The Twelve Percent

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Two nights later, Natalie was shimmering in the middle of my room. I sat cross legged on my bed with the papers from her mother’s desk spread in front of me. My own notebook and loose leaf pages were spread within them. There was a method to my madness – but Natalie didn’t seem to think so. She had her arms crossed across her chest. I ignored her; chewing on my lip and shuffling the papers around. I was missing something. Natalie’s mother was missing something. Hell; the police were missing something.

“Natalie.” I glanced up, she moved her glare from the pages on my bed to my face. I flinched at the menacing look on her face. Yikes. “Nat. I know it’s hard but don’t look at this shit. It’s only going to make your progress harder and upset you.” The look stayed on her face for a beat longer, before dissolving into exasperation and understanding. She nodded. “Okay, good. Nat, did you have any sort of significant other?”

She raised an eyebrow at me before nodding once. I resumed gnawing on my lip, and ran a hand through my hair. As it fell back into place and into my face, something caught my eye on one of the crime scene photos. I snatched up the glossy page and held it to my face.

The official police report had said that Natalie had been stabbed twelve times after having her throat slashed. The ME report said the stabbing happened before her throat was cut. It also said there was no sign of sexual assault. The part of the page I had nearly against my fucking face was a picture of Natalie’s right hand. I waved at her. “Nat, come here.” Feeling the sudden cool air beside me, I held out my hand. “Let me see your right hand, if you don’t mind.” She held it out in front of me, careful not to touch me.

“I don’t…wait a minute.” I rustled through the papers until I found a photo I’d printed from Natalie’s Facebook memorial page. I compared it to the other photo and to Natalie’s hand. “Did you get a tattoo that night?” I held up the two photos beside each other. The photo from the crime scene, and a photo from her senior photos where there was definitely not a tattoo on her right wrist. She opened her mouth, then gave me a frustrated look, and nodded.

“Oh my god.” I scrambled to get off my bed, knocking papers to the floor in my rush. I ran down the stairs to the kitchen table, where my laptop was sitting from my earlier real estate research. I quickly entered in ‘Teratone murders in the last two years’ into the search bar.

“Holy fuck!” I said, startled at Natalie appearing beside me. “Jesus, Nat. Nicely done, but I’m trying to solve your murder and I can’t do that if you give me a heart attack.” She smiled and laughed a silent laugh. I smiled, and returned to the page as the results loaded up.

“Natalie…” I began, clicking through pages. “You were definitely not his first victim…”

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