Detective Jake ordinarily would have gloated but he still couldn’t figure out what the man before them was doing on their case.
“Did Captain ask you aboard?” Mike suddenly found his tongue. ”What does the CIA want with a case involving an obvious serial killer”.
“It is personal, so if you two will excuse me, I need to comb the house for evidence”, Sean sighed and turned around.
Detective Jake stepped closer and halted just within arm’s reach of the man. “We will give you all we have but you have to keep us in the loop on anything you find”.
Mike felt his lower jaw drop and his face looked stricken with an unexpected slap. “Are you nuts?”
“Again, pretty boy seems to be the smart one”, Sean teased before heading for the bedroom. “I will have what I asked for when you’re ready Detective Jake and Mike Rondon!”
His absence in the room provided them both the opportunity to share their disbelief and shock at the fact he knew their names already.
“Who exactly is he?” Detective Jake asked himself with his head pounding with thoughts. “He seems to know us more than we know him.
Mike looked frustrated and shouted for the umpteenth time. “Will you focus from wherever you got yourself into and figure out what our next move is?”
Detective Jake looked startled as he lunged himself back into the reality of the moment. “We? Did you just say we?”
Mike Rondon nodded.
With a scoff, his colleague replied. “There is no we… but we have to give him what he wants and be atop our game if we are going to bring this killer to justice”.
Mike Rondon nodded again, agreeing and barely believing he could ever be on the same page with Detective Jake. They exited the house looking gloom and troubled with endless thoughts and blindsided by the new person in the picture.
“This case doesn’t add up for me”, Mike sighed before getting into his car.
Detective Jake couldn’t agree more as he took another look at the seemingly abandoned house which had been wiped clean by a professional at least.
“There is something else I am not seeing about all of this”, he concluded to himself.
The body count didn’t make any sense and to make things worse, he still had to figure out who had found him out and why his works had been compromised and brought to light.
“I need to see the bodies… “, he muttered to himself just as the sound of a mug being smashed against the wall coincided with his.
A visible image of a frustrated looking Sean Stein could be seen through the window before he pulled the blinders shut and block Detective Jake from seeing any more of his tantrums.
“What is your deal?” he asked before heading for his car.
There were too many unanswered questions and he needed them sorted soon or he could be on his behind within a short period should the men around him being to make findings. Normally, he would trust his work and the amount of expertise he had attached to each killing, but his perfection seemed dented now; someone obviously knew him to be the killer and must have dumped the last body in there before alerting the police.
Someone was playing a dangerous game and Detective Jake couldn’t come to think of anyone in the slightest as he pulled out of the parking space he had occupied. For the first time in a long while, his heart seemed unsteady; he was nervous as hell; something about Sean made him nervous… something about the case did that to him too.
***
Seeing her hovering around the dead bodies in the coroner’s work room didn’t bring any comforting feel but he had little to no choice. Asides the hassle involved with getting stuck in traffic for an hour, and the fact many of the bodies might be bagged within a few days so their families could find some closure. He couldn’t leave without seeing them for himself or noting anything else his revealer might have left behind.
“I never thought you to be the kind to visit morgues Detective”, Sarah Connell chimed upon noticing the man walk into the room.
With a subtle smile spread across his face and his hands tucked into his pockets, Detective Jake shrugged. “There is never time to sleep in times like this”.
She agreed with a subtle nod and invited him over to the first body. His handwork stared him hard in the face, and he could barely forget how it had all gone down; from every cut made and every incision carried out. It felt like reliving the moment again and it made his insides filled with anxiety.
“Whoever did this must be a craftsman… I mean, one handy and of exceptional use of his hands”, Sarah pointed out while handing him a pair of rubber gloves.
Receiving them and slapping them on his hands, he smirked gently and looked at her. Her face beamed with some feeling of gladness as though she drowned herself in the sight of the dead bodies.
“Correct me if I’m wrong but are you admiring his work?” he asked with a slightly raised brow.
Sarah let off a loud chuckle and a rather embarrassed one as she hurried to the next body without giving a response.
The detective pushed further. “You fancy his works don’t you? I am right!”
She looked around the room hurriedly before looking back at him. “Yes! I do, but not for the horrible reasons but the magnitude of perfection he placed into it… you have to appreciate his work of art if you are to understand it at all”.
Streams of pride and warmness coursed through his spine but he did well to keep his emotions in check. The woman was definitely an odd duck but she seemed experienced and unperturbed by the sight of dead bodies.
“What can you tell me about
