Officer Neil, Homicide Psychic
It's a full moon tonight. My 'perceptions' are stronger on full moon nights. I couldn't shut out the secrets of men even if I wanted to. And God do I want to. I got my detective shield and transferred to homicide because I thought there I could at least use my curse to do some good. But more often than not I end up fixated by a secret kept by one of the witnesses.
Its eight o'clock when we get the call. He's done it again. He's fucking done it again. Another child taken. In twenty four hours she will be dead. And as with all kidnapping cases the FBI will be there. God how I hate the Behavioral Analysis Unit detectives. Don't get me wrong. I think what they do is awe inspiring and a lot of them are nice enough. Oh but are they haunted! They know the dark side of humanity better than anyone. They carry the wounds and secrets of all the evil bastards they catch. And even more the ones that are still at large.
His nickname is the doll collector. He goes after the little blonde girls with the Victorian curls and chubby arms and legs and piercing blue eyes. He returns them to public places the next day, dressed like dolls. Their skin perfectly pale except for the rouge.
My partner Gracie O'Daer cries at each crime scene. Both where the girls were taken from and where he put them on display. Her secret is that when she was sixteen she mixed a lethal cocktail of sleeping pills and pain killers into a martini and held it to her mothers lips. I've seen it through her eyes. I've felt her heart break. I've watched the relief that flooded through the eyes of a woman riddled with cancer. Thankyou, said the eyes. I've never told her about me. But somewhere behind the deep, intelligible eyes I see the spark of suspicion when I make eerily accurate guesses.
At twenty minutes past eight o'clock we arrive at seventy two cross street. The neighbourhood is consistent with where the last five girls have lived. Middle upper class suburbia. Large white houses behind white picket fences. The razor level lawns the exact same shade of green. I call these neighbourhoods Mirrorville.
Albert Chase. Sara Chase's frantic father is having an affair with the woman two doors down. Denny Chase, her mother has been taking Ritalin. Oddly both are wondering if their secrets caused someone to want to take their ten year old daughter. We are sitting in the living room of the Chase house. Well Gracie, Denny and I are sitting. Albert Chase is wearing a hole in the ridiculously expensive rugs. Asking our questions is pointless because in two minutes the FBI will have finished their debrief and be here to ask the same questions as us. It seems needlessly cruel to make the worried sick parents answer the same questions twice.
They arrive in good time and the lead investigator Special Agent William Round wastes no time beginning the usual sequence of questions. S.A. Callum Daniels and S.A. Aleisha Cooper disappear as directed into Sara's bedroom. The killer had been in that room and if anyone could find a trace of him they could. In a silent conversation that consists of only a nod I convey to Gracie that she should join them in the room while I remain to take stock of the answers.
At a quarter to nine I feel a familiar sensation in my stomach. If nervousness felt like butterflies the spinning, lurching sensation I felt was more closely akin of a flock of migrating birds. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. My heart starts beating like a marathon runners and I can't quite catch my breath. I am being pulled, like a fish on a line, along an invisible thread. I know if I follow that thread outside I would come face to face with the doll collector.
Wordlessly I walk out of the house, unclipping my holster for easy access to my service weapon if needed. As I step out into the front yard I spot a crowd of onlookers drawn like moths to the flashing lights atop the police cruisers. There are twenty people in all and only one of them is the doll collector. Hiding in plain Goddamn sight. There are five women present. Going along the guidelines of the criminal profile the FBI gave us I can dismiss them. The doll collector will be a male. Fifteen suspects. Factoring in the suspected age of 21 to 62 I ruled out eleven more people. That left four. Actually two considering Agent Round's certainty that the doll collector was white.
The remaining men fell within the age race and gender specifications. But ultimately it wasn't the profile that cemented in my mind which one was the doll collector. It was his secret. The first man I approached was living in the closet so to speak. He was just another looky-loo.
I saw the dolls when I was still a foot away from the tall skinny man with oily dark brown hair and wire rimmed glasses. I saw the room his physically abusive adoptive father kept him in. It was a small study built into a cold cellar. It was dimly lit with a single bulb. Dusty shelves adorned every wall. And on every shelf no less than thirty Victorian dolls. Oh how he'd longed to hold just one of those dolls. To take comfort from a human form that didn't seek to do him harm. But he knew that his painful, healing wounds would be nothing compared to the fate that awaited him if he were caught with one of the dolls. He'd been promised a slow, agonizing death and knew his adoptive father was not one to speak idle threats. He'd eventually escaped the cruel man's grasp. Had waited at the top of his stairs when he was sixteen years old and took the old prick by surprise. Smiled widely when he heard the neck break on the way down. For fifteen years he strove to put his upbringing behind him. Assumed the guise of a normal, well adjusted person and married an accountant he'd met at night college. He was studying computer engineering. Which later became the way he chose his victims, gaining access to their houses through his job as a tech support worker. When he was thirty one his wife died suddenly. And the dolls crept into his soul once more. He sought their comfort in human form. Until he realised that they would not relent. Would not play his game. Would not love him.
Some men are evil. Others are simply broken. I almost felt a twinge of pity for him but whatever his upbringing he was a killer of children. I must have looked too long at him because his eyes grew wide and he melted away into the throng of people. I started to follow him and heard a scream from the crowd. It parted like the mythical red sea and I saw him once more. He'd turned to the woman closest to him and snaked one arm around her neck. In his free hand he held a revolver.
'Don't move, I swear to God I'll end her,' he shouted at me.
'Throw your gun away,' he said nodding briefly at my holster. I did as he said.
'And your back up, I watch T.V you know!' He had me there, Goddamn procedural police shows. Slowly I bent down and freed the smaller pistol from my ankle holster. I threw it in the same direction as my first gun. With a sound not unlike a growl he shoved the woman toward me and began to flee. A gunshot echoed through the night and the doll collector slumped to the ground, dead. I knew he was dead because I saw his spirit leave his body and vanish. Instinctively I whirled around, placing myself between the terrified hostage and who turned out to be Special Agent Round. My sudden departure caught his attention and he'd followed me outside.
'Who was he?' Round demanded.
'The goddamn doll collector. And now we'll never know where he's keeping Sara Chase.' I answered.
The search for Sara Chase began in earnest at twelve past nine