(3)

Hutch looks around the apartment, his eyes searching for any clues that can lead them to the killer. The front room, where the body lays covered by a white sheet, is crowded with policemen, their indistinct chatter making it hard to think. He tries to remember a time when a scene of a crime was a grim occasion and not treated as a spectacle. There was laughter coming from a pair of cops by the door, their idle chatter concentrating on their individual plans for the weekend instead of watching the crowd that had gathered in front of them, trying to get a look at the crime scene inside the apartment.

With a roll of his eyes, Hutch heads to the small bathroom, pulling the shower curtain to the side. The bathroom was bare like a hospital room with its white and undecorated walls. The perp had to have been hiding somewhere, he had reasoned earlier that night; he couldn't have just popped out of thin air. According to the witness, Monique Travis, if one could call hiding in the kitchen whilst a man was being killed in the other room witnessing something, she had heard and seen nothing until walking back to the living room and finding her date on their makeshift bed covered in blood.

Rubbing his eyes, trying to shoo away the sleep he felt bidding its time somewhere inside of him, Hutch walks to the kitchen. The window was open half way, enough for a man to be able to make his way inside the apartment and leave without being detected. The drop, he notices as he pocked his head out the window, wasn't that far down. Even if the perp had entered via the open window, the Miss Travis had been in the kitchen at the time of the murder, further supporting his original hypothesis of the perp being already inside when the couple had arrived. It was either that or she had let the killer in.

"Pending a trip to my cosy home in the coroner's office, I'd say cause of death was multiple stab wounds," the attending coroner was telling Starsky as Hutch exited the kitchen and walked into the scene of the crime, the living room. The detective's nod to one another, Hutch shakes his head to indicate that he had found nothing. "I tried counting 'em but I ran out of fingers."

"Type of weapon?" Starsky asks as Hutch crouches down to examine the body. "You can't just tell me death by stabs. I've got eyes too, you know?"

"A sharp instrument," the coroner replied dryly.

"C'mon, Russ, give me something," Starsky insisted.

"A sharp bladed instrument," Russ corrected with a smirk.

Hutch can practically hear Starsky rolling his eyes at the man. He looks at the body as the conversation continues. Multiple stab wounds was not enough to describe what had happened to the man lying on the bed, his back practically sliced open.

"As you can see it was larger than a penknife and smaller than a sword," Russ quips.

"The assailant was smaller than the victim," Hutch calls out, standing up. Russ raises an eyebrow, his gaze turning to the blond detective. Starsky badly conceals a smirk knowing what was to come. Hutch had his 'smartass' face on and it was, for once, not directed at him. "Probably right handed and crazy as hell."

"I can't confirm any of that until I get him on the slab," Russ says. "Are you moonlighting for the coroner's office?"

"Oh, no, no, no," Hutch exclaims, not missing the small chuckle that erupted from his partners lips. "My contract wouldn't allow that."

"You keep raining on the witch doctor's parade he's gonna turn you into a frog," Starsky jibs, taking the notepad Russ shoves his way and signing it.

"It's no big deal," Hutch declares. "Wounds are on the left side meaning attacker is left handed. Angle of entry is pretty much straight on." He pauses, giving Russ a levelled look. "Now, if the victim was smaller than the assailant the knife wounds would be in a downward angle, wouldn't they?"

"Let's hear it for Sherlock Holmes," Starsky says passing back the pad to Russ before he could reply. "How about we leave this to the professionals, eh partner?"

"Lead on, Watson," Hutch chuckles following Starsky to where the victim was, sitting on her couch, hands shaking in her lap.