Her gawking eyes reminded him of every detail during her dissection and how she seemed at peace afterwards before he assembled her parts into the bag and disposed of them.
“Well, other than the fact our killer goes after women, not much but I did find two notable sides to his killings”, she explained.
Detective Jake didn’t expect himself getting nervous but he was. He felt like a child about being graded for his work by a class teacher and he would have her just hurry up and tell him what she thought rather than continuing to dally about.
“Firstly, many of the ladies died a year apart from the coroner’s report with the exception of one”, she began explaining. “The weirdest part is the last body, which is the recent killing but one I mistook to be the first”.
He paused, looked around the room and familiarized himself with the bodies he was certain he had done in. Asides the few body parts on some bodies, they had remained intact with the help of the bag he placed them in.
“The new body?” he asked.
There had been no new body, or at least none for him since the year before. In fact, he had hoped to hunt for a prey before the revelations came to light.
Sarah grinned, yanked at his arm excitedly and pulled him towards the inner room where a body lay atop the table. “The new one must be months old from what I can tell and as much as the killer tried replicating his own work, it just doesn’t look entirely alike… I mean… “.
“There are dissimilarities”, Detective Jake assisted in finishing her line with a tender frown atop his face. “This is different”.
She smiled, nodded and tapped him hard in acknowledgments on his shoulder. “Look who’s got an eye for detail… you’re right as rain”.
Her words of flattery didn’t seem to interest him though, while the intended replica to his works seemed crude and obviously difficult to take in. There were clear disparities from the method used to the manner in which the lady had been killed.
“We found lots of differences, from the incision marks to the crushed windpipe which means this particular lady was strangled and dissected possibly after she was already dead”, she pointed out. “It gets even weirder”.
“How so?” the detective looked on in a perplexed state.
She yanked at his arm again in what he could perceive to becoming a norm and hurried him off to the closest body, which was one of his own works. Staring down at the dismembered body of the prostitute he had dismembered six years before brought mixed feelings to his insides.
She stopped just before the body and turned the neck to the side before pointing at a needle mark. “You’d find this on every other body here but this one… it is baffling and I barely know what to make of it”.
He would agree with her on her latter statement and a worried look across his tired face.
“It is almost like someone decided to adulterate a Picasso painting… urgh!” she groaned.
He couldn’t agree even more and it creamed his corn too. “Someone polluted my work!”
His pride felt struck and damaged immediately. His work and legacy had been contaminated in the most bizarre of ways. Slowly returning to the last victim, he reached for her neck, turned it to the side and found nothing close to a needle mark, while her jewelries still clung to her ears in what was an absolute “no-no” for how he operated.
“Could this be a copycat?” he turned to Sarah immediately to confirm. “Can there be the possibility that this is a copycat trying to mimic the same person that murdered those women?”
Sarah took her time to respond but she seemed somewhat confused. “It could be or it could be a protégé being taught… it is often the case in instances like this”.
His ears hummed with disbelief and his knees felt wobbly as though they threatened to cave in.
“Whoever this is or who they are, they need to be found immediately”, she added.
“Why?” Detective Jake stared with no words easing past his lips but she seemed to have gotten the drift.
With a gentle reach for the forehead of a dead body to her left, she replied. “If we have a protégé as you suggested, then it is definite that someone else is going to get hurt”.
Her voice bore enough seriousness and worries this time to leave him worried. She was right as rain and he had sensed it too.
“I don’t have a protégé”, he murmured to himself before heading for the door. “This is unbelievable”.
“Goodnight Detective Jake”, Sarah greeted from behind.
Looking back around and waving subtly, he answered. “Have a wonderful night”.
He needed the clear air to think. It was going to be a really long night.
Chapter Five
W
addling through the darkness after parking in the driveway, barely able to get his vision in focus as he struggled for the keys in his jacket pocket, he heard something drop.
“Shit!” he murmured, realizing the keys had slipped from his pocket and unto the ground.
Bending over to retrieve the keys came with the blowback stench from his alcohol infested breath as the whimsical smile lit his face and brought with it memories of the fun night he just had. Fondling the key to no avail into the keyhole after trying them one after the other, his luck finally struck and sent the door ajar while he slipped into the darkness and slowly shut the door behind him.
Feeling the wall to his left for the switch, he made contact and lit the room before stopping dead in his track and almost having a heart attack by the sight of the man whose disregards for personal boundaries knew no bound.
“Jesus Christ! You fucking scared me!” he yelled.
“Hello Luke! Looks like someone has been having a good night”, Sean Stein spoke, cross legged
