Chapter 1

I sighed, looking down on yet another mutilated corpse. The young girl would have once been considered beautiful, with full lush skin and vibrant eyes. But now her pale lifeless form lay in an alley, painted crimson due to her tongue having been ripped out through her throat. The very thought of somebody doing this kind of thing to a young defenseless woman makes my skin crawl. As expected, upon further examination, her left ring finger was missing and nowhere to be found on or near the crime scene.

I turned to my partner and resisted the urge to immediately facepalm. Being typical Black Star, he wasn't paying any attention to the actual crime scene but rather the surrounding scenery, which was nothing but a couple of brick walls. Thankfully though the idiot noticed me walking towards him.
"What do you think, Star?"
He shrugged. "Hard to say really."
I sighed loudly. Obviously none of this was getting through his thick skull. "Exactly the same as the others. Right down to her tongue being exactly eight inches away from her face."
Star nodded at this information, letting his eyes fall on the poor girl's body. "This is the seventh one in almost four months."
We started walking out the alley and towards the cruiser. "Exactly," I started. "I keep telling the Chief that this is the work of a serial killer, but he always dismisses me without looking into it. So not cool."
My partner just rolled his eyes as he got in behind the wheel.

I've been telling Black Star the same thing every time we head back to the station after a call like this. After the third time, he gave up on arguing with me and just let me have my little rant. He was probably already sick of hearing this again. But yet he still endured it for my sake, unlike my previous partner. I can still remember when Black Star was assigned to be my partner. It was after the second killing and here we are five later. This is the longest I've ever had a partner. Most of them say I am a pain to work with and would normally be transferred by the end of the second case working with me. But not Star. He's stuck with me this far. He was loud and unpredictable, whereas I was rather quiet in comparison and probably tried too hard to be 'cool'. I may have not known him long, but I felt that Star and I knew each other fairly well. At least I thought we did... \