A/N: The first and second chapters have been re-edited into 3rd Person POV, so check out the new updated first chapter if you haven't (and if you want to), but otherwise, enjoy!
"The kidneys are missing."
"The what?"
"The kidneys are missing. Who are you?"
Bishop smiled as she followed Wang's glare towards Gilliam—the FBI agent, the man in the suit—as he was closing the door to the morgue, eyes drilling into the back of his suit jacket. The man didn't even realize he was being stared at until he turned around to face the two women, noticed both pairs of eyes fixated on him, frowning in apparent discomfort.
"Special Agent Joel Gilliam, of the FBI." He moved forward and offered a hand to the otherwise kind doctor, but all she did was stare at the hand for two solid seconds before she lifted a single latex-gloved hand—powder blue stained with dried vermillion. Noticing the glove and the blood, Gilliam quietly retracted his hand away and made a small, acknowledging nod. "It's a pleasure, doctor—"
"Jane Wang," the woman replied with a deadpan voice, glancing briefly over to Bishop before her eyes turned back to Gilliam. "Head medical examiner. Since when is the FBI involved in this case?"
"Since he came to the station this morning," Bishop quickly replied, peering over at Gilliam just to see the deepening frown on his face before turning back to smile at her friend and colleague, "and tried to take over the entire case. Luckily, the chief made an agreement with the feds for a joint investigation instead, so here we are."
A sigh came from beside her. "Considering we'll be working together from now on," he said, "I would appreciate it if you didn't talk about me as though I'm not in this room, detective."
Bishop didn't even bother turning to look at him. "Dr. Wang, the bodies?"
"Oh, yes." Wang quietly clapped her hands together and led the other two towards the closest autopsy table, where one of the seven bodies laid, the overall figure indicating it was an adult, draped in a large white cloth long enough that it was hanging over the sides of the table. Bishop knew Wang wasn't able to get through all seven bodies by the time they arrived at the morgue later that afternoon—she didn't expect her colleague to finish them all within a span of just a few hours—but she did call the police department to inform them she was done with the patriarchs of both families. That was more than enough, Bishop thought, because there could be something from either body that she hoped would give them some lead about the case.
Wang stood at the other side of the table opposite to the two investigators, looked towards both of them with a nod before she uncovered half of the cloth covering the first corpse. Bishop immediately recognized him to be John Smith, from the family with the stitches. She could tell Wang was done performing the autopsy on the man—his skin was clean of blood, and there was a large Y-shaped incision across his chest that had been stitched closed to spare the two investigators from the sight of the man's insides. The stitches were, Bishop quickly noticed, very much cleaner than the ones in his abdomen, but as Wang uncovered the corpse down to said area, she noticed Wang had removed the initial stitches and replaced them with her own professional handiwork.
"John Smith's cause of death was not, in fact, severe blood loss," Wang stated, barely able to hide the intrigue in her voice. "He died of a cardiac arrest."
Beside the detective, Gilliam arched an eyebrow at the doctor's statement. "Cardiac arrest?" he immediately inquired. "You mean, the victim had a heart attack?"
Wang briefly glanced up, between Bishop and Gilliam, before her eyes settled on the former. "The victim's medical records did not indicate that he had any cardiac problems prior to his death," she stated instead, taking a deep breath before continuing. "In addition to signs of cardiac arrhythmia, I also found some damage to the lungs, the liver, as well as the trachea." She turned her gaze back down at the body, pointing to each of the organs she mentioned. "With that, I have reason to believe the victim suffered acute chloroform poisoning just before he died, one that likely triggered the cardiac arrest."
"Chloroform?"
Bishop suppressed a sigh when Gilliam spoke up again, noticing Wang turning to glare at him from across the table.
"I know what I observed, Agent Gilliam," the doctor quickly responded, her expression remaining unfazed, softening only when she looked back toward Bishop. "I've sent some blood and tissue samples for analysis to Forensics upstairs. They should be working on them as we speak."
"And the kidneys?" Bishop asked. "You said they were missing?"
"I was just about to get to that."
Wang turned her attention to the abdominal area, pointing towards the newly-done stitches. Bishop noticed Gilliam's marked interest towards the abdominal wounds—he immediately switched his attention to them, peering at them, into them, with rather unusual intrigue.
"In case I need to repeat myself—" Bishop tried not to snicker at the emphasis in Wang's voice, "—the victim suffered two incisions located just above where the kidneys should be, which had been stitched shut when we first discovered the bodies earlier this morning, albeit very poorly." Wang looked up, addressing both investigators. "I was able to cut them open when I performed the autopsy on Mr. Smith earlier today, and the first thing I noticed was the missing kidneys."
Bishop stared at her in disbelief. "Both of them?"
The doctor nodded. "They were carved out post-mortem. However, I can definitely tell that, just like the stitches, it was not professionally done—the bastard didn't have the slightest clue in the world what he was doing and tried to gut the man out like a pig on a butcher's block, and I've seen butchers do better. The cuts were almost an entire inch off, and the killer had to slice through the skin and flesh several times before he managed to cut the man open. There was significant collateral damage done to the surrounding tissue. If Mr. Smith hadn't died of the chloroform, the procedure would have no doubt taken his life instead."
Bishop turned to her partner briefly, expecting some sort of remark from him. Gilliam's face was about as expressive as a stone.
She looked back at the doctor. "And the murder weapon?"
Wang took another deep breath. "Judging from the incisions, I am positive that the killer used a smaller blade—much smaller than the one used on the Walkers, smaller than a common kitchen knife or a switchblade for that matter." She tilted her head up, raising a single gloved index finger as a gesture. "In addition to that, I also found some traces of the unknown dark substance that you found at the crime scene, in the tissue surrounding Mr. Smith's missing kidneys. I've also sent those samples up to Forensics for further analysis. From what I can tell, it did not come from any bodily fluids he could possibly have inside his body."
Bishop looked towards Gilliam. He had turned his face away from her direct gaze, but the corner of his mouth was twitching, like he was trying to hide the frown to match the creases in the corner of his eyes and his forehead. He had yet to make another comment on the doctor's findings, but it was clear that he was six feet deep in whatever thoughts he had in mind right now, unaware even as Bishop stared straight at him. She didn't want to admit her slight curiosity of what he thought of the nature of John Smith's death—that folder he gave to the chief, who later gave it to her, held information of just one potential suspect, and she could take a confident guess on which victims Woods' modus operandi could match with. She noticed the agent had another file in his hands, when she was sitting beside him back at the chief's office. Did he have another potential suspect in mind for the Smiths, too?
After several seconds of silence, Bishop averted her eyes from the agent and turned back to the doctor. "What about the Walkers?"
Wang led the two investigators to the next silver table over, reassuming her position on the other side opposite to them. Bishop remembered how the two of them discovered the Walkers' bodies, in the bloodbath that was once the master bedroom of their house. Part of her was mentally preparing herself before Wang could start uncovering the cloth upon Samuel Walker's body. She was hesitant to even take a second look at the photographs she took of the crime scene, let alone the mangled corpse of the poor man before them.
"This one didn't stand a chance against his killer," Wang remarked before she even took hold of the cloth. She was much gentler with her movements this time around, as though the man was still alive and very much in pain, and she wanted to disturb him as little as possible, however much she could. She folded the cloth about halfway through, showing just the upper half of his body and stopping right where his stomach should be. Indeed, the Walker patriarch did not look much better than when the two women first found him—long lacerations across his chest and forearms, with much larger, deeper wounds decorating the skin, though most of them had been carefully stitched up by the good doctor, and most of the blood had been cleaned off. Like Smith, a large Y-shaped incision adorned the majority of the chest, though it almost looked indistinguishable with the other injuries the man had suffered prior to his death, very much in contrast to Smith's.
"No major surprises with this one," Wang said, nodding to the corpse. Her gaze was, once again, near sympathetic, more than the average person would upon looking at any mere corpse. "Some bruising around his wrists, just like Mr. Smith, but Mr. Walker also had large gashes on both of his palms."
"He got a hold on the blade of the killer's weapon."
"I believe so," Wang confirmed. "The size of the injuries indicates the same weapon was used throughout the entire process, though he was cut apart with varying strength and angles. Some of the wounds were done post-mortem—the killer struck him in a number of major arteries, veins and did significant damage on the heart, lungs, and most of his vital organs even after he expired. Cause of death could either be severe blood loss or the massive trauma done to his organs, but either way, he had no chance of surviving the night."
It was an overkill, Bishop thought. The killer murdered the man for the sake of murdering him, as though he was getting high on the adrenaline it must've brought him. She'd read about killers like these before—dealt with a couple of them herself, even. It was a certain kind of high—a certain kind of addiction that could only be sated one way, and one method alone.
Whoever this killer might be, Jeffrey Woods or otherwise, was going to kill again. There was little doubt about that.
Gilliam had yet to make a statement of this. When Bishop looked at him from the corner of her eye, the FBI agent was still as silent as ever, though his gaze on Mr. Walker's body held just the slightest hint of what she could recognize as pity—an emotion she didn't think he would have, considering their interactions thus far.
She pulled the corner of her lips back for a brief second as she turned back to her colleague. "Anything else?"
"I have about four and a half more bodies to get to," Wang stated with a quiet, grave tone. "I don't expect to see any stark differences between them and their patriarchs, but I will inform you if that statement changes."
"Nothing? Just nothing else you want to comment on—no snide remarks about how the victims were killed, or contradictions to whatever theories you have in that head of yours?"
The ceramic mug fitted in the coffee stain on Bishop's desk was devoid of coffee, so the machine in the back of the room became her first objective the second they arrived back at the station. She was dismayed when she noticed a dark figure appearing in her peripherals seconds after the machine started to churn out spurts of dark liquid into her mug and the surrounding area of the counter it sat on, and she turned to her right to see the FBI agent standing there, a respectable distance away from her, and with a familiar brown manila folder in his hands, flipped open as his eyes scanned through whatever page he was on.
He barely noticed her speaking to him, lifting his gaze up to address her, briefly glancing when the coffee machine started making questionable sounds as though it was going to burst into flames right in front of them. In any case, Bishop wouldn't be surprised if it did.
"What?"
Bishop suppressed the urge to roll her eyes at him. "You're clearly still hiding something from us," she said, nodding towards the file in his hands. "You were talking big smack up until Jane told us the results of her autopsies. You know, if we're going to be working together from now on, I expect you to be transparent to the lead investigator of this case."
"Co -investigator," he corrected, glaring at her for a brief moment before he turned his attention back to the file. "And I am being transparent. I told you about Woods, didn't I?"
"You clearly have something else in mind." The machine beeped and she moved her mug from underneath it, raising it up to her lips and taking a short, careful sip of the lukewarm liquid. "I'm not an idiot, agent. Woods might have killed the Walkers, but you think someone else killed the Smiths, don't you?" She tried to resist the urge to make a face at the bitter liquid in her mouth but failed. "And why are you following me around the office, anyway?"
He briefly glanced up again, frowning. "I was going to ask you if there are any available desks I can use while we work on the case," he said, then did a quick scan around the room. Indeed—and Bishop wasn't surprised by this—the limited number of desks available at the station were all occupied, let alone one that was close enough to Bishop's that he would not have to yell across the room just to attract her attention.
Bishop did roll her eyes this time; she briskly walked back to her desk, replaced her mug on its circular stain, and, noticing Gilliam still trailing behind her, went to grab a spare folded chair in the corner of the room and set it down on the vacant space right beside her desk, after relocating her trash bin to beneath her table.
"There," she announced, gesturing towards the chair. "You can sit there for the time being. I don't care—I don't give a shit about what you do as long as you don't mess up my workspace, and—" Before he could do anything else, she quickly snatched the file straight from his hands and slammed it down on her desk. "—you start being transparent about what's going on with this case, what and how much you know about it, because bullshit some kid in his—what, twenties now—has been out there, killing entire families and evading the cops and feds for nine whole years."
He glared at her now, just bordering on hostile but still somehow keeping his composure, before his eyes went to the folder that had just been in his hands one second ago, now securely pinned underneath her palm on her desk. She could just lift it up and look at it herself now, but she unknowingly found herself amidst an intense staring match with the FBI agent, both of them keeping silent for longer than she was comfortable with, and perhaps longer than he expected as well.
She could've sworn she saw the corner of his eye twitch before he eventually breathed out a long sigh, moving to pull the folding chair out a short distance and then sitting down, pulling it back close to her desk. When she had yet to move, he looked at her with confused eyes, then nodded back at the file.
"Take a look, then," he said, quietly, much more than the usual. "Go ahead. You're right—I agreed to the terms the chief had set for the agreement, and we will be working together for the remainder of this case. He set the bar quite higher than what I would expect." He took another deep breath and leaned back against the chair, though seemed to have quickly made a mental note to himself to not lean back too far, stopping himself just before he could tip the frail chair over and send himself plummeting to the ground. "Therefore, I should have no reason to distrust you, or invalidate your opinions on the case."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "You're being sarcastic, aren't you?"
He was feigning innocence on his face—she had been on the job long enough to tell with a single glance at his facial features. "No, I assure you, I am not," he insisted. "I am genuinely interested in what you think of my so-called 'theories' and the 'contradictions' to them, with what evidence we do have on hand."
Which were not that many, Bishop thought to herself. There was a kitchen knife missing from the knife block in the Walkers' kitchen, which could be the murder weapon used to kill them, but it had yet to be recovered, and it was likely the killer disposed of it in a nearby dumpster before the garbage collectors got rid of the evidence for him when they went through the neighborhood earlier in the morning. On the other hand, one of the other officers who were at the scene did recover a scalpel, of all things, dropped at the Walkers' front lawn, almost hidden amidst the grass. It was covered in dried blood, which was still undergoing analysis, though with Dr. Wang confirming the weapon used to kill the Smiths, Bishop was confident the Smiths' DNA would be on that scalpel.
There were still the samples that Wang had sent to Forensics after conducting her autopsies, though those had yet to turn up with results, either.
Bishop kept her glare on Gilliam as she took a seat on her creaking desk chair, pulling it up close against the desk as she slid the file over closer towards her. Before she could flip it over, however, she almost jumped out of her seat when she felt something latching onto the back of her hand, and looked down to see Gilliam's hand over hers, and over the folder, before tilting her head up to see him staring at her.
He realized what he had done and promptly removed his hand, pretending as if that hadn't just happened.
"I have to remind you, however," he said with a quieter voice, and she didn't miss how his eyes wandered from hers for a split second, as though to make sure no one else was listening. "The details written in these reports are considered classified material. You are not to discuss this with any of your co-workers, or anyone else in this department, much less any civilian outside this building. Not even Dr. Wang, regardless of your personal and professional relationship with her." He paused. "And I have only shown the chief the extent to which he is allowed to know about this case."
Bishop frowned, and, with furrowed eyebrows, found herself staring back at the folder underneath the palm of her hand. He seemed genuinely serious about this—he always did, but the creases in his forehead were deeper than usual, and the dark glint in his eyes almost sent shivers down her spine, and not the good kind, but still unlike the ones she had when she first saw Woods' image, or the Walkers' bedroom. It created a certain uneasiness in her stomach, making her feel like she was about to throw up any second soon.
"I am making an exception to you, detective." He leaned back, putting appropriate distance between them, and between himself and the floor. "I am putting trust in you that I know I shouldn't, but I know I have to, considering the circumstance."
Part of her wanted to think he was messing with her—making her believe this was as serious as he made it seem to be, more serious than the situation actually was. But the other part of her still had that sinking feeling in her stomach that was making her believe the horrible facts about the crime scenes and the bodies alone was barely scratching the surface of how deep the iceberg went.
She shouldn't believe him. There were more traditional methods of how to proceed with the case, despite the lack of leads and evidence available to them as of that moment. She could go interview the neighbors again—the other officers did what they could and she tried to help them out as well, but all they could obtain from them was a highly questionable witness account of someone screaming from either of the houses in question, and another who claimed to have heard sounds of struggle, though could not be a hundred percent positive if that came from one of the houses, or a raccoon rummaging through the dumpster, which was apparently a common occurrence in the area.
She could run background checks on people that both families associated with—see who they had mutual connections or relationships with. Their activities prior to their deaths. People in the area who had a history of violence, or known criminal records, specifically home invaders or robbers. Anybody who had any reason to harm either of these families.
She had the intention to do so upon returning to the station, but it seemed that her plans were being thrown out the window, for now.
Without averting her eyes from Gilliam, watching him with careful intent, she flipped the file over and finally turned her eyes away from him and looked toward the page.
She skimmed through the first few rows and columns of the report before she made another comment.
"What the hell is this?"
Her tone wasn't condescending—at least, she tried to not make it so. She was confused, more than anything. She had no idea what she was reading—had no idea if the coffee she just drank made her read something that wasn't even on the page she was staring at.
"His name was Jack Nichols." Gilliam's voice sounded distant in her ears, her mind struggling to process what he was saying and what she was reading at the same time. "Upstanding college student from Colorado. Had no history of violence or mental health issues. Like most victims, he was just at the wrong place, at the wrong time."
Just like Woods' file, there was a photograph attached to the top of the page as well, one that looked like a photo from a student's ID or even a high school yearbook. It was a picture of a young man at the end of his teenage years, with short light brown hair, fair skin and hazel eyes. He was smiling, too—not a large, beaming grin, but a small, polite smile indicative of a picture taken for some kind of ID. Last recorded age was nineteen, and his last recorded location was what she assumed to be his college campus, where he was pursuing a degree in medicine.
His last known status was declared dead in absentia .
"There was a cult operating on campus grounds," Gilliam continued, his voice lacking all emotion. "It was no doubt a religious cult—the kind you see in movies and TV shows, with cloaks and masks and a sacred text describing some demonic being they worshipped as a god and everything. Nichols' roommate informed us he last saw Nichols heading off to the forest just outside of campus grounds when the two of them spotted a fire coming from a cave in the middle of the forest—the roommate recalled Jack claiming he had visited that cave before, along with a girl he just recently befriended at the time, named Jennifer Smith, who we had reason to believe was part of said cult."
This time, she was reading along the typed-out paragraphs in the report as he spoke, as if he had memorized the contents of the report and was reciting the words to her in real time. It felt like fiction—a piece of fiction she was reading, printed out as some sick prank, but it looked to be a legitimate photocopy of an official federal police report that was signed and stamped with the word 'CONFIDENTIAL' in big block letters at the top of the page. Nothing about it seemed forged whatsoever, and it terrified her unlike anything else.
The man sitting beside her suppressed a sigh, but his last intake of breath was slightly longer than usual. "We still do not know exactly what happened in that cave," he said. "But there were a number of students reported missing after that night, including Nichols. The local police organized a search party, and eventually stumbled across the cave, and discovered the mutilated bodies of almost every single student missing from that campus."
Bodies disemboweled, throats ripped open, eyes gouged out. A bloodbath, as it was described in the report—and, Bishop thought, not quite unlike how the Walkers were murdered in their own home just the night before, with one notable exception.
The kidneys were missing from all the bodies found in the scene, and one pair of enucleated eyes that did not belong to any of the students identified at the scene—a pair that DNA analysis determined to have belonged to one Jack Nichols.
Bishop looked up. His expression had not changed. " Almost every one of them?"
"Nichols' body was never recovered," he promptly replied. "He was still reported missing and became our prime suspect for the mass homicide. Last February, he was officially declared dead, and the case officially went cold."
Bishop frowned. "If the boy is presumed dead, why are you saying he is a potential suspect for our case?"
"About a week after the first incident in that cave, another homicide case was called in from the neighboring town." Gilliam straightened his back, reassuming a proper sitting posture as his distant gaze landed on the file in her hands. "A group of hikers were found dead on a hiking trail. All of them were enucleated and disemboweled, with the notable exception of their kidneys, which were all discovered missing from their bodies during autopsy. Another similar case turned up in the same town a few weeks later, and even more in the years since, but the killer's M.O. was evolving—the victims were no longer disemboweled, but their kidneys were always removed. Over time, more and more victims survived, only realizing they had been attacked because they noticed pain and stitches in their abdomen, and eventually discovered one of their kidneys had been removed overnight."
Bishop's eyes momentarily averted away from Gilliam, and towards the rest of the office space. No one else seemed to be paying attention to their conversation—everyone around her was busy with their own devices, most of them doing paperwork or just chatting with their fellow co-workers. Other than a few occasional glances from her desk neighbors—it wasn't every day that they had a federal agent visiting, much less working together on a homicide case here in town—no one else gave a damn about what they were doing.
That was good, she thought. Because God knows what they would think about what Gilliam was telling her the past few minutes.
"How are you so sure it was him?" she found herself asking back. "Couldn't it have been just some sick bastard harvesting organs from people in the middle of the night after sedating them or something?"
"His signature, detective," Gilliam replied, confidence still unwavering. "Just like Woods, there is one thing in common with almost every single victim of his that we have encountered so far: traces of an unknown dark-colored fluid substance, with an undetermined composition, containing no bodily fluid or chemical substance that modern science has identified so far."
Like the ink-like substance we found at the first crime scene . She cursed under her breath.
"We were, however, able to determine that all the traces we collected in all similar cases, as well as those found in the original crime scene in that cave in the forest, were all of the same fluid substance," he concluded. "We just have absolutely no idea what it consists of."
"How is he still out and about?" Unlike their conversation at the chief's office, Bishop didn't raise her tone of voice—she asked with genuine curiosity, though her voice, she realized, came off more as confusion, despite her attempt to mask it.
"The incident occurred near a small college campus, involving freshmen students at said campus," Gilliam stated matter-of-factly, returning her gaze. "I am sure you know how teenagers are these days, detective." He looked back at the folder in her hands, eyes almost seeing through the manila backing and straight at the police report. "The kids there called him 'Eyeless Jack'. Quite the tongue-in-cheek nickname, if I do say so myself."
He was right—it was difficult to take him seriously, with all that he just told her that still seemed like he was just recounting some urban legend to her. She expected him to burst into laughter at her now-grave expression at some point, assuring her that he was joking and all of this was indeed one elaborate lie—an elaborate attempt to prank her, which she honestly wouldn't be surprised of.
But as the seconds ticked by and she continued to read the rest of the apparently-legitimate federal report, there was no laughter coming from the agent. No lighthearted smiles, nor any attempt to negate the tense atmosphere around them. His expression stayed the same—emotionless, with faint hints of uneasiness and aggravation written across his rather tired face.
"Let me get this straight," Bishop finally said after some time, closing the folder and gently setting it back on her desk, straightening her posture as she turned to face him. "You are trusting me with this sort of 'information', or so you call it. Why?"
"I have told you why," he replied instead. "This is an exceptional circumstance. I believe my superiors will not object to me revealing this information to you, considering the nature of the case."
"The evidence is still circumstantial." Because they weren't done being processed yet, but she said nothing further about that. "This can still be a copycat killer for all we know. And if so, if what was written on this report was indeed true, you may have potentially revealed federal government-classified information to me."
"On the account of the evidence," he replied, readjusting his sitting position after remaining as still as a statue on that severely uncomfortable-looking chair for quite a while now, "that is for you to decide. That is why I offered this file for you to read. I want to know what your opinion is, concerning everything on the table so far. As for the legitimacy of the report, I assure you, on my badge, that it is as legitimate as it can be. And again, whatever repercussions that may come from revealing this information to you, I will ensure my superiors take into account the extreme conditions of the current status of our case. You've seen the bodies—you've seen the message on the wall. Even if Woods nor Nichols are not responsible for any of the deaths that occurred last night, you know that whoever did this will strike again. The body count will not stop unless drastic measures are taken, detective."
She wished he was wrong. She wished this was all some sick joke. She still did, even as she returned the file back to him, and exchanged glances when the telephone on her desk started ringing. The two of them remained silent as Bishop moved to pick up the phone, eyes still staring down at each other as she answered the call.
Gilliam watched her every movement, listened to every word she spoke to the phone until she thanked the other person for calling in and hung up the phone.
"C'mon," she announced, pushing her chair back and picking up her phone, her badge and the handgun she kept in her drawer, returning it to the holster secured around her belt. "Forensics got something. Time to get a move on, agent."
He nodded silently and moved to stand up as well, but instead of immediately following her out to the building exit, he reopened the desk drawer and stashed the manila folder inside before closing it shut.
She stood halfway through the room, eyes following the man as he did a light jog to catch up to her, offering her a tight-lipped smile as well as a firm nod of confirmation.
"It's time to get a move on," he agreed.