The detectives arrived at Herman Park in Tudor City at just past eight-thirty, and could see they'd tagged Lanie for the case; it was the first time Beckett would get to work with her friend in over a year. The petite doctor was wrapped in a bright red jacket, and her toque was sprinkled with the Montreal Canadiens logo. She glanced up at the approaching footsteps and her face split in a grin when she saw Beckett.

'Welcome back, mama, barely fifteen minutes on shift and you get a body.'

'Morning to you too, Doctor Parrish. What do we have here?'

'Fiona Birk, forty-one, strangled with a length of white silk.' Lanie looked up from her clipboard, pointed with her pen. 'Lividity and body pooling suggests she's only been here a few hours, but her liver temp when you factor in the elements puts her TOD between midnight and two last night. And there's this.' She swabbed the encrustation by the victim's mouth, passed it to the detective. 'Take a sniff.'

Beckett did so, blinked. It was sugary sweet. 'Almond paste?'

'Buttercream frosting. Fiona's a cake-maker for Hat-Trick Catering. They do a lot of weddings.'

'So clearly someone wasn't happy with just a mocha-fudge fondant,' Ryan said dryly, earning looks from the rest of his co-workers. 'You don't think someone strangled her because they didn't get her as a wedding caterer and decided if they couldn't have her no one could? That seems a little extreme.'

'I've learned that if a bride is so inflexible as to resort to murder, it's not about the marriage, it's about the party.' Beckett turned to her temporary partner. 'Now, if some little bitch purposely ruined a dress because someone got to it before her, I think I'd call that justifiable homicide.'

'Between giving birth and the ability to call murder over a dress justifiable homicide, I'll never understand how women get called the weaker sex.'

'What, no comments on high heels as torture devices?'

Ryan pointed to her feet. 'That's self-incflicted insanity, especially you, though not today it seems.'

'My ankles can't handle the pumps yet. Anyways.' Beckett looked around. 'You talk to the first on-scene, I'm going to talk to park security.'

'Got it.'

Sean Thurston's wide cocoa-coloured face was serious as he pulled the discs and began to make copies for Beckett when she showed herself into the security booth of the park.

'My park is a safe place, yo. Mamas and babies and young women come here on their own because it's safe. I ain't gonna have no dead white girl mucking up my rep that I didn't do my job,' he told her sternly.

'I understand sir. Miz Birk was not killed there, someone put her here because they wanted her found.'

'She wasn't here between seven and eight, and as soon as I saw her, I called it in.'

'That's good. Was there anything out of the ordinary besides the body on the bench?'

'Honestly Detective, once I saw the lady there, I got my guys to block off the entrances to the park and get anyone in there quarentined in case y'all needed to talk to them.'

'Good work, Mister Thurston.'

'Here we are.' Thurston passed her the copies of the discs. 'Anything on there looks fishy, you tell me.'

When Beckett arrived back at the precinct after having notified the family of Fiona Birk, she began to write up her murder board with what they knew already. A few minutes later, the elevator dinged and Beckett saw Andrea Hennessey and Daniel Brick step off both looking absolutely destroyed; as they were two of the most even-keeled people Beckett knew, she capped her dry-erase marker and went over to them right away.

'Andrea, Daniel? What's wrong?'

'Can we talk in private for a moment?' Andrea asked, hitching the strap of a laptop bag onto her shoulder.

'Sure.'

Beckett showed them into a conference room where Andrea pulled out the MacBook.

'I got a very disturbing email this morning.' Andrea spun the computer towards Beckett. 'It's an email with a video attachment.'

She nodded, then pressed the 'play' button to start the video.

And her blood went cold.

It was a warehouse, lit with dank blue and dirty white lights that cast the eerie pale palour of death over everything it touched. At the centre of the desolate, barren space was Fiona Birk in her underwear and showing signs of torture in the form of a bruised face, torso and thighs and bloody nose. Tears streamed from red eyes as she begged for it to stop.

'Please don't do this, what has she done?' Fiona sobbed. Off-screen, a soft unisex voice answered back with a chilling detachment.

'Andrea is not suppose to get married. A fat bitch-whore like her does not deserve a man like Daniel. Now I have to show her what happens when she breaks the rules.'

'I don't even know who Andrea is.'

The woman whimpered as the owner of the unisex voice stepped into frame, covered in black head to foot with a red-hot poker in hand, then screamed when it was laid against the side of her throat. As the screen faded to black with Fiona's cries for it to stop became the sound-track to the overlay of text. The words were in oversized font a bright, ugly red, all but screaming at the recipient:

ANDREA CALL OFF THE WEDDING IMMEDIATELY OR TOMORROW ANOTHER ONE DIES.

R&R&Enjoy