Work Text:
This job gets to everybody – even the “Tin Man”. If it weren’t for those outlets, we all have we’d burn out. Of course, what those outlets actually are, no one truly knows for sure. Yes, there are things like roller coasters, children, dating, playing DJ, reading forensic journals, or blasting loud music, and so on. But is that truly the outlet or is that merely what we say it is? I know I’m lying when I say my outlet is… well, what they think it is. But I rather enjoy the idea. I enjoy the notion that I can wrap so many people around my finger without any of them being the wiser. By venting the frustrations, I feel on the job, I can watch as my colleagues are in turn frustrated, and I feel happy.
There was a trust that the woman, who now lies where I left her, had for me when I offered to assist her in helping her load her grocery bags into her car. She’d been laden down with more than she could carry when she exited the store – one that was thankfully too cheap to put in cameras – and could do nothing to prevent a few from slipping from her grasp. I had been walking though the streets of Las Vegas when I bore witness to her mishap. She saw the kindness I’d projected through my eyes and took in my warm, helpful smile and was thankful – not commenting on my gloved hands, even though it was barely evening. Once the task was complete I “confessed” that my car had broken down not too far from the store and I was looking for somewhere I could call a tow company so I could get it jump-started. She kindly offered to drive me back to my car and we could jump-start it without it costing me the towing bill. I accepted with a smile and directed her from the grocers to an unmonitored lot where I’d seen an abandoned car parked. Once her car was parked next to that one and we’d exited I struck. She was startled as I overpowered her – forcing her to the ground. “You’re so trusting,” I said to her, and she looked at me with fear. Her fear made me laugh as she cried. She had family waiting for her, she had a life. She pled with me as I stripped everything she was from her.
When I was finished, I left her body lying on the ground between the abandoned car and hers. I stepped back and admired my handiwork. I strolled away from the scene and headed home, placing the bloodied clothing – shirt, pants, gloves, and toque[1] – I’d used into the flames lighted in the fire pit I had installed in my backyard for this very purpose. Crime is a messy business. A smile plays on my face as I shower and ready for work in a few hours. I sit in my living room and wonder what the rest will think of the little scene I set up for them to find.
Catherine sat in a layout room mulling over the evidence from her most recent case. The vic, Clarisse Theroux was a 34-year-old mother of four. She was a housewife that had gone to the grocers to do some routine shopping and her family hadn’t heard from her. A few minutes before shift started the call came in saying her body was discovered in a parking lot a few blocks from the grocery store. What was found there had sickened everyone. The woman had been restrained by her own clothing and raped with an unopened bottle of Vex – a fruit flavoured vodka cooler[2] – then her throat had been slashed. Cause of death was the severing of the jugular vein, the vic bled out in about five minutes.
“Tests came back,” Nick said as he entered the room. “All negative for foreign DNA. Blood on the bottle was the vic’s.”
“No DNA evidence, no fingerprints, no fibres… we got absolutely nothing to go on.”
“Kinda reminds me of the Strip Strangler, you remember that? The guy left no evidence, like a pro. He knew exactly what to do to cover his tracks.”
“You’re telling me,” Catherine muttered as she studied the crime scene photos. “Y’know, this kind of reminds me of a case I handled about two years back,” she said, turning one photo. “Only we found evidence that linked it to a drug dealer we’d been after for a while.”
“Was that the one where you lifted a set of his prints off the knife used to slash the woman’s throat?”
“Yeah, they guy got life without parole.”
“We should call Brass to see if the guy’s still there, y’know hasn’t escaped.”
The woman in the parking lot was driving my colleagues crazy – as had all the other cases that sprung from my favourite pre-work activities. It’s been a few days and they’ve long since had to label it a cold case. There’s yet another one for the Fish Board, my it’s getting full lately.
The young man writhing in pain at my feet pleads with me. He’s only fifteen, just a baby. I bring the Easton Stealth[3] in my hands down hard onto his chest, relishing in the sickening crack of yet another rib. The boy wheezed as he asked me why I was doing this to him. I didn’t know him after all. That wasn’t the point, I’d said as I broke his remaining knee-cap.
“Then what is?” he choked out. His voice hoarse from screaming. I looked at him with a menacing smirk, I’m sure there was also an insane look in my eyes. I brought the bat down onto his skull. I swung until I was sure he was brain dead. I left the bat I’d stolen from an unlocked car next to his motionless body as I exited the empty area of the golf course.
Sara snapped pictures of the baseball bat that was lying next to where the body had been – the coroner already having taken it away. It was a teenage boy, brutally bludgeoned to death with what she assumed was the bat in front of her. Like she’d once said to Grissom when they worked the case where the woman ended up buried underground in a winery box: it still amazed her what people did to each other.
“Got an ID,” Sophia said as she ducked under the yellow crime scene tape. “Chase Bleta, age 15. Just got in touch with his parents, last they knew he was playing basketball with some friends not too far from their high school.” Back at the lab, Sara printed the baseball bat and was able to recover some prints. The prints, Mandy Webster (the Print Tech) told her, belonged to Bradley Denman – a man with a previous conviction of assault causing bodily harm.
I laughed when I found out that Denman had been charged with the murder of the kid. Poor shmuck didn’t have an alibi that could stand up in court. He was now looking at life sentence for second degree murder.
Now, weeks later I find myself standing on the banks of Lake Mead, looking serenely out at the water. The old man I’d picked up in town pounding against the trunk of his own car. I feel like taking it easy tonight. I get the car to drive itself into the lake. I smile up at the stars as I hear the man’s muffled cries for help as the vehicle fills up with water and I walk calmly along the lake’s edge towards where I’d stashed a car a few weeks back. Weather forecasts say there’s a storm rolling in and as I climb into the get-away vehicle I can already see it. I park in an area in town where no one gives a damn enough to care what I’m doing. Stripping off my muddy clothes and shoes I pull clean ones from the trunk and slip into them, stashing the dirty ones in a bag for disposal at home. I overturn the gasoline canister inside the car and douse as much as I can before lighting up a cigarette and tossing the match into the car. Picking up my bag of muddy clothes I calmly walk over to where I’d left my car a few hours ago and head home.
Grissom sits in his office going over a file from the most recent case to go on the Fish Board. The vic was a 61-year-old man who was stuffed in the trunk of his own car before it was dumped in Lake Mead where the old man drowned. It was the second in the last month. From what Doc Robbins was able to tell, the man had been dead for about a week. “What’s up Griss?” Greg’s voice filters through his thoughts. He’d just wrapped up a case with Nick and the two men were now seating themselves in chairs across from their supervisor.
“A new case just came in and I want you two on it,” he replied handing over the assignment slip. A break and enter three blocks from the Strip that resulted in an arson. The two men dutifully rose and head out to the scene.
I can hardly believe the trust that some people are prone to have, even in Las Vegas. I saved a young single mother from a mugger. She was so grateful that I’d saved her and her seven-month-old baby girl she immediately accepted my offer to escort them home. She’s now tied to her bed, nude, tears streaming down her face. She begs me not to kill her. She pleads for the innocent life currently growing inside her. I just grin and gag her. With a knife I found in the kitchen held in my gloved hand I begin to slowly cut her skin, autopsy style. She her tears flow harder as the pain overwhelms her. When I’ve made the last incision, she’s incoherent with the pain. I drop the knife next to her body as I reach up and cradle her head. I whisper that it’ll be okay. The audible snap as I jerk her head to the side is music to my ears.
Leaving the room where her dead body lays, I shed the coat I was wearing and turned it inside out to minimize the blood transfer. I slip into the room where her baby is currently sleeping soundly. I gently pick her up from her crib and inconspicuously exit the home. Within the next three hours I’m in the shower, my clothes from this evening burning in the pit. The baby girl is wrapped in a warm blanket on the doorstep of a well-known paediatrician that I know will ensure the girl is taken care of – I’m not completely heartless after all.
Warrick photographed the gory sight of a female decomp. The woman had been tied to her own bed, gagged, and sliced opened like she’d been to see Doc Robbins already. On top of that her neck had been snapped. “She’s decomposed pretty bad, we’ll have to wait until we get her back to the morgue before we can estimate time of death,” David Phillips (the coroner’s assistant) said as he and an attendant prepped the body for transfer. Warrick turned as Brass entered the room.
“Got anything for me?” he asked the Captain as he photographed the knife that was lying on the bed next to the body.
“Vic’s name is Shirley Dalke, age 23. According to what we were able to find out, she was the mother of a seven-month-old girl.” Warrick turned back to Brass.
“Any idea where the girl is?”
“Yeah, turns out the girl was left on the doorstep of a paediatrician almost three weeks ago,” Brass replied.
“A paediatrician?” Warrick arched and eyebrow.
“Yeah, who knew a sadistic murderer would have a soft spot when it came to infants.”
It’s been a month since the Dalke case. All the evidence, as it turned out, pointed to the woman’s ex-boyfriend (who was also her first child’s father). He was sitting in a cell awaiting trial and by the looks of it he won’t be getting out. I laugh as one of my colleagues makes a lame joke, in reality I’m laughing at the system. I relish in the knowledge that I’ve been able to fool it so easily once again. We’re currently sitting in a club somewhere along the Strip – all of us, even Brass and Sophia have joined us.
As time passes and most of us are dancing, I slip away without question. No one in the darkened club notices me slip on a pair of gloves. I chat with the waitress that served us and get her to take me to the back alley, convince her to actually exit the building ahead of me. As we passed the edge of the bar, no one noticed as I stealthily picked up an unopened cooler the distracted bartender left on the counter. Slamming the door shut behind us, I overpower the woman as I did with the Theroux woman a few months ago.
The rush I feel from the action I just committed leaves me giddy and I can’t help but laugh. I hear the door open behind me and, strangely, I don’t care. I turn around, still smiling, to see all of my colleagues standing there looking at the scene in disbelief. They see me standing over the body of the young waitress, the blood from her slashed throat splattered down the front of my shirt and pants, leaking down my arm and dripping from the knife in my hand, droplets spattered on my face – an unopened, bloody bottle of Vex lying next to my feet.
“How long has this been going on,” one asks in a hushed voice, having seen the joy and familiarity in my expression when the group had exited the bar into this alley. It’s obvious to all of them I’ve done something like this before.
“Since the Vaughan case,” I reply, feeling the maniacal grin plastered on my face. That case was three years ago. At my answer they all wonder how many of the cases that have gone through the lab were my doing. I know they wouldn’t have even the faintest clue unless I told them – I never stuck with the same MO every time.[4] My colleagues surround me, shock and betrayal playing on their faces, after all I’ve always been the one they’d least expect. For long moments none can speak before someone is able to choke out:
“How could you?”
—30—