Excerpt: Criminally Scienced

As the argument inside the classroom escalated, the few carrying on the conversation drew everyone's attention. They sat anxioiusly on the first day of class waiting for the professor but no one showed. As the new classmates compared their argumentive points to each other the change of demeanor in Deej’s opinion happened to escalate further.

“The serial killer had it all wrong. If I were going to kill someone I wouldn’t leave behind stupid evidence like their wallet or their car. The killer just wasn’t smart so he got caught.. Killers are not smart, most of them have pure dumb luck but none of them have the ability to get away with it. Actually, the ones that are smart did get away with it," Deej said as he mocked them.

"We could all argue Ted Bundy to Jeffrey Dahlmer but what about the recent killer they haven't even given him a proclaimed name yet. We could easily solve the case if they would let us do it," Jeremiah exclaimed.

As the conversation between the classmates introduced their own expectations of murder and how they would have done it differently the class of eleven introduced an interesting topic. The only one that didn’t seem to have any input on the conversation was Donovan Carr.

“What do you think Donovan?” Jeremiah asked as their conversation had now erupted into over an hour long debate of who murdered correctly as opposed to there being a right and wrong way to murder.

Donovan nodded and stood up.
"I’m glad to see that you all have such open minds, I’m interested in knowing a lot more from you next week. So your homework is to study one particular serial killer and find their erroraneous method. What did they do wrong and how did they get caught. Bring your presentation next week and we won’t need to meet again until next week. I’ll see you then.”

With open mouths they watched their professor leave the room. They assumed he was just one of the other classmates, he looked much too young to be teaching the utlimate course in Criminal Science.

***the post below was updated 11/12/09

As Patrick headed up the stairs to his dorm room after closing down the campus library, he carried his full backpack up the stairs with his head deep inside a novel. As the clock struck eleven he knew that he would enjoy the rest of the evening finishing up this book and watching the re-runs of Star Trek. He knew which way to go; he knew how many stairs and how many steps it was until he reached his door as he walked blind with only the words staring back at him. As the door rattled and his key unlocked the bolt he walked into the dark room sliding his backpack off onto the chair next to the door. He kicked the door shut behind him without skipping a word on his chapter.

He collapsed on the couch, with its loose threads barring the foam pad through the cushion. The old brown couch soaked him in. The dust billowed around him as he kicked off his shoes pulling his mismatched socks into the crease of the couch. As the hours slowed he picked up his pace in reading because he wanted to finish the book before he ate something. Dinner was running very late tonight as he usually ate before midnight but it was nearing 2AM as he closed the back cover shaking his head. He didn’t like that book at all. He rose from his feet as the sounds of the party downstairs grew much louder over the last few minutes now that he was paying attention to it. He opened the refrigerator and stared at his leftovers from yesterday and decided that popcorn seemed like a more appetizing dinner. As he slammed the microwave shut he listened to the popping as he pushed the VHS tape into the cassette player to have Doctor Spock accompany him this evening. It is the most look forward to event of the evening in his eyes.

He heard the pounding on the floor boards as it appeared that party must have had some proclaimed dancing going. He ignored it and sighed as he turned up the volume of the intro music of the Battlestar Galactica advancing through space. The first characters words were repeated at the exact same time by Patrick who had memorized the entire script of the episode.

The popping corn steadily beat inside the microwave when he heard a similar thunder of footsteps down his hall. He rstood at the door of his dorm looking into the dark hallway through the peek-hole. There was no-one in the hall anymore and the only thing he could hear was rummaging of slamming doors as more thunderous pounds stomped up the staircase again. Patrick opened the door to see into the hallway and was immediately met by two other young men that pushed him into the apartment. His door slammed closed just as the second round of stomps approached his door. The darkenss of the hallway masqed whomever was there. Once inside Patrick saw the two men. One of them pushed his way in and latched his door shut locking the dead bolt and sliding the chain across the entry.

“What’s going on?” Patrick cried as his scrawny body fell to the ground with the other men on top of him as they scurried into the room much too fast.

“Shh” one of them hushed him.
T
The first man stood with his eye buried inside the peep-hole. He took a step back as he stared at the door and with the quick step of his feet a quick thrust of three bangs on the door rang inside the room. .

“Open up, this is the police,” They ordered.

"Y —“ Patrick was muffled by one of the men’s hands in front of his mouth as the microwave beeped just a second later.

Bang, Bang, Bang the pounding repeated.

“Open up, this is the police,” he yelled louder from the hallway. The smell of burnt popcorn floated in the air.

A wrestle from behind the door was apparent as the men pulled Patrick further into the room, they began unstuffing their pants with bags of various pills and weed and pushing them into the creases of Patrick’s couch and under the books on top of the full coffee table and all Patrick could do was stare at them disbelieving.

The door burst open as the police withdrew their ramming pole and flooded the room, with other police pushing further down the hallway toward the other doors. All three of the men inside Patrick’s room raised their hands instinctively.

“It’s not mine!” Patrick yelled.

“Search the room,” the cadet yelled with a raised gun as they began to deluge the room.
“There are no other occupants in the room,” one of the other cadets yelled informing the other officers. The overflow of officers approached each of the three taking them down to the floor and to pushing their faces into the dusty floorboards of the room.

“It’s not mine!” Patrick yelled again.

The police didn’t care about what he was saying they just wanted everyone detained at this point. As each of the three wore their handcuffs behind their backs they were spread out on the floor and their bodies were searched meticulously. Pulling bags from their pants the two other men said not a word. Patrick’s molesting officer came up clean but with a quick search in the apartment they found the various bags of miscellaneous drugs that the two just planted. As each bag was retrieved Patrick pled the same words over and over. They had to know he was being set up!

"It's not mine!"