New York City
October 12th, 1973
Blythe saunters through the crowded streets, leading Chris, whose a few steps behind her. He watches every passersby carefully, scanning each face. Every time a new case comes around, he always finds himself doing this. Looking for the scumbag wherever he goes. The odds are miniscule, of course, and even if he actually saw the guilty party, he wouldn't even know it at this point. But he can't help it. It's a compulsion of sorts. Just something he needs to do.
The sidewalk widens, and he manages to catch up with Blythe as they pass the street her hospital is on.
"Are you gonna go get your motorcycle?" He asks.
"Nah," She replies, looking straight ahead. "I'll be back there tonight. It's not too long of a walk."
Chris shrugs, and leaves his longer stride to keep up with her shorter, scurrying legs.
There's moment where she bites her lip self-consciously, and then looks at him.
"I'm sorry, about that arm-crossing comment earlier." She says. "It was stupid, I was just in a bad mood."
"Don't worry about it." he smiles. "Trust me, I've had worse comments directed at me in situations like that."
She gives a non committal grunt and the silence returns until they reach her apartment building.
"This is it," She mutters, pulling her keys from her jacket pocket. "Thanks for the escort."
"No problem," He catches her arm before she can enter the building. "If you hear anything else or need something." He hands her a phone number.
"Right." She replies, and is gone.
m m m
Back at the station, Chris and Ray are sent out to see if they can round up any more witnesses of the kidnapping.
They start in the alleyway, poking around the dumpster and old cardboard boxes. They don't find anything of interest. The kidnapper left nothing behind. Then they canvas the buildings on each side of the alley, knocking on doors to see if anyone saw anything out there windows. Most people aren't home though, and wouldn't have been home during the kidnapping, because it was in the middle of most people's work day.
Ray finds the person who called them though. A woman in her sixties whose retired and spends most of her day watching out the windows at other people. He shows her the badge and she lets him in.
"Did you find the girl?" She asks. "The one who ran away?"
"What's your name, ma'am?"
"Lana Eloise Parker. Did you find the girl who mugged that woman?"
"Yes, we did. Can you tell me what you saw?"
"Not a lot, but enough. I was looking at that front window, actually, when I heard a scream from the other side and when I looked out I saw a woman being dragged off, and another woman running away. Then I called the police."
Ray looks out the side window she had pointed out, moving back a lace curtain to do so. It is the third floor and a corner apartment, with a pretty good view of the mouth of the alleyway and part of the sidewalk.
"And you saw it to be a mugging?" He asks.
"I don't know what else it would be."
"It was a kidnapping, actually. The woman you saw running away was running for her life."
"Oh my," Lana gasps, hand over her mouth.
"Would you mind coming back to the station so we can take a statement?"
"I suppose I could." She says, taking her coat.
m m m
Chris is having considerably less luck.
He has taken the building opposite Ray's, and finds the first two floors completely empty. On the third floor, he finds a man in his early forties, drunk as a skunk and in boxers and wife beater. He didn't see anything.
The fourth floor is also empty, and in frustration Chris wanders to the window at the end of the hallway to look out on the fateful alleyway. In his left peripheral vision is a metal dumpster.
Forty-five seconds of staring out at the alleyway and it takes him half that time to register the twinkling to his left.
He meets Ray in front of the building he had just gone through with some old woman. Then he shrugs and leads them toward the dumpster in the alley. It doesn't take him long to locate what he had seen, but before picking it up he quickly pulls on a pair of leather gloves over his strangely long fingers.
"Look at that," Ray says, as Chris lifts the glass bottle of chloroform from the small space directly behind the dumpster.
"Do you think when we can get prints off it?" Chris asks.
"With luck," Ray replies. "Maybe we finally have the last name of our Daniel guy."
m m m
Sam Tyler was looking through one of the many file cabinets of the 125 when Annie appeared out of nowhere.
He had been looking through recent of arrests of anybody with the first or last name Daniel, but he isn't sure how far back to look, and the amount of hits is growing.
"I found something interesting." She says, holding four separate file folders. "In the last eight months, four nurses have been killed. All from different hospitals, and all unsolved because no one could find a motive. Each time, they'd go missing for a couple days, then turn up dead some place really populated. All the victims were reported to be private people, never talked about themselves much at work, with not many friends."
"So you're saying we might have a serial killer on our hands?" Sam feels a cold chill run down his spine, thinking of Maya's encounter in 2008.
"I think it's a strong possibility. Except now we have a motive."
"Abusive boyfriend."
"Abusive serial killer boyfriend who doesn't like nurses."
"Either way, Tessa is missing, which means it's only a matter of time before she turns up dead, if it's the same guy." Sam reasons
"Then we'd better hurry." Annie replies evenly.
m m m
Three detectives, a lieutenant, and a policewoman stood behind a fence of yellow tape on a crowded New York street.
A woman called Tessa Powers was sprawled on the sidewalk, dead.