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Jeepers, this is the longest story I've posted on here. If you get to the end without falling asleep you deserve and medal.
**********************************************
Not A Laughing Matter
Inspector Darklin had been dragged from his bed by the ringing telephone at 7.00 am. Although he would normally have been up at 7.30 am, he still felt aggrieved by the rude awakening, of being robbed of that extra 30 minutes. A body had been found in the woods and, as he was still officially on call, it was his duty to attend.
He arrived at the woods at 7.20 am. That’s how close the crime scene was, only 10 minutes from his home. A constable was waiting for him in the small car park to escort him to the actual place of the body. She was very young, looked a little green and obviously wasn’t happy to be going back. At that moment though the coroner and his assistant arrived so it was quite a collection of people who walked back into the woods with her.
Darklin and the coroner stopped a short distance away from the scene to get the initial feel of things. A few metres away two young girls were being comforted by a woman; all of them had their backs to the body. They were obviously very distressed and there were signs of past crying. Darklin nodded to the woman and indicated with his head that all three of them should be escorted away from the scene. He then turned to the young constable who had shown them the way to the scene and asked to be apprised of the situation.
Apparently the two young girls had been taking a short cut through the woods on their way to their grandmothers when the younger child had fallen over something poking out from the undergrowth. It was only when the elder child had helped her gain her feet again that they noticed the body hanging in the tree. The elder child called her mother; who then called the police and came to find them.
Darklin turned his gaze once again to the body hanging in the tree. It was a truly bizarre sight. It was a clown, well at the very least, it was a slim man dressed as a clown. The orange wig was slightly askew, the make up had been smudged and it had lost one of its large shoes. It was the missing shoe that the young girl had stumbled over. Darklin realised that he was calling the body ‘it’ but he couldn’t help himself. He had been badly frightened as a child by a clown and could not get over his fear of them, even in adulthood. The clown was swinging from blue nylon rope and to all intents and purposes it looked like a suicide but this was the fourth clown to have died in the last three months. Darklin didn’t believe in co-incidences. As far as he was concerned this was another murder victim. He spoke quietly to the coroner and then left everyone at the scene to collect evidence and cut down the body while he went back to the station.
There was an incident room already set up for the first three murders so Darklin grabbed a coffee, strong and black, and entered he own nightmare room. He’d mentally tagged the room with this name because as soon as he entered it he was assailed from all angles by pictures of clowns. The first clown had been found three months ago by a tramp walking down a quiet alley. The head had been smashed in so heavily that bone fragments had been found buried deep in the brain. The body had been badly mutilated as well. In fact it had been castrated by the use of a blunt instrument according to the coroners report. The second and third victims also had head wounds and had been similarly mutilated. Darklin let his eyes unfocus while he tried to piece everything together. The first three victims all had four things in common. They were all dressed as clowns, they were all men, they were all castrated and they all had traces of GBH in their bloodstreams.
Several days later the coroners report from the fourth victim landed on his desk. It was indeed a murder. Pulleys found in the bushes below the body indicated that this was how the clown had been strung up in the tree. Surprisingly the body did not have its genitals mutilated but shockingly the body had been that of a young woman. Darklin rubbed his tired eyes. A female victim? This didn’t add up at all. It blew their best theory completely apart. He trudged to the incident room to update his team and let them know they were back to square one.
Square one was the knowledge that the murderer was female. There had been plenty of evidence at all the crime scenes to confirm this. The murders had all been so brutal, obviously committed with such hatred that the only theory that made any sense was revenge for a rape. The fact that the fourth victim was female just didn’t fit the profile. There had been no matches for the DNA collected at the scenes and they had been back through twenty years of rape victims’ reports. They had turned up no reports of anyone being raped by a clown. The murder of a female seemed to make this work redundant. There was nothing further they could do; all avenues were closed to them. They badly needed a break in the case and as happens in life they got one. It took a further 12 months and 3 more victims, again all male and all mutilated, before the case broke and the murderer was in custody.
Darklin watched and listened from a room alongside the interview room as Sarah Kirkby told her story. She had been stopped just outside the city by a patrol car that had pulled her over as a matter of routine; her brake lights were not working. She had become very agitated when one of the policemen offered to check the lights out for her, to see if they had blown or if it was just a loose wire. Due to her obvious agitation and refusal to co-operate they arrested her on a triviality and opened the boot themselves. The drugged body of a clown was not what they expected to find.
Sarah Kirkby was an intelligent woman, a qualified chemist by profession and a mother of three young girls. She hated clowns, was terrified of them and had been since she was seven. Sarah had been raped by a clown thirty years ago and no one had been caught or punished for it. It was no comfort to Darklin that their original theory had been correct. The reason she had gone on the killing spree? Her youngest daughter, also seven, had come back from a friends’ party and told her that there had been a clown there. When Sarah asked why she looked unhappy her daughter told her that the clown ‘touched’ her and she hadn’t liked it. Sarah had gone into shock, all the deeply buried horrors and memories had rushed to the surface. Sarah considered the police tied by red tape and knew they wouldn’t be able to punish the clown with the force necessary so she had taken matters into her own hands. Mixing up her own batch of GBH she injected it into clowns to knock them unconscious or just make them drowsy. The end result we knew about. The first clown she’d killed had been the one to mess with her daughter.
Darklin rested his head against the cool glass separating the room and despaired of human nature. The other clowns had been killed simply because of the trade they plied. If two clowns were bad then in her opinion they were all tainted. The female clown had simply been an accident. The clothes and make up had hidden her gender from Sarah until it was too late. It had only been when she stripped her of her trousers that Sarah discovered her mistake.
Darklin left the station and went home. Normally when a case was solved it gave him a buzz of satisfaction, a feeling of completion and closure both for his team and for the victims families. Tonight he didn’t feel this. Tonight he felt sorrow and compassion for a woman who felt she had to take matters into her own hands but who had taken them much too far.
**********************************************
Not A Laughing Matter
Inspector Darklin had been dragged from his bed by the ringing telephone at 7.00 am. Although he would normally have been up at 7.30 am, he still felt aggrieved by the rude awakening, of being robbed of that extra 30 minutes. A body had been found in the woods and, as he was still officially on call, it was his duty to attend.
He arrived at the woods at 7.20 am. That’s how close the crime scene was, only 10 minutes from his home. A constable was waiting for him in the small car park to escort him to the actual place of the body. She was very young, looked a little green and obviously wasn’t happy to be going back. At that moment though the coroner and his assistant arrived so it was quite a collection of people who walked back into the woods with her.
Darklin and the coroner stopped a short distance away from the scene to get the initial feel of things. A few metres away two young girls were being comforted by a woman; all of them had their backs to the body. They were obviously very distressed and there were signs of past crying. Darklin nodded to the woman and indicated with his head that all three of them should be escorted away from the scene. He then turned to the young constable who had shown them the way to the scene and asked to be apprised of the situation.
Apparently the two young girls had been taking a short cut through the woods on their way to their grandmothers when the younger child had fallen over something poking out from the undergrowth. It was only when the elder child had helped her gain her feet again that they noticed the body hanging in the tree. The elder child called her mother; who then called the police and came to find them.
Darklin turned his gaze once again to the body hanging in the tree. It was a truly bizarre sight. It was a clown, well at the very least, it was a slim man dressed as a clown. The orange wig was slightly askew, the make up had been smudged and it had lost one of its large shoes. It was the missing shoe that the young girl had stumbled over. Darklin realised that he was calling the body ‘it’ but he couldn’t help himself. He had been badly frightened as a child by a clown and could not get over his fear of them, even in adulthood. The clown was swinging from blue nylon rope and to all intents and purposes it looked like a suicide but this was the fourth clown to have died in the last three months. Darklin didn’t believe in co-incidences. As far as he was concerned this was another murder victim. He spoke quietly to the coroner and then left everyone at the scene to collect evidence and cut down the body while he went back to the station.
There was an incident room already set up for the first three murders so Darklin grabbed a coffee, strong and black, and entered he own nightmare room. He’d mentally tagged the room with this name because as soon as he entered it he was assailed from all angles by pictures of clowns. The first clown had been found three months ago by a tramp walking down a quiet alley. The head had been smashed in so heavily that bone fragments had been found buried deep in the brain. The body had been badly mutilated as well. In fact it had been castrated by the use of a blunt instrument according to the coroners report. The second and third victims also had head wounds and had been similarly mutilated. Darklin let his eyes unfocus while he tried to piece everything together. The first three victims all had four things in common. They were all dressed as clowns, they were all men, they were all castrated and they all had traces of GBH in their bloodstreams.
Several days later the coroners report from the fourth victim landed on his desk. It was indeed a murder. Pulleys found in the bushes below the body indicated that this was how the clown had been strung up in the tree. Surprisingly the body did not have its genitals mutilated but shockingly the body had been that of a young woman. Darklin rubbed his tired eyes. A female victim? This didn’t add up at all. It blew their best theory completely apart. He trudged to the incident room to update his team and let them know they were back to square one.
Square one was the knowledge that the murderer was female. There had been plenty of evidence at all the crime scenes to confirm this. The murders had all been so brutal, obviously committed with such hatred that the only theory that made any sense was revenge for a rape. The fact that the fourth victim was female just didn’t fit the profile. There had been no matches for the DNA collected at the scenes and they had been back through twenty years of rape victims’ reports. They had turned up no reports of anyone being raped by a clown. The murder of a female seemed to make this work redundant. There was nothing further they could do; all avenues were closed to them. They badly needed a break in the case and as happens in life they got one. It took a further 12 months and 3 more victims, again all male and all mutilated, before the case broke and the murderer was in custody.
Darklin watched and listened from a room alongside the interview room as Sarah Kirkby told her story. She had been stopped just outside the city by a patrol car that had pulled her over as a matter of routine; her brake lights were not working. She had become very agitated when one of the policemen offered to check the lights out for her, to see if they had blown or if it was just a loose wire. Due to her obvious agitation and refusal to co-operate they arrested her on a triviality and opened the boot themselves. The drugged body of a clown was not what they expected to find.
Sarah Kirkby was an intelligent woman, a qualified chemist by profession and a mother of three young girls. She hated clowns, was terrified of them and had been since she was seven. Sarah had been raped by a clown thirty years ago and no one had been caught or punished for it. It was no comfort to Darklin that their original theory had been correct. The reason she had gone on the killing spree? Her youngest daughter, also seven, had come back from a friends’ party and told her that there had been a clown there. When Sarah asked why she looked unhappy her daughter told her that the clown ‘touched’ her and she hadn’t liked it. Sarah had gone into shock, all the deeply buried horrors and memories had rushed to the surface. Sarah considered the police tied by red tape and knew they wouldn’t be able to punish the clown with the force necessary so she had taken matters into her own hands. Mixing up her own batch of GBH she injected it into clowns to knock them unconscious or just make them drowsy. The end result we knew about. The first clown she’d killed had been the one to mess with her daughter.
Darklin rested his head against the cool glass separating the room and despaired of human nature. The other clowns had been killed simply because of the trade they plied. If two clowns were bad then in her opinion they were all tainted. The female clown had simply been an accident. The clothes and make up had hidden her gender from Sarah until it was too late. It had only been when she stripped her of her trousers that Sarah discovered her mistake.
Darklin left the station and went home. Normally when a case was solved it gave him a buzz of satisfaction, a feeling of completion and closure both for his team and for the victims families. Tonight he didn’t feel this. Tonight he felt sorrow and compassion for a woman who felt she had to take matters into her own hands but who had taken them much too far.
I thought that the idea for this piece was a good one, but it was let down in it's execution. It read like you were telling the backstory before something else came. I think it would have been stronger if you took us into each scene with some dialogue, rather than being told what went on there - the trouble is to do that would have taken some considerable expanding on each of these scenes, and you say you felt this was a long piece to begin with.
Sorry about that. I didn't mean it to sound that way. I liked the idea of the storyline and thought I would try it from a third party angle instead of my usual way.
Thanks all for the criticism. I'll try not to do this again :)
Thanks all for the criticism. I'll try not to do this again :)
Meh. It felt like you yourself didn't really care about writing it, so how is anyone else supposed to care about reading it?
And you missed out the best bit - catching the killer.
Also talking about rape then putting "all avenues were closed to them" was rather amusing.
And you missed out the best bit - catching the killer.
Also talking about rape then putting "all avenues were closed to them" was rather amusing.
It's not so bad, but you're painfully literate. You need to let us deduce things for ourselves, and when we do, don't waste time telling us what we've just figured out in blunt English.
Ineedsleep wrote:
> He arrived at the woods at 7.20 am. That’s how close the crime scene
> was, only 10 minutes from his home. A constable was waiting for him
> in the small car park to escort him to the actual place of the body.
> She was very young, looked a little green and obviously wasn’t happy
> to be going back. At that moment though the coroner and his
> assistant arrived so it was quite a collection of people who walked
> back into the woods with her.
For example, the highlighted lines could have been removed completely.
Show, don't tell.
Ineedsleep wrote:
> He arrived at the woods at 7.20 am. That’s how close the crime scene
> was, only 10 minutes from his home. A constable was waiting for him
> in the small car park to escort him to the actual place of the body.
> She was very young, looked a little green and obviously wasn’t happy
> to be going back. At that moment though the coroner and his
> assistant arrived so it was quite a collection of people who walked
> back into the woods with her.
For example, the highlighted lines could have been removed completely.
Show, don't tell.
I quite like that, although I don't think it will win. Still enjoyed reading it though.
Might have concentrated on the story if you hadn't said something like:
"he got up at 7:00. He got to the forestat 7:20. Yes, it was only 10 minutes from his house."
Otherwise, it seemed a very familiar sort of story.
Verdict- 4/10
Unoriginal, your primitive urges to include tales of mutilation overpowered the story.
"he got up at 7:00. He got to the forestat 7:20. Yes, it was only 10 minutes from his house."
Otherwise, it seemed a very familiar sort of story.
Verdict- 4/10
Unoriginal, your primitive urges to include tales of mutilation overpowered the story.
Nicely written, but it was too spelled out (if you know what I mean). Not enough mystery. Having said that, my recent attempts have slipped so far into realms of blurriness that - oh, I've forgotten what I was going to say...
Mediocre at best. Chuckleworthy as worst.
4/10
I expect better ma'am
Please dont try this genre again, it works against you and is particularly clichéd.
4/10
I expect better ma'am
Please dont try this genre again, it works against you and is particularly clichéd.
Jeepers, this is the longest story I've posted on here. If you get to the end without falling asleep you deserve and medal.
**********************************************
Not A Laughing Matter
Inspector Darklin had been dragged from his bed by the ringing telephone at 7.00 am. Although he would normally have been up at 7.30 am, he still felt aggrieved by the rude awakening, of being robbed of that extra 30 minutes. A body had been found in the woods and, as he was still officially on call, it was his duty to attend.
He arrived at the woods at 7.20 am. That’s how close the crime scene was, only 10 minutes from his home. A constable was waiting for him in the small car park to escort him to the actual place of the body. She was very young, looked a little green and obviously wasn’t happy to be going back. At that moment though the coroner and his assistant arrived so it was quite a collection of people who walked back into the woods with her.
Darklin and the coroner stopped a short distance away from the scene to get the initial feel of things. A few metres away two young girls were being comforted by a woman; all of them had their backs to the body. They were obviously very distressed and there were signs of past crying. Darklin nodded to the woman and indicated with his head that all three of them should be escorted away from the scene. He then turned to the young constable who had shown them the way to the scene and asked to be apprised of the situation.
Apparently the two young girls had been taking a short cut through the woods on their way to their grandmothers when the younger child had fallen over something poking out from the undergrowth. It was only when the elder child had helped her gain her feet again that they noticed the body hanging in the tree. The elder child called her mother; who then called the police and came to find them.
Darklin turned his gaze once again to the body hanging in the tree. It was a truly bizarre sight. It was a clown, well at the very least, it was a slim man dressed as a clown. The orange wig was slightly askew, the make up had been smudged and it had lost one of its large shoes. It was the missing shoe that the young girl had stumbled over. Darklin realised that he was calling the body ‘it’ but he couldn’t help himself. He had been badly frightened as a child by a clown and could not get over his fear of them, even in adulthood. The clown was swinging from blue nylon rope and to all intents and purposes it looked like a suicide but this was the fourth clown to have died in the last three months. Darklin didn’t believe in co-incidences. As far as he was concerned this was another murder victim. He spoke quietly to the coroner and then left everyone at the scene to collect evidence and cut down the body while he went back to the station.
There was an incident room already set up for the first three murders so Darklin grabbed a coffee, strong and black, and entered he own nightmare room. He’d mentally tagged the room with this name because as soon as he entered it he was assailed from all angles by pictures of clowns. The first clown had been found three months ago by a tramp walking down a quiet alley. The head had been smashed in so heavily that bone fragments had been found buried deep in the brain. The body had been badly mutilated as well. In fact it had been castrated by the use of a blunt instrument according to the coroners report. The second and third victims also had head wounds and had been similarly mutilated. Darklin let his eyes unfocus while he tried to piece everything together. The first three victims all had four things in common. They were all dressed as clowns, they were all men, they were all castrated and they all had traces of GBH in their bloodstreams.
Several days later the coroners report from the fourth victim landed on his desk. It was indeed a murder. Pulleys found in the bushes below the body indicated that this was how the clown had been strung up in the tree. Surprisingly the body did not have its genitals mutilated but shockingly the body had been that of a young woman. Darklin rubbed his tired eyes. A female victim? This didn’t add up at all. It blew their best theory completely apart. He trudged to the incident room to update his team and let them know they were back to square one.
Square one was the knowledge that the murderer was female. There had been plenty of evidence at all the crime scenes to confirm this. The murders had all been so brutal, obviously committed with such hatred that the only theory that made any sense was revenge for a rape. The fact that the fourth victim was female just didn’t fit the profile. There had been no matches for the DNA collected at the scenes and they had been back through twenty years of rape victims’ reports. They had turned up no reports of anyone being raped by a clown. The murder of a female seemed to make this work redundant. There was nothing further they could do; all avenues were closed to them. They badly needed a break in the case and as happens in life they got one. It took a further 12 months and 3 more victims, again all male and all mutilated, before the case broke and the murderer was in custody.
Darklin watched and listened from a room alongside the interview room as Sarah Kirkby told her story. She had been stopped just outside the city by a patrol car that had pulled her over as a matter of routine; her brake lights were not working. She had become very agitated when one of the policemen offered to check the lights out for her, to see if they had blown or if it was just a loose wire. Due to her obvious agitation and refusal to co-operate they arrested her on a triviality and opened the boot themselves. The drugged body of a clown was not what they expected to find.
Sarah Kirkby was an intelligent woman, a qualified chemist by profession and a mother of three young girls. She hated clowns, was terrified of them and had been since she was seven. Sarah had been raped by a clown thirty years ago and no one had been caught or punished for it. It was no comfort to Darklin that their original theory had been correct. The reason she had gone on the killing spree? Her youngest daughter, also seven, had come back from a friends’ party and told her that there had been a clown there. When Sarah asked why she looked unhappy her daughter told her that the clown ‘touched’ her and she hadn’t liked it. Sarah had gone into shock, all the deeply buried horrors and memories had rushed to the surface. Sarah considered the police tied by red tape and knew they wouldn’t be able to punish the clown with the force necessary so she had taken matters into her own hands. Mixing up her own batch of GBH she injected it into clowns to knock them unconscious or just make them drowsy. The end result we knew about. The first clown she’d killed had been the one to mess with her daughter.
Darklin rested his head against the cool glass separating the room and despaired of human nature. The other clowns had been killed simply because of the trade they plied. If two clowns were bad then in her opinion they were all tainted. The female clown had simply been an accident. The clothes and make up had hidden her gender from Sarah until it was too late. It had only been when she stripped her of her trousers that Sarah discovered her mistake.
Darklin left the station and went home. Normally when a case was solved it gave him a buzz of satisfaction, a feeling of completion and closure both for his team and for the victims families. Tonight he didn’t feel this. Tonight he felt sorrow and compassion for a woman who felt she had to take matters into her own hands but who had taken them much too far.
**********************************************
Not A Laughing Matter
Inspector Darklin had been dragged from his bed by the ringing telephone at 7.00 am. Although he would normally have been up at 7.30 am, he still felt aggrieved by the rude awakening, of being robbed of that extra 30 minutes. A body had been found in the woods and, as he was still officially on call, it was his duty to attend.
He arrived at the woods at 7.20 am. That’s how close the crime scene was, only 10 minutes from his home. A constable was waiting for him in the small car park to escort him to the actual place of the body. She was very young, looked a little green and obviously wasn’t happy to be going back. At that moment though the coroner and his assistant arrived so it was quite a collection of people who walked back into the woods with her.
Darklin and the coroner stopped a short distance away from the scene to get the initial feel of things. A few metres away two young girls were being comforted by a woman; all of them had their backs to the body. They were obviously very distressed and there were signs of past crying. Darklin nodded to the woman and indicated with his head that all three of them should be escorted away from the scene. He then turned to the young constable who had shown them the way to the scene and asked to be apprised of the situation.
Apparently the two young girls had been taking a short cut through the woods on their way to their grandmothers when the younger child had fallen over something poking out from the undergrowth. It was only when the elder child had helped her gain her feet again that they noticed the body hanging in the tree. The elder child called her mother; who then called the police and came to find them.
Darklin turned his gaze once again to the body hanging in the tree. It was a truly bizarre sight. It was a clown, well at the very least, it was a slim man dressed as a clown. The orange wig was slightly askew, the make up had been smudged and it had lost one of its large shoes. It was the missing shoe that the young girl had stumbled over. Darklin realised that he was calling the body ‘it’ but he couldn’t help himself. He had been badly frightened as a child by a clown and could not get over his fear of them, even in adulthood. The clown was swinging from blue nylon rope and to all intents and purposes it looked like a suicide but this was the fourth clown to have died in the last three months. Darklin didn’t believe in co-incidences. As far as he was concerned this was another murder victim. He spoke quietly to the coroner and then left everyone at the scene to collect evidence and cut down the body while he went back to the station.
There was an incident room already set up for the first three murders so Darklin grabbed a coffee, strong and black, and entered he own nightmare room. He’d mentally tagged the room with this name because as soon as he entered it he was assailed from all angles by pictures of clowns. The first clown had been found three months ago by a tramp walking down a quiet alley. The head had been smashed in so heavily that bone fragments had been found buried deep in the brain. The body had been badly mutilated as well. In fact it had been castrated by the use of a blunt instrument according to the coroners report. The second and third victims also had head wounds and had been similarly mutilated. Darklin let his eyes unfocus while he tried to piece everything together. The first three victims all had four things in common. They were all dressed as clowns, they were all men, they were all castrated and they all had traces of GBH in their bloodstreams.
Several days later the coroners report from the fourth victim landed on his desk. It was indeed a murder. Pulleys found in the bushes below the body indicated that this was how the clown had been strung up in the tree. Surprisingly the body did not have its genitals mutilated but shockingly the body had been that of a young woman. Darklin rubbed his tired eyes. A female victim? This didn’t add up at all. It blew their best theory completely apart. He trudged to the incident room to update his team and let them know they were back to square one.
Square one was the knowledge that the murderer was female. There had been plenty of evidence at all the crime scenes to confirm this. The murders had all been so brutal, obviously committed with such hatred that the only theory that made any sense was revenge for a rape. The fact that the fourth victim was female just didn’t fit the profile. There had been no matches for the DNA collected at the scenes and they had been back through twenty years of rape victims’ reports. They had turned up no reports of anyone being raped by a clown. The murder of a female seemed to make this work redundant. There was nothing further they could do; all avenues were closed to them. They badly needed a break in the case and as happens in life they got one. It took a further 12 months and 3 more victims, again all male and all mutilated, before the case broke and the murderer was in custody.
Darklin watched and listened from a room alongside the interview room as Sarah Kirkby told her story. She had been stopped just outside the city by a patrol car that had pulled her over as a matter of routine; her brake lights were not working. She had become very agitated when one of the policemen offered to check the lights out for her, to see if they had blown or if it was just a loose wire. Due to her obvious agitation and refusal to co-operate they arrested her on a triviality and opened the boot themselves. The drugged body of a clown was not what they expected to find.
Sarah Kirkby was an intelligent woman, a qualified chemist by profession and a mother of three young girls. She hated clowns, was terrified of them and had been since she was seven. Sarah had been raped by a clown thirty years ago and no one had been caught or punished for it. It was no comfort to Darklin that their original theory had been correct. The reason she had gone on the killing spree? Her youngest daughter, also seven, had come back from a friends’ party and told her that there had been a clown there. When Sarah asked why she looked unhappy her daughter told her that the clown ‘touched’ her and she hadn’t liked it. Sarah had gone into shock, all the deeply buried horrors and memories had rushed to the surface. Sarah considered the police tied by red tape and knew they wouldn’t be able to punish the clown with the force necessary so she had taken matters into her own hands. Mixing up her own batch of GBH she injected it into clowns to knock them unconscious or just make them drowsy. The end result we knew about. The first clown she’d killed had been the one to mess with her daughter.
Darklin rested his head against the cool glass separating the room and despaired of human nature. The other clowns had been killed simply because of the trade they plied. If two clowns were bad then in her opinion they were all tainted. The female clown had simply been an accident. The clothes and make up had hidden her gender from Sarah until it was too late. It had only been when she stripped her of her trousers that Sarah discovered her mistake.
Darklin left the station and went home. Normally when a case was solved it gave him a buzz of satisfaction, a feeling of completion and closure both for his team and for the victims families. Tonight he didn’t feel this. Tonight he felt sorrow and compassion for a woman who felt she had to take matters into her own hands but who had taken them much too far.