Chapter 3
CSI came quickly to investigate the scene as did LAPD and CHP from Richardson's division. "My God, Richardson was supposed to come in this morning!" exclaimed a shocked and deeply overwhelmed Sgt. Norman Barlow, Richardson's sergeant. "How could they catch him in his uniform before work, shoot him up, and then somehow drag him into another division's restroom without anyone noticing? Let alone with all the blood? The blood is practically a dead giveaway, almost!" "This isn't blood, believe it or not," answered Sabrina Jordan, a member of the CSI. "It's actually red food coloring." "Red food coloring?!" Exclaimed an exasperated Getraer. "Apparently for dramatic effect," she answered. "The shots taken to his body aren't quite that fresh, but from the looks of things, they did happen this morning. The red food coloring was used to dress the poor soul up, so to speak, then scare the living daylights out of Baker and Poncherello." Tell me about it, thought a frightened Jon. "We'll have to send the rest to Forensics. We've only got three more samples to speak of, no hair or fingerprints, but we've got what appears to be something else dripped on his uniform at the left shoulder, and on the badge, too. We've also got what appears to be some sort of seed, a tiny seed, from a fruit, maybe. Then we've got what appears to be something darker than blood or food coloring, definitely something dark red and fresh, from the looks of it, in his hair." "The question is," asked Jon, "Well--there are a lot of questions, I mean-- why would someone drag him all the way to Central, and how, without anyone noticing? And why would someone just target him and O'Brien? Did they know him and her somehow? Or did they just target them at random? Are they after just people--or specifically cops--or specifically the CHP? And why are they targeting me and my partner--" he asked, the intensity in his voice growing, "--why are they after us specifically? And who's this 'Ghoul"
"We'll have to get back to you on that," said Detective Lauren Ashbury of the LAPD. "As for Orly and how he murdered O'Brien, all we have on that so far is, the Montana dirtbike belongs to one Robert Mitchell of the famed Black Mountain Lion Ranch in Billings, Montana. When LAPD contacted Billings police and asked them to take him in for questioning, when they reached the ranch, he had poisoned himself with arsenic-laced Jagermeister in a standoff." "Hey, Ashbury," called LAPD Detective Robert Agee, "We just recieved word from LAPD at Richardson's house. They found traces of blood in the bathtub, along with some Clorox. Apparently, he was shot in his bathtub, then they tried to get rid of the blood with the bleach and wash it down the drain. We also saw traces of choloroform on Richardson's bed, but nothing else."
Getraer and the other witnessing CHP officers gave looks of exasperation to each other, the ceiling, and the floor.
LAPD Forensics tested everything, from blood samples to uniform samples to hair samples and everything in between. The mysterious seed was off of a strawberry, and from the juices, the seed examined in a microscope, the strawberry was eaten early in the morning. The redness in Richardson's hair, was, no doubt, Shiraz wine by Beringer, and, as fresh as it was, was ingested right when the mysterious killer or killers put Richardson, somehow, in the men's bathroom at Central (but according to the autopsy, not by Richardson, who had ingested only Folgers French Roast coffee with half and half. Traces of chloroform had only one more element in them, Old Spice. More questions, of course, but all involved were determined to find every one of the answers. There seemed to be nothing else in Richardson's house at the time that led to any answers, no hair or blood samples, no signs of struggle, it seemed that his house had been left perfectly immaculate, as if he had never even had breakfast that morning. Finally, the sample from Richardson's left shoulder and badge was tested. One of the forensics agents, Harry Jameson, was a connossieur and noticed it right away...
"Korbel Champagne! I bet my entire life on it!"
At 2:00 pm, an officer at Central slipped into the empty men's locker room and slipped an envelope into Officer Barry Baricza's locker, then slipped out unnoticed. At the end of their particular shift, Baricza, Fritz, Officer Arthur Grossman, Baker and Poncherello milled in to the locker room, and got dressed in their cilivian clothes. Baricza noticed the strange envelope in his locker, nothing written on it, no address, no name... "Hey, what's this?" he asked. Jon and Ponch looked at the note as Barry opened it. It was a simple folded-up sheet of typing paper, which, when unfolded, had typed words that read:
Ghoul is 25 years old.
Caucasian.
Solely targeting California Highway Patrol.
Plan:
Many others to die.
Can't say anymore. F.F. will kill me.
The officers were perplexed. Who put the note in Barry's locker? Ghoul was 25, but what else? Why was he targeting solely CHP officers, let alone anyone at all? And who was this F.F.?
Suddenly, the screams of a man were heard outside the locker room. The officers hurried to find him, only to find him dead in the nearby supply room. It was the officer who had slipped the note in Barry's locker. Officer John Jenkins, 35 years old and an exceptional watercolor artist on his time off, married to a wonderful wife with two children, one not yet born, lay dead in the supply room, a horrid gash torn through his throat.
Getraer, too, hurried to see, then nearly blew a major artery at what he saw. "What in Sam Hill is going on?!"