Hello you all! I am putting the author's note at the beginning because this chapter might be a little graphic in the scenes that I have written. It is not the sexual kind of graphic. I don't think that it is bad, but I just want to warn you that this chapter talks about death and talks about the manner in which the bodies are staged. If this bothers you then there is one part that is more graphic then the others which I have one of the characters warn that it is graphic. I did not think that it is too bad, but I wanted to let you all know before you got there. If it does bother you I bolded each of the words in the paragraph that have the scenes described so you can skip those scenes. I am also going to bump up the rating because we are getting into the plot know, and there will be more mentions of rapes, murders, and other things. So I am going a head and bumping up the rating now.
In other news, I want to thank you all for reading this. I am sorry this is posted later then I planned on. I was working a summer camp and we had no Wifi and I was dead at the beginning of the week when I got home. I hope you all enjoy this!
MS
When we got to the prescient I was taken into a conference room, and Sargent Benson was sitting in front of me at the table.
"Adelee, do you know anyone who would want to do something like this to you?" She asked me. I took a deep breath.
"The only person that I can think of is my ex-boyfriend from college. He did this," I said gesturing to my leg. "He's in jail currently and I would have been notified if he was released. He also isn't the type to play with his food, he would just attack, and he's also not smart enough for that, he hated my interest in mythology." I told her.
"I honestly don't think that he is doing this."
"Ok, is there anyone else?" She asked me.
"No. There is no one who comes to mind." I told her.
"Ok. Can you tell me the method that the letters have come to you in?"
"They are mailed to my office at the university, and the addresses are on labels that are typed up on a computer. There was no return address on any of them." I said looking down at my skirt, picking invisible lent off of my tights.
"Ok. Until we find out who is doing this I think that it might be best if you stay at a friend's or relatives house. Do you have anyone to stay with?" Sargent Benson asked me.
"I can stay with my grandmother." I told her. "I don't have to miss work do I?" I don't want to miss any of my classes.
"As long as you're not alone with anyone you don't know or fully trust." She told me.
"Ok." I told her and as soon as I had said that there was a knock was on the door. Some one poked their head in.
"Sarge, I got those case files you wanted." A young man with slicked back brown hair said.
"Adelee, this is Detective Carisi. Carisi, this is Dr. Adelee Jones." Sargent Benson introduced us to one another.
"Nice to meet you Detective." I waved and smiled a little.
"Pleasure to meet you." The Detective said. He laid the files down on the table. "Will that be all Sarge?" He asked.
"No that's all. Thank you Carisi." Sargent Benson said. He left the room and again we were alone. "I have some other cases from Homicide and from other detectives who have had strange cases." She started to open the files. "I have to warn you they are violent."
"The first one that we have is this one. Could you look at it and see if you see anything?" She asked me. She laid out some of the pictures in front of me. I looked at them, and this one had a girl with an arrow sticking out of her chest and leaves set in her hair. She was clean, if she were pierced in the heart I would assume that there would be blood everywhere, but there was none. Her hair was brushed back, and the leaves where rapped around her head and threaded through her hair. She was laid out underneath a tree naked. "She was found under a tree in her own backyard."
"Apollo and Dahpne. Are those laurel leaves?"
"Yes." She said.
"The myth of Apollo and Daphne is that Eros or Cupid, was so angry at a comment that Apollo made that he stuck Apollo with a golden tipped arrow and her with a lead tipped arrow. Her arrow made her want nothing to do with Apollo where's his made him fall in love with her. She begged her father to save her from being raped by Apollo or losing her virginity, it depends on which interpretations you look at, and her father was the god of the river. So, he turned her into a laurel tree. She was a nymph, and that might be why she is naked. Wait," I looked closer at the girl in the picture. "I know her." I told the Sargent.
"She was a nice girl, and I really liked her. Her name was Sabrina Martian. When I knew her she was about to start her first year of college at Columbia, she wanted to study law." I had tears in my eyes.
"Were you friends with her?" She asked me.
"Sort of. I work at a couple of churches that have groups of survivors of sexual abuse and she was one of the girls from a group at my former church." I told her.
"Ok. Do you know anything about her abuse? Why did you leave the church?" She asked me.
"It was someone that she went to high school with. He attacked her in her freshmen year of high school. I finally got into faculty housing; I went from being a part-time professor to full time and I was able to move closer to campus. The church was on the other side of the city, and I just found it easier to leave." I couldn't breathe. This was unbelievable.
"What was his name? Do you know if he was prosecuted? What was the church's name?" She asked me.
"I don't know anything more then when it happened. The name of the church is St. Paul's Episcopal Church." I told her. She wrote all of this down. She pulled another photo out of a file.
"Do you know him?" She asked. I looked at the photo of the blond man. I knew him, he was in a class I taught.
"Yes. He was a former student." I told her. "He was in my Ancient Religion class. I remember him because he showed up to my office, and became hostel."
"How was he hostel? What happened?"
"He failed a test. He became angry in class after I handed back the test at the beginning of class. He came to my office later that day, and he was very angry."
"Who would have heard this argument?" She asked me.
"Anyone in that class, any of the professors next to my office, and anyone who walked by my office." I told her.
"Do you know this girl?" she pulled out a photo of a tan woman who had hazel eyes, covered in moles, and had long curly black hair. I didn't know her, but she looked a whole lot like a younger version of me.
"No." I told her.
"She's the missing victim from the case that you said was about the myth of the 'Rape of Persephone.'" She told me.
"I need you to look at one last case." She told me. She pulled out some photos from another case. "I have to warn you, this one is graphic." I could feel my stomach drop. I looked down at the photos in front of me. There was a blonde woman who was posed. She was in a sort of backbend with her head twisted all the way around to were her face was looking at the camera while the front of her body was facing up. There was something that was sown or stuck into her mouth that looked like pinchers. There was something that was impaled through her body that made her look like she had four other limbs besides her two arms and her two legs. It was black and shiny, and it was impaled into the ground after it went through her body to get her bent in that position. She was clothed in some kind of skintight black suit. I couldn't keep the bile from rising in my throat I tried to make a mad dash for the trashcan behind the Sargent. I landed on the floor because my leg gave out half way there. I landed on my good knee and crawled the extra foot that there was to the trashcan. When I made it there I threw up my lunch. When I was finished I started crying. I couldn't handle it any more. The Sargent came up behind me, and was rubbing my back as I cried.
"I know her." I kept muttering that over and over again for a while. When I had calmed down a little she offered to help me up and I nodded. She pulled me up and led me to the chair that I was siting in earlier.
"I will be right back." Sargent Benson said. She then left the room. She came back in a couple of minutes later with a glass of water.
"I hate to ask this, but how do you know her?" She asked me.
"She was a friend who was in the same doctorate program that I was in. She ended up stealing my research for my doctorate's thesis. She won an award for my research and I had no way of proofing it. Her name was Jessica Langley. I haven't spoken to her since then." I told the Sargent. "Who every did this compared me to Athena and her to Arachne. Arachne challenged Athena to a weaving contest because she thought that she was the best and could beat Athena who is the goddess of skill. Athena disguised herself as an old woman who appeared to her, and told her to take back her words and ask for forgiveness against the goddess. However, Arachne said that Athena should appear to her so she could compete with her. The old women turned into Athena and they competed against one another. Athena became angry when she saw the work that Arachne did which showed disrespect to the gods. So Athena told her that if she loved her work so much that she could spin forever, and that is when Athena turned her into a spider." I had tears rolling down my face and I had to stop every once and a while because of my sobs.
"I know this is hard and we're almost done. Who would have known about her stealing your research?" She asked.
"My students, my colleagues, my family, and anyone who probably Google searched me. It was covered by the schools news paper at the time, and those are all digitized now." I told her. She was writing down more things now. There was a long period of silence during this. That is when there was a knock on the door.
"Come in." She said.
"Sarge, Barba's here to talk to you." Detective Carisi said. Is that my Barba? He is an ADA for SVU. More then likely that's him. I don't want him to see me like this. God I have so much baggage that its ridicules. Someone is fucking killing everyone that I knew or who wronged me. I rubbed at my eyes and reached down for my messenger bag and pulled out a tissue. I looked down to rub my eyes with it when I caught sight of the photos again, and it made me feel nauseous again. I placed a hand on my stomach in hopes that that would keep it down.
"Ok thank you Carisi," she said looking at him. She then turned to me and said, "I believe that's all that I need from you know, but I need you to be careful. You need to stay at someone else's home, and you need to not be alone anywhere. It will only be for a while. I have one last question for you, have you personally received any threats?" She asked.
"No." I told her.
"Ok. Let me walk you out." She said. I got up out of the chair and grabbed my messenger bag and cane. She let me start walking in front of her, I had to stand there and wait for my leg to get steady before I could move it. Once we were out of the office I saw that the Barba that they were talking about was defiantly my Baba, and the look that he gave me when he saw me walk out of the conference room with tear stains on my face was unforgettable.
