*Keera*
“Gotta admit,” Lexi said in awe as we looked around the lab. She turned to face me, an impressed look on her face. “They did a pretty good job.” I waved my hand dismissively even though I silently agreed with her. The lab was definitely more than what I’d been expecting. I took a look around as we stepped further inside. I was certain that they’d gotten almost every equipment that we’d asked for. I touched the counters with my forefinger, feeling for dust and discovering none.
Okay, I was really impressed.
Lexi turned on the lights, illuminating the room even more than it already had been. I walked around the room, noting that they had provided the swabs, lab coats, head rest, autopsy table and blades that we’d asked for. I walked around the counter to where Lexi stood in front of a small cupboard. We pulled out the drawers and found goggles, dissection kits, gloves, specimen and evidence jars, envelopes, packets and a bunch of other stuff. There were lab coats hanging on a medium sized rack.
“Yeah,” I couldn’t help but admit. Lexi’s gaze dropped to her wrist watch and then she shot me a concerned look. “We need to get to crime scene number one immediately if we want to complete the tasks for today.” She reminded me. I checked my phone screen, confirming that she was in fact right. She grabbed some evidence packets and gloves from the cupboard and then we headed out to where they’d found the first body.
Where a little cub had found the first body.
***
The scene was a narrow alley. The werewolf council had let us know during the meeting this morning that a small pup had been the one to discover the body. According to them, the little boy and his mother had been returning from the mall and he’d been playing around with a balloon. The balloon had left his hands and he’d been chasing after it when he’d seen the body and alerted his mom. “So the killer ruthlessly ended her life,” Lexi said as we looked around, a thoughtful expression on her face. “And then he dumped her body in this alley where no one was supposed to find it for a couple of days.”
I looked at the picture of the first victim on my phone. Tala Brandt. She’d just been sixteen years old, a little over a pup herself. Her body had been found a day after her parents had reported that she was missing. They hadn’t seen her two days before that. That much I knew from what the council had said. Josie and Kathryn had already gone to speak with her parents and any of her friends who might have last seen her.
“I wonder how the killer had gotten her here.” Lexi spoke up, coming to stand beside me. The sun had come out completely and beads of sweat were rolling down our faces. Even as bright as everywhere was, the alley was only a bit illuminated. The body would have been here for quite sometime before it would have been discovered naturally. “It’s possible that he had carried her in his arms.” Lexi said, fixing her attention on me. “I mean she couldn’t exactly have been so heavy.”
I pressed my lips together, putting my phone back into my pocket. “What I really want to know,” I finally spoke up walking further into the alley and trying to look for clues. “Is where the actual crime scene had been.” I turned to face her, knowing that there was probably a perplexed expression on my face. “Think about it.” I urged her. “Basically the only scenes we know of are the secondary crime scenes, where their bodies had been discovered.” I said. “How come no one’s concerned about where they’d actually been killed?”
Lexi put her gloves on, tilting her head to the side as she considered my question. “I mean they could always have been killed where their bodies had been found,” She said, trying to counter my view like she always did when we were working together on a case. It helped us look at things from every angle. “We already know that none of the victims had any bodily injuries.” She reminded me. “It means that there might not have been any weapons at all involved. The crime scene wouldn’t exactly be so gruesome. Not when it looks like none of the victims had put up a fight.”
I made sure my glove was in place and we began a careful search of the place. Not when it looks like none of the victims had put up a fight, Lexi’s voice echoed in my head. “Think it might have been someone they all knew?” I questioned, lifting a few scattered bottles and wraps off the ground. The alley wasn’t exactly bright and we didn’t want to miss anything so we had to put on our torch lights. Lexi yelped quietly, causing me to quickly turn my attention to her.
She let out a little laugh, apologizing when a huge rat ran past us. I shook my head. “I mean it might have,” She answered. “That would definitely explain why they were so accessible to the killer, why there had been no need for weapons and why they hadn’t put up a fight.” She said, sounding like she was crossing things off an invincible list. “But that would mean that there’s more than just one killer. I mean they couldn’t all have been close to the same person, right?”
I stayed silent, picking up a plastic cup and placing it carefully in one of the evidence bags. I wasn’t sure we were going to find any prints on it, but we couldn’t afford to take any chances. “They could but yeah, it’s a little unlikely.” I said carefully. “Especially because we haven’t found anything that the victims seem to have in common yet.” I opened the shoulder bag we’d come to the scene with so Lexi could add the leather bag that she’d picked up. We checked the entire scene about three more times but it yielded the same result as the first.
Nothing but a few items to be dusted for prints.
***
“Nothing?” I asked Kathryn the second she walked into our lines of sight. We were all sitting in the small conference room we’d been provided with in the house, waiting for Kathryn to get back from trying to get prints off the items Lexi and I had collected from the scene. I deflated a little as she shook her head, confirming what I had already known. They had just been random items that had been abandoned overtime and had somehow managed to find themselves in the alley. Getting a fingerprint off of them was going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Fuck.
Kathryn slid in beside Joe, drumming her fingers on the table as we stared at a picture of Tala on the screen. “The lab’s pretty sick though,” She complimented and Lexi and I nodded that we thought the same thing. I ran a hand over my downy face, taking a deep breath and trying to sort out my thoughts. Things would have probably been a lot easier if we’d gotten called to work on the case sooner. But no, it had taken eighteen victims to get Grayson to lower his pride and ask for help.
I couldn’t promise that I wasn’t going to say it to him one of these days.
He had no idea how difficult it was going to be trying to track the killer from scratch. Luckily, every pack member’s finger print had already been taken and registered into the database so it was something we didn’t have to get done all over again. All we had to do was hope that we were going to lay hands on something that was going to lead us in the right direction.
“How’d the interview with Tala’s parents go?” Joe said, his question directed at Josie and Kathryn. They shared a look before Josie spoke up.
“Well, let’s just say that her parents hadn’t exactly been involved in her life like we’d already guessed.” Josie informed with a shake of her head. She uncapped her water bottle and drank water from it. “It had taken them a whole day to realize she had been missing and an extra day of waiting around pointlessly to report it.” I shook my head at how pitiful the situation was. Tala had only been sixteen for crying out loud.
What kind of parents weren’t bothered about their sixteen year old?
Joe folded his arms across the table looking as unimpressed as the rest of us. “According to her mom, the last time they’d spoken to her she had been informing them that she was going out to see a friend.” Kathyrn spoke up, a strange look on her face as her eyebrows raised. “It had taken us quite a while to realize that the friend had also turned out to be one of the killer’s recent victims.”
“Christ,” Lexi muttered under breath and I rubbed my temples, sharing her sentiment. So much for following that lead. There was no way we could talk to her friend when she was equally on the other side and talking to her friend’s parents was just going to upset the plan we’d made to follow each of the killings the way they’d happened. We were going to have to be a lot faster if we wanted to find anything. . .
Important. To the case.
“I’m starting to think that the killer’s someone close.” Joe spoke up, scratching his bald head and leaning back on his seat. “I mean, that would certainly explain why there had been no need for weapons or a fight.” Josie blew a soft whistle, rocking back and forth in her desk. We waited for her to say something as I punched a button on the remote to reveal the second victim.
“I mean I guess it could be someone close.” Josie said, drawing her words out. “Then again the killer might be a total stranger. I mean if he’s knocking them out and finishing them off, all he basically has to really do is find the perfect place to get access to them.” I heaved a sigh, tapping the pen in my hand lightly against the table.
I stood up and walked to stand in front of the screen. Sitting was beginning to make me feel a lot like we weren’t doing anything and we were never going to catch the killer on time. “So what we actually know about Tala is that she’s sixteen, has parents that couldn’t care less about her, set out to visit her friends around five in the evening and never got back.” I said, making a recap of everything we knew about her. “And then her dead body was discovered three days later in a narrow alley by a little boy.”
Everyone nodded, adding a few more things that I missed. Like the fact that she hadn’t had any injuries on her when she’d been found.
“I think the next step to take from here is to get an autopsy done on her.” I informed everyone. “Kathryn, Lexi and I will try to narrow things down to the time and cause of death tomorrow.” I stared at the time on my phone. Neither of us had eaten anything other than the slice of bread and cup of tea or coffee that we’d had for breakfast. “Josie and Joe, you guys check in with the friend’s parents tomorrow before moving on to the second victim.” They nodded. “Let’s see if Tala ever made it there in the first place.”
“Can we get started on dinner now?” Kathryn asked. “We won’t be of much help to anyone if we’re this weak.” Even though I wasn’t exactly happy with the fact that we hadn’t found anything important, I knew that Kathryn was absolutely right. We had to get some food if we were going to have the strength we needed to go on with the case tomorrow.
“Sure.” I finally responded.