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| Pelahatchie | MS |
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Isabella peels off her jacket and slides into the booth.
Her partner is seated, sipping her coffee as she shuffles through a large folder containing case notes and pictures.
"The county morgue is a fucking shit-fest right now. Reporters everywhere," Isabella announces as she waves down a nearby waitress. She ruffles the raindrops out of her short bleach-blonde hair, watching as it falls onto the unsightly wooden table of the booth. "Is this plastic?" She asks, picking at the edge of the table.
Leah barely looks up, taking another sip of her espresso. "Does it matter what the table is made out of?"
"Actually, yes. It does matter. I feel like I'm caught in a time capsule. This place looks as if it's still stuck in the seventies." Isabella replies as a young girl arrives at the table, notepad and pen in hand. She wants to laugh at the big hair, the chewing gum, and the bright red lipstick.
"Wha' can eye, get ya?" the girl asks in a broken English type of way.
"Coffee, soy milk, no sugar. And a piece of your best pie. Hold the cream."
The girl takes the order and saunters off.
"You're still on soy?" Leah questions, raising a brow.
She rolls her eyes, "It's not exactly a choice being lactose intolerant."
Her partner frowns now. "You eat cheeseburgers."
"Cheeseburgers are worth the suffering."
"Huh. So tell me what you found at the morgue."
"Same as the others. Pretty young things, late twenties to early thirties, petite. Bruising around the collar bone and throat, crushed larynx. The rape kit came back as positive but no semen was left in the body."
"Did you find anything in the airway?"
Isabella nods. "The petal was jammed further down this time. I could barely reach it with forceps and almost had to make an incision in the throat. From the angle and the bruising around her mouth once I wiped off the make-up, I think he put it in there and held a hand over her mouth while she was still alive."
Leah does look up this time, flipping to a specific page inside the folder. She opens the edges and lays it down, pushing it toward Isabella. "I was talking to Maggie this morning and she faxed this through."
Leah taps her finger below the picture.
"The flower has meaning to our killer. It says there that a Lotus flower symbolises rising from a dark place into beauty and rebirth. Lotus flowers grow directly out of muddy and murky waters and produce beautiful white and pink blossoms. I think he's using its symbology to tell us why he's doing this."
Isabella runs a finger over the picture, remembering each time she had pulled the specific petals from each of the five victims that they had examined since March.
"He's trying to change them, free them from a place he considers dark," the bleach blonde murmurs, her brows pushing down.
Nodding, Leah continues. "He's trying to help them escape something in their lives or perhaps life itself. And I believe he thinks that death is the only answer." Leah leans across the table to turn the page. "One big advantage we have is that they only grow in tropical parts of Asia or in Queensland, Australia. That means he's either importing them or he has enough know how and means to cultivate them himself in a controlled environment. Maggie is trawling through records of any horticulturists in the county who are familiar with the flower."
Once they're finished, Isabella leaves a few bills on the table before they head to the car.
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