Back at it again at last. I am slowly getting caught up but definitely will be happy when the holidays are over with. Besides, I don't want to get a bad reputation for ending everything on a cliffhanger.
It had been twenty minutes since Steve and Dan 10-20'ed their position and the lump in Mike's throat grew exponentially. Unsure of what exactly Erin McMillan had to show for when it came to incriminating evidence, he didn't like the time that had passed since their arrival at her apartment.
Not in this case anyways.
Glancing over at the interrogation room holding Damian, Mike sighed, before rubbing a hand over the tense muscles in the back of his neck.
As his eyes scanned over the notepad of letters again, the Lieutenant pursed his lips, frustrated that his mind couldn't come up with the connection. With only four victims, the five letters didn't add up. Neither did any of them resemble a name, or even a job title of their three stiffs, or that of Carrie, at least not in a consistent order that went with the killings.
R&I and Vice had yielded nothing on the acronym either, and even the guys down in Bunco hadn't heard of it before.
Part of him wondered if it was worth to go down that rabbit hole altogether, realizing that these letters might have absolutely nothing to do with their case, and that they might just be some sort of coping mechanism Damian used to control his anxiety.
The other part of him grew suspicious that the letters didn't appear until he intensified his interrogation method, and until Damien felt like he was alone.
Sighing when he realized that another five minutes had passed without a phone call, Mike looked back at the blackboard Steve and he had rolled into his office in an effort to brainstorm a potential connection to literature with their murders.
The character of Horatio in Hamlet…it seemed to be the sole glue that tied things together here in one strange form or another. Presuming that Damian was some sort of accomplice, just who could Hamlet be?
Reciting what he remembered from the play, Hamlet, the disillusioned son of a murdered king, angry at his mother and uncle, was vying for Ophelia's love all the while torn between loyalty to his friends, desire to take the throne and revenge for his father's death.
When a sudden, frightening thought entered his mind, he opened his office door to call out for Haseejian, telling the detective to bring the book about Shakespeare's Hamlet from Steve's desk along with him, as he wiped the blackboard clean.
Decidedly hesitant, Norm stayed in the corner of his doorframe and watched the Lieutenant work away for a moment.
"You remind me of an angry economics teacher I had a long time ago.", the Armenian detective joked half-heartedly, only to find himself confronted with a stern-faced Mike.
"Never mind all that. Do me a favor Norm, help me out in identifying all the characters that appear in Hamlet that start with an F."
Alarmed by the unusual task, the Armenian detective brought the book closer to his eyes, and began to skip through the pages as fast as possible.
"I only see Fortinbras here, Lieutenant."
"Fortinbras…", Mike mused as he wrote down the name, "That was the ehm…the prince of Norway. His father was killed by Hamlet's father, and he wishes to avenge his death. His father's name was also Fortinbras, so we have 2 F's here…now give me all names that start with a P."
Thoroughly confused but too nervous to stop Mike in his train of thought, Norm went front to back through the small book again, the Lieutenant's eyes on him the entire time.
"Polonius."
"Polonius. That's right. Father to Ophelia and Laertes, which also gives us the "L"."
There was a slight tremor in Mike's voice when he said that, his handwriting growing rushed as he put the names on the blackboard.
"Claudius would be the C. Hamlet's uncle, and ambitious politician…"
Following the names on the board and the darts going off toward the left, Norm fell quiet, the tension building in the room slowly rubbing off on him.
As Mike put the letters in sequence of their murders, attached the names, and then used the right-hand side of the black board to write down Hamlet and Ophelia, time seemed to come to a complete stand still.
"Let's say our killer, our Hamlet, has picked our victims based on some sort of connection between the play and his real life, our first victim, Darrings would be Fortinbras. Let's forget about the murdered father part and look at how the character itself is challenging Hamlet on several occasions, so perhaps our killer chose him first because he felt threatened."
"Or because Horatio-guy over here was threatened by him…"
Norm's comment made Mike glance up briefly, then nod.
"Yeah, you might be right there. Next up we have Rudy McMillan, Polonius, father of Ophelia and Laertes."
"Erin and Eric McMillan."
"Which goes right back to David Forney as our Hamlet…", Mike concluded with his jaws clenched in tension, "What about C? Claudius, as Ramon Peterson. He isn't related to either one of the McMillan's though."
"Maybe not, but he was an influential businessman and had his hands in Rudy McMillan's pocket. There may not be a biological connection, but there is definitely a societal one."
"And it is conceivable that the L, the last letter drawn by Damian might mean that David is planning on taking out Eric McMillan, Laertes."
"Yeah, but what about the connection to our boy over here? Isn't there a higher chance he knew Erin compared to David?"
"Not necessarily.", Mike countered and bit his lips, "He could have met Forney at Big Al's or Morley's for that matter."
Nodding in agreement as he went through the book once again, Norm tapped his foot against the carpeted floor of Mike's office, the nervousness quickly filling every corner of the room.
"That last F though, our fourth victim…Darring's father is gone, died in a car crash a few years ago, so are we looking for somebody who personifies the character of the late Fortinbras, King of Norway. Maybe there was some…some role model in Darring's life they're after next? This just…this doesn't make any sense…", the Lieutenant grunted out loud, one hand scratching his chin as he glanced down.
"Maybe it's not Fortinbras.", Norm countered, his voice beginning to tremble as he held the book open on the page he stopped at, "I found another F."
Visibly intrigued, Mike stepped closer and cocked his head to see where the Armenian detective's thumb had underlined the name.
"Francisco…that's right…that's a side character. What was he again…?"
Feverishly scanning through some of the dialogue early on in the play, Mike's eyes fell on the random assortment of lines reserved for the character.
"Francisco…soldier and guardsman at Elsinore."
"Soldier and guardsman?"
Looking up when Norm mumbled the question out loud, Mike froze in his tracks for a moment, then grabbed the Armenian detective's arm tightly.
"Guardsman…a cop. Steve. Let's go Norm, call in all available units in the vicinity of Erin McMillan's apartment."
