Rise of the Dunamy (4 page)

7

A
s she began scanning the first page of the report, Sofia cradled her pen between her forefinger and middle finger and began wobbling it back and forth. The rhythmic wobble of the pen helped her slip deeply into her own thoughts.

They had first begun the case with the attack on the possible member of the Aryans. Due to the type and extent of the damage to the corpse, they couldn’t be sure an animal hadn’t been involved. At that time they had begun investigating it as a possible animal attack. The abuse that the body had endured along with the numerous apparent bite marks that covered the body would have really only allowed for one type of animal to have attacked them, and that animal was a bear. Being that there were no signs of bear tracks or any other forensic evidence indicating the presence of a bear, coupled with the fact that it was highly unlikely that there was a bear in the downtown area, they quickly abandoned that possibility. After their brief consideration of the bear attack they considered the idea that it may have been an accidental death, not a homicide. They were out surveying the scene to see if the victim could have fallen from a rooftop and then been picked apart by a passing pack of animals when they received word from Lucian. He had determined the cause of death which instantly changed their opinion of the case.

The man had been killed by blunt force trauma to his neck. Although the cause of death and location of the strike were evident, after much deliberation and forensic examining they had been unable to determine the murder weapon. Lucian had informed them that he believed, based on the bruising; the man had been punched in the neck. Bishop and Sofia both agreed it seemed a bit far-fetched to believe that someone was capable of doing such a thing with their hands and continued to search for a more plausible weapon.

The next attack happened a few days later, across town from the first. The attacks were very similar in their surroundings and severity, and the wounds were similar. At this point, Sofia and Bishop revisited the earlier case and began to investigate the two attacks as though they were related. Their suspicions were confirmed when a third attack occurred only two days later.

As they inspected things further several patterns developed that linked all three crimes, but none of the patterns would lead them any closer to the killers. Sofia knew that since they had developed a pattern, it wouldn’t be long before the FBI got involved. Any time the potential of a serial killer arose, the FBI sent in it’s own team to handle the situation. The idea of federal agents coming in to take over her case was maddening and had driven her to further immerse herself.

Although the causes of death each case had been a broken neck, Lucian had commented they would all have died from the amount of internal bleeding they were experiencing anyway. The beatings each of the victims received prior to the broken neck was so severe it almost seemed like the final strike was meant to be merciful. All of the victims had been brutally beaten and once again Lucian’s findings were that the bruising patterns indicated no weapons were used. The only exception being the victim in the final attack who they believed was killed by the other victims that had also been found dead at the scene, and he had clearly died from the stab wound.

All three attacks had been committed close to high traffic areas which increased the amount of foot traffic through the actual crime scene, so determining the number of people involved was nearly impossible due to the large amount of trace evidence at each scene. In every attack the victims were armed, most often with guns. In each case those guns had been fired, yet they were unable to find any trace amounts of blood from the attacker around the site. Whenever they were able to locate slugs they believed to have been fired at the attacker, no DNA was ever lifted from them.

Sofia suddenly asked aloud “Where are the slugs with blood on them?”

“Which slugs? Nothing we’ve found has had anything on it,” Bishop replied with a confused look on his face.

“That’s what I’m saying. There have to be slugs with blood on them. It’s just not possible that these guys are being killed without any of them getting a shot on the attackers. Their combined rap-sheets are a mile long! Most of them fired their weapon at some point during the attack, most of them several times, and not one single bullet hit any of the suspects. Even if they missed the person they were aiming for, it seems like they would have hit someone in the group.” The frustration continued to mount from the increasing likelihood of FBI involvement.

She knew that the second the FBI showed up she would only be allowed to participate in the investigation at a subordinate level. The agents that took over these sorts of cases weren’t keen on allowing local law enforcement officers help in the decision making once they became involved. Sofia didn’t want anyone making it look like she didn’t know how to do her job well, and that’s exactly what they would do.

“These “cannibal killers” must be well organized. Maybe our victims are firing up in the air or something to try and scare them before they attack.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that already,” Sofia said with a huff as she angrily flipped through the pages of the case folder. “It’s just not possible. Based on the shell casings we’ve found, there should be a ton of slugs at the sites, but we’ve only found a handful between all of them. Plus, these guys aren’t going to try and scare someone. These guys are going to attack first if they feel threatened. They all have backgrounds with violence, so they aren’t scared of an altercation. Some of them have been involved in shootings before, so I doubt they’re hesitant to fire at someone they think is after them.”

“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious then.” Sofia closed her eyes as she prepared for what she could tell was going to be a stupid comment. “We’re talking about ninjas.” Bishop’s comments were accompanied with a subtle laugh. This was typical of Bishop. Anytime he couldn’t figure something out, or the facts presented to him didn’t make sense, he would make a ridiculous joke and laugh the situation off. Sofia could usually find the humor in his jokes, but this was a much different situation because of the FBI timeline.

She looked on in silence as Bishop shuffled through unrelated papers and looked over worthless crime scene photos he had seen several times before. It was all just a show that he was putting on for her benefit, and no one was more aware of that than Sofia. Bishop had focused more attention towards cleaning up his work space than doing any actual detective work since finding that the common thread between their victims was that they were all hardened criminals who had successfully evaded the system several times. If Bishop had done anything to contribute to the investigation Sofia felt that he was purposely misdirecting their efforts to delay the murderers capture.

What was once a wasteland of unfiled paperwork, half-eaten sandwiches, and empty soda cans was now a well-organized, easily navigable workstation fit for the Lieutenant. The only exception was the oversized Styrofoam cup filled with paper towels that was always present at the left corner of his desk beside his computer monitor. The purpose of the cup was actually quite disgusting, but something that Sofia had learned to deal with during her time on the force.

Apparently, holding a wad of tobacco between a person’s lower lip and teeth produces a great deal of saliva that is filled with tobacco remnants. Once their mouth fills up, that persons only options for dispensing the tobacco laced saliva were to either swallow the solution, or to spit it out. Bishop was a “spitter”. The filthiest part of the whole process was that for some reason, even though there was an endless supply of small cups available in the break room, Bishop preferred to keep the same giant cup for months on end and simply change out his paper towels. The cup would end up collecting a layer of tobacco and saliva all around the inside. The stench that wafted over to Sofia’s desk from the cup was at times so putrid that she would often begin to gag when it reached her. The smell was indescribable, but instantly identifiable to anyone that had ever smelled it. It rated somewhere between raw sewage and month old dirty diapers.

Sofia had done all she could to get Bishop to stop the filthy habit. She had given him documentation on the effects and probability of mouth, tongue, and throat cancer. She had shown him ghastly pictures of those who had suffered from such ailments. She nagged him incessantly, but nothing she did even slowed him down. Her only recent attempts to thwart the frequency of his habit were to throw his cup into the garbage every time she could get her hands on it. This too had proved futile as each time she returned she found him stuffing new paper towels into a brand new cup from a stash in his drawer. These days it seemed like he was dipping far more often as another excuse to slow his work on the case. The only progress she had made was occasionally ridding herself of the older, smellier cups. As she looked over to the cup that now sat upon his desk, she could tell she had forgotten to trash his cup recently by the amount of doodling he had done on the sides using his fingernail.

In the past two days, Bishop had decided that they would follow up on several leads that she knew weren’t credible. He had rounded up a list of calls that named the areas where they had found bodies connected to the Cul De Sac Case. Sofia had believed it to be a creative idea to come up with any information that could lead them in the right direction. She had commended him for his creative thinking up until they went up to first house to question the caller about the complaint. When they tracked down the original caller, the woman was confused as to what they were doing there as the call had been from over three months earlier. Sofia let Bishop slide on mistakenly allowing a call onto his list from so long before the first body had been found in their case, until the next caller they tracked down had also contacted the police department several months earlier. When Sofia asked the woman what her call had been in reference to she was shocked to learn that she had called to complain about the neighbors dog barking during the night. When she learned that information, Sofia knew that Bishop had put no effort into building his list to find out information about their case, he had simply put together a list where calls had come in and referenced an area near one of their crime scenes. It was Sofia’s belief that he had done so in order to keep her from making any real headway on the case, even though it was highly unlikely that she would. After spending half the day tracking down some of the calls on Bishop’s list, Sofia asked what exactly he had hoped to learn from following up so many completely unrelated leads. Bishop informed her that he was asking each of the men and women questions related to their case. When she pointed out that none of them had heard anything even remotely useful, Bishop had thrown up his hands and proclaimed that he was ‘Trying to think outside the box!’ He said that these were the type of people they needed to talk to because, if they were willing to call about such stupid things, they would be willing to talk to them about anything they knew. In order to calm him down, Sofia accepted his explanation and they followed up on his list for the remainder of the day. She had hoped that by allowing him to finish the day on his list, he would drop the idea and they could move on the next day. Instead, the next morning he had added more calls to his list and she had been forced to waste another day of work following up on Bishop’s ‘creative thinking’. Although she hated that another crime scene had been located overnight, Sofia was the slightest big pleased that she wouldn’t be stuck tracking down meddlesome neighbors and “concerned citizens”.

“What paperwork are you looking through?” She inquired as she glared at him, incapable of overlooking the way she believed he had been intentionally sabotaging their case.

“Eh. Just looking through some other stuff to try and get my head clear.” Bishop replied, never looking up from the assortment of papers.

“How’s that working out for you?” She snapped condescendingly.

“Oh, about as well as that nasty attitude is working for you.” Bishop began bouncing the papers on his desk to try and get them to stack neatly as he shot a knowing glance at Sofia. “The difference is, after I’m done, there’s a chance I’ll have a new idea or different opinion on the case. When you’re done with your pissy attitude, you won’t.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll be a wealth of knowledge,” she muttered under her breath as she rolled her eyes at him and returned to her case file. Surprisingly, Bishop chimed in with regards to the case as opposed to returning to his aimless pursuits in his old paperwork.

“I’m telling you, I think these guys are new to the area and trying to build some cred by knockin’ off rivals. Maybe they eat the bodies to send a real ‘don’t mess with us’ signal. I mean, if you were goin’ around makin’ enemies as fast as these guys are, you would have to do something to keep the retaliation down. You eat a person and I think it would keep people off of you.” Bishop said plainly as he leaned back in his chair and turned towards his sulking partner. Sofia grimaced in response to his suggestion. As often as Bishop joked about it she still couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that the bodies were being eaten by the killers. They certainly made it appear that they were eating the corpses, she just hadn’t completely allowed herself to believe it yet. She had almost resigned herself to the idea that it was the only possibility, but she continued to try and think of new alternatives.

“They could make the same impact if they used dogs or something to chew up the bodies,” she suggested.

Bishop replied with a laugh, “A: I think keeping a group of bloodthirsty dogs out of the way until time to eat would be another level of difficulty to some already unbelievably difficult work. They would create more targets, more noise, and more visibility. B: We’ve found no signs of animals present at any of the scenes. Angry dogs drool; that’s just a fact. And C: Having a group of dogs eat the bodies does not have the same impact as people who eat the bodies. On the crazy scale, it takes a ten to eat a person; having dogs do it is a five at best.” Sofia knew he was right, she just hated the possibility that they were dealing with a group of cannibals.