Mako's Message: And now back to your average sized chapters. So yeah, a fair bit shorter than the last three, but this one was up within a week this time so... compromises. Plus plot! We're also, unfortunately, probably back to the usual number of typos, but I want to get this up before I go to work so I can have reviews to look forward to when I come home. Hopefully.

Enjoy!


So.

I hate good news bad news situations.

I mean, it's summer, so I don't really have all that much to do. Sure, I enjoy sleeping in because I can, and I'll go hang out with Angela or Dave, and sometimes Marty and Todd, but I can only train so much in a day without being too tired to go out at night or hurting myself, and even my chores don't take much time.

So, I've been spending a lot of my free time trying to work out something from the heart stealer case. I can't make any real dents in it from the "who killed him in his cell" side of things since I just don't have access to that sort of thing, and I don't think dangling cops off of rooftops for information would be good for my reputation. I'm kinda walking a thin line with the cops as it is.

So, mostly I've been working with the murders the guy committed and the murders and missing people they're trying to pin on him. But when I plotted it all out on a map, it was just a massive blob. And that was just from the last two years, which was six months before they found the first one of these heartless bodies. It's kind of depressing to think that one person is going out and killing that many people just for shits and giggles. I mean, I barely have these kinds of numbers and I've been putting people down en mass.

That got me thinking that these couldn't ALL be from one guy. And people go missing for all kinds of reasons. Runnaways, kidnappings, accidents, hell even animal attacks. So, I pulled all the yellow pins, and the whole thing started to look a lot more manageable. It was still a blob but now I was working with a number that I could blame on one person. If he was really busy.

And as I was going through the files again, I noticed that some of them just didn't fit at all. Like, one guy was shot, this other woman was stabbed. Stuff like that. It didn't match the killings that brought this guy to their attention, and I figured they were just being thrown in so they could be called solved. Which is lazy and sloppy and I'm honestly not surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if more than a few of these were mob hits that some corrupt detectives were taking any opportunity to get off the books.

But some made sense. Like, missing a head, or a hand, or a whole limb. Like they were taken as a trophy. And others had been scavenged tot he point that cause of death couldn't be determined or just completely skeletonized. And of course only a couple of those were actually complete skeletons.

So I started rearranging my map. I took out all the red pins for murders that were probably unrelated and replaced them with yellow pins, leaving only the red ones were the bodies were missing parts or death couldn't be determined. Then I went ahead and replaced the red ones where there were damaged or missing ribs with green ones and my map started making a little more sense. I could actually see one psycho being able to pull this off.

But it was still spread out over three fucking states.

Then I realized that some of the skeletonized bodies didn't have an estimated time of death, so they could be old as hell as far as I knew. Obviously those CSI shows are full of shit. Either that or people that good and the equipment they use are as rare as fucking unicorns.

So I asked Marcus if he could find more unsolved deaths for me, where the body was either missing pieces or skeletonized, but I wanted him to go back five years.

When I put THOSE pins in my map, I had a fucking breakthrough.

My map still showed a blob spread out over three states, but now it was a blob spread out over three states made out of dozens of little rings.

When I saw that I couldn't help falling back on my bed and saying, "Aw fuck."

Because along with realizing that we were dealing with multiple killers, I realized this had to be a conspiracy. Suddenly all those unrelated cases didn't seem thrown in the pile to get them off their desk, but to hide the truth. And if there were people in law enforcement involved then that would explain why "no one" knows what happened to that guy.

There could even be more of these cases that were swept under the rug.

It's fucking depressing really. Marcus isn't going to be happy when I show him this, but I don't think we'll be able to do anything unless we have an inside man too.

I mean, I don't even have any ideas for how to track these guys down. There's nothing that I can see to connect the victims aside from the way they died, and if we can't identify possible targets how are supposed to find the

THEY TOOK MY OFFER! YES! I HAVE A BUILDING!

Shit I wish I'd gone lower now. But whatever. I get to design a new safehouse and training center. And I've got more space to work with than ever! This is going to be so fucking SWEET!

Of course, now I have to start looking up contractors for most of the general work, and I'm gonna need to hire at least three different ones so no one knows the whole story of what's being done there. I'm also gonna need to start hunting down furniture and equipment to put in it.

At least I'll be able to clear out some of the stuff in Safehouse C. The bedroom is small enough without all those crates.

Two steps forward. One step back.