A/N: I really like how even though Tori has her bad ass moments on the job, she's still very much a dork at heart hence her awkward first day at the Langley PD. I'm hoping the updates get more frequent, likely twice a week, as now that we've gotten to Langley, we can move this along.
Didn't get any writing done this weekend as I've been under the weather. I normally don't get sick, I don't get flus, colds, upset stomachs, etc. So, when something actually gets me, it knocks me on my butt!
I am pushing through it to leave one more chapter for 2024 because I love my readers that much.
See you in 2025!
It was a warm October down in New Orleans, which puzzled Jade's sensibilities.
She had grown accustomed to that shifting of her surroundings into autumn, that snap in the air. At least a Halloween with a high of 80 degrees lent to the more scantily clad costumes. Seeing ladies dressed as Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy don't have the same impact when they both had jackets draped over their shoulders.
Whether or not they had trick or treating around here didn't matter, Jade wasn't feeling the usual spooky season spirit. Not that she wasn't already too old to go out and dress up without any rugrats dragging their pillowcases full of teeth-rotting treats. There was likely some adult-oriented stuff going on; the queer community gravitated toward Halloween the way their hetero counterparts made a big to-do about Christmas.
Jade was sure that there were parties galore around town. But she wasn't in the mood. And the prospect of meeting someone else made her shiver. After everything with Luanne went to shit and they haven't spoken since that last fight, romance was the furthest thing from the medical examiner's mind.
The work week was done, and she got a foothold on her laundry unlike other Saturdays. Just her and a small family down at the laundromat. She figured since Halloween was around the corner, folks likely went to the dry cleaners as costume materials ranged from high quality to questionable. No 100% cotton for Dracula's cape. With all of this added free time, Jade took advantage of the variety of horror movie marathons to get people into the right mindset.
One of the more infamous early 1980's slashers, Mother's Day, was on. It was a Troma production, as it was co-written and directed by Lloyd Kaufman's brother, Charles. Jade found it amusing that there is two Charlie Kaufmans in show business and are very different from one another. It concerned a trio of friends who go on a trip and are captured by a backwoods family where they are horribly tortured until one eventually succumbs to her injuries. The surviving two girls escape and band together to exact ghastly vengeance against the family. It was one of many "revenge" movies that came out around this era like Last House on the Left, Vice Squad, or I Spit on Your Grave where critics hated them, but horror aficionados look back on them fondly.
Mother's Day is objectively one of the nastier of the bunch. As a doctor, Jade pondered the effects of the one killer imbibing Drano would've had before getting smashed over the head with a TV set and then stabbed with an electric knife. She hadn't seen this movie in nearly eighteen years and forgot about the bizarre final shot.
One thing that stuck out in Jade's mind was the three friends. There were college girls. It made Jade think back to Jane Doe #201 and how she hit a dead end in the search. But the college angle was a revelation. Before, the woman had only focused on missing persons reports. "Missing" implied an active search, that she was noticed to be gone. Jade didn't think that Jane had nobody who cared for her. But where else would a twenty-something be that's away from home and it would be weeks before a wellness check?
Jade turned off the TV and booted up her computer.
Jane Doe could have been anywhere from 18 to 19 when she graduated high school. No telling what her major was, but her approximate age would (hopefully) put her in the window of a standard four-year bachelor's degree. Maybe she took a gap year?
With nothing else to go on, the medical examiner poured herself into looking up various universities starting in the pacific northwest. For shits and giggles, Jade looked up her old alma matters, first Washington State where she double majored in biology and criminal justice. Then she went down to the Pacific Northwest University in Yakima to properly study medicine. Once she achieved her license, it was a long period of on-the-job training to gain experience. It was during her stint at a teaching hospital in Seattle that she met Dr. Gregory Reynolds, and the rest was history.
She isolated the female names out of the hundreds that enrolled and painstakingly searched for each one through Facebook. Two tedious hours later, Jade had exhausted through both of her previous stomping grounds.
(FUCK ME! There's gotta be a faster way to do this!)
Jade then laughed manically to herself and playfully bonked herself on the head.
"You're going about this all wrong, West!" she grinned, reaching for her phone. "I just hope he's awake."
The phone rang for about half a minute before a groggy male voice answered.
"Yeah? Who this?"
"Sorry, sleeping beauty! Did I wake you?"
A rustling on the other line made Jade imagine she had woken him up and he was sitting.
"Jade?" Andre asked. "Holy crap, I thought you forgot about us!"
"Never!" the medical examiner gasped. "How've you all been?"
Andre stretched, eliciting a groan.
"Not bad, I guess. Case still open. Still no suspects. Still no sign of number three."
Jade winced.
That killer was out there and the fact that he withholds his victims for some time makes each day have a black cloud over it. Jade had heard through the grapevine that this recent disappearance of Traylor Greene hit him hard. It was something of a public secret around the precinct, but they knew better than to bring her up to his face. You don't dare mention Traylor without immediately following it up with you found her.
For as long as she knew him, Andre Harris was a pretty chill guy. He was one of the rare guy friends who knew she was gay and didn't make it weird. Even as a cop, the dude was pretty level-headed. Jade figured he hadn't had that much experience in a murder case like this. More commonly, those carted off to the morgue were the victims of poisoning or gunshot wounds. Nothing like this. Langley had their own Jack the Ripper.
But from what she heard, and Jade detected it in his tone, he changed when Traylor went missing. And she worried for him, thinking of the detective as a brother as she grew up without siblings.
"I'm sorry 'Dre," Jade sighed. "That sounds like a real mess."
"Don't worry about me. Besides, Doc is holding down the fort until your triumphant return."
Jade covered her mouth, giggling.
"Listen, I hate to disturb your sleep..."
"Sleep's been disturbed for a while, Jade. Plus I had to break in a new partner this week."
The blonde shook her head.
"New Partner?!"
"Uh-huh."
"What's the matter, got tired of the Canuck?"
"Hey, don't say that; that's their word. But nah, he's still around. This one's from below - Los Angeles."
Jade let out a puff of air, letting that sink in.
"No shit? But, why?"
"Boss insisted on it. Said we needed extra assistance on the case."
Jade put her arm behind her head, leaned back and imagined the newcomer.
"LAPD...mmm...what's he like?" she asked.
"She," he corrected.
"Oh, really?"
She imagined Beck was probably drooling over this one, assuming she was at least moderately attractive.
"Well, question still stands, what do you think of her?"
"Eh...jury's not in yet. Anyway, you sounded like you've got something for me to do," he said, attempting to get the conversation back to task.
"Right. I've been dealing with a Jane Doe in my spare time and I'm pretty sure she's a college student."
Andre cleared his throat.
"Okay?"
"I know colleges do background checks on their applicants, so there must be a database that you can access, right?"
"Give me a little time..."
"No, Andre. I'm not asking you to do the work. I just need to get into the database. I'll do the legwork myself."
There was a pause.
"Okay, Jade, but you still need to give me time. I have to find the right database and send an encrypted link to you to get in."
"Think he'll do it?" she asked.
"I can get him to do anything as long as I say it's urgent."
"Thanks, Andre" she smiled. "I really appreciate this!"
"No sweat!" he yawned. "No go back to your crayfish and gumbo and let a man get some sleep!"
He let out a few bars of a chuckle before hanging up. Jade just stared at her cell long after the call ended.
Seeing that it was very late on her side of the country, she decided to turn in as well.
The following morning, she woke up in a sweat.
After pulling the sheets that were stuck to her body off of her, Jade grumbled as she went over to check the air conditioning. The service panel in the wall was lit but nothing was coming through these vents.
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!"
Having telephoned the main office, she was greeted with the grim news that the AC would be operational, probably, later today. A few buildings in town were affected, so they were "on the list," as he put it.
Jade was grateful that this hadn't happened in July, or she would've melted like a snow cone in Hell. She cracked the window, hoping that would do something but the wind wasn't giving her much to work with today. Jade then jumped into the coldest shower in history while racking her brain about what to do now.
The bathroom was devoid of steam when she finished. It didn't feel right. It didn't feel natural. Jade liked it nice and hot in there but this morning!
She was about ready to give up on today before it even started when she got an email alert on her app.
Work rarely communicated this way and most of her incoming, now or later, ended up in the spam folder. Jade hadn't paid a bill recently, so this wasn't a confirmation message. She opened it up and it was from the Langley PD.
It was from Andre.
(You're the best!)
The message was brief, explaining that she needs to open this attachment on her computer. This will not load onto a phone and make sure her firewalls are up!
Jade grinned as she got her laptop out of sleep mode and double-checked that her anti-virus/VPN was up and running, as if she ever turned it off. She accessed her emails and found what Andre sent at the top of the inbox.
She clicked on the link and it transported her to the North American Youth Network. It was full of active records for people between the ages of 12 and 25. The database was created by law enforcement and the FBI as a response to the high amount of this bracket being the victims of human trafficking and other related crimes. Through the NAYN, investigators could verify someone's identity by cross sectioning birth records, medical records and school records.
And since most schools took pictures for student ID's, one could search through the faces like like an eye witness picking someone out of a lineup. But this wasn't five or six figures standing against a wall. This was millions upon millions of young adults inside this thing. It took Jade some time, but she found where she could do a visual search based on face recognition software.
She uploaded the face of Jane Doe taken by Reynolds at the autopsy and pressed the green button to begin the analysis.
The blonde leaned back and folded her arms, reeling with the possibility that she could very be on the precipice of finding out who this girl was.
Staring at the twirling digits was making her dizzy after a while and she elected to make some coffee while she waited. Jade got into the kitchen and was midway filling the water when she heard a warble come from the other room.
The blonde never scrambled to her computer faster. Jade did her best to maintain her composure as she read the screen carefully.
FACIAL RECOGNITION SUBJECTS FOUND: (1)
93% MATCH
She was borderline hyperventilating when a student ID for the University of Chicago came up: Donna Blakely.
Her tired blue eyes began to water as she tenderly touched the display, as if to comfort the girl in the photo.
"So, that's your name, sweetheart..." Jade shakily told her. "I'm so sorry, Donna."
Jade squinted at the screen: RELATED SEARCH RESULTS [OPEN]
Her fingers guided the touch pad to select the highlighted OPEN button and clicked on it.
Another student from the same school had their profile pop up.
"Adam Marcus? Who the fuck is that?"
Jade's eyes looked beneath the boy's picture and saw a link that took her straight to his Facebook page. She saw no mention of Donna anywhere on his wall in the past six months. He apparently didn't post often. But the photo gallery was updated very recently.
She opened the album up to show all uploads and scrolled through them, her tongue sliding over her bottom lip in tense concentration.
Eyes widened and chills crept up her spine when she saw a photo that made her stop.
There was Adam and a couple of friends. They were all smiling and last one of the right was Donna.
"Okay, Adam..." Jade swallowed. "Let's find out what you know."
A/N: That database Jade used was a fabrication, I made it up. Maybe the government has something like this, I don't know! But for the sake of drama, I'll say this software works faster than it probably would have.