"Based on your experience, what can you tell so far?"
They had brought the remains into the examination room in the Bayview Police Station. Under the bright light illuminating the autopsy table, Alicia was still in the middle of examining the little remains that they found: the pelvic bones, a femur bone, a few metatarsals, full spinal cord complete with all, half of an arm, and an intact skull. She was taking a few measurements using her scale and measuring tape before turning her attention towards Alfred who was standing by the door, watching her work from afar.
"Femur weighs about 295 grams and has a length of roughly 50 centimeters. With this and judging by the shape of the pelvis, the victim is definitely male. Will run by forensics to see if they can get DNA samples from each remain to make sure that this one whole body, and not multiple victims. Also, could you be a dear and not distract me for a while?"
"What do you even mean? I haven't done anything because you are hoarding the damned table? Have you never heard the term teamwork?"
"Trust me, there will be teamwork. But since FBI does mean Federal Bureau of Investigation, you would do most of the work with the actual investigating part."
"Alice, I swear to every sweet deity that looking at the remains is also the part of investigating. That's why it's called investigation. Not just the part where I go run the investigations when the family and friends of the victim appear."
She gave him a stern look, "Please don't call me Alice," she said with a barely concealed shiver of disgust as she continued her work.
"Whatever, Sherlock."
"Shut up, Watson," was her reply. He turned towards the door and without any hesitation left the room.
With the annoyance out the room, Alicia was able to relax completely. Funny how much work you get done once you are alone, she mused to herself as she took the victim's pelvis firmly into her hands. It was charred (from the fire she suspected was used while disposing of the body post-mortem) with a few of the ligaments still attached in a few places. She gently twisted and prodded the pelvis, trying to discern anything that could possibly give her a clue. It was then when she spotted it: the small hairline fracture that ran from the outer curve of the hip-bone towards the pelvic cavity. There were at least 3 possibilities for this:
1) While attacking, the suspect knocked down the victim with enough force to cause the fracture
2) While trying to hide the victim's body, the suspect managed to bang the hip against something heavy or sharp
3) Or, the victim was raped, if the exertion of the suspect's weight was strong enough.
She wrote down her observations within her notepad and continued the meticulous act of observing anything that was out of place or unusual and wrote it down.
It was going to be a long day.
Meanwhile, Alfred was downstairs speaking with his colleagues about the similarities between all three cases.
"Look, I want to say that I feel that these three cases are somewhat interrelated. All victims were found within walking distance or in today's case, inside one of a Naval Base. This justifies that the killer is part of the Navy. However, to our knowledge, none of the victim's are affiliated with the Navy or any of the military branches, which currently makes it impossible to figure out the killer's motives."
"If you take into consideration what body parts were discovered, it seems our killer is trying to make a statement," his colleague Ludwig Beildschmidt added into the conversation as he was at the other 2 crime scenes, "each body was found without their hands. 0f course, that leads to multiple motives, but it doesn't narrow it down to one: could he be punishing them with cutting off their hands?"
"It seems plausible, yet why would he cut them off from the forearm down?"
They both became quiet, quietly consumed in their own thoughts. People passed by them, rushing to and from the police station, mumbling and speaking to each other as the minutes dragged by. The sky was littered with clouds, lazing their way across the San Franciscan skyline. The peace and quiet that surrounded them became disrupted by Ludwig's phone ringing.
"Excuse me," he said before moving into the building. He watched him leave, before going off on his own. It was time to speak with the Navy to see if they knew anything about the suspect.
"Do have any idea of what went down?"
He managed to catch up with his Japanese-American friend who was stationed at the Naval base, Kiku Honda. After the body was found, Kiku was assigned to run through the security feed and a list of people who had recently transferred to the base within the past 6 months. They were currently sitting in the CCTV room The flashing of the monitors around them slowly recreated what happened that fateful night of the possible day of death by the victim.
"So far, the search was somewhat conclusive. We managed to get a shot of the perpetrator using the security cameras. Through the cameras, he is seen dragging the bag from around the location of the barracks," Kiku commented as he panned into a particular scene in the evening of the fourth of August. In the zoomed in portion of the screen, you can clearly see the figure of a man dragging behind him a black trash bag from the barracks. Kiku zoomed out the camera and fast forwarded the tape to the exact time when the suspect tied the bag to the pier. "The time written on the time stamp was 00:13 of the following morning."
"Was there anyone awake at the time? Have you started a face analysis to see if the suspect is in the database?"
"For what my colleagues tell me, there isn't anything solid about that. I've begun running a facial recognition scan throughout the local database and nothing has appeared as of yet. I would need to send out alerts to all camps for their data as well."
"So what you are telling me is that until we get the DNA analysis of the body, we are at a dead end."
"Hai."
Alfred inhaled deeply before exhaling rather forcefully. He was frustrated that there were no leads for the case as of yet which gave the suspect (killer, he corrected himself as the other two bodies are surely connected with the case) the chance to flee into hiding.
"Thanks dude for your information today! It might not seem like much, but I'm sure that once things start clicking together, this information will help. Can you get in contact with me once you've finished the facial recognition scan?"
Kiku nodded and vocally assured him that he would personally find him and deliver the news. After pleasant farewells, Alfred left the main office from the Naval base and headed directly to his car. He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket so he quickly retrieved it and answered it.
"Hello?"
"Alfred, is that you?"
Here we go again, "What is it, Isabella? It better be important, because if it's not I will-"
"Look. I know you are probably very tired and would like to go get food, or sleep or whatever, but we have a name for our victim. Now get over here so that you can show us your personal charm and help us arrange interviews tomorrow with the victim's families and all of the other technical stuff."
He sighed out in relief. Finally, something to work with, "I'll be on my way."
