Story Time: Shade

Hello again, readers!  I know I'm really late with this month's entry, but I'm currently working on a new segment for the blog, as well as polishing my craft by writing and posting entries of stories on my favorite forum website.  I have recently submitted a short story to a a magazine company, and my manuscript is being looked over by a publisher.  I haven't heard anything from them yet, but I hope to very soon.

In the meantime, here's another entry of "Story Time"!  I wrote this one a long time ago, on the same forum site that I posted "Writer, Father" on.  Both were untitled at the time, but unlike the last one, this one intrigued me so much that I decided to take the character and give him his own book series.  Just one of my many, many projects for the future.

Anyway, here's my next entry, for your reading pleasure.  Enjoy!

Shade

A dark street corner. Thirty minutes after one 'o clock, A.M. A rolling fog. A haunting breeze. A pool of blood.

Inspector Julian Shade feared none of these things, even though each showed itself plainly on this autumn night in Dublin. The wind struck his black leather duster and made it wave ominously in the darkness. A single, dim streetlamp hung over the crime scene, casting light upon his wide-brimmed, jet-black, Andalusian hat and covering his face with a deep shadow.

Shade had been tracking this madman for weeks, but it seemed that he had finally slipped up in his latest crime: a small string of thread, undetectable to the untrained eye, rested indifferently next to the crimson puddle. Shade crouched down, picked up the thread and examined it thoroughly. Shade pulled one hand from its black leather glove and felt the scrap of thread between his fingers. He suddenly felt his intuition surging: the time of day, the murder weapon, the killer's position, the victim's position, where the criminal came from and went to, it was all open to him. The perpetrator used another large tool, this time, a heavy wrench. He had crept up to her and spinelessly attacked her from behind. This, however, was not the murder scene. Judging from the impression marks in the bloodstains on her head and neck, he had used a cloth to stop the blood flow. He had taken her to this location several hours ago, and stuffed her into the strangely bent trash can in the nearby alley. The can was precariously positioned, and some time after the body was deposited, the can fell on its side, exposing the body; Shade could tell that this murder was sloppy and rushed, as if the killer were desperate, maybe even panicked—as he should be.

The killer wore a cheap suit—the thread of which Shade was now holding—and, likely not paying to use a Laundromat or anything similar, proceeded home to wash his clothes and the bloody rag. His eagerness to return was obviously accented by the fact that he lived far away, outside the city, but not by much, and the thread could only have come off after brushing against the traffic sign on the corner, catching his suit jacket from the side and tearing it. This meant that the killer fled the scene along this very street, most likely heading straight for the highway.

Inspector Shade turned and stared down the street, a mixed look of triumph and determination barely seen on his shadow-covered face. This time, the murderer would not escape again. This time, Shade would finally have the answers to this mystery.