“When will we have the full details of the autopsy along with the tox screen?” he asked.
“Within a day or so. We believe this may be the work of a copycat killer. Someone obsessed with the Executioner and has now started killing as well. For someone as precise and accurate as the Executioner is, even small differences in the MO are enough to show it’s not him.”
“I agree,” the Captain said. “The note was in different handwriting, and this doesn’t seem to be personal to Matthews. Whoever it is, they don’t know much about her except what has been made public. But I don’t want this getting out. Let the copycat think that we believe this is the work of the Executioner. Let the media spread it around. He shouldn’t know we are on his tail. I want everyone working on this. Understood?”
“Sir, you possibly can’t mean to include Matthews on this, do you?” Lory scoffed. “For all we know, she did this.”
“Detective Matthews has been under observation for the past two weeks,” the Captain said, his voice low. “As much as I want to believe she is the killer, I know she can’t be in this case. At the time the murder occurred, our Detective was at her sister’s house. I confirmed the alibi myself before even moving forward with the investigation. But that doesn’t mean that I trust you, Matthews. I don’t trust you, even a bit.”
“I understand, Sir,” Robin said curtly.
“Get to work, team!” the Captain barked.
Chapter Seven
“Hi, my name is Detective Matthews, and this is my partner, Detective Grange,” Robin said. “We are here to get information about one of your taxi drivers. We have CCTV footage, and this is the license plate number we believe the taxi had. Could you run it for us?”
“Of course,” the receptionist said. “Let me check.”
She typed it on her computer and then frowned.
“I am sorry, but this cab is not in our system,” she said.
“Not in your system?” Kyle asked.
“This is not one of ours,” she said.
“But there is not another taxi service that runs here,” Kyle protested.
“I am sorry, but it’s not in the system,” she said.
“This is getting more and more interesting,” Robin said. “An elusive taxi driver, a girl who disappears somewhere between her friend’s house and her boyfriend’s house, and a copycat killer. I believe we need to get a look at the CCTV footage.”
“I will have the team send it to me,” Kyle said. “Where do we stand on our report about the Butcher.”
“I last tracked him down in Brooklyn, where I believe he was hiding,” Robin said. “Remember, he had to be very careful. The Butcher couldn’t just get a new name and new identity and blend in. His face was disfigured, and he stood out instantly. His face was plastered everywhere. He was sighted in New York where someone reported him, but by the time police got there, he had run away again. I think he made his way to Brooklyn, where, once again, there was a report about him being spotted. That’s the most recent report I have. A year after that, he showed up beheaded on Abby’s doorstep.”
“Let me ask my friends in Brooklyn to look into it,” he said. “See if anyone remembers him and a young man with him.”
They headed back to the station, reporting their findings to the other team members.
“Alright, this definitely makes the cab driver very suspicious,” Kyle said.
“Let’s run the footage,” Burke ordered. He opened his laptop and played the footage, all of them peering over his shoulder.
“Right, that’s where she leaves her friend’s house,” Burke said, “and gets in the cab. We can’t see the driver’s face at all.”
“Can you track it?” Robin asked. “See where the cab went?”
“We tried to,” Burke said. “But we couldn’t find anything. The taxi turned into an alley somewhere, and we have no footage of it after that. This is the footage of the camera outside the boyfriend’s apartment. As you can see, no cab appears, and no girl appears all night.”
“Let’s look into the area where the girl disappeared,” Kyle said. “Send people to look into the alley and the houses there.”
Burke’s phone rang, and he picked it up.
“Yeah?” He said. “Down in forensics? Be right there.”
“What’s up?” Kyle asked.
“Dr. Gravis wants to see us,” he said. “He found something.”
__
“Detectives,” Dr. Gravis said when they entered the morgue. “I have found something that is rather important and confusing at the same time. Now, I ran a full tox screen, and I can confidently tell you that she has been a drug user for quite some time. But at the time of the incident, there were no drugs in her system. In fact, I thought the results were rather unremarkable. And then, I found clear signs of cyanosis that I couldn’t explain. And then there was the fact that her blood was blue.”
“Blue?” Burke asked.
“Yes, a blood film showed Methemoglobinemia. Methemoglobinemia occurs when red blood cells contain methemoglobin at levels higher than 1%. Methaemoglobin results from the presence of iron in the ferric form instead of the usual ferrous form. This results in a decreased availability of oxygen to the tissues,” he said. “Now, I couldn’t find any reason to explain why the patient had this condition, so I ran a more detailed tox screen.”
He handed Burke a paper with the results in it and said, “o-toluidine. o-toluidine is used primarily in the manufacture of dyes. o-toluidine is highly toxic to humans when absorbed through the skin, inhaled as a vapor, or swallowed. Acute exposure of humans to o-toluidine affects the blood causing methemoglobinemia, with clinical signs of central nervous system depression. The killer used this drug to depress her nervous system until she was unable to fight back, and then killed her.”
“But the other victims were never given any drugs,” Robin said.
“I ran a tox screen on the stored blood samples of the previous victims,” he said. “We found nothing. This is clearly a
