"Ned! Dinner is ready!" A chipper voice called out from the hallway.

She smiled and did some final notes on her note pad, before closing that and her English text book, laying them on the bed. She sat there, Indian-style, her back against the headboard of the bed, for a moment, chewing on her pen.

Her mind had drifted off all day. In class, at the market, even as she walked home she was so lost in thought she almost knocked over a little kid on the street. She shook her head as if to clear it and stretched her arms up over her head, yawning. It had indeed been a tiring day. She hadn't gotten any sleep last night.

Thoughts about what happened yesterday haunted her. The envelope, the picture... him.

Sighing, she rubbed her eyes and rose from the bed. She didn't feel like getting dressed again. The three sizes too big pajamas she was wearing were good enough, she thought. It was only her and Wella, one of her roommates, that were home anyway.

She rolled her shoulders, groaning, before she grabbed a hairband from the eight-armed Buddha figure on the nightstand. She looked at the statue for a second, smiling. All her knick-knacks were on it. Hairbands, rings, necklaces, bracelets... and then of course, her most prized possession: the picture of her mother. She stroked the older version of herself on the cheek and blew her a kiss, before she pulled her long auburn hair up into a ponytail.

Her mind drifted again. The new picture. Her eyebrows furrowed and she walked over to her bag, by her desk, retrieving the envelope he had given to her. Pulling out the picture of the two of them, she looked at it, studying it. She was always told she looked like her mother, but now that she had a possible picture of her father, she needed to compare. So she walked over to the mirror above her mahogany dresser and lifted the picture up beside her face, so she could look at her own reflection as well as her "parents'". Her eyes darted from her mother's face, to her own, to her "father's".

There was definitely a resemblance. She couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was, but... Her eyes suddenly squinted when she looked at his eyes. Were they brown? She turned the picture in her hand so she could look straight at it, and frowned. No, not brown. They were... light blue, silver-ish? She blinked and looked harder at the picture, and then she remembered. He had a shine job. Or so that's what she had read in a file she found online a while ago.

She had always been interested in criminology. Maybe it was because of what happened to her mother, she found it fascinating. She had gone online that day, just to check her email, but ended up at a site she had come to love. Unsolved murder mysteries and detailed biographies on murderers and serial killers.

She read article after article, interview after interview. Classified notes from psychiatrists who either had interviewed the criminals in prison or evaluated them after they got arrested. She listened to sound clips from interviews with killers, viewed film clips from surveillance cameras, which had caught some of the crimes on tape.

She found it fascinating, but Wella, her best friend and roommate, found it gross. The girl just couldn't understand how she could spend hours after hours on that site and the message board. She tried to explain it to Wella, but the girl just rolled her eyes and stomped out of the room on several occasions, slamming the door after her, calling out, "You need a life, love! No more horror gore stories, REAL or NOT! Move on!"

The words always struck her right in the heart. "Move on." How could she move on? Her mother had been murdered and...

She found her mind drifting again, as she stood there in the middle of her room, staring at the picture of her mother and her "father." He was a killer. A serial killer. But... he looked so... normal, in the picture with her mother. And he looked very normal up close. He smiled. Most of the killers, she had seen on the site, had only smiled when they talked about their killings. Sick, twisted smiles. But his... it was a real smile. Genuine feelings involved. Emotions--

"Stop, Ned. You're gonna knock yourself unconscious with all this thinking," she muttered to herself as she ran a hand down her face, sighing.

As she blew out a deep calming breath, her eyes locked onto the pictures, being held up by the Buddha statue. She went back to bed and sat down, taking the pictures from the sacred grasp of the figure.

She studied them closely, while her mind wandered off again. Her own hair was auburn, with a slight dark tone in the back. Long, wavy, with a hint of curls. She loved her hair, but as she looked at the picture of her mother, it made her wonder. Her mother's hair was an almost dishwater blonde. So where did she get the auburn from? An aunt? A grandmother? She sighed and her gazed locked onto her mother's green eyes. Her own dark brown, near black, except for the amber ring around the iris. Big eyes. Wella used to make fun of her and call her "my little doe."

She stared into her mother's eyes. Eyes caught in a moment of happiness, captured in time.

Jane Doe. Approximately twenty-two years of age. 5'10''. Death by strangulation. Cut and bruised--

"Stop, Ned." She pressed her hands into her temples, squeezing her eyes shut. Sometimes a single word, an item, a fragment of a sentence, triggered something in her head and she couldn't get it out of her mind again. She took a deep breath and swallowed, before returning to the task of comparing herself to her mother... and possible father.

She studied her "father's" face intensely. His lips full, just like hers. She puckered her own at the picture of him and her mother. "Kissable!" She giggled and rolled her eyes at her "parents," poking her tongue out at them.

Her eyebrows furrowed. His nose was wide, nothing like her own, which was slender and a little pointy. She chuckled suddenly and lowered her head. If he was her father, she definitely didn't inherit his big, wide nose. She snorted out loud and shook her head, rolling her eyes again.

Suddenly Wella's snickering voice was heard coming from the kitchen. "NED! Are you coming or what? Felix is alllllll over your plate!"

Her eyes widened and she quickly ran out of her room, heading straight from the kitchen, where she snatched the critter away from her dinner. She sat the cat down on the floor and it huffed at her, making her giggle as she sat down on the chair at the kitchen table.

"Sorry... had to finish something..." She grabbed her fork and leaned in over her plate, inhaling the amazing aromas coming up to meet her nose. "Smells incredible, Wella!"

Wella grinned and sat down at the table with her own plate. "Thank you, love! I am a master chef, you know?" She winked and dug into the food.

Nedia laughed and also dug in, scooping some of the spaghetti noodles up into her mouth. Wella could always make her smile. No matter how down she would be, or how much she tried to isolate her from the pleasures of smiling, Wella was always there, cheering her up.

"You going out with Michael tonight?"

Wella shrugged and took a sip of her glass with lemonade.

"I don't think so... something came up..."

Nedia frowned. This wasn't the Wella she usually saw when she spoke about Michael, her boyfriend through nineteen months.

"What came up?" she asked as she too took a sip of her lemonade. Wella's lemonade could be used as a cleaning detergent for the bathroom, but Nedia loved it anyway.

Wella sighed and shrugged again, her eyes sad.

"His father went missing last night. He called me this morning, all frantic and desperate. He's with the police now."

Nedia's eyes widened and she dropped her fork onto the table with a clunk.

"He's missing?! Wow... I bet all his old colleagues are putting in extra time for the search, huh?"

Wella nodded and smiled a little.

"So is Michael. When you're the son of one of the finest police officers in the system -- retired or not -- you have some privileges." She snorted, but quickly sobered, staring down at her plate.

Nedia reached over and laid a hand on her best friend's arm, giving it a light squeeze as she smiled softly.

"I'm sure he's fine. He probably just needed some quiet time. You know how he gets when spring arrives..." Her smile fell for a second. Next month... her mother had been dead for twenty-one years.

Wella smiled and nodded her head, reaching over and returning the gesture with a squeeze on Nedia's arm too.

"Yeah, you're probably right. But Michael isn't so sure... there's been some rumors going..."

Nedia's eyebrows furrowed and her head tilted to the side.

"What rumors?"

"That Richard B. Riddick is back on the planet. I don't know what he would be doing here in the first place, but... I don't know..." Wella hung her head and covered her face with her hands. "Michael said that his father has a history with Riddick, and that's why he's worried."

Nedia was staring at Wella in shock. Riddick. Her "father" and Michael's father had a history? Suddenly everything came crashing down on her and her mouth dropped open.

"Oh my god... Michael's father. What is his name again? Martin... what?" She had to grip the edge of the table to stop her hands from shaking.

Wella blinked and narrowed her eyes curiously at her best friend.

"Well... his full name is Martin Alexander Truman. But he's known as Detective "Jacqueline" Truman in the force. Why?"

Nedia slumped back into her seat, her eyes lowering slowly.

"The detective on my mother's case." She whispered.

To Be Continued.

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Chapter: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 (Incomplete)