Ashes

"Not again!"

Brian was woken up from his sleep by the ringing telephone. Couldn’t they wait two more hours when he actually got up?

He reluctantly picked up the phone and grumbled, “Hello.”

“Haner, we got another one,” the Captain said.

“Shit!” Brian cursed.

Brian knew this would happen sooner or later but he still hadn’t anticipated it. This was getting more and more serious. They had to figure it out soon. He rushed to get dressed then stormed out of his house. He didn’t have to take his car as the park was only two blocks away.

“Bri!” Detective Zachary Baker greeted as he saw his partner step under the yellow tape. “Over here.”

Brian walked over to him. This was starting to become a routine and it frightened him. Zachary led him to through the shrubbery to the corpse. The forensics team had already swept through the scene. There were no fibres, no fingerprints and no footprints except for that of the victim. How the hell did the perp come through here without leaving footprints? Are we looking for a ghost or something? Maybe the perp was part human part monkey Brian thought looking up at the huge birch trees. Brian laughed to himself at the thought as images of a human monkey hybrid flooded his mind.

After inspecting the scene for another hour Brian and Zachary drove to the squad room to brief the Captain on their current situation.

“So what new information do you have for me?” the Captain Ian Campbell asked them as they entered his office.

Zachary looked at Brian. The truth was that they had been on this case over roughly four weeks and they still hadn’t come up with some hard evidence, no suspects, nothing conclusive.

“Uh Captain,” Zachary started. “Well we’re beginning to see some similarities among the victims. They’re all petite females and they were all pretty young. The new victim has still not been identified but the ME thinks that she was in her late twenties.”

“There is another thing too,” Brian added. “Last night I was going through some pictures of Ms. Thornton’s car and I noticed that something had been taken.” Brian then pulled out the picture and showed them the circle on the dashboard.

“You’re right,” Captain Campbell said. “We need to get in touch with the family to find out what was on that dashboard. Baker, you go to Ms. Thornton’s family and Haner I need you to see if you can get any information on the new victim.”

The two men left the room to go their separate ways. Brian decided that he would visit Johnny before he decided where he would go. When he got there Johnny was sitting at the computer entering some data.

“Mr. Seward,” Brian shouted as he entered the room.

Johnny turned around then said, “Since when am I Mr. Seward? Wait, do you need money? I heard that police salaries pretty much suck.”

“Nope, I don’t want your money. But I do want you to help me identify the new vic.”

“No problem man,” he told Brian in his best Jamaican accent. “I already found out who she is.”

“Johnny man, you’re a life saver,” Brian said.

“When I examined her, I found out that she had recently had skin grafts on her left thigh, so I asked around at the hospital. It turns out her doctor is a friend of mine. We were dorm mates in med school. Her name is Clarice Newton. That’s all he would tell me though.”

“Some friend,” Brian said sarcastically.

“Hey, it’s a lot more than you’ve got,” Johnny pointed out. “The rest of the info you’ll have to get yourself. You’ll probably need the ADA to get medical records with the whole patient/doctor confidentiality charade.”

“Oh yeah,” Brian sighed.

“That’s why I prefer them dead,” Johnny stated.

With a laugh Brian left the morgue to go to the District Attorney’s Office.