Chapter 1
"The date must be going well" Jesse grinned eyeing the clock on the wall.
"It wasn't a date" Amanda corrected him casually.
"Oooh, raw nerve Dr Bently?" he teased "we wouldn't be jealous would we?"
Mark entered the living room carrying three mugs of coffee.
"Cheryl and Steve are colleagues, friends, no more" Amanda retorted "Isn't that right Mark?"
"Oh they are colleagues, that's true, and definitely friends"
Jesse and Mark smiled mischievously at each other as he discreetly declined to pass judgement on the 'no more' part of Amanda's statement.
"It's a birthday meal that's all" Amanda glared at Jesse "Stop it! I am not jealous."
Jesse shrugged, "you're probably right, Steve in a new suit and tie, flowers, chocolates, best table in a fine restaurant. Friends"
Mark laughed "Well I think that what ever is going on between those two is none of our business. And I hope that they are having a nice, relaxing evening, lord knows they deserve it they way they've been working on this awful case".
Amanda tossed a thought around her mind for a moment "that was a new suit?"
Jesse smirked.
"I'm not jealous"
"Are too"
"Am not!"
Mark rolled his eyes.
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Steve avoided eye contact with the forensic officers and uniformed police constables as he left the small white stucco house. The dusk had turned to darkness and the lights from the police vehicles threw coloured streaks across the walls behind him. Despite the number of people bustling around the scene, there was barely a sound to be heard as he crossed the street to where his car was parked. He walked directly to the passenger side door.
Cheryl sat with her feet on the sidewalk, head between her knees and hands locked behind her head. She wore a grey pinstriped silk suit. The trousers hung casually over the black leather boots she was staring at intently. Steve crouched in front of her and placed his hand gently on her upper arm, rubbing his thumb soothingly across her shoulder. Cheryl barely seemed to notice him.
"Here" Steve offered her a sparkling white pressed handkerchief from his breast pocket, and dipped his head to try and make eye contact. She took the hanky and sniffed.
"Thanks, I'll be back inside in a moment"
"No need, we're just about done"
"But" she began to protest
"No need" Steve repeated "forensics and photographers are in there, we've seen all we need to for now." He swiftly brushed a tear from her cheek "guess this means dinner is off?"
She smiled weakly "yeah, happy birthday to me."
"Hey mister" the voice called from over Steve's shoulder.
"Nothing here to interest you, just keep walking." Steve dished out the standard polite line though the impatience was evident in his voice.
"Oh, OK. I just wondered, you got the time?"
"Eleven-twenty" Cheryl replied curtly, glancing down at the watch on her slender wrist. The man grunted his thanks and headed back the same way he'd appeared from.
"I'll drive you home" Steve stated as he got up and walked around to the driver's side.
"You sure we're finished here?" Cheryl asked as he slid into the driver's seat.
"Look at it, it's a circus over there" he nodded towards the lights flashing their colours across the building. "We can come back in the morning, check the rest of the place out."
Cheryl closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the rest as they pulled away from the roadside.
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Steve's dark blue suit clashed hideously with the colour scheme in Cheryl's living room. His jacket and tie were slung over the arm of the sofa and he'd undone the top button on his shirt. One of his hands circled the other wrist and he slowly flexed his fingers then pulled them down to form a fist. He continued to repeat the action as he spoke loudly enough for Cheryl to hear him in the bathroom.
"Guess you think I'm a cheap date?" There was no reply. "You can call the restaurant, I really did make a reservation."
Cheryl appeared in the doorway, a long cotton dressing gown hanging open over sweat pants and a vest. "Well if you didn't book a table I sure hope that wasn't your way of getting out of an embarrassing social situation." There was an awkward silence. "More coffee?" she asked.
"I'm fine" Steve replied, tentatively lifting the half-filled cup to his lips. He looked across to the kitchen, Cheryl stood with her back to him.
She didn't hear anything through her gentle sobs but she sensed Steve moving towards her from across the room. She could feel his warm presence behind her and without looking she turned and buried her head into his shoulder. Her hands were locked between his firm body and her face as he wrapped his arms around her back. Steve pulled her closer as her sobs grew louder, cradling the back of her head with one hand and resting his check atop her head.
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Mark glanced at the door and then looked at his watch '1:05'. He smiled to himself and switched off the light as he made his way upstairs to bed.
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Steve opened half an eye. Blearily he peered down at Cheryl who was sound asleep on the sofa beside him, her head resting on a cushion in his lap. Awkwardly he tried to ease himself up without disturbing her but as he moved she stirred.
"What time is it?"
"Half two, just lie there, I'll get a blanket"
"No it's OK" she pushed herself wearily into a sitting position.
Steve stretched and groaned as he stood in the middle of the room.
Cheryl rose from the sofa and casually caught hold of Steve's fingers as she stumbled sleepily past him. He didn't move and Cheryl jolted to a stop when they both reached arms length. She turned to face him, a puzzled smile on her face.
"C'mon, I've got a perfectly good bed next door." She tugged at his fingers but Steve didn't move. Seeing the uncertainty in his eyes she raised an eyebrow. "Don't worry Sloan, I promise to behave."
Steve shook his head in embarrassment and followed obediently as she led him into the bedroom.
The room was darkened except for a single beam which cut through the gap in the curtains from the street light outside. Cheryl flicked on the bedside lamp, pulled back the covers on the high double bed and tossed her dressing gown onto a small wooden chair by the window. Steve unbuttoned his shirt, shrugging it from his shoulders and letting it drop from his wrists. He kicked off his shoes, then sitting on the edge of the bed pulled his socks off as Cheryl slid between the sheets and clicked off the light. Removing his trousers he joined her under the covers, lying awkwardly beside her, trying to maintain a respectable distance. He looked across at his partner through heavy-lidded eyes; her brow was still furrowed as she faced the window, and Steve was sure she was already asleep. There was a chill in the night air, he shuffled a little closer and lay there just watching her again for a moment, then pulled the covers further up her body.
Cheryl felt Steve's hand brush against her bare arm as he drew the sheets up around her shoulders. Reaching behind herself she fumbled for his arm and slid her soft palm down until she found his fingers and intertwined them with her own. Steve felt his forearm press against her warm stomach as she wrapped both of their arms tightly around her body. He edged closer again and held her tightly as she raised her knees and curled up into a ball. His body felt warm and strong behind her and the frown gradually slipped from her face as she acknowledged the secure feeling welling within her. Steve's chest rose and fell gently and Cheryl felt his breath, soft and rhythmic on the back of her neck. She was almost asleep as he pressed his lips to her ear and whispered "Happy Birthday."
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"You look terrible!" Jesse exclaimed as he strode into the doctor's lounge with Mark not far behind him. Steve didn't retort, just wearily tossed a folder onto the table, which Mark began to flick through. "So how was the date?" Jesse continued, grinning expectantly as he pulled up a chair.
"There was no date"
"Morning" Amanda chirped as she came through the door. She looked Steve up and down suspiciously "You look awful."
"I didn't get much sleep last night" he explained without thinking how Jesse would interpret that information. Amanda tried to hide her blush.
"Thought you said there was no date" Jesse cackled, the juvenile grin spreading from ear to ear now.
"I didn't get much sleep because of that" Steve nodded towards the folder that his father was flicking through.
"Another 'voodoo' murder" Mark stated solemnly.
"What happened?" Amanda gasped.
"I was on my way to pick up Cheryl when the call came in. I'm surprised you guys didn't hear it on the news, it was a media circus as usual. So basically instead of a pleasant evening out we were at the crime scene 'til I don't know what time then I drove Cheryl home."
"Nice suit" Jesse remarked after a slight pause.
Steve looked down at the dark blue trousers and crumpled jacket, knowing full well what his friend was implying.
"Yes Jess" he snapped "I drove Cheryl home, we were both pretty exhausted so I crashed there and haven't had a chance to go home and change yet."
Jesse held up his palms in mock defence "OK, I'm sorry, just honing my detective skills."
"So any clues this time?" Amanda asked.
Steve shook his head and began to wring his hands. "Pretty much the same MO as before. He waited 'til dusk, forced entry through the back door. All the action took place in the kitchen, same sort of rituals, certain body parts laid out in a contrived manner."
Amanda shook her head "poor woman, what do you know about her, who was she?"
"Katriona Bennet" he paused and looked up at his father. Mark nodded his understanding and Steve continued "Katriona Bennet and Hazel Bennet"
"Two women in one house. Sisters?" Jesse asked.
Steve shook his head and slouched forward over the table letting his fists land with a dull thud. "Katriona was the mother, 24 years old"
Jesse and Amanda shuddered with the gradual realisation of how young that made the second victim.
"Hazel was only three, neighbours heard her scream, thought it was just the kid throwing a tantrum."
"Who alerted the police?" Mark asked solemnly.
"A friend. It seems Katriona managed to get to a phone during the attack, pressed last number redial. It was a friend's house but there was nobody home, answering machine picked straight up and recorded a few seconds of muffled sounds. The friend got home about an hour later, wasn't sure what to make of the message at first. She recognised the phone number as Katriona's, tried to call her back but there was no reply. She waited a while, called again then started to worry. She called the station but not answering the phone isn't a crime, so in the end she drove over there herself. There was less than two hours between the call being placed and the bodies being found."
"Even though he knew she'd placed a call he still went through the rituals?" Amanda asked sceptically.
"I know, pretty sure of himself or he just didn't care about getting caught. You know how long it would take to go through with the mutilation, he had to be cutting it fine. When our guys saw the kitchen they were sure he had to still be on the premises or at least in the area."
"But nothing?"
Steve shook his head "We had road blocks up within minutes, all the gardens and out buildings checked but nothing. And nothing in the house so far, no prints or fibres. Medical Examiner thinks we may get some skin samples from under the mothers nails buy if this guy isn't on the DNA register it doesn't help catch him."
"No link with the other victims?" Mark asked running a finger across his lips.
"Nothing I can see." Steve paused, going over the information stored in his mind. Addressing nobody in particular he began talking again. "Valerie Shome was a forty-three year old librarian, happily married. Her husband discovered her after returning home from a business trip. Genie Anderson was a 19-year-old collage student discovered by her roommate. Now we have a single mother living on the other side of town."
"You still don't suspect Valerie Shome's husband then?" Jesse asked
"No, can't say I do. I know most homicides are family affairs but in Valerie's case he had a watertight alibi and little motive. And these weren't frenzied killings, in terms of being in the heat of the moment, and then there's the ph…" he paused "there's too much that doesn't fit the domestic violence theory. On top of that we found no relationship to Genie Anderson and I doubt we'll find he had any connection with Katriona Bennet either."
Mark slowly turned the pages in the folder "you began to say something then stopped" he looked at Steve. There was no reply "you said 'and then there's the…', then there's the what?"
Steve pushed himself up and ambled to the door, closing it firmly and resting his back against it. His audience waited in silence. "The photo's" Steve began. He sighed deeply. "A case like this, the press are all over it and before you know what's happening the public know more than you do. It leaves the field wide open for hoaxes, people claiming to be the 'voodoo killer', wasting your time or worse still pulling stupid stunts, scaring some poor girl half to death hoping for fifteen minutes of fame. When we found Valerie Shome, we found the voodoo doll next to her body, laid out in the same way as she was. The press had a field day with it, heck they're still using it. What they don't know about, what only a handful of us know is that there were photos too."
Jesse grimaced "What kind of photos?" he asked, not altogether sure that he wanted to hear the answer.
"A series of Polaroid's, from what we can gather the guy goes in there with the doll intact. Then he starts to dissect the doll, documenting each stage of the process with a Polaroid camera. The theory we are going with at the moment is that he's showing the victim what will happen to them, so he does the doll first, then the person."
Jesse gulped, his morbid fascination again getting the better of him. "And there are photos of the victim too?"
"No, we figure that if he takes pictures of the real deal, which I'd say is highly probable, then he keeps those as his souvenirs."
"How sick can a guy be?" Jesse spat
"Tell me about it, I've been trying to get inside this guy's head for too long now, it's driving me crazy. In some ways I wish they'd let the feds take total control. Their guys are more used to profiling monsters like this than we are. Working alongside them isn't a bundle of fun, all the cross-department lines crap on top of the gore's getting pretty hard to take I can tell you. Give me a straight up honest-to-goodness gang shoot out and I'll be a happy man right now."
Mark ran a hand through his hair "one of his victims was a child this time, does that give us any more insight."
"I don't think so" Steve answered before anyone else had the chance to hypothesise. "I don't think he knew about the kid, there was only one doll, found next to the mother and he didn't really…"
Nobody probed any further but Steve continued after a short while "the three adult victims so far were severely mutilated" he stated clinically "but the child was only partially…you know. Maybe he ran out of time, did get scared about being caught but I don't think so. I think he started the job but couldn't finish. It was the mother he was after, not the girl."
"So you're tying to say he is actually playing by some rules here?" Amanda raised her eyebrows in disbelief. It sounded to her as though Steve was rationalising what this monster had done.
Steve shrugged "His rules I guess, in his warped mind it's OK to let the girl watch her mother be killed then kill her, but the rest of the ritual was too much for him to go through with."
"These dolls?" Mark asked "are they all the same or are they in the image of their victim so to speak?"
"They're 'personalised' at some crude level, size, hair colour, and some sort of trinket."
"Like what?"
Steve blew a long shallow breath though his lips and sat down on the couch, letting his head flop backwards as he did so. He rubbed his eyes "Valerie Shome's had a dime stitched inside it. At the time we thought it was something to do with greed, you know, he was implying she was centred on money but the other's were just as random."
"It can't be totally random" Amanda disagreed "maybe it shows he had previous knowledge of the victims, knew what type of people they were."
"But Valerie wasn't greedy, quite the opposite infact. She used to help out at a charity shop in her spare time."
"What about the others?" Jesse prompted.
"Genie Anderson's doll had a bottle top with it. Last night it was a map pinned to the back of the doll."
"Map?" Mark asked.
Steve nodded "A little scrap of paper with a couple of roads junctions and arrows on it."
"Could it be showing you where…." Steve cut Amanda off before she could finish.
"It's got no labels, I doubt it means a thing", then on Mark's expression "but we've got someone on it all the same."
Steve grimaced as he began to flex his fingers, switching his attention between hands at regular intervals. Jesse stood up and headed for the door "I'm off now guys", he glanced towards Steve "whoa, hope that's not repetitive strain injury from all those reports you do, I can take a look if you like, be your star witness when you sue the police department." Steve smiled wryly and his father chuckled.
"Just a bit stiff" he assured his friend "but I'll keep that offer in mind".
Jesse screwed his face up "well if your hand shrivels up and drops don't say I didn't try!" and with that he left. Amanda and Mark beamed broadly at his comment; Steve's smile however masked the seeds of a growing concern.
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