Short Stories

Black Blood: Trace The Family Tree

Chapter one: 

Bloodlines, The name is the link

short story JamaicaThere was blood everywhere. Sergeant Kennedy was tip-toeing across the pavement trying his earnest best to avoid disturbing the scenes. He Bent down and examined what turned out to be a spiffs-tail. “Rogers!” he called out to the young corporal, “bag it,” he said. 

Corporal Vince Rogers being new to the service, had only been on active duty for five days, however, he already felt as if he has seen enough blood and gory mess to last him a lifetime. He fetched a receptacle from the kit and placed the saggy bit of would-be evidence inside, he then replaced the cap and set it aside. Vince by then was sick to his stomach and was beginning to question his career choice. All of a sudden, the pulpit seemed mighty appealing to him. And his mother seemed like the wisest woman who’d ever lived.  She had it all planned out.

  

From the time he was a little boy, his mother wanted him, or maybe it was “The Lord” as she always said, who had called him to be a minister of the Gospel. But Vince was quite sure that the Lord would have made a mistake on that call. And as for the roll-model whom, she always pointed him towards, in the person of the Reverend Richard Bultzer.

If she was really serious about her son becoming a minister of the Gospel? That was a mistake of Titanic proportion on her part too, to be pointing her son towards the Reverend Bultzer. Vince’s thoughts of him were never very flattering, to say the least. He thought of the Rev. as being nothing more than a lazy, heartless, bloodsucking leech, who “preys” on those silly women with low or no self-esteem. “I’m not a sissy,” he had said to his mother, “I will go out and get myself a real job and earn my keeps like real men do.” So instead of registering for Bible School, like she wanted him to, the police academy was the benefactor of Vince’s search for adventure.

If one will take a moment to examine the facts concerning people like the Reverend Mr. Bultzer, one may well be on the verge of a healthy dose of get-with-it reality broadside, Vince argued.

……

Sergeants Adam Kennedy and Fenton “fats” Michaud were partners in the early days, they were really good friends too, but Fenton had died, way before his time, and the sergeant had gotten himself a promising young constable (or so it seemed) as his working partner.

Sergeant Michaud was a very funny man among other things. He weighed in at over 320lbs but very fast was he, and as agile as a Tomcat on steroids, he will outrun Usain Bolt on the Sunday morning after a raving hot Saturday night-out on the town.  Fats was implicated in an earlier shooting incident where he was said to have used excessive force to bring down a shooting suspect, a man who was clearly running away from him at the time. Folks said that the only advantage the poor guy had on fats was his size, and he did use it to squeeze his way through tiny holes and crevettes such as those which the sergeant could not go through, all in his getaway bid, “I’ve got something for you” said fats, before he lit him up, well, so the story goes. He wasn’t going to lose that one, not again.

Fats died at his desk the official reports said, but we all do know very well where officials and their reports stand on the truth, as well as on the trust and confidence index in people’s minds.  Folks said the goodly sergeant died trying to climb up mount Galimore, on a bunk bed at the office. Took two strong men to pry him off of the frightened Gali-mountain… may he forever, rest in peace, as he very well might. 

  

……

Meanwhile, Sadie danced, Silhouettes of dancing Sadie floated down from the window and over the shoulders of investigators and curious onlookers alike. Her relationship with the deceased family needed to be examined, Commissioner Watkins thought to himself. 

The commissioner had been the first to arrive on the scene after the call. He didn’t stay very long though, just walked around the peripheries of the compound and assigned roles to the next in command.  On his way out, He cast his eyes up at the third-floor apartment and saw Sadie standing there in the window looking down at the happenings. Commissioner Watkins paused just long enough to survey the settings before moving along, shaking his head in the usual “shaky Watkins” manner. Sergeant Kennedy and the team then went to work gathering evidence.

Crime scene Analysis: these were what the forensic team found and documented at the crime scene: 

  • Two bodies, 
  • One bloody machete, 
  • A bloody kitchen knife
  • A wet and saggy spiffs-tail 
  • And a trail of blood leading from the living room where one of the two bodies were found.

The trail of blood leads out through the front door, down the steps, and out onto the paved driveway where the second body was found lying face down on the pavement. Just beyond the cordoned off area, curious onlookers and tight-lipped neighbors, stretching their necks to sneak a peek across the fence, many among them were probably the same ones who did not even bother to respond to cries for help in the night, now they are out seeking a thrill.  All of that, plus a senior cop obviously perplexed beyond the norms at what he was seeing. Add in also, those newspaper reports and thesis, and later on, dancing Sadie was called in for questioning and then released, the deceases’ lifestyle came in for scrutiny. The verdict was left hanging, for the time being.

……  

While Sergeant Kennedy was skimming through the various crime scenes all over town, the commissioner was thinking, planning and strategizing. He was also sharing anecdotes with his family. He always does. He would then need to review all of the incidents in detail in order to see if there were patterns. Any link, and tie-ins that could connect one to the other would come in handy. He would later find the connections but there was much work to be done before that would come about, and the clock was ticking the time away.

……  

Chapter two:  

  

Black blood? Too black 

They had stopped for a quick coffee break, they weren’t going to be very long. Didn’t bother to lock the door of the vehicle, there was nothing in there to be overly concerned about, only those two dead bodies which they had gone to pick up, and those weren’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon.  They didn’t plan on what happened next. The crooks were Swift and surefooted as could be. While one kept a watchful lookout, the other one climbed in into the driver’s seat of the throttling van and drove off, while his accomplice ran alongside the van and then hopped in.  The erring stooges, scampering out of the diner, was chasing the illusion that they would catch up with the speeding van and regain possession of their belongings, including the stiffs, meanwhile, a panicking teenager chasing after the two van chasers was shouting: hey, you forgot to pay me, you forgot to pay me… 

……

 Later on down the road, two dead bodies fell out of a moving vehicle, or were they pushed out? Police investigators were later found to be frantically trying to piece together the chains of events which lead to two dead bodies lying on the roadways, after a frantic call from a motorist who reported running over two dead bodies on the road, did he cause the deaths of those two or were they already dead when he hit them? He was wondering. The investigation continues.  Meanwhile, the funeral service people were busily trying to keep it all under wraps. How were they ever going to be able to tell the grieving families that they had lost the bodies of their loved-ones to a couple of corps-snatching bandits, or whoever those two should eventually turn out to be? 

Lucky for them though, they had a few things going in their favor. The funeral home was tops in body makeup artistry, and the bodies do not both belong to the same family, so even if they should become somewhat suspicious of any inconsistency in the look and appearances of their dead loved-one, upon receipt for burial, it should be easily explained away by the expert funeral planners and embalmers. 

After all, how likely is it that any one family would have had to deal with burying dead family members to become so well able to tell how a dead body in a casket ready for burial is supposed to look? And not having another one to compare it with, or another disgruntled family questioning those very same issues at the same time as they are and in their hearing? Put the odds squarely in the favor of the funeral home people. And they were not going to just sit around and leave it all up to chances, they were already busy on the job, trying to smooth out the rough spots.  The narratives which were being played in the public spheres quickly changed from one where: a motorist ran over two dead bodies on the roadways, to becoming one where: two men were apparently struck and killed by a vehicle which did not stop and was then run over by a second vehicle. The driver of the second vehicle, thinking that he ran over two people, who were (for whatever reason,) lying on the street. He then called the emergency services hotline number to report it, he was later taken to hospital where he was treated for shock and sent home.  Someone was skillfully manipulating the facts and painting a different picture.

Even though it was black blood which was sputtered on the scene (what little of it that was there).  That black blood was too black, it could not have been flowing through the veins of someone who was alive and breathing ten minutes before the impact which caused the spilling out of the black blood. 

But the other version of the story was what was being broadcast on the news all day and into the night, by morning, folks would have swallowed that version and moved on to the next topic of discussion for the day, which suited someone, somewhere, very well indeed.  (To be continued….)

Find the book on the author’s page at, amazon.com/author/elloydkelly

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