2 Chapter 2: Two hours to conclude

The missing cases soon had become a social sensation, people started liking the kidnapper's way, police called him a predator and society hailed him as THE PREDATOR, it had been two days since the strange guy in coat appeared in my house, similar appearances of the man in the coat took place in the residencies of all the police and detectives investigating the case. We concluded it was the predator, though we were not sure if he was alone or operated as a group.

Many people started talking about him like an angel that came to save the world from overpopulation while some started conspiracies that said he was transporting a chunk of the population to another dimension.

All we knew was that around 1,540 people went missing in just ten days and the cases were increasing like a contagious disease, no one knew where they were going and we were surprised to see "#takemepredator" trending on social media.

If he is a psycho killer he would leave the bodies out for attention, but he didn't do that. Abducting a huge number of people in a matter of days and maintaining all of them, can't be done by a single human, the case started getting more attention after pop singer Myra Johnson went missing, a special team of twenty policemen and three forensic experts and two detectives were appointed for solving the case and the team leader Michael Fred called the whole team for a two-hour meet to discuss the enigma.

The whole team assembled at the Chamber of Conceal, the most secretive base of WPD, Fred walked into the chamber ten minutes after everyone arrived, just how a boss maintains his highness, he switched on the projector and looked around, checking the presence of everyone.

"Let's just see the incidents that happened in the last five days and try to find something useful," he said as he started the slide show.

In last five days, there were around 1,190 missing cases, one of them was pop star Myra Johnson, there was no noticeable revelation in the economic conditions of the victims, they are all from different levels of financial background, there is no relation among the victims, not even one clue left to analyse the pattern of the mysterious disappearances.

As the slides moved one after the other, I started seeing a pattern, almost ninety per cent of the total kidnappings happened in the last five days, so I started noting down the number of cases from the starting day.

John and Lynda was a couple, the next day three missing cases were reported, then the day after there were six people missing, the series looked like "2,3,6,12,24..." missing cases per day increased in a pattern as if the strength of the society was increasing every day, the sum of cases reported on previous days plus one gave the number of people going to be kidnapped on the present day, I didn't understand why this society was maintaining such a pattern so I kept it for myself and a common thing I noticed was that they were kidnapping people from deserted places, I raised this topic when Fred asked us to brainstorm about where to start the investigation.

"Myra was kidnapped at her farmhouse, John and Lynda are kidnapped from a hospital, Zenith was kidnapped from his room and he lives alone, Kia was kidnapped from the club and others were kidnapped in the same way, without any disturbance. the Predator did not create any chaos while doing these″.

Horner raised his hand after I finished, he seemed nervous because it was his first day on the job, "you said the kidnappings are being done at deserted places, but Kia was kidnapped in a club?" he asked.

"Kia is a middle-aged single mom who worked as a strip dancer at the Hoppy N Don's pub, she went missing from her dressing room, no chaos, no violence, Predator has shown sheer skill in abducting her. John and Lynda, this couple was the first to go missing, they were in Saint Xavier's hospital when they disappeared, so I propose that we should start our investigation from there." The crew looked at me anxiously, maybe because I didn't give them a chance to brainstorm.

"That's a lot of homework, Leo!!", said Fred, as he passed the mic to Surge.

Surge was my fellow trainee when we were in the police training, he was the topper in arms handling and was known all around in academy as Slingshot.

He dragged the mic towards him as he wetted his lips, he took a deep breath and started his pitch,

"I'm surprised that Leo did not speak a word about the predator's appearance at his flat, but for me, his appearance at my home is a significant clue.", he gave pause as he looked at me and gave a devilish grin, then he shifted towards the mic again, "he appeared in my bedroom at around four in the morning, he destroyed my house without a single noise loud enough to wake me up, when I woke up in the morning I realised, I missed my chance to hunt him down..", Horner stopped him by raising his hand and this time he seemed more nervous,

"Yes, go on throw it at me." said Surge,

"You said he appeared at around four, how did you know the time? if you woke up after he left," asked Horner as he squeezed one palm with the other.

"You should let me finish to get your answer, can I continue?"

"Yes sir, umm... I'm sorry", Horner trembled as he apologized with a barely audible voice.

Everyone in the room muttered something, probably against Horner,

Surge silenced the mumbling as he started to speak again,

"My house is completely under supervision, I did that ... cause...I doubt my wife, I knew there are laws against it, but this left me a huge clue...trust me," he said chuckling.

He took out a chip from his pocket and inserted it into the laptop,

"This is the recording of the predator entering my house and destroying it."

The camera was in the drawing-room facing the couch, the Predator entered the drawing-room, from Surge's bedroom, he sat on the couch and contemplated at the ceiling, he then took a little plastic bag from his pocket and then put it on the table in front,

"It was Cocaine, I sent the little leftover on the table to the lab," said Surge as he paused the video,

Fred was confused and did not find it as an important discovery, that would help the case,

"So you say we have to investigate all the drug addicts in Winterwich, the list will be really long," said Fred,

Surge continued the video without uttering a single word,

The predator spread the cocaine on the table, rolled a currency note, licked the edges of the rolled note and took a long snort, he then gazed at the tiles for a minute and took out a live Hamster from his bag and forced it to breath in some cocaine, he carefully inserted a knife into its throat and spilt its blood all over the floor, he collected some of it in a bottle that he carried in his coat and started destroying the room with extreme stealth, he shattered selective tiles with a hammer, later he cracked the Television screen with short knocks and inserted the hammer into it, he then ravaged the couch using the same knife that he used to kill the Hamster.

As I was watching the video, my mind was stuck at the part where he ingested the drug, that snorting style, licking the edges of the rolled note before taking a snort, I had seen that before.