Pattern 137, 2
OLIVIA'S POV
"Well," Melinda begun, snapping a glove on her hand, "it's official: they were embalmed, and not in a DIY, learn it on your own kind of way. This was a professional."
Her assistant had called us to come down to her office a couple of days after having found the Derrick's murdered in their home. We had spent the better part of that day arguing with the guys of the two-two and with Alex for leaving me to deal with the entire situation without her as a buffer.
In order to continue with the investigation and in order to keep the guys from Homicide stick with their investigative duties, I had to get incredibly creative with what I had to come up with to their CO. Neither Sergeant Bryce nor I were ecstatic to be working together, and thanks to that, I'd been able to convince Melinda to take over the cases at the Medical Examiner's Office to see if by any chance we could speed up this case and finally bring peace to the families of the victims.
They had found three families murdered and preserved in the same way, and the knowledge that OnePP's involvement and wanting to keep this out of public knowledge had me unsettled. How was he picking his victims? We knew for a fact that he wasn't going after one particular structure of a family since some of his victims did not have children, but what we wanted to know most was if any of his killings had motive. My wife had given us a partial profile, and that's exactly what we were working with. I'd called and invited her over to Melinda's office to see if she could pick up some type of evidence left on the bodies of our recent victims.
"How do you know?" Bryce asked, circling one of the exam tables.
Melinda nodded. "Take, for example, Mr. Derrick here," she walked towards Aidan Derrick, mumbling a faint apology as she stepped in front of me. "You see these two incisions in his common carotid artery?" she looked up after having pointed to Aidan's clavicle. "That's where someone placed arterial tubes and connected it to a real embalming machine. The firmer the skin, the better the job."
"And, they did this all in their home?" Victoria asked, shocked.
Melinda nodded. "You guys were at the crime scene, right?" we nodded, looking at each other. "Make sure CSU gives you their report. If you can find traces of the formaldehyde used, we could track it."
I closed my eyes, rubbing my brow, "You said a professional did this?"
Melinda nodded. "Anyone, you know?" Bryce asked. Melinda scoffed and when I looked up, I saw her shaking her head. "What I meant was, is it possible to recognize the embalmer's work by just looking at it?"
"Like some kind of signature?" I added.
"Yea, I mean, I figured everyone has their own style of doing things."
"No," Melinda said with a smile.
Victoria had been stalking the room, panning the bodies of the Derricks for signs of something. "Any signs of sexual assault?" she asked, frowning at the body of the youngest of the boys.
Melinda turned, "No. None."
"What are we looking for, Dr. Warner?" she continued.
Melinda sighed. "There really isn't much I can tell you other than, the killer did everything by the book—"
"Except the whole killing for your own enjoyment part," Bryce interrupted with a sigh.
Melinda stopped mid-sentence to glare momentarily at Homicide's Sergeant, grinning in amusement as she looked between Victoria and me. "They cleaned the bodies, massaged them to relieve rigor mortis…" she glanced down, looking at the body before her. "Definitely sounds like you're looking for a professionally trained funeral director."
I scoffed, "That's good news. There are only so many in the city. We can run them all down, see if they knew our victims."
Bryce snorted, shaking his head. "Who knew she had it in her…" he commented, placing his hands on his hips.
"Wait, Liv," I turned, watching Victoria weave through the slabs in Melinda's office. "West 54th and 6th Avenue."
I furrowed my brow, giving my head a slight shake. "Radio City is three blocks down," Bryce added casually.
Victoria grunted in frustration, "The hotel! There's a convention this weekend and you said—"
"Who the hell goes to a convention to choose where they'll sleep for the rest of eternity," we said in unison.
"Oh," Melinda gasped. "The AACF is having their convention this weekend."
"Jesus," Victoria sighed.
"They've been plotting this for months… Employ this very specialized method—"
"And frame three thousand people," Bryce finished.
It was moments like these that made all the police work worth our while. Being here with Melinda had opened up a window for us to look through and find the bastard that had been terrorizing the city on the low.
After having thanked Melinda for her insight, we all left for the one-six. We still needed to bring Victoria up to speed on the previous victims; hopeful she would give us a more accurate profile for the person who had murdered the families now lying on the morgue. It'd been almost a week since we'd found the Derrick's and no more victims had been found or identified since. The only thing left to think was that he either was waiting for the convention to frame someone or he was waiting for the convention to gather his next victims.
Once at the precinct, we went over the evidence already collected. Whoever was doing this had their motive. What was the motive is what we needed to figure out. Once we figured their motive, we could figure out who could be their next target.
The first victim, Vern Wilcox, a man well in his seventies was found in his home in Staten Island, sitting at his dine-in kitchen table with a cup of coffee in front of him and a mug of hot chocolate half-finished atop a different placement of the table. The CSU team had dusted for prints and any other sign of DNA and had found nothing left behind.
The second and third victims, Emilia Dorneget and Michael Knight, a woman in her eighties and her caretaker in his sixties. Ms. Dorneget had gradually been losing her eyesight as she grew older and by the time she'd reached her thirties, she'd lost over seventy percent of her eyesight. They had found her on her bed with a book on her lap, the side next to hers rumpled and disturbed, as if someone had been laying next to her and he'd been found on the couch, seemingly undisturbed.
And, the latest victims were the Derrick's.
Whatever had driven this perp to do the things he'd been doing, we needed to figure it out and figure it out as soon as possible. He'd been killing adults, up until the Derrick's, where he'd devolved and murdered children.
"Wilcox's place was kept in pristine condition for over a week. The only reason we stumble upon it was that the neighbor had been concerned of his well-being," Detective Todd sighed, balancing his arm on two fingers atop the table in front of him.
"And two weeks later, we received a call to the precinct," Hendricks stood, rounding the table to approach the display board.
"For?" Rollins asked with a headshake.
"A wellness check," Bryce chimed in, reclining next to Fin.
"Ms. Dorneget's akhi called the precinct, asking to check on both Ms. Dorneget and on Mike," Todd said with a shrug. "Apparently, Mike and Ms. Dorneget would come into the deli for a triple chopped cheese after their Ms. Dorneget's daily walk. Apparently, he hadn't seen them in three days, and that's how we found them."
"And, you know how we found the Derrick's," Perry added simply.
Fin sighed, "Man knows how to target 'em."
"Honestly," Kat pitched in. "So, he's killing them, embalming them, and then he just… what? Sits there, like a creep?"
Victoria had been silent mostly, but we all knew she'd been listening. Paying attention in her own way. She'd focused more on the pictures of the crime scene, the ones CSU had taken for us. I could hear both my team and Bryce's arguing away the facts and the possibilities of the case, but I could only focus on what my wife was doing with the pictures. The way she was scrutinizing the pictures told me she was looking for something. Something that wasn't as apparent as she wanted it to be.
She shook her head and bit her lip, mumbling something underneath her breath.
The team continued to argue their way through what little forensics we had recovered from the crime scene, and none of it had been relevant to my ears.
"Captain, we should check out that convention you mentioned," Bryce paused to direct me.
"Yes! Yes!" Victoria came to life, turning to me with a smile. "What do you say, Captain. Will you marry me… again?"
I chuckled, coming to a stand, "Until death does us part."
"What's wrong, Tori? You've been awfully quiet…"
She sighed. "I—I don't know, Liv. Something… Something's not sitting right with me about this case," she scratched her brow, shaking her head.
"Do you… want to let me in? Talk about your process…"
She turned towards me, waiting for me to turn my head. We had notified Alex of our plan, letting her know that we were going undercover for a couple of hours at the convention. She'd bickered, as always, but she'd concede once she heard Victoria had been running with a working theory. She'd always to what I had to say, but she would buckle down when it came to evidence. As a form of payback, she'd asked for a late lunch to be delivered to her downtown, from her favorite restaurant in the Upper West Side. To say that we'd been played, would be an understatement.
"I can feel you staring a hole to the side of my face," I smirked.
She hummed, "I'm just staring at your profile."
"Yea?" I turned to look at her shining eyes. "You're avoiding the question, Tori."
She sighed, shaking her head. "Not—Not yet, Olivia," she sat straight, leaning forward to place her elbows on her knees. "I don't want to be wrong."
"When have you ever been wrong about… anything?" I shrugged, attempting to keep an eye both on her expression and the road in front of me.
She smiled coyly, "I've been wrong before."
"But not about this," she opened her mouth to protest. "It's fine. If you're playing it close to the vest, I respect that, Tori."
"Thank you, Liv."
We drove in silence until I was able to find a couple of feet from the entrance of the hotel. Surprisingly, there were far more people there than I'd expected. From morticians to carpenters, to apparent membership holders.
"So much for undercover," Tori grumbled next to me.
"Hey, we can still make this work. I'll flash my badge discreetly. They'll let us in."
I smiled as we reached a cordoned area, most likely for said membership holders to explore the most exclusive deals. I cleared my throat, feeling Victoria shift at my side. We both raised our arms as discreetly as possible to flash our credentials. The man guarding the roped-off area gave a subtle nod, allowing us through with a swift movement of his arm.
"Enjoy," he mumbled, smiling at us.
Tori giggled next to me, pushing her arm through mine, "'Cause death's so enjoyable, right."
I shook my head, taking notice of the prime inventory around us.
No one looked guilty, but then again, morticians were trained to remain calm and collected against the crumbling family members that struggled to keep pace against the continued acceptance of having lost their family member. I felt Victoria's hand in my own, her fingers filling the spaces of mine as we walked through each small exhibition.
"You guys doing ok?"
We turned to find a cheery couple, around their necks, a lanyard for the conference. "Yea, just… browsing," Tori replied, hugging my arm.
"Well, I'm Dan, and this is my wife, Thea. How can we help?"
Tori and I looked at each other. She gave me a quick and sudden nod; a silent encouragement. "We're looking to talk to someone to embalm my mother. I, uh, after she saw in the news that one guy in Puerto Rico that was embalmed on his motorcycle, she's been set on being embalmed differently," I chuckled nervously.
"I mean, she didn't want nothing too crazy, but you know… different," Tori added with a smile.
Dan and Thea smiled, brushing each other's shoulders. "Well, my husband and I own a funeral home in the outsides of the city and we've had our fair share of… niche requests," Thea began.
"Our partner is very talented with these. What—What did your mother have in mind?"
Victoria turned to look at me, a glint in her eyes, "She wanted to be sat on her favorite chair, knitting."
Thea and Dan suddenly looked uncomfortable, "Sitting… that won't come without its expenses."
"Yea?" I asked, letting go of my wife's hand, reaching for my belt to pull the clip of my badge. "Mind telling us more someplace less crowded?"
A/N: Hello guys, long time, no see. I want to thank you for being so patient and I'd like to remind you all that I am a nurse working through the pandemic. My mind has been completely off and away from writing, but I've managed to produce this since it was the most logical thing to write. I''ll try to push something else with little wait time, but no promises. I hope you enjoy this and don't forget to follow me on twitter for more updates!