This is the kind of motel where people come to die.

I don't even know what its name is. Half the sign fell off a long time ago. The other half is covered with graffiti. When the poor woman who saw her fiancé beaten to death in front of her eyes finally pulled herself together, she was able to give us a description. A great description, too, all things considered.

As soon as we posted it on the five-o-clock news, we got a call from the man at the desk. Said he rented a room to a man with the same facial features.. hell, even the same clothes. Me and a few of the boys came over as fast as we could.

Most people think that if you shoot yourself in the mouth like this poor shit did, your brains go flying out the back of your head. Not true. With the caliber pistol he was using, they didn't get very far at all.

He didn't even get blood on the picture of the ocean hanging over his bed.

I pull his driver's license out of his pocket. I was right. This is the same man that murdered Charlie Reynolds. They were roommates for a few months. Then, one day, he choked him to death. Didn't even wear gloves. Nobody even knew Charlie was dead for a good three days. Then someone heard a lot of crashing around in the middle of the night.

It's an old cliché, but it still rings true for me once in a while. Sometimes, the criminal does return to the scene of the crime. Usually, they do it because they want to have a conversation with somebody who won't rat them out. Who knows what this sick fuck was looking for when he went back to Charlie's place. But he got out right before the boys showed up. Window was still open, and so were a couple of doors.

We matched up the fingerprints right away. This man was convicted of stealing a car a few years back. He shot the driver. We caught him at a roadblock near the edge of the city. But he was declared insane. Part of his sentence involved sessions with a psychiatrist. Dr. Anthony Shelton.

Dr. Anthony Shelton was murdered over a week ago. When his secretary came into his office in the morning, she found that the picture window the doctor had in his office had been shattered. He fell twenty stories.

He didn't have any appointments until 1:30 that afternoon, so we had no leads. I took the liberty of searching through his notes on my own time, but I couldn't understand a sentence of his psychobabble bullshit.

The last piece fell into place when a local bartender turned up dead in his home yesterday. One of the patrons remembered he got into an argument with a man that matched our description perfectly. Then, we went public.

Looking down at this dead man on the bed, now, it's easy to believe he could have killed four people without a weapon. He isn't especially muscled, but he has a large frame, and strong hands. But he had a weapon. He didn't buy this gun on the way here. Maybe it belonged to Charlie. Why would he kill all those people with his bare hands?

For kicks, probably. Just another twisted freak wandering this city. This one looking to have his fun by ruining people's lives.

Did it make you feel strong? I wonder, as I stare down at him. Did it make you feel like a man?

Then, I see the letter.

He's holding it in the hand that's not wrapped around the trigger. It's in an unmarked envelope. And it's not sealed.

Before the guys from forensics get here, I take the letter out of his hand. Standing with my back to them, the other officers can't see me turn around and take the sheet of paper out of the envelope. The handwriting is very clean.

To whom it may concern,

Let it be known that of all the causes worth fighting for, I find love to be the most valuable.

Love.

I turn around and look at his body, again. His eyes are closed. For the first time, I notice something about his expression. It almost looks like he's smiling. Then I blink, and it's gone.

I shove the note back into the envelope and lay it down on the bed. Then I walk over to the window and open the curtains. I can't see very far, but I can see almost everything this city has to offer. My mind is still on the corpse behind me.

Love. He was fighting for love. At least that's what he thought. He was crazy. A psycho killer.

But he was fighting for something.

I close my eyes and the world around me disappears. I don't see darkness. I see the face my first partner, who was shot through the head while he was riding next to me. The face of the first mother I had tell her that her daughter wasn't coming home. The crying, bruised face of a maniac who sang the blues while he died. And I see the dead, smiling face of that murderer behind me.

Why?

I see the face of the woman I loved. And how she looked when she left me. It was a week later that I joined the force. The long hours made it easier to not think of her. And in a city like this, there was always the possibility that I wouldn’t make it home. But that only matters if you’ve got somebody waiting for you.

The dead man laying on the bed. He thought he was fighting for love. How far am I from ending up like him?

I take a deep breath, and all the images vanish from my head. All I have left is darkness.

Darkness.

It's not so bad.