New, old story
So, as promised, my oldy from CSI New York. Enjoy!
Never Again
Prologue
The construction site was quiet at that time of the night, as quiet as any place could be in a big city. The moon was half full, but between the tall buildings and the harsh street lights, little of its glow shone upon the solitary figure walking amongst the abandoned machinery and debris.
Some dog howled in the distance, momentarily distracting the man from his task. He looked around, heavy coat draped across his broad shoulders, lapel hiding almost all of his face.
He wasn’t jumpy, just being cautious. Being jumpy implied a sense of fear, and that sentiment he had abandoned a long time ago, along with compassion and remorse.
The dark night is the territory of terror, and most people with half a good sense in their minds would have never chose that construction site for a walk, not even by day. A man had been killed there, not a week ago, causing the temporary closure of the place.
The certainty that no one would dare to venture there had served him perfectly, for what he was looking for was not to be seen by any eyes, except his and the ones that hired him.
Sure steps led him towards a pile of closed bags. Sand, or plaster, or some other component waiting to use in adding another concrete monster to the city. He didn’t care. What he was looking for was nested between the third and the fourth bag.
Reaching with a gloved hand, the man’s fingers closed around a thin package. ‘A vanilla envelop,’ the man thought. ‘How original’
He knew that he should wait until reaching a more private place before he opened the envelop, but curiosity was one of the traits of his personality that he had yet to shake. Sometimes it helped him in his work, others... not so much.
Breaking the glue seal, the man tilted the package, watching as two glossy pictures and a sheet of white paper slide in to view. A young man with rectangular glasses and short cropped hair was staring right at him in the first one. The second was of the same man, walking in to one of the city’s police stations.
‘So they want me to waste some cop,’ the man accessed his new assignment, carefully storing the envelop and its contents in the right pocket of his coat. ‘I can do that’.
CHAPTER ONE
The construction site was quiet at that time of the night, as quiet as any place could be in a big city. The moon was half full, but between the tall buildings and the harsh street lights, little of its glow shone upon the solitary figure walking amongst the abandoned machinery and debris.
Some dog howled in the distance, momentarily distracting the man from his task. He looked around, heavy coat draped across his broad shoulders, lapel hiding almost all of his face.
He wasn’t jumpy, just being cautious. Being jumpy implied a sense of fear, and that sentiment he had abandoned a long time ago, along with compassion and remorse.
The dark night is the territory of terror, and most people with half a good sense in their minds would have never chose that construction site for a walk, not even by day. A man had been killed there, not a week ago, causing the temporary closure of the place.
The certainty that no one would dare to venture there had served him perfectly, for what he was looking for was not to be seen by any eyes, except his and the ones that hired him.
Sure steps led him towards a pile of closed bags. Sand, or plaster, or some other component waiting to use in adding another concrete monster to the city. He didn’t care. What he was looking for was nested between the third and the fourth bag.
Reaching with a gloved hand, the man’s fingers closed around a thin package. ‘A vanilla envelop,’ the man thought. ‘How original’
He knew that he should wait until reaching a more private place before he opened the envelop, but curiosity was one of the traits of his personality that he had yet to shake. Sometimes it helped him in his work, others... not so much.
Breaking the glue seal, the man tilted the package, watching as two glossy pictures and a sheet of white paper slide in to view. A young man with rectangular glasses and short cropped hair was staring right at him in the first one. The second was of the same man, walking in to one of the city’s police stations.
‘So they want me to waste some cop,’ the man accessed his new assignment, carefully storing the envelop and its contents in the right pocket of his coat. ‘I can do that’.
CHAPTER TWO
Stella consciously slowed her pace has she neared the man she’d been looking for. Danny Messer was daydreaming in front of his computer, and for the nth time she wandered if Mac had done the right thing when he allowed the young man back to work so soon after what had happened.
It was nothing short of every cop’s worst nightmare, to accidentally shoot another police officer. The fact that said police officer had been linked to some dubious connections and business while working undercover, did little to diminish the whole dogma surrounding the thing.
Even if he didn’t say anything about it, Stella knew that Danny was being the butt’s end of some humourless jokes and harsh comments over what had went through in that subway station; mainly from Minhas colleagues and freshmen police officers that hadn’t bother to get their facts straight.
The IAB’s investigation could clear him for duty all they wanted, but rumours and bad-mouthing would take a hell of a long time more to disappear. Adding that to the guy’s family somewhat dark history, she was sure this was not being easy on him and that his eagerness to return to active duty was just his way to prove them all wrong. Including Mac.
She couldn’t say that she blamed Mac for the dressing down he’d gave Danny; she just wasn’t sure if that was the right way to deal with him. It had to be difficult for Taylor, being the marine at core that he couldn’t shake out of his personality, to deal with a guy that heard his orders as suggestions and would, more times than few, deal with things in his manner, completely ignoring the older man. And it had to be particularly painful for a guy like Mac, who, even preaching that only evidence should be followed, prided himself of having some pretty good instincts, to be proven so completely wrong.
His instincts had told him that, despite the warnings, Messer was a competent guy. Evidence was telling him that he had trusted his instincts at the wrong time.
“Earth to Messer, you are clear to land on platform 12,” she said, ruffling his gelled up hair.
Danny blinked, looking dumbly at the computer screen, as if wandering why it was taking to him. The familiar hand on his head made him turn to face Stella.
“Hey Stell, what’s up?”
“Hawkes paged you, but you didn’t answer… he send me as his private pigeon.”
He looked at his waist, finding the pager’s casing empty.
“Ah… the battery was down, so I let it charging at the reception,” he mumbled, mentally slapping himself because he knew he should’ve requested another one for the time being. “What did he want?”
“Something about your floater… he’s waiting for you downstairs.”
Just then the computer blinked an annoying red message of ‘no matches found’, or as most CSI’s phrased it ‘go bark at another tree’.
“Looking for something in particular?” She asked, recognizing the programme as NYPD’s missing people database.
“The floater, Trevor Mils. Wanted to see if anyone had report him missing,” he said, abandoning the computer.
“Guess not,” she said in a sad tone, wandering if Trevor even had anyone to miss him. NY was a city of lonely people, and everyday they learned that those were the best victims.
“Guess not,” Danny agreed, knowing what was on her mind.
8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o
“What took you so long?” The dark skinned CME said from under the florescent light bulb when he saw Danny rounding the corner.
As usually, the CSI’s first action when arriving at the highly lightened autopsy room was to take off his glasses to clean up the lenses. Apparently the dirt in them was like old bruises… it only came out under harsh light.
“Well hello you too!” Danny delivered the sarcastic reply while replacing his now clean spectacles. Sheldon Hawkes really was a nice guy, but sometimes he could be just a tiny little bit over the edge enthusiastic. “What’s the rush? Is the guy alive or something?”
“Or something,” the medic said, a smile playing on his lips that told all about the excitement he was feeling over his discovery. “You are not gonna believe this.”
With a flick of the thumb he switched the lights off, replacing the white light for a blue glow that lent the entire place a weary feeing.
“Holy shit!”
“Told you!” Sheldon smirked, knowing exactly what the young man’s reaction would be.
Turned with his face down, the body of Trevor Mils lay over the cold autopsy table in all its naked glory, his ample back directly under the blue light source, revealing what the normal spectral light hadn’t been able to. Written in bruises it was easy to read ‘COP KILLER’, running horizontally from the man’s neck to his butt.
“You better get a bigger light source, Hawkes,” Mac’s voice startled them, coming from the other end.
The medic was about to ask why when he realize what Mac meant. Two of the other bodies lying face down on the autopsy room had the exact same pattern all over them.
CHAPTER THREE
“So, it’s a serial killer,” Aiden stated as she studied the six pictures on the table.
After discovering five more bodies with the same characteristics as Danny’s DB, Mac had called in the whole team to work on what was now officially the biggest case in the entire city.
“It would seem that way,” he said, his gaze held by the words printed on each of the victims’ backs. Six pairs of black bruises with the accusation ‘cop killer’ stared back at him, urging him to understand their true meaning. “So let’s see how far we can go before the feds arrive to play in our turf. What do we know about them?”
Stella started from the left and grabbed the pictures of the two DB’s she’d been working on.
“Margaret Stuton, age 47 and Xavier Stuton, age 48,” she said, holding the glossy pictures of the couple. “Married for twenty five years. A neighbour that was supposed to have lunch with them yesterday found them dead, seating on their living room’s couch. Restriction marks, similar to the ones Danny found on Trevor were present on both bodies. COD so far is being pegged as strangulation, but we’re still waiting on the autopsy results.”
Aiden grabbed the new two pictures, hers and Mac’s case, another couple.
“Samantha and Louis Emmertton, age 46 and 49, married for fifteen years. The uniforms passing down the old TA Bridge reported a parked car. The bodies were found inside, seated on the front seats, seat belts on. The marks on both wrists and ankles are consistent with both Trevor Mils and the Stutons. COD is yet to determine.”
Flack grabbed the next picture, belaying what the CSI working the case had told him.
“Female DB, middle age, found in a dumpster in a corner between the 166th Street and Broadway. COD was a single blow to the head. She’d been lying downstairs for three days, waiting to be IDed.”
Danny grabbed the last picture.
“Trevor Mils, age 45, found in the Harlem River, just pass Spuyten Duyvil Creek. COD is yet to be determined, but Sheldon was leaning towards heart failure. If it weren’t for the rope marks, it had natural cause written all over it. He was trying to catch any lingering cyanosis in the fingertips when the UV light caught the bruising on the back and…” he trailed off when he spotted the blond man in a suit staring at him from the doorway of the common room. “You liking the show or should we just refund you the ticket money?”
All four heads turned to the door, spotting the intruder to their meeting. Mac took the lead. “Can we help you?” He asked in a deceiving cordial tone.
“I’m sorry… I must’ve come across a little stalk-ish,” the man apologized, even though everyone in that room, experienced with interrogations, knew he wasn’t being sincere. “My name is Donauh, John Donauh. I’m with the Bureau,” he said, offering a hand to greet Mac. “They send me over to help out in your investigation.”
“Damn… that was fast,” Aiden let out between closed teeth.
CHAPTER FOUR
“If I remember it clearly, my report said that the information was, at this point, insufficient to make that sort of assumptions,” Mac said, suspicious of the FBI’s lightning speed response. They were fast, but damn, that was almost clairvoyance.
Donauh snorted.
“Detective… Tayler, is it?” He tried to confirm. When Mac didn’t correct, he went on, “You aren’t new to this game. The minute you report six bodies lying in your morgue that might’ve been killed by the same MO, you know red flags jumped up in all sorts of places. Mine was just one of them.”
Mac’s look upon the man did little to disguise what he thought about the game and red flags. He knew that, in theory, they were working for the same result, but previous experiences had taught him the hard way that more often than not, department prides and personal feelings came in to play, completely ruining any chances of solving the cases.
“We’re all on the same side, detective,” the man said, guessing Mac’s thoughts. “I promise I won’t stand in the way of your forensic investigation. My only function in here is to help your team to catch this guy before he kills again.”
Mac could almost believe him.
8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8
“This isn’t making any sense!” A frustrated Danny said to no one in particular, leaning back from his computer stool. He took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes.
Mac had decided that each would continue to run with the DB’s they’d been initially assigned to, crossing references and information when ever something important came up. But, so far, all of them had had little to ‘show-and-tell’ to the rest of the class.
“What?” Aiden, seated on the stool next to him, asked. She rolled her chair closer to look at his computer screen. It was opened in the VICAP’s page. “No hits?”
“Too many,” he sighed, “but none close enough to our guy. I mean, we have three different COD’s in six victims, plus one that died of natural causes but that could’ve easily be caused by fear. In my book, such a wide spread of MO’ suggests there is either more than one killer or one killer highly experienced, right?”
Aiden nodded. The same ideas had already run through her mind as well.
“Right. We have the Emmerttons, who died of punctured heart; the Stutons who were strangled; our Jane Doe from Broadway who died from blunt force trauma and Mills, whose heart failed.”
It was Danny’s time to nod. All of them knew the six victims’ cases by heart now.
“Now, if we’re looking at more than one killer, and VICAP’s data base is showing me at least a hundred MO’s to each of those patterns, then why the same markings and words written in bruises on the victims backs?”
Aiden could only shrug. She had no idea.
“The one killer theory is, however, inconsistent with a serial killer’s usual MO. They prime themselves for following a pattern, perfecting their technique and use it in every one of their victims. So, if this is a serial killer we’re dealing with, why is his killing method all over the place?”
“Exactly,” Danny beamed her a smile, happy to see their brains working on the same page. “There is a third option…”
Aiden noticed his hesitation.
“But?”
“But it’s just a hunch, so I’ll seat on it for a while,” he finished lamely, having learn his lesson about following his instinct over the evidences. He hit a button on the keyboard to start a new search.
“Too bad that the ones with the best info are all lined up downstairs, not breathing.” Aiden said, patting his shoulder and returning to her computer.
“We’ve just got lucky, kids,” Flack said, entering the room with a satisfied smile.
“And by ‘we’, you mean you, right?” Danny said, turning away from the frustrating computer once again.
Flack ‘whipped’ his friend’s head with the report he was carrying before placing it on top of the table, between the two CSI’s.
“Our Jane Doe ain’t Doe no more.”
Two hands flew to open the file, eager to know if this was the one piece of information that would allow them to move forward in their investigation. Flack saved them the trouble.
“Her name was Barbara Ramirez, age 50, mother of one Orson Ramirez, age 8. We ran her DNA on CODIS and had a hit by association. Her brother, Raul Ramirez, is doing time for car theft. Her mother had reported her missing two days ago.”
Aiden ran a hand through her long hair.
“As she been contact?”
“Yeah, Stella was on it. Left her on the phone and came to give you guys the news.”
“And what do we have on Miss Ramirez?”
“Not much, like the others. Respectful, law obeying single mother. Worked at a hospital in Manhattan, paid her bills and lived her life quietly, as far as we can tell so far,” Flack said, opening his note book even though he had already memorized all the details that were necessary.
“So, we’re more or less where we started, right?” Danny asked, returning his glasses to his face and turning towards the computer.
No one answered him. There was no need.
Police Report Chapters 5-10
Never Again
Prologue
The construction site was quiet at that time of the night, as quiet as any place could be in a big city. The moon was half full, but between the tall buildings and the harsh street lights, little of its glow shone upon the solitary figure walking amongst the abandoned machinery and debris.
Some dog howled in the distance, momentarily distracting the man from his task. He looked around, heavy coat draped across his broad shoulders, lapel hiding almost all of his face.
He wasn’t jumpy, just being cautious. Being jumpy implied a sense of fear, and that sentiment he had abandoned a long time ago, along with compassion and remorse.
The dark night is the territory of terror, and most people with half a good sense in their minds would have never chose that construction site for a walk, not even by day. A man had been killed there, not a week ago, causing the temporary closure of the place.
The certainty that no one would dare to venture there had served him perfectly, for what he was looking for was not to be seen by any eyes, except his and the ones that hired him.
Sure steps led him towards a pile of closed bags. Sand, or plaster, or some other component waiting to use in adding another concrete monster to the city. He didn’t care. What he was looking for was nested between the third and the fourth bag.
Reaching with a gloved hand, the man’s fingers closed around a thin package. ‘A vanilla envelop,’ the man thought. ‘How original’
He knew that he should wait until reaching a more private place before he opened the envelop, but curiosity was one of the traits of his personality that he had yet to shake. Sometimes it helped him in his work, others... not so much.
Breaking the glue seal, the man tilted the package, watching as two glossy pictures and a sheet of white paper slide in to view. A young man with rectangular glasses and short cropped hair was staring right at him in the first one. The second was of the same man, walking in to one of the city’s police stations.
‘So they want me to waste some cop,’ the man accessed his new assignment, carefully storing the envelop and its contents in the right pocket of his coat. ‘I can do that’.
CHAPTER ONE
The construction site was quiet at that time of the night, as quiet as any place could be in a big city. The moon was half full, but between the tall buildings and the harsh street lights, little of its glow shone upon the solitary figure walking amongst the abandoned machinery and debris.
Some dog howled in the distance, momentarily distracting the man from his task. He looked around, heavy coat draped across his broad shoulders, lapel hiding almost all of his face.
He wasn’t jumpy, just being cautious. Being jumpy implied a sense of fear, and that sentiment he had abandoned a long time ago, along with compassion and remorse.
The dark night is the territory of terror, and most people with half a good sense in their minds would have never chose that construction site for a walk, not even by day. A man had been killed there, not a week ago, causing the temporary closure of the place.
The certainty that no one would dare to venture there had served him perfectly, for what he was looking for was not to be seen by any eyes, except his and the ones that hired him.
Sure steps led him towards a pile of closed bags. Sand, or plaster, or some other component waiting to use in adding another concrete monster to the city. He didn’t care. What he was looking for was nested between the third and the fourth bag.
Reaching with a gloved hand, the man’s fingers closed around a thin package. ‘A vanilla envelop,’ the man thought. ‘How original’
He knew that he should wait until reaching a more private place before he opened the envelop, but curiosity was one of the traits of his personality that he had yet to shake. Sometimes it helped him in his work, others... not so much.
Breaking the glue seal, the man tilted the package, watching as two glossy pictures and a sheet of white paper slide in to view. A young man with rectangular glasses and short cropped hair was staring right at him in the first one. The second was of the same man, walking in to one of the city’s police stations.
‘So they want me to waste some cop,’ the man accessed his new assignment, carefully storing the envelop and its contents in the right pocket of his coat. ‘I can do that’.
CHAPTER TWO
Stella consciously slowed her pace has she neared the man she’d been looking for. Danny Messer was daydreaming in front of his computer, and for the nth time she wandered if Mac had done the right thing when he allowed the young man back to work so soon after what had happened.
It was nothing short of every cop’s worst nightmare, to accidentally shoot another police officer. The fact that said police officer had been linked to some dubious connections and business while working undercover, did little to diminish the whole dogma surrounding the thing.
Even if he didn’t say anything about it, Stella knew that Danny was being the butt’s end of some humourless jokes and harsh comments over what had went through in that subway station; mainly from Minhas colleagues and freshmen police officers that hadn’t bother to get their facts straight.
The IAB’s investigation could clear him for duty all they wanted, but rumours and bad-mouthing would take a hell of a long time more to disappear. Adding that to the guy’s family somewhat dark history, she was sure this was not being easy on him and that his eagerness to return to active duty was just his way to prove them all wrong. Including Mac.
She couldn’t say that she blamed Mac for the dressing down he’d gave Danny; she just wasn’t sure if that was the right way to deal with him. It had to be difficult for Taylor, being the marine at core that he couldn’t shake out of his personality, to deal with a guy that heard his orders as suggestions and would, more times than few, deal with things in his manner, completely ignoring the older man. And it had to be particularly painful for a guy like Mac, who, even preaching that only evidence should be followed, prided himself of having some pretty good instincts, to be proven so completely wrong.
His instincts had told him that, despite the warnings, Messer was a competent guy. Evidence was telling him that he had trusted his instincts at the wrong time.
“Earth to Messer, you are clear to land on platform 12,” she said, ruffling his gelled up hair.
Danny blinked, looking dumbly at the computer screen, as if wandering why it was taking to him. The familiar hand on his head made him turn to face Stella.
“Hey Stell, what’s up?”
“Hawkes paged you, but you didn’t answer… he send me as his private pigeon.”
He looked at his waist, finding the pager’s casing empty.
“Ah… the battery was down, so I let it charging at the reception,” he mumbled, mentally slapping himself because he knew he should’ve requested another one for the time being. “What did he want?”
“Something about your floater… he’s waiting for you downstairs.”
Just then the computer blinked an annoying red message of ‘no matches found’, or as most CSI’s phrased it ‘go bark at another tree’.
“Looking for something in particular?” She asked, recognizing the programme as NYPD’s missing people database.
“The floater, Trevor Mils. Wanted to see if anyone had report him missing,” he said, abandoning the computer.
“Guess not,” she said in a sad tone, wandering if Trevor even had anyone to miss him. NY was a city of lonely people, and everyday they learned that those were the best victims.
“Guess not,” Danny agreed, knowing what was on her mind.
8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o
“What took you so long?” The dark skinned CME said from under the florescent light bulb when he saw Danny rounding the corner.
As usually, the CSI’s first action when arriving at the highly lightened autopsy room was to take off his glasses to clean up the lenses. Apparently the dirt in them was like old bruises… it only came out under harsh light.
“Well hello you too!” Danny delivered the sarcastic reply while replacing his now clean spectacles. Sheldon Hawkes really was a nice guy, but sometimes he could be just a tiny little bit over the edge enthusiastic. “What’s the rush? Is the guy alive or something?”
“Or something,” the medic said, a smile playing on his lips that told all about the excitement he was feeling over his discovery. “You are not gonna believe this.”
With a flick of the thumb he switched the lights off, replacing the white light for a blue glow that lent the entire place a weary feeing.
“Holy shit!”
“Told you!” Sheldon smirked, knowing exactly what the young man’s reaction would be.
Turned with his face down, the body of Trevor Mils lay over the cold autopsy table in all its naked glory, his ample back directly under the blue light source, revealing what the normal spectral light hadn’t been able to. Written in bruises it was easy to read ‘COP KILLER’, running horizontally from the man’s neck to his butt.
“You better get a bigger light source, Hawkes,” Mac’s voice startled them, coming from the other end.
The medic was about to ask why when he realize what Mac meant. Two of the other bodies lying face down on the autopsy room had the exact same pattern all over them.
CHAPTER THREE
“So, it’s a serial killer,” Aiden stated as she studied the six pictures on the table.
After discovering five more bodies with the same characteristics as Danny’s DB, Mac had called in the whole team to work on what was now officially the biggest case in the entire city.
“It would seem that way,” he said, his gaze held by the words printed on each of the victims’ backs. Six pairs of black bruises with the accusation ‘cop killer’ stared back at him, urging him to understand their true meaning. “So let’s see how far we can go before the feds arrive to play in our turf. What do we know about them?”
Stella started from the left and grabbed the pictures of the two DB’s she’d been working on.
“Margaret Stuton, age 47 and Xavier Stuton, age 48,” she said, holding the glossy pictures of the couple. “Married for twenty five years. A neighbour that was supposed to have lunch with them yesterday found them dead, seating on their living room’s couch. Restriction marks, similar to the ones Danny found on Trevor were present on both bodies. COD so far is being pegged as strangulation, but we’re still waiting on the autopsy results.”
Aiden grabbed the new two pictures, hers and Mac’s case, another couple.
“Samantha and Louis Emmertton, age 46 and 49, married for fifteen years. The uniforms passing down the old TA Bridge reported a parked car. The bodies were found inside, seated on the front seats, seat belts on. The marks on both wrists and ankles are consistent with both Trevor Mils and the Stutons. COD is yet to determine.”
Flack grabbed the next picture, belaying what the CSI working the case had told him.
“Female DB, middle age, found in a dumpster in a corner between the 166th Street and Broadway. COD was a single blow to the head. She’d been lying downstairs for three days, waiting to be IDed.”
Danny grabbed the last picture.
“Trevor Mils, age 45, found in the Harlem River, just pass Spuyten Duyvil Creek. COD is yet to be determined, but Sheldon was leaning towards heart failure. If it weren’t for the rope marks, it had natural cause written all over it. He was trying to catch any lingering cyanosis in the fingertips when the UV light caught the bruising on the back and…” he trailed off when he spotted the blond man in a suit staring at him from the doorway of the common room. “You liking the show or should we just refund you the ticket money?”
All four heads turned to the door, spotting the intruder to their meeting. Mac took the lead. “Can we help you?” He asked in a deceiving cordial tone.
“I’m sorry… I must’ve come across a little stalk-ish,” the man apologized, even though everyone in that room, experienced with interrogations, knew he wasn’t being sincere. “My name is Donauh, John Donauh. I’m with the Bureau,” he said, offering a hand to greet Mac. “They send me over to help out in your investigation.”
“Damn… that was fast,” Aiden let out between closed teeth.
CHAPTER FOUR
“If I remember it clearly, my report said that the information was, at this point, insufficient to make that sort of assumptions,” Mac said, suspicious of the FBI’s lightning speed response. They were fast, but damn, that was almost clairvoyance.
Donauh snorted.
“Detective… Tayler, is it?” He tried to confirm. When Mac didn’t correct, he went on, “You aren’t new to this game. The minute you report six bodies lying in your morgue that might’ve been killed by the same MO, you know red flags jumped up in all sorts of places. Mine was just one of them.”
Mac’s look upon the man did little to disguise what he thought about the game and red flags. He knew that, in theory, they were working for the same result, but previous experiences had taught him the hard way that more often than not, department prides and personal feelings came in to play, completely ruining any chances of solving the cases.
“We’re all on the same side, detective,” the man said, guessing Mac’s thoughts. “I promise I won’t stand in the way of your forensic investigation. My only function in here is to help your team to catch this guy before he kills again.”
Mac could almost believe him.
8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8o8
“This isn’t making any sense!” A frustrated Danny said to no one in particular, leaning back from his computer stool. He took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes.
Mac had decided that each would continue to run with the DB’s they’d been initially assigned to, crossing references and information when ever something important came up. But, so far, all of them had had little to ‘show-and-tell’ to the rest of the class.
“What?” Aiden, seated on the stool next to him, asked. She rolled her chair closer to look at his computer screen. It was opened in the VICAP’s page. “No hits?”
“Too many,” he sighed, “but none close enough to our guy. I mean, we have three different COD’s in six victims, plus one that died of natural causes but that could’ve easily be caused by fear. In my book, such a wide spread of MO’ suggests there is either more than one killer or one killer highly experienced, right?”
Aiden nodded. The same ideas had already run through her mind as well.
“Right. We have the Emmerttons, who died of punctured heart; the Stutons who were strangled; our Jane Doe from Broadway who died from blunt force trauma and Mills, whose heart failed.”
It was Danny’s time to nod. All of them knew the six victims’ cases by heart now.
“Now, if we’re looking at more than one killer, and VICAP’s data base is showing me at least a hundred MO’s to each of those patterns, then why the same markings and words written in bruises on the victims backs?”
Aiden could only shrug. She had no idea.
“The one killer theory is, however, inconsistent with a serial killer’s usual MO. They prime themselves for following a pattern, perfecting their technique and use it in every one of their victims. So, if this is a serial killer we’re dealing with, why is his killing method all over the place?”
“Exactly,” Danny beamed her a smile, happy to see their brains working on the same page. “There is a third option…”
Aiden noticed his hesitation.
“But?”
“But it’s just a hunch, so I’ll seat on it for a while,” he finished lamely, having learn his lesson about following his instinct over the evidences. He hit a button on the keyboard to start a new search.
“Too bad that the ones with the best info are all lined up downstairs, not breathing.” Aiden said, patting his shoulder and returning to her computer.
“We’ve just got lucky, kids,” Flack said, entering the room with a satisfied smile.
“And by ‘we’, you mean you, right?” Danny said, turning away from the frustrating computer once again.
Flack ‘whipped’ his friend’s head with the report he was carrying before placing it on top of the table, between the two CSI’s.
“Our Jane Doe ain’t Doe no more.”
Two hands flew to open the file, eager to know if this was the one piece of information that would allow them to move forward in their investigation. Flack saved them the trouble.
“Her name was Barbara Ramirez, age 50, mother of one Orson Ramirez, age 8. We ran her DNA on CODIS and had a hit by association. Her brother, Raul Ramirez, is doing time for car theft. Her mother had reported her missing two days ago.”
Aiden ran a hand through her long hair.
“As she been contact?”
“Yeah, Stella was on it. Left her on the phone and came to give you guys the news.”
“And what do we have on Miss Ramirez?”
“Not much, like the others. Respectful, law obeying single mother. Worked at a hospital in Manhattan, paid her bills and lived her life quietly, as far as we can tell so far,” Flack said, opening his note book even though he had already memorized all the details that were necessary.
“So, we’re more or less where we started, right?” Danny asked, returning his glasses to his face and turning towards the computer.
No one answered him. There was no need.
Police Report Chapters 5-10