Here is chapter seven.

Disclaimer: …No.

The call came in late that night. Sara was at her desk, sipping her coffee, and looking over the file case when the phone rang. She took down as many notes about the scene as she could from over the phone. Immediately afterwards, she grabbed her bag and made her way toward the door. Catherine had gotten the call too.

"What do we have now?" she asked when she saw Sara.

"Two dead bodies at a center outside of the city."

"Well, here we go."

They rode in the car in silence. It was easier to talk about the case when they were standing in front of it, not in the air-conditioned car. Besides that, there was not much more to say. Both women were thinking about things they should not.

Outside of the city was a plaza. It was small, but there were successful stores that were visited frequently. Now there were police cars and crime scene tape plastered around the area. The simple appearance that it had was now gone. Groups of people were clustering around the edge of the scene, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

"Nick and Warrick are still on their case, and ours is at a standstill," said Catherine. "We always need work, even if it is something we want to stop."

The shop that they were called to was a large building, but it was not the largest one in the plaza. The sign read ECHO. Next to it was a very small flower shop. The flowers overflowed through the building. On the other side of the center was a clothing store. The letters on the sign were unlit and it was hard to read from a distance, but the clothing that showed through the windows looked to be for older women.

"It is a center for people who are deaf, blind, or mute," said Sara, her attention returning back to the notes she had taken earlier. "The place is accessible to people who need help getting the things that they need because of their disabilities and the costs, or it is just simply somewhere they can discuss what they are faced with."

The inside of the center was clean and kept—but then Sara and Catherine turned around the corner and to the front desk. Two cadavers were slumped onto the floor, one on its side and the other face down. Blood was splattered on one wall in a long, single strike. The contents of the desk were thrown onto the floor, suggesting that there was a struggle. Pencils, pens, paper, and paperclips littered the room.

"Do you have any IDs yet?" Sara asked one of the police officers standing nearby.

"Yes," he said. "They are the owners of Echo. The woman is Dorothea Friar and that is her husband Elliot. An assistant found them this way when she came back from her lunch break. She said that everyone goes out to the restaurant at the other side of the plaza, but if there is work to be done, which is regularly, then the Friars stay behind and work through lunch."

"So no one was here when they were killed," Catherine said. "Interesting."

"Maybe that means that our killer knew when exactly to strike." Sara glided over to the scene.

Catherine followed her over to the bodies. "Which also means that this murder was not done on the spur of the moment," she said. "Someone was watching them."

Sara looked the bodies over. From what she could see, both of them were stabbed to death. Piles of blood were soaking into the carpet under them.

Catherine was examining the face of the deceased male. "His face is scratched," she muttered. "A blade was run across his face."

A scene started to form. "Let us say that the killer attacked Dorothea first," said Sara. "Elliot runs over to his wife and the killer swipes upward as an attack, and it hits him in the face." Sara saw this happen with the imagination of her eyes.

"That could work," Catherine said as she started to swab and bag. "We will have to fingerprint everyone who works here, though…. Did the killer leave the weapon? Will we have to look for it? Or did the murderer take it with him?"

Sara shrugged. They were not questions that she could answer at the moment. "It looks as if it was a knife," she said, pointing toward the stabs, even though it was hard to tell because of their clothing. "Stabbing looks like the COD."

Catherine nodded slowly. "Yes, it does, but we will have to wait for the coroner's report to be absolutely sure."

The blood spatter on the wall was in a strange pattern. "This is not from the weapon being stabbed into the victims," said Catherine. "It must be from when the weapon was pulled out of the victim. The knife, if it was that, was slashed out through the air, creating that blood splatter." Catherine checked out the wall. "That is what I think."

"That is what I think, too," Sara said when she joined her and looked over the wall.

They went on their way, swabbing and bagging. The things that littered the floor were put into their own bags. They tried to identify what blood belonged to whom and that too was swabbed. They would have to collect hair off the bodies after they got back to the lab. Nothing was out of the ordinary—it was a normal crime scene.

Fingerprinting was next. None were found on the bodies and there was no weapon to dust for. All of the workers at Echo were fingerprinted and all of them agreed with no fuss or complaining. Everyone expressed their sorrow for the deceased, telling them how much that every person that they met loved them. The Friars dedicated all of their time to helping people and that was what made them so popular. They were just all around good people.

"I just cannot believe it," wept one woman. "They have no enemies—who would want to kill them?"

Sara and Catherine asked the secretary who found the bodies if she could check to see if anything of value were taken from the desks. After examining the main rooms, she shook her head. "No, nothing was taken." She checked the money that was hidden, and none of it was missing. They also asked for the video footage from the security cameras.

"So, why kill two people that everyone loved?" Sara asked herself.

Catherine overheard her. "That is because someone doesn't love them—this isn't just a robbery; no money was taken."

They shared a look and went back to work. They had seen this kind of thing before and they would see it again. There was no doubt about that. Then the CSI women started to search the entire center for the weapon, which they now presumed was a knife. There were only two floors, but it took some time for them to search everywhere. Starting with the top floor, they made their way down. Even if it was not a robbery, the killer could have stashed the weapon in one of the other rooms to hide his tracks. If they found a weapon, they might be able to get fingerprints and fingerprints meant they could catch a killer.

"Nothing," sighed Catherine when they had finished searching the top floor.

The bottom floor showed the same thing: nothing. However, the woman then entered a small, clean office. Sitting on the desk was the strangest thing: a statue of the torso and hide legs of a goat seemed to stand out from all of the piles of papers. On both sides of the statue, there were openings for other pieces of the statue to slide in.

Sara snapped a picture of the statue. "You know what this means, right?"

But, Catherine was already running toward the door. Sara followed her. The blonde woman was standing outside of the center.

"How could we have not figured it out?" she whispered, cursing herself.

"What do you mean?" Sara asked.

Catherine took a deep breath as she stared around the plaza. "The clues that Zoë told us about –just look at this place, Sara. The first clue was right in front of us! The center's name is Echo. It is from the story of Echo and Narcissus. Next door is a flower shop—narcissi flowers." The flower shop did not seem as bright anymore. The flowers were a leering sign of death.

"Well, what about the Graeae?" Sara asked. She did not see a dentist office or an optical office center. "I see nothing that has a reference to them…."

"Sara." Catherine was gazing upward now. "The sign."

The sign for the plaza read GREY SISTERS PLAZA. Grey sisters. Gray sisters.

Now we have to find more clues, Sara thought bitterly. Unless there are none, but I highly doubt that….

"I do know what this means," Catherine said, referring to the question Sara had asked earlier. "We have a serial killer on our hands."

To be continued…

The Chimera Killer has struck again! Oh, no!

The center being named Echo was a big giveaway, but I liked it. Since Echo could not talk, the Friars named their center after her because of that. Does that make sense?

Please tell me your thoughts!

R&R