12th Precinct, Present Time

To Serve and Protect

Chapter 8 - On The Front Lines

The War Front

The capital city of Ukraine, Kyiv, is about 235 miles from the Russian border. Alexis had chosen to report the possible Russian invasion from that city which is the center of Ukrainian government. Additionally, Alexis had a good knowledge of the city having studied about it and also from personal stories of her step mom. Kate had told Alexis about a summer spent in the city when she was at Stanford. Many of the discussion on Kyiv that she had with Kate were in Russian so that Alexis could also improve her language skills. Additionally, her grandfather, Jackson had many an assignment in the Ukraine and also spoke the language. He is now serving as her driver and his knowledge of the city and Ukraine will be helpful.

Today they would head north of the city to the Russian-Ukraine border. Alexis had all her camera gear with her to include a drone to take videos from on high of the surrounding country. Her grandfather had buzzed her in the morning around 8AM that he was on his way to pick her up for the trip. She grabbed a quick breakfast of cereal, OJ, and toast. When her grandfather arrived with their vehicle for the trip, he had packed a lunch of sandwiches, juice, chips, and snacks to eat later for their trip. Jackson loaded his granddaughter's photo gear into the trunk of the car and then made sure she was comfortable in the back seat. They needed to keep the guise of him as her driver, also, Alexis could grab some sleep in the back as she needed it.

Alexis found herself dozing off in the back and had even fallen asleep. She awoke when her grandfather told her they were about twenty minutes from the Russian-Ukraine border. When they got to a place where they had a good view of from the border of the Russian side, Alexis set up her camera gear. She took several high overhead drone videos of the area that surrounded the border. As they viewed the images from the drone, Jackson's quick eye had spotted the troop buildup.

"There", he said pointing on the screen image, "see it, a large number of ground troops with supporting mobile assets: tanks, fast track troop movers, mobile missile launchers, and the like."

"I see it, how far away do you think they are from the border?"

"Maybe ten miles out on the Russian side. How high can the drone go? We might be able to get a better video shot of the buildup if you go higher."

"I am almost at my max altitude, but let me push it and see what we can get", replies Alexis.

They stay at their border site for almost two hours getting good footage of the Russian Troop buildup. When Alexis felt she had enough for a good video post of the activity, they headed back. The box lunch her grandfather had brought came in handy. They eat a late lunch on the fly as they start back to Kyiv, where Alexis would spent most of the night editing their video footage for a pod cast on The Scroll's web site in following days. The main stream press was not reporting the troop buildup. She wondered if they even knew of it. Alexis and her staff became aware of the situation from vlogs posted to the internet by the locals in the area. The internet was a great source of research, it provided timely information that was actionable. Based on this Alexis had decided to go to the Ukraine and start an expose series on what was happening there.

The Covid Killer Hunt

The current case had been dubbed the 'Covid Killer Case', a tag by the main stream press. The case was receiving quite the coverage and Alpha knew this would just feed into the ego of their killer, such was the nature of many serial killers. Back when Kate Castle had handled the case of the killer who went after her and bombed her apartment, they had used the press to stroke the ego of the prep in an attempt to goad him into making a mistake. When he committed the mistake, they had him. Now they were doing the same with this killer, releasing just enough info to keep the press interest, but holding back on some details that only were known to the detectives of the 12th working the case. Again trying to goad the killer into making a mistake by feeding his ego, the NYPD was using the publicity from the case to do so.

They had one suspect who looked right for the murders. As they had investigated three possible contract billing companies that handled various hospitals and care facilities and compared that list to the list of the various vics' treatment sites. One company came up and now Alpha was doing a deep dive into all the personnel of that company. All came up clean, as to be expected, as serial killers tended to be highly intelligent and covered their tracks well. But based on the profiles of the killer that Jordan Shaw had provided, one person came up, a Gregg Fletcher. His record was clean, but he had been an EMT giving him sufficient medical knowledge to conclude from billing info as to targets of interest for him. He had lost a wife due to a dengue epidemic his wife had been involved with in Indonesia with the DWB. She had contracted the disease and eventually died from it. Fletcher had few friends and was considered a loner based on a confidential telcon interview with his supervisor. This profile matched some of the traits of their profiled prep.

Fletcher was now a person of interest in this case and was under surveillance by the 12th. To date, none of his behavior indicated anything out of the ordinary. He was becoming a non suspect, but it was Castle who had a hunch they had the right man. Finding that they had street cams where Fletcher lived the team used them to monitor his activity. They had also planted an additional camera on his entry door to the apartment complex and recorded the comings and goings by him, 24/7. Castle suspected that after the failed abduction of his latest vic the prep was keeping low key, but with time he might do something to verify their suspicion of him.

"How long do we keep up our tracking this man?", Espo had asked Beckett during a team meeting with their Captain.

"As long as it takes Espo. Serial killers are smart and patient, biding their time till an opportunity arises. If you noticed there have been no current vics and we are passed the established time frame for a new vic. That in itself should tell you the prep is on to us and is just playing the waiting game till he strikes again. We need to be as patient and tenacious as our prep", responds Kate to her Alpha team.

"What's is Plan B if the surveillance goes south?", asks Ryan.

"There is no Plan B we have to nail this killer. There is only a Plan A. We will be patient, diligent, and wait our time on this case. In meantime we will continue to look for other persons that may come up as we investigate. Find me a Plan B if Fletcher turns out not to be the one.", says Beckett, "You all have your guidance here. Alpha is now fully on this case. All the other teams will take up the slack to allow Alpha to solely concentrate on this case".

Alpha is dismissed after being given the priority from their captain on their case.

Gregg Fletcher

He was on to the increase scrutiny of the NYPD to his daily routine. He had been expecting as much and was on the alert for any signs that confirmed his suspicion. Fletcher had caught on to the recently installed camera monitoring the entrance to his apartment complex. He had noticed a suspicious dry cleaning delivery truck parked on his street one day as he went to work. Then, returning from work later, he had noticed a new camera concealed on a nearby building and no truck. Presumably it had departed earlier that day after Fletcher went to work. The new camera was hidden as a fake owl statue used to scare away unwanted birds from a building across from his apartment. He knew that feign as he had also used a similar model to stalk one of his vics and had hid it in a similar fashion to monitor his one vic's apartment building.

Gregg continued to do his daily routine, making sure his movements were like clockwork. He left his apartment at near the same time for work and then returned daily at around the same time from his work. When he was not on time for his return, he made sure he had groceries to give him a reason for missing his usual arrival time. It was a cat and mouse game and Gregg Fletcher enjoyed playing it with the NPYD. He suspected they may have also hacked his home internet system so also made sure his online computer habits were also clean.

What the NYPD had not caught on to was that Fletcher had a hidden sanctum. It was his own version of Bruce Wayne's Bat Cave. There he kept most of his own surveillance equipment, a storyboard for his latest vic, and the many souvenirs of his past killings. He had not visited his lair in quite a while and would not do so until the time was right. He often went there to go over his many mementos of his vics and to do his research on potential victims. Fletcher was indeed keeping low key.

The other thing not known by the NYPD concerning him was that he had many other victims before being branded the covid killer. Those past victims were treated and cured from past mass infection events dating back to the time his own wife had died from an infection. So he had done many more than the homicides of this latest covid campaign.

A Hunch

Rick Castle was playing a hunch. He had suspected while doing his research on the serial killer that said prep may have struck long before this covid thing had happened. He was doing research now on past mass infection events and checked on murder during those times. It was again another big search involving time but since their prep had started to lay low, Rick used that down time to gather additional info on Fletcher. He searched for other leads outside the current covid killings. He found eventually, after some time, three murders that did not quite match the current MO, but came very close.

The victims were known to have contracted the latest contagious disease at the time and had been cured from it. They were found not displayed like the current victims but laid to rest on their backs with arms crossed and hand joined across their chests. He had only found three potential victims, but was sure if he dug longer he would find more. But rather than take time to find more vics, he reviewed the case info on these three homicides. These murders had occurred after long periods between the murders with no establish frequency of occurrence. Thus they and had not been connected to a serial killer but treated as isolated murders.

Also the vics were infected and cured, not by the same infectious disease, but from three separate and different diseases. The one connection were that the vics had been infected by the current contagious disease at the time. These murders began shortly after Fletcher's wife had died from her contracted disease. So there had been no established MO. No one tied these murders to the same prep. But as Castle had suspected his findings pointed to their prep as having been active long before these current covid homicides. So Castle continued to look at these pre-covid murders and compare them the current homicides. It was not a perfect match, but there were enough similarities to tie the three murders to the same prep doing the covid killings.

With time, Rick hoped to find that Fletcher was behind all these murders. If his research confirmed these suspicions, it meant that the current case had far greater roots than originally thought about. But Fletcher was keeping a quite low profile and that had caused some doubt as to whether they had the right man here. Still, as Kate had pointed out, they needed to be patient and take as much time as their current suspect took. The one redeeming factor here was that the murders had stopped, at least for the short while. The goal was not just to keep the victims on the low side, but to capture and convict the prep, of whom Fletcher appeared as the most likely candidate.

So Alpha was being patient, and so with the murders ceasing for the time being, the political pressure had been reduced. That reduction in public pressure allowed Alpa to get back on to their game. Now came the cat and mouse chase that was to be played out. Who would blink first? The hope was that Fletcher would do so and fall into the trap that Alpha was now setting for him.