Don could not bare to see his brother like. So lain bare and raw. So hurt and scorn. It was like the life had been sucked out of his dear little brother – the one he had always sworn he would protect.
When Charlie had been younger, it had been the bullies that teased him for his brain. When he had gotten older the demons had been the ones inside Charlie's mind that Don could do little to help him fight against. When they had both entered adulthood and started working together, Don was the one who introduced the demons into Charlie's life.
And for that he would never forgive himself.
…..
2 days earlier
Charlie had done nothing wrong. He know that. He understood that. Yet it still felt like he had.
Charlie had only been trying to help and he had. He knew he had. The numbers were there and they made sense. Unfortunately, it had been one of those times were the numbers made more sense inside his own head than they had for anyone else.
He had truly done a terrible job at retelling the findings the numbers showed into a language other people were able to understand. For that reason, Don and the rest of the team had failed to see the significance of his findings and the direction he wanted to take the team in. They had completely misunderstood what he was trying to say and as a result, a young woman had died. One bad advice, one mishap in direction, and another young woman had been the victim of a brutal serial killer that had laid havoc to the L.A. area the last couple of months.
Charlie had worked with Don on the case for weeks now – ever since it was transferred to his office. None of them had gotten much sleep lately and they were all more than a little tense. Emotions were running high and Charlie could as well feel the pressure. And Charlie did not do well under emotional pressure.
He sighed and grasped the steering wheel so tightly that his fingers turned white. "Just forget about it", he murmured to himself when he remembered Don's angry face and how he had yelled at him. 'The math was wrong Charlie', is the exact words Don had used.
Charlie's math was never wrong. He just sometimes had a difficult time explaining them to other people.
Another image flashed before his eyes that was even less welcome and even more gruesome. Charlie could still see blue-tinged face of the dead woman. Her face had been swollen from all the beatings she had endured before her death. Her chest had been lain bare, as the killer had ripped her shirt to pieces. One her nipples had been cut from her breast and supposedly taken as a souvenir by the killer. The rest of her body was a chaotic mess of long lashes from a horse whip, they had found at the scene, and cuts and bruises. The woman had endured much pain before the killer had finally ended her.
Last week it had been a child. The week before that had a elderly man, whom no one had noticed was gone until they found the body, because he lived alone.
The layout of the bruising and cuttings were always different and so were the victims. What they all had in common was a complete brutalization of the bodies and always – always – a whip had been used. It was as if the killer wanted to cause the maximum amount of pain a human being could endure, before he allowed them to die from their injures or killed them himself.
Another thing remained the same; the killers fascination with Friday. Every single time the victim would be found on a Friday in a populated public place. The killer most likely dropped them off in the middle of the night, when there was only homeless people and junkies out. He would leave them to be found by some unknown citizen, who would call in and few hours later, the FBI would be at the scene.
In the last couple of months, the killings had become personal as well. That was why the case originally was transferred to the FBI office.
The serial killer did not discriminate his victims based on gender, race or even ages. At first glance, the killings seemed disturbingly random. Until you started to notice that all of the victims were somehow related to the investigation of the killer himself. The sister-in-law of the lead detective. The youngest child of a first responder on the first crime scene. The Alzheimer-diseased father of one of the first suspects.
No doubt the killer had first started out killing at random and then later turned his focus towards the ones investigating his case or otherwise involved in it.
Charlie still got chills every time he thought about it. He and Don had somehow lured their father out of the city, when the killings started to increase in both frequency and violence. Don had even tried to get Charlie out of the way as well, but Charlie had refused. That too had let to quite a big altercation and the only reason why it was semi-resolved at the time, was because Charlie had agreed on an escorte.
Charlie glanced at his sideview mirror and saw the black SUV following closely behind him. At first, an agent had been following him closely around everywhere, including driving Charlie to his appointments. Slowly, Charlie had managed to weasel himself out of this overprotective shield that Don had created around him and gained a little bit more autonomy.
Charlie loved to drive. Despite the many jokes being made at his expense about his poor driving skills, he really did enjoy the act of driving. It was the only time his mind really quiet down to a slow breeze instead of the raging storm it so often was.
Focused as he was on the traffic around him, the numbers of pedestrians passing him by and calculating how many stop signs he had in average seen per block forced his brain to shut down in a very soothing way. There was simply no room for larger and more abstract mathematical equations.
Charlie loved math but sometimes it could be truly exhausting.
He turned into his street and soon after he turned into the driveway, where he turned the engine off. He stepped out of his car and briefly waved at his escort in the black SUV, which parked across the street. Charlie knew it would be there the remainder of the day until tonight, where it was replaced with another agent.
Charlie sighed at his overprotective brother and his foolishness and opened the door. He closed the door behind him and carefully locked it before he went out into the kitchen to grab himself a quick microwavable dinner.
Charlie never saw the hand before it was pressed against his mouth, pressing a cloth over his airways and his body against that of a strong male body.
"Sleep now, Professor", an unknown male voice whispered in his ear. "We will have much fun you and I, when you wake up again".