anyone come near the dead body?”

“Not since I arrived here. I don’t know before that.” Graham answered honestly.

“Who first discovered the body?” the officer asked inquiringly.

“It’s that man in the messy shirt.” Graham pointed at the man. He was standing some distance away from the dumpster, looking around. He seemed confused about what to do.

“Thank you for your time,” the friendly officer nodded at Graham and approached the man in question. Graham was trying to listen in to the interview, but he didn’t have to try hard to do that because the man spoke loudly. It seemed that he naturally always spoke loudly.

The officer asked him about how he came to find the dead body and the man answered, “I was on the way to work. It was around eight-fifteen. I finished my coffee but I didn’t see any bin around so I went to the dumpster to throw away the cup. And the man was in there.” he said with his eyes wide open. It looked like he still couldn’t believe that it was happening in his life.

And then, as if realizing something important, he slapped his face with his palm, “I need to go to work!”

“You need to stay here for now. Did you see anyone suspicious around the time you found the body?” the voice of the officer could be heard faintly.

“No, there is no one. I was the only one there. When can I leave, officer? I really need to go to work!” he started panicking again as if afraid of being late.

“You need to stay at least until our medical examiners arrive. They might have more questions for you.”

Graham wanted to go back home and divined what he could about the body, so he approached the officer and asked, “Can I leave?”

“Yes, you can leave after our men ask you for your contact,” the officer shot a glance at another officer who was asking everyone there for their contacts.

Graham understood it was the procedure even though he was sure the friendly officer already had his landline number and his identity. He waited for a while until another officer came over and asked him for his contact. He gave it to him honestly and left the scene, after observing the dead body one last time.

He walked back home and arrived seven minutes later. Graham directly set up a ritual to divine about the dead body. He lit the candles, concentrated and repeated the questions in his mind.

‘Who is the dead body near the dumpster?’

After a while, an image appeared. It was of a blue one-story house. The image then zoomed out and showed a street. It was a cobblestone street with a lot of trees. Graham recognized it right away. The street in the image was Tuinstraat North.

After a while, the image gradually disappeared.

He then concentrated again and repeated another question.

‘What caused the death of the man near the dumpster?’

After concentrating for a while, a blurry image slowly formed up in the flames. It was of the dead man a moment before his death. He suddenly started scratching his faces and dropped dead. The image stopped there. It was not clear what caused him to die.

Graham went into thinking for a while and started divining again. He repeated another question in his mind.

‘Who killed the man whose dead body is near the dumpster?’

The candles were burning for some time but no image appeared. After waiting a little longer, Graham put out the fires except for one candle.

“It seems my divination was not interfered with, but it couldn’t show me anything. It is likely that the killing method is something that cannot be traced back to the killer.” he deduced.

Graham took out a piece of paper and wrote something on it to confirm his theory.

‘The murder of the man near the dumpster involves the supernatural.’

He lit the bottom right corner of the paper on fire and it consumed the whole paper rapidly, indicating a positive response.

“Val, the paper burned really fast, so it indeed involves the supernatural. A Contractbound is very likely to be behind it.”

He then wrote another statement on another piece of paper.

‘It is dangerous for me to try to catch the killer.’

He lit the paper on fire and it burned the whole paper, but at a slower rate than the first one.

“So it is dangerous, but it shouldn’t be life-threatening. We should be able to pull it off it comes to that,” he said while sitting in his dark office chair.

“I’m sure the Police also have divinators; maybe even better than me,” he was thinking for a while. There must be other divination methods that the Police knew of and used.

“We have the option to leave it to them to catch the murderer. I’m sure they have dealt with something similar in the past. But the body was found near here. That alone is enough to put us in potential danger. If the murderer showed up nearby, we would be the closest one to react, so we have to be prepared, Val.”

“Not to mention the mysterious killing method. I won’t be able to sleep well until I know how they did it. It was just too mysterious. We need to know more about it so we can guard against something similar in the future. Maybe, it would even count as a great secret that I need to divine; you, uncover. So we might as well investigate this case too.”

Graham had decided what to do. He got ready right away to start investigating. His first destination would be the blue house on Tuinstraat North.