Another Victim

CHAPTER 8-- another victim

It had been a week, not a good week mind you. Working overtime, coffee, not near enough sleep because my Commissioner was pushing for us to wrap up this case quickly and get our solved rate up before the upcoming performance review. Its not easy being a cop during reviews. Your captain is on your tail because the Commissioner is on his. The mayor is on the Commissioner's tail because the governor is on his. Its a cycle and, remember kids, crap rolls down hill. Quinn and I were under a ton of pressure to close this case quickly, keep in mind that we were low on both evidence and suspects. All we really had to go on was the hood itself. Quinn was checking with the local animal shelters about any recent dogs that were abnormally violent. So far no luck.

Trace was being processed and would be back soon. If all went well, there would be blood all over the hood that would be in CODIS and could be traced back to a serial rapist or something. An easy pick up and conviction, but really, its rarely that easy in the real world. In the real world, you have, on average, forty-eight hours to catch you man before he's in the wind. Something told me though that this case was going to be very different, we'd have more than just one run at him. He was going to want to make a statement.

“Detective Ross!” It was the voice of my Captain, Jonas Lombardi. Nice guy, known him almost as long as I had Quinn. “My office! And bring your partner!”

“Looks like we're up,” I told Quinn, snatching my coffee mug before heading to his office.

The captain was trying to look annoyed with us, but there was a hint of worry in his eyes when he saw me. “Ross, you're not looking yourself.”

“I'm fine, sir, nothing a bit of coffee can't cure.” I took a sip, cringing slightly because bad coffee should ever be drank when its cold.

He shook his head, knowing better than to push that point while in the office. He could berate me all he wanted at dinner. “How's the case coming? The woman in red?”

Often short names are attached to cases for speed of recognition or out of some morbid sense of gallows humour. Some detectives don't care for it at all. For others, its merely a way to maintain sanity.

“Not a lot to go on, sir. This guy was careful.” Quinn was looking over his notes. “Forensically speaking, he left near nothing. Several dog hairs, and the hood itself, but not much else.”

“At least its something. When you have a suspect, you'll something to tie him to this murder.” He was pacing, reading over a file, probably for show. “You're thinking, Sammie, what are you thinking?”

I gazed out his window, overlooking the city. Something was bothering me, nagging on my brain, warning me that this was far from over. That feeling in my gut wasn't anything new to me, I learned to follow my instincts long ago and they were telling me to be careful now.

“This isn't over, Jon, far from it. Something tells me this guy isn't going to stop until theirs a bullet in his brain.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Rockberry. He said that a guy told his wife that, 'happily ever after should never be stolen.' That makes me think bad things are coming. Something triggered this guy, it must have been major, but I have no idea what and nothing to go on.”

“You can't wait for another to die, Ross,” he barked.

“No kidding, Sherlock! But what choice have we? Its not like he leaves a calling card behind.” I was shouting and he really doesn't like it when I yell at him, especially when he knows that I'm taking my frustration out on him.

“We're working as hard as we can, sir, but there really isn't much to go on. There is basically nothing to go on.” Quinn was trying to calm both his Captain and his partner.

I'm sure the Captain was about to say something when my phone rang. Saved by the bell, you could say. Quinn gave me a look when he saw my face fall and heard the words, “we're on our way.”

“Oh, not another one.”

“Abandoned house in the north side. Couple of kids found her while goofing off in the neighbourhood. Looks like a hanging...” I paused.

“But...” Quinn picked up on my trepidation.

“But she's dressed in renaissance garb, similar to our lady in red. They're calling us in to investigate.”

“Great, maybe he made a mistake this time?” Quinn said, rolling his eyes.

I shrugged, non committal, as I led the way to the car. It was a short drive to the house in a neighbourhood that was currently in the middle of a bidding war at the city counsel. Half wanted to make it into condos, the other half wanted to keep the historical buildings as they were. I didn't care either way so long as people stopped using them as crack houses. Personally, I was sick of finding dead kids from over doses. Those are the worst calls to make. “I'm sorry to tell you that we've found your child, they won't be coming home.

We parked near Rocky's van and headed into the house. She was downstairs in the hall, looking up at a woman in a blue renaissance dress who was hanging from the banister. A braided rope was tied to the banister and wrapped around the woman's neck. She was young, late twenties with brown hair.

“Oh no...” Quinn was stating what I was thinking. Two women, similar look, similar dress. I was hoping that we just a very strange coincidence, I wanted to go back to the precinct and find that there was connection between these two woman that had nothing to do with a weird cause of death or similarities in wardrobe. No cop wants to work on a serial case. Serials take time and resources. You have to wait for the guy to make a mistake and sometimes they don't make one. Remember, no one ever caught the Green River Killer nor the Zodiac. They didn't make a mistake. I was seriously hoping that we didn't have a serial killer.

“Looks to me as if she'd been strangled.” Rocky was closely examining the woman hanging. “I'd say she was strangled once then hanged here, there's a second pattern consistent with a manual strangulation.”

“So you're ruling out suicide, I suppose.” I was taking notes.

“That is exactly what I'm saying. Some one killed this poor girl then hanged her from that banister.”

Rocky was giving order to have the rope cut in the middle, to preserve any evidence that may have been in the knots such as hair or epithelial (or skin) cells. She was partway through cutting it when she made a rather rude remark that I won't quote here. Mostly because she told me that if I did she'd hit me with a dirty bedpan out of spite.

“What is it, beautiful?” Quinn asked her.

“I... I think your boy made this rope himself,” her voice was shaky, not common for a medical examiner.

“Why?”

“Because its made from... from hair.”

There was a silence in the room so thick you could scoop it with a ladle. “Rocky, my dear, I really do hope that you're wrong,” I said.

“I know hair when I see it, Samantha Ross! And that is hair!” she scolded me while pointing to the rope.

“Oh great, now we have a psycho?” Quinn asked.

“What was your first clue?” So I'm sarcastic.

They finished cutting down the poor woman and loaded into another black bag, wheeling her out on the stretcher. We'd follow Rocky later for her autopsy results. Until then, Quinn and I surveyed the house, looking for clues. You have no idea how hard it is to decipher something of importance when its surrounded by trash of all sorts. Old needles, crates, rancid food, and piles of whatever in the corners that served as sleeping materials littered the floors of every room. There was simply too much evidence to pinpoint which parts would be important and which were useless. This guy was choosing his dump locations with great care. First, a public park and then a crack house. Finding evidence against this psycho would be almost impossible. He was already covering his tracks too well.

I drove us back to the precinct, quiet for a while as I thought what our next move would be. The usual procedure in a case like this was to search for a link between the victims, but I already knew there wouldn't be any. Not a personal link any way. They would indeed share some similarities, they'd have to for this guy to hunt them like he did. Who ever was behind this was probably some one that no one would think to be a danger, a quiet man with good manners. He may have been someone that these women actually knew, but I doubted it. Quinn felt the same, thinking that even if these two women did know their killer, it was probably only in passing.

Fingerprints gave us the name our latest victim rather quickly. Her name was Eliza Grey, she worked for the school district in the library. She was a well liked teacher, no enemies, loving husband who had a solid alibi. By all intents and purposes, this was a woman who should be reading stories or checking out books to kids, not lying blue on a slab in Downtown! Eliza and Kate both enjoyed books, especially fairy tales. They both had been married for about five years, give or take a few months, and they had similar looks with brown hair and blue eyes. If you saw their photographs, they could have passed as sisters. The similarities were uncanny.

We searched through their friends, relatives, co-workers, associates, and casual acquaintances looking for a person that they shared in common. Nothing. Doctors, gym memberships, even their favourite cinema were all different. They're only similarities were love of books and drinking copious amounts of coffee. Even then, there was no overlap, these women had no reason to be on the radar of the man (or woman for that matter) that killed them.

Rocky called, eager to let me know what the boys and girls in the lab came up with. Sure enough, the noose was made from human hair, just like she thought, but there was a twist. The hair had been washed and treated in the same manner that one would for wigs. The hair was readily available on the internet. Dozens of websites carry human hair, mostly for extensions, so its not that hard to come across. Quinn suggested that we subpoena the websites and see who ordered mass quantities of untreated human hair, six to ten inches long. Good suggestion, but how to narrow it down? We'd literally have to subpoena almost thirty websites, not counting mail-in only wholesalers. And even if we could find a judge that would sign off on that, there was no guarantee that we would find anything but hair dresser's or “stylist”.

Rocky had something else for us. Just like the first victim, our killer left a signature by way of a folded sheet of paper in her mouth. It was a title page from the Brothers Grimm, this time it was Rapunzel. Hanged with a long braid of hair, he called her Rapunzel. If this guy was being clever, he was succeeding only in annoying me personally.

“What is he after?” Quinn asked, munching on a handful of almonds. He wasn't the doughnut kind of cop.

I shook my head. “I don't know. It almost seems like he's killing the fairy tale. Usually, the princess in these things is a blonde not a brunette, but its his story I suppose.”

“Killing the fairy tale?”

I shrugged, “Yeah, its almost as if he wanted a different outcome to the story and is making his own. Though why choose those stories? There are thousands of fairy tales the world over, why focus on the Brothers Grimm?”

“Favourites as a kid?”

I shook my head, I didn't think that was the case. “I'm thinking it goes deeper than that, maybe?” I sighed, this case was going no where and it was starting to tick me off. “There has to be a connection. Its got to be something to do with the stories. We've got homework, my friend. Dig out your old copy of Grimm's and read up. Maybe we can get into his head if we're on his page.”

Quinn grumbled something about a date. I asked what was more important, justice or getting laid? He gave me that look that told me he wasn't answering that one. I knew he'd rather have a little fun, so would I, but we had two dead women and more on the way if we didn't figure this one quick. It was late and we parted ways, each to our own little world's to get to, dishes to clean, laundry to wash, dinner to microwave. And now a book of messed up fairy tales to read.

Author's Note

Unedited for NaNoWriMo