We got him.

They're bringing him into the station now.

Oh, I can't wait for the interrogation, so I can wipe that fucking smirk off his smug face.

We've got movement in the city. Conaghan's walking about.

Today's the day.

We're moving in as fast as we can, observe and go in for immediate take down once we have confirmation.

I probably won't be able to update further until the end of the day.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Quarantine

I've taken the last few days off. Not really my call, but the chief's word is official law, no matter how much we don't like it. That, and I've switched Internet provider, so I did not have Internet for the last couple of days. I can't even begin to tell you how many hours I've wasted watching mindless television and playing old school Super Mario on my old school Nintendo system.

Yeah, I have an NES. So sue me. I haven't used it in years.

Lizzie comes by, but abides by my ruling not to bring work into my house, despite my saying she was allowed to break that rule just for this one time. I have no idea what's going on at the office. For all I know, Conaghan could be behind bars and Eric and the others could be rescued and resting at home for the first time in months.

Nah. I think she would tell me if something THAT big had happened. Then again...it IS Lizzie.

But over the course of the last couple of days, I have learned quite a few things about myself.

One: I lose my fucking mind when I don't have Internet, or work. Apparently work is my counter-balance to the scale of Zen.

Two: I really suck at Super Mario. Like, badly. Like, I can't even finish stage 2 without an extra lives cheat.

And Three: Television is a dying art. Or a dead art. Or a art that has been shot, burned, buried, dug back up, pissed on, shat on, and buried again.

Why is all television just mindless reality shows and cartoon spin-offs of shitty movies? Why did they remake Garfield? When did ER finally breathe its last breath? Why the fuck is Charlie Sheen still on the air? When did High School Musical get turned into a TV show, and why does it have three characters from Heroes on it? Why is Lost the only show that makes any bit of sense to me? When did Disney stop caring about lovable mice in pants that teach friendly kid values and start caring about pop stars that can't sing and sell sex to children subtly? When did Nickelodeon stop being funny? When did Syfy change its name? WHY did Syfy change its name? Why would I rather watch a cat ninja its way across a room in a Youtube video than see who becomes the next American Idol?

And how the HELL did that guy from Tosh.0 land that job? Seriously, who do I need to be talking to? In high school I would have KILLED to have a job like that.

Oh, I can't wait to be DONE with this quarantine bullshit. Nothing's happened to me. Nothing. Other than me losing my mind with boredom I'm a picture of health.

With the free time, though, I have had time to ask a few questions. The message, of course, taking predominant stance over everything.

Those letters were in Albright's journal, that SHE wrote. So how the hell could the message have been in there the whole time? There's no way they could have been gunning for me that early in the case. He must have just pulled them out at random later on down the road for convenience's sake. Slimy bastards.

Alright, assuming I am the target here...why take Eric? He was barely involved. I barely knew the guy. Why not take Lizzie if they wanted to intimidate me (and don't think me uncaring; if that ever happened I think I'd kill ten people just to slit the throat of the bastard who took her)? Or hell, why not just come for me? Hell, I'd love a fight, bring it on.

You scared, motherfuckers?

I'm not.

I'm waiting.

I go back to work tomorrow.

And when I do, you'd better start saying your prayers, because I'll be gunning for you.

Hard.

You scared yet?

You'd better be.

…

I'm going to go make lunch. Try to get back into a calmer state.

But I stand by my words.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Lizzie stormed into the bathroom while I was in there a little while ago. Normally she doesn't do that unless she absolutely has to, so it was a little disconcerting when she storms in and catches me with my fly down. Not that she doesn't know “”ME” by now, but that's fun time and this is the public restroom.

“You need to back off the case,” she says as I zip myself up.

I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

She tells me to take a few days, lay low. Now I know she's screwing with me, and I ask her if she is being serious. She responds by handing me a sheet of paper that, typed in what had to be 72-font (jeez, big enough?), were the following letters:

MHARTS UOY EES I

Of course, I recognize them immediately. But I still don't understand what it has to do with me.

“Lizzie, is this a joke? What are you-”

That did it. She grabs me, pushes me so that I slam against the counter (she's never this rough, not even during fun time), and holds the sheet up to the mirror.

“Does this look like a fucking joke?” she screams.

And this time, I see it. Really see it. The letters that were written in backwards were now showing so that they were finally legible. He never wanted me to unscramble all the words; he wanted me to find the one hidden message in them. I didn't know what to say as I looked at the four words that were staring back at me as though taunting me:

I SEE YOU STRAHM

Bodies

I...I can't even comprehend this right now.

We've got four bodies piled up in an apartment room in the suburbs of town.

Four.

That brings the total to eight.

Oh, sorry, did you think I meant the four bodies that were missing already? Sorry to deceive.

Nope, these are four completely new bodies.

We got the call when the landlady received complaints of a foul odor on the fourth floor, and then a neighbor on the third floor reported something leaking through the floorboards above her. When she went to go check it out, this was what she found. Those bodies had to be at least three days old, though how they got there I couldn't tell you.

I didn't even know what to expect when I went to go and investigate. When I saw the scene, let me tell you, I haven't thrown up on the job yet, but this threatened to break the streak I had going for me. These bodies were carved up like jack-o-lanterns on Halloween. From the looks, I'd say anywhere between a ten-inch blade and a machete. The one girl was hollowed out completely, just skin and bones and a lot of blood. The guys are just as bad, but I'll spare those of you with a weak constitution the details.

I couldn't tell on glance who they were, and DNA hasn't come in with results yet. But on glance, I don't think- think being the key word- that they're any of the kids already missing. Just a hunch, but there's at least three guys and one girl here; different ratio. The girl may be Krell or Albright and one of the guys may be Ford. Again, I don't know yet. But what I do know is that none of them are Eric.

At least there's one bit of good news.

And of course, there's a message waiting for us. This time, all it said was “SMHARTUOYESEI” and then “TOO LATE” written underneath that.

That really makes me freaking hopeful.

I can't even write any more. My mind just exploded at this. How do you sneak four bodies into an apartment without anyone seeing them or hearing the commotion? Piece by piece? Or did they go in through the window off the fire escape? Are they just mocking us now, or are they sending a warning that more of this will follow?

We've finally got bodies stacking up, and it just makes everything worse.

What else is new?

Update

You want an update? Here's your update:

Eric's still missing. It's been three days. Chief's been putting off talking to the press, but he can't avoid it forever. I wonder if there's any way we can avoid telling them that it's a detective from the case that's gone missing, but I suppose press have ways of getting their sources.

Every day I keep coming in to the office expecting to see him working diligently at his desk, but every day I stare at the empty seat and remember that that's not going to happen. Not now, at least.

Out of curiosity, I went through his desk the other day...and, well, three guesses what I found. I guess he and Lizzie must have been sharing information. Pictures and printed out websites all revolving around Secret Agent Man the Alien.

Yeah, not my best pun, but what do you want from me, I've got a lot on my mind.

I'm getting tired of this. Everyone's finding connections to this thing but I just don't want to look there. The minute I start looking there, then it starts to become real, and it's NOT real. I'll acknowledge that Conaghan is using the meme as part of his MO, but I'm not going to dig into everything. I need to keep a clear head, and not get bogged down with shit like this.

We're getting close to Conaghan, I can just feel it. And when we find him, then we find Eric and the kids, and all this blows over...well, not after a lot of therapy for the victims, but it'll blow over.

I just hope they can hang in there a little while longer. Almost there...

Oh, did anyone figure out this frigging anagram yet? I'm horrible with these things, I must have tried five different ways and I'm still not getting any clear sentences. Let me know.

Alright, I'm back, I'm alright, no need to fret.

Though yesterday was no weirder than you'd expect.

People showed up for work about an hour after I got that call. I told the chief, he sent me over there with a couple of officers to investigate. I could tell the whole place was worried, but I just tried to keep a cool head.

Eric lives in a house on the west end of town, not too far from where Jessica Albright's family lives. It's more of a two-story shack than anything else, but it's pretty homely, at least, on the outside. Blue paint, green shutters, even a little garden out front. I never took Eric for the type, but then again, you learn something new every day.

We tried not to make a scene. We just went up to the door and I knocked. They stood on either side, ready to go in on my mark.

“Eric? It's Zeke, you home?”

No answer. I open the door, my gun's out, and we all but storm inside.

Eric's place was a wreck. The couch was overturned and the stuffing was torn out of one of the cushions. The TV was smashed up, the vase was shattered, and almost every single picture that was hanging on the wall had the glass smashed or was hanging crooked. The only picture that wasn't in shambles was the one on his table, the one of him and his old partner, Mickey Scott. I'm still not sure why it was the only one untouched.

I must have searched the entire first floor twice before I moved upstairs. The rest of downstairs was just as big a wreck. The kitchen lost every single dish it had had all over the floor, the bathroom was just unrecognizable (not to mention flooding somewhat), and the dryer in the laundry room had actually been overturned. Over-fucking-turned. Now that's something I've never seen before.

But no Eric.

His bedroom was a mess. The mattress was flipped so that it was leaning against the wall, the springs on the underside twisted and broken. His dresser was rummaged through, and clothes were all over the place. His alarm clock was on the floor in hundreds of little pieces, and the mirror on his door was cracked so bad you couldn't pick your reflection out of it.

The whole place is just a fucking mess. Some of it is just too extreme. This wasn't a robbery or a kidnapping, somebody waged the Vietnam War Part Two in here and bombed the shit out of it. And still, no sign of Eric. No wallet, keys were found under one of his jackets, no visible sign of him anywhere.

Something new happened here. None of this matches the patterns we've been seeing so far. The other kids were taken with almost no effort, and yet here it looks like a fucking rhinoceros charged through here to grab him. Conaghan couldn't have done all this without help...so who else did he have do this?

I told one of the officers to call the station and get more people over here, and I told the other one to start marking outside, make sure no one decided to come snooping. The first one immediately took off, but the second one just stood there looking up at the ceiling like he had mental issues. I snapped my fingers in front of his face to bring him back down to Earth, and he just looked at me for a minute and then went right back to looking up at the ceiling again. Annoyed, I looked up to see what had him so damn transfixed...and saw what was quickly becoming the most redundant part of this whole fucking case. A damn message:

OEW HES OIN RYO UTR EUO PIN TKN GHO OFI IXN EPR MEC UFI XSU NEG HHE LLE TYO USE PRW EEN NER LIV GA

THE ANGEL OF DEATH COMES FOR US ALL

Yeah, I am officially getting sick and tired of that fucking line. If I wanted a preacher's quote, I'd go back to church.

Well, at least it wasn't ALL blood writing this time. But the letters...assuming my memory hasn't gotten fuzzy, because I haven't thought about it much since we discovered it... those are the letters from Albright's diary, right? The capitals from that freaky-ass rhyme-thing she wrote? Some of it's written in what I'm guessing is paint or tar or something...and then the specific letters and the last line are written in blood (for some reason, there's no color options on this damn thing, so I just bolded them so that it would be easier to understand).

I guess there was a message in there after all. Though I don't if it's intentional or just coincidence.

The rest of the department got there and immediately got to work, taking pictures, dusting for prints, all that. Someone was going to take a blood sample, but based off of experience I believed it was safe to assume we weren't going to get anything off of it. Lizzie got here, and when she saw the writing on the ceiling she just gave me that look I knew all too well.

This just got personal.

I'm back at the office now. Eric's face is being printed on a million “Missing” posters as we speak. I look over at his desk, thinking about the conversation we had had barely two weeks ago...and wondering how the hell he got targeted.

He wasn't a threat. He wasn't a major player. He was just doing his job.

And I know what I'm going to hear; how this coincides with the latest Marble Hornets entry. Yeah, well, fuck you. You're saying Eric was kidnapped so that it could be in sync with a fucking video? Kiss my ass. I don't know how you'd plan something like this around a fucking video; especially one that just got put up hours before.

Eric is missing. I don't care what happened in the stupid entry. I care about finding him and the others.

So Slender Heads, piss the fuck off.

I'm finishing this entry before I get angry.

I'll write again when I know more.