Back at the Squad Room

CHAPTER 3-- back at squad room

Quinn and I set up a murder board as soon as we returned to the squad room. The best way to describe a murder board is like a story board for a cartoon or film, just much less pleasant. You start with time of death and work your way to back, collecting information as you go. Crime scene photos were hanged on the board as points of reference, photos of evidence would be placed up with pictures of possible suspects. Slowly, we started to piece together the last few days of a woman's life. Its always a sobering experience, the frailty of the human existence. As a cops, I walk the beat knowing that any moment could be my last. Some punk could book it out of a bodega with an itchy trigger finger and that would be the end of this detective. When it comes to the average person on the streets, most folks have a healthy sense of caution, but they do go about their days without too much to worry about.

We started off poorly, without an ID there wasn't much we could do. The evidence at the scene would only take us so far. Jane or John Does are always harder because you're missing the most important part of a person, the name. Many questions lack answers when there is no name. Did she have any enemies? Were there any strange things going on in her life? Anyone following her? Was she in a relationship? Without a name there was no way to find the answers. With any luck, Rocky would find her in some finger print data base. Until then, Quinn and I would have to work with what we had from the CSI. Since his writing was better than mine, Quinn filled in the board with points of fact such as the time line.

He was writing as a runner handed each of us a file. The preliminary report from forensics. The cloak was a custom job, hand stitched without a label. I was expecting something along those lines. Cloaks would be special ordered for a person who would go to a Renaissance fair or maybe one of those comic book gigs where people dress up as Wonder Woman and whoever. I'm sure one could be purchased from any number of seamstresses on the internet, but at least we had one answer. The cloak, a deep red in colour, was purchased or made especially for her. Someone cared about her, or at least about how she was dressed. Also found on her dress and body was dozens of hairs from several dogs, mutts by the look of the bites and the hairs themselves, which didn't fit with any specific breed.

“Sounds as if she's been attacked by rabid dogs,” Quinn was saying, reading over the report.

I shook my head, “I don't think the dogs were rabid, just trained to kill. Rocky would have checked for that, she isn't a fool.” The phone on my desk started ringing and sure enough it was our Rocky, telling me she wanted me over to the morgue. “Speaking of, she's got news, lets go.”