This is NOT your story of kinkyful goodness. But since it's rated M, this story will contain some kind of sexual content in the far future. That, and there's a crazy serial killer on the loose.
Copycat.
It was grotesquely signed in all capital letters on the walls with the victim's blood. Severed limbs disjointedly connected together to paint out a neat but unidentifiable message on the filthy alley floor. The pool of viscous blood underneath the disassembled body parts splattered everywhere, shading the area with almost every color of red in the color spectrum.
Weiss Schnee pushed her platinum hair over the crevice behind her ear and wrinkled her brows at the putrid, decaying odor. She instinctively pinched nose with her two fingers while she stared down at the gruesome sight.
It smelled like road kill that had been left baking in the beating hot sun for far too long.
She gagged a little, the foul stench of blood somehow slipped through the tiniest crevices and invaded her sensitive senses. Vile substances from today's lunch almost regurgitated, but she made sure to keep it all down.
"This is disgusting," another FBI agent crinkled her nose.
She removed her aviator sunglasses and squinted closely at the perfectly hacked body. She angled her head sideways in hopes to get a better sense of idea of what the hell she was looking at, but nothing worth noting came to mind.
"Coco, this is why we need to solve this quick." Weiss circled around the limbs, snapping a photograph at every direction. "This is getting way out of hand."
"Hah! If you need a hand, there's two severed ones on the floor."
"Knock it off." Weiss shot a intimidating glare at Coco who casually brushed it off like specks of dust. "You're supposed to be my partner. So be useful and help me out by not making morbid puns."
"It was an attempt to make this less depressing as it is," she muttered. "Hey Ice Queen, you would expect a serial killer to be good in art, but this is just plain awful."
"Coco," her partner sighed while dragging her syllables as vexatious as she could. "Be serious."
"I am serious!" She frowned at Weiss for questioning her professionalism. She gestured hands at the obviously mutilated body. "There's not a single good clue anywhere on this."
Her blue eyes scanned across the dismembered body and its vicinity. As much as Weiss didn't want to admit, Coco was right. The bodies were awfully put together.
Limbs were arranged in jagged circles like several ripples in a river. It was difficult to make out what it was suppose to be, and the blood smeared across the floor didn't even do the image justice either.
It was disgusting.
If the serial killer was trying to put a secret message out there, then that person was doing one hell of a job in stretching the word secret.
"Let's collect some blood samples and do a swab around the place. Maybe we'll be lucky and get something out of it," the alabaster haired woman puffed out a breath of hot air.
Coco shrugged and took out a plastic bag from her black briefcase. She slipped on white disposable gloves and aseptically swabbed the place for any clues. Blood samples were drawn but that was as much as they could do. They already swept the place for any traces of weapon nearby and already done a forensic test. Like normal, they came out either empty handed or with invaluable information.
"You two ladies got everything you needed?" One officer ducked under the yellow caution tape obstructing his path. "Because we need to get this cleaned up before it makes a bigger scene than necessary."
Weiss looked at Coco and the latter nodded her head.
"Yes, we are done. Thank you —" Weiss paused, subtly squinting at the name tag attached to the officer's uniform. "Officer Wukong."
"No formals. Sun is just fine as it is," he smiled but it gradually faded into a frown. His hand found its way to the back of his head, and he scratched nervously. "I figure we might be working together more often considering this is the second one this week." The hand travelled back down to his throat and he began rubbing it anxiously. "It's rather disgusting to clean up after this person."
"Something that we both can agree on," Weiss simply nodded. She tore her gaze away from the officer and gestured her head at Coco.
Her partner noted the silent message and slipped back her aviator sunglasses before storing the bag of evidence into the briefcase.
"We'll do our best to apprehend this criminal," Weiss continued when she turned back to Sun. "Once again, thank you. We'll be taking our leave now."
The two ladies ducked under the yellow tape and went into the black sedan parked onto the side of the street. Like always, Coco took the driver seat while Weiss sat in the passenger. It was normal for the platinum haired agent to go through all their clues, trying to piece what they have together.
"I'll send those to the investigators to have the samples read. But most likely, we're not going to get anything except the name of the victim," Coco said as she started up the car.
"One can hope," Weiss sighed, a tone of unpersuasive optimism. She rubbed her temples to soothe the headache that was beginning to form. She popped the locks of her white briefcase and began to flip through the files. "I'll run through the security cameras when you drop me off home."
"You're not going to find anything. Copycat always tampers with it."
"I'm trying to be positive here," she hissed at Coco. Papers shuffled around in her hands as her blue eyes flickers through every paper.
"What are you looking at?"
"Old files of Copycat's victims," Weiss answered. She began tapping her chin as she focused on reading a light profile of one paper.
Russel Thrush, a slim boy with light-green mohawk, was murdered at Vale's park. His body was found in the next morning by a routinely jogger. When police arrived to the scene, Copycat was marred onto his chest. The thin red line imprinted on his neck suggested that he was strangled to death initially.
Weiss flipped to the next paper.
Penny Polendina, a young teenage girl with curly orange hair and freckles on her face, was found dead early in the morning in the middle of a baseball arena. Both joints of her arms and legs were cruelly torn from her body, and scattered haphazardly around the arena as the killer's celebration for Easter. Police had to shut down the stadium for a week to find the missing limbs as part of their surprised special Easter hunt, and had to scrub the place spotless from the blood. Not only that, but the grass had to be replaced considering Copycat was neatly mowed in big letters.
Weiss flipped to another one.
Emerald Sustrai, a young woman with mint green short hair, was found in a public swimming pool with her eyes gouged out. Her body floated on the surface of the tainted red water with empty eye sockets. Trails of dried blood ran from the corner of her mouth and her nail beds were ripped off. It was a mystery of how the girl died but autopsy suggested that her organs were ruptured, leading to internal bleeding. However, the killer remained the same as the name Copycat was horribly scribbled on the girl's eyeballs, which was found by an employee in the cash register box.
Weiss stroke her temples again and flipped to the next paper.
Peter Port, a middle aged man who worked at Beacon University, was found hogtied and inhumanly shoved in a cage that belong to one of the animal science department. His head was missing, and bruises and cuts were found all over his body, an implication that he was tortured. The school was closed for a few days and police later found the missing remnant of his body on his office desk. Marked on the victim's forehead was the name Copycat.
"Nothing makes any sense," Weiss murmured as she frustratingly ran a hand through her silky long hair. "There were no signs of sexual assault on any of the victim's bodies. There's no gender or age preference. There's no consistent methods of homicide. There's obvious signs that the killer is organized and at least intelligent."
"It's like Copycat is just killing for the sake of killing," Coco muttered, shaking her head. The black Sedan slowed to an almost stop and pulled into a driveway of a white house. "Well, we're here. Update me if you find anything out."
"Don't I always?" Weiss snorted.
"Yeah, but normally you don't find anything," she half joked but the other half was the harsh truth. Copycat barely left any leads for them, so it was essentially difficult to crack the case. "Make sure to get some rest too. You're too head deep in this case that I can start seeing bags forming."
"Your concern is duly noted Coco."
"Good," she then playfully grinned. "Now get out of my car."
Weiss rolled her eyes at. She knew Coco's remarks meant no harm, barely any bites. Her partner was always full of sarcasm, and sometimes, Weiss appreciated it.
"My pleasure," she made a strangled sound of annoyance. She got out of her partner's car and took her briefcase along. "If you find anything, let me know."
Coco shot her a thumbs up and back out of the driveway once Weiss shut the door. The white haired woman strode to the front of her house and unlocked the door. When she walked right in, she was welcomed with silence like usual.
Like any other ordinary home, hers was just as similar, nothing extraordinarily extravagant. A simple living room with a simple kitchen, and a simple one bedroom with a converted office room across from it.
Weiss sighed and shrugged off the black jacket of her business attire suit. She kicked off the low inch black heels and comfortably walked into her office room with her pale skinned feet.
The agent immediately dived straight to her laptop, sat down, and popped it open. She was dedicated to her job, almost a slave to it. But she enjoyed solving mysteries, and she enjoyed bringing down the hammer of justice to those who deserved it.
Her finger maneuvered around the touch pad of the mouse, opening multiple files saved in her laptop.
"Where is it…" She muttered to herself, scanning left and right.
A few clicks and she finally found what she was looking for. A window popped up in her computer screen and she reclined back into her leather office chair, getting herself comfortable to watch the security footage.
The monochrome colored video played quickly, fast forwarding the scene from morning to night. Not a single noise could disturb Weiss as she focused her gaze onto the screen. A few minutes passed, and the number of passersby had begun to dwindle.
It was a signal that evening was approaching and people were heading home.
The video flicker through normally, and her eyes narrowed upon a man walking on the sidewalk alone. He constantly glanced back at his watch while taking long and hurried strides. As he approached closer to the alley, the video suddenly cuts into a gun metallic static.
"Fucking dammit!" Weiss snarled, slamming her fist onto the wood polished desk.
The security footage buzzed loudly. At the bottom of the screen, there was a message in white printed letters that said 'lost signal'. But Weiss knew that the signal didn't coincidentally disconnected during that moment.
Copycat had somehow tampered the footage.
Weiss snapped her jaw tightly closed and gritted her teeth. She continued to watch the blank video until the footage hazily returned back to normal. The victim's corpse barely peeked out of the alley within the camera's range, but as expected, there was no sign of Copycat.
She slammed the top cover of her laptop shut, and she frustratingly stormed into the kitchen. She was angry that Copycat has always been ten steps ahead of her. It was beginning to irk her because Weiss was normally multiple steps ahead.
Copycat was one of the rare people in her books that posed a difficult challenge to hunt down. Most of the agent's cases were easily solved within a month, perhaps much less if criminals weren't the brightest of the bunch. However, it had already been two months.
Two months with barely any smidgen of leads.
Weiss jerked open her fridge and rummaged through it to put some kind of dinner together. She grabbed a plastic container of mixed salad and a bottle of dressing, along with leftover pasta from yesterday night. She then proceeded to bitterly set it on the table, furiously stabbing her food with a fork in the same fashion of how Copycat would probably stab their victims.
Cold, tasteless pasta was hungrily shoved into her mouth along with her salad on the side. Weiss didn't care of how dull her food tasted. She just needed something in her stomach to keep her energy up if she wanted to catch Copycat.
As Weiss thought more about Copycat, it made her blood boil. She continued to indignantly shove more of her bland dinner into her mouth until her phone started ringing. She quickly swallowed and sipped a mouthful of water to clear her throat.
"What Coco," Weiss irascibly spat, obviously in a terrible mood.
"I need you here stat. We suspect Copycat had a new target."
"Wait, what?" Her typical cold demeanor thawed and she blinked multiple times to register what she had just heard.
"I think Copycat struck again on the same day," Coco explained further. There was a hint of urgency in her tone of voice that Weiss could distinguish. "I need you here at Vale Hospital."
"Why Vale Hospital?"
"Because the assailant failed to kill their target."
I don't watch enough CSI, law and order, how to get away with murder, etc to have a complete understanding of everything. So if there are mistakes, point them out, and I will do my best to fix them to the best of my abilities without changing the story too much. If it's grammar mistakes, you are also welcome to point them out, and I will take note of it and fix it later on.
Even though I have a bunch of other stories on my plate, I'm adding more. *shrug* I debated whether or not I should finish typing it before posting it. But through long contemplation, I'm sure you guys will appreciate a new white rose story. I'm already many chapters deep and not even half way through. Just need thorough proofreading.
If you have concerns that this story may contain something you don't want to read, feel free to PM me.
