A/N: Terribly sorry about the delay! :-] Please enjoy the next chapter!
CHAPTER THREE
A bag of cat litter. That's all Molly wanted. She hadn't been paid yet for that month, nearly run out of cash, but she never imagined her card would act up like this.
As she swiped it through the machine, the cashier sent her a funny look.
"Hm," The cashier said. "Try it again, please."
Molly nodded, a bit confused, but obliged.
The cashier stuck out his lower lip in confusion. "Says that account don't exist."
"What?" Molly said, blinking. "I was just here yesterday and it worked fine."
Shrugging, the cashier said, "D'you have another card?"
Molly burrowed through her entire wallet – not a single card worked. A kind freckled stranger from behind her in line wound up paying for it, and even spotting her cab fare. Too shy to refuse, she blushingly accepted the stranger's generosity, all the whilst inwardly panicking over what might be happening.
She'd said thank you very quickly, shook hands with him, and rushed to the nearest LINK but her PIN did not work, her card echoing the cashier's words. The card wasn't linked to an account.
In the cab ride back to her flat, Molly called the bank.
"Yeah," she said into the phone, "It never responded…my name's Molly Hooper…I need to spell it? M-O-L-L-Y H-O-O-P-E-R. I was born in 1981…wh-what? I'm sorry but-What do you mean? There's…there's no account? I've been with this bank since '94! My dad's will money went into it. Look for him, won't you?"
She couldn't believe it.
According to the bank, the account never existed – apparently she had no account with them at all. No papers, loans, savings, checks, or credit. Not there, and apparently, nowhere in the whole of the United Kingdom.
"This doesn't make sense," She shook her head, biting into her fingernails.
"Maybe your name got mixed up in the system," The teller wheezed from the other line. "Do you have a driver's license? An identification card?"
She read the teller the number on her identification card, slowly, making certain to avoid mix-ups.
"I'm sorry," The teller said, sounding stunned. "There's no one attached to that number."
Molly blinked. "There has to be."
"I'm sorry, ma'am."
"So…wh—what are you saying, exactly?" Molly felt her chest start to collapse on itself.
According to the bank, she didn't exist.
She sat in the cab, utterly dumbfounded. Why was this happening? Banks made mistakes all the time, she was certain, but weren't there precautions? How quickly did it take someone to strike a whole life from any records?
Did someone get her numbers and close all her accounts? Maybe they took the money and ran. Of course, that didn't explain why the teller told her that she'd never had any money or records there.
She was starting to get a rather massive headache. In the morning, she resolved, she'd look into it more. Not that night, though. She was too emotional. She'd learned that emotion doesn't help when trying to get to the bottom of things.
The money the stranger handed her in the store went to the cab driver, and she walked back to her flat, more slowly than necessary, a sudden paranoia came over her—fear her key wouldn't work in the door, that her lease records burned with the rest of her papers.
Thankfully, the wracking paranoia wound up being rather unnecessary, and her key admitted her into her flat without hint of anything amiss.
She shuffled in through her doors, hanging up her coat and quickly setting into her daily routine. She filled a bowl of food and fresh water for Toby (who suddenly seemed very interested in what she was doing), made herself a sandwich for supper, and made herself cozy in her armchair.
That's when she grew frightened. It was kind of funny, almost. She'd always disregarded money, taking the rather juvenile belief that happiness, with people who loved you, was a better source of riches than rolling in money. She had to admit – it was easy to say that when she knew she had enough in the bank to support herself.
She shook her head. It was just a mess up with the records.
Pulling out her mobile, her thumbs darted across the screen, calling her landlord.
Once niceties and greetings were exchanged, Molly sighed. "Look, I don't know what happened, but there's a problem with my bank account."
Her landlord gave a slight gasp. "My gosh! Oh, hon, what happened?"
"I don't know. I'm getting it looked at tomorrow. But…" She winced. "But, I might be a bit late on rent. I don't know…I'm not sure how long this will take."
If not for the static over the wire, it would have been silent.
"Molly, you already paid us for this month. Next month, too. I think you'll be fine."
Molly blinked. She hadn't paid them yet. What is going on?
"Oh." She said, trying to calm a rather disturbed feeling in her gut. "Well then…that's good, yeah?"
"You're stressed," The landlord said. "Go, take a nice hot bath, and calm down. I'm so sorry to hear about what happened though, so truly sorry. If it takes longer to get everything sorted, we won't sack you or anything."
She smiled into the phone. "Thanks," She said, gratefully. "Give my best to your husband."
"Of course," The landlord's voice hinted to a smile as well. "Good night, Molly."
She blew her cheeks full of air, and began to fidget with her hair, splitting her ends. Her accounts closed as though they never opened. But somehow her landlords had gotten the next two months rent – and they didn't get it from her.
Utterly baffled, she continued to pull at her hair, when she heard Sherlock's voice reverberate through her head. "You're an idiot – it's all right, almost everyone is."
She sighed, suddenly annoyed on top of everything else.
Shaking her head at the whole ordeal, she cracked open her MacBook, she opened an empty document and recorded what happened, just as she remembered it. Just in case.
"Let's review," Donovan said on the drive back to the Yard. "We know Shaelee Birdie was stalked, at least since last January. She enlisted a private detective to help her – "
"Instead of the police." Greg chimed.
"Well…yeah." Donovan ticked her head, as though it didn't ring the same meaning for her. "Anyway. She went missing a few days ago, and then was found. She had no friends. And suspects are, that colleague, Maryann Thompsen, and George Willis."
Greg nodded, pressing the steering wheel harder into the palm of his hands. "We need to see if any of them relate to Celeste Paxton. If we do, we've found him."
"You seriously still think it's him?"
"Same method for murder – exactly the same. You know how stalkers basically fill out a profile when they chose who to stalk? Both girls were quiet, anti-social, with few friends."
Donovan sighed. "All right. It's fishy, I admit."
Greg nodded, leaning slightly against his hand as they drove back to the yard. "Let's have a look at the computer, though. See what we're dealing with."
With a slight pause, Donovan said, "Are you sure you're not just inventing similarities when there aren't any?"
"Why would I do that, Sally?"
Donovan shrugged. "I know it's always bothered you that you never solved it. Maybe you figure you'll feel more competent if you catch the man."
Greg remained silent. "It's still the same, though. Every detail, just with an older girl. Copycat killers don't wait fifteen years to strike again."
"Neither do the original killers," Donovan muttered under her breath before staring out the window again.
Upon arriving back to Scotland Yard, they found nearly all the interns had departed for the night, and many of the new hires straggling from cheap Styrofoam cups of coffee, staring blankly at computer screens.
Greg shifted the laptop under his arm, and walked rather briskly to one of the closest desks to his own office.
Anderson sat, leaning on the flat of his hand, watching screen captures of a microscopic view of mold.
"Anything new?" Greg asked, announcing his and Donovan's presence.
Anderson shook his head. "Thought the mold from both crime scenes might match. So far that's a no." He made brief eye contact with Donovan, who promptly looked away.
Bloody hell, Greg thought. Not this again.
"Something new for you," He said, rather than voicing his thoughts. "Found it in Birdie's flat. Check it for prints and see if you can unlock it."
Anderson nodded curtly, and then muttered, "Isn't unlocking it better suited for Collin?"
"He's not in," Donovan intercepted. "Besides, it's not that hard, just run the programme."
In only a few short hours Anderson managed to look for fingerprints on the laptop. He managed to find a single definitive set. Only one person ever used the computer. Yet, when he ran it through the system, no matches came through. Not only of criminal history, but no matches from any census, or any other database. As though the person to whom these fingerprints belonged did not exist.
A few hours later, after running an extensive-looking programme per Donovan's suggestion, Anderson managed to unlock the computer. The results sent shivers down Greg's spine.
There were only three items on the entire hard drive. The first folder, labeled 1998, only proved him right.
The entire folder was filled with photographs, old and hastily converted onto a computer, all in black and white. All of Celeste Paxton before she died. Most of them appeared shot around a corner, as she left a lecture hall or a restaurant. There was one with a red 'X' covering the extent of the photograph – one of Celeste holding hands with Billy.
The next folder, labeled 2011, looked similar, but with Shaelee. Black and white photos of her driving, leaving the library, one even through the window near her kitchen. One of her pulling a nightgown over her head. One, causing Greg's skin to crawl, seemed to be taken from the inside of her flat. Perhaps even from the closet they found the laptop in the first place.
Then, sitting exactly below it on the desktop, a third folder. 2013. Greg felt his heart pound.
"He's got a new obsession," he muttered.
Anderson moved the track pad over to the folder in question, and double clicked.
This folder was different. The photographs were all in colour this time, and most of them from behind. Just as before, the subject standing in the street, walking through black double doors, photographs of hands and shoes and feet. Nothing through windows yet, nothing half-naked or super personal. She must have been new to him.
As Anderson clicked on a photo to enlarge it, and thus make the subject recognisable, Greg's jaw fell.
He suddenly felt his whole body deflate. His stomach dropped through the floor, and he felt as though someone just grabbed his heart from this chest, a huge black veil covering him entirely.
The girl in the photograph…it couldn't be.
Oh fuck. Shy. Lonely. Quiet. Few friends. She fit the fucking profile perfectly.
Sitting inside this deranged man's computer, was a collage of about fifty photographs of her. Never before in his life had Greg been so upset to see Molly Hooper.