Joe's pov
(TW: Mention of SA)
The next day, and without our younger siblings present, my girl and I were back working the case of the copycat Ghostface. Two kills had been made thus far, at least that we were made aware of. At least I got to keep my Lori safe working together and vice-versa, now that the 'no dating partners' rule had been blown to smithereens by my Uncle Jamie and Aunt Eddie. My Lori broke me out of my thoughts
"Maureen Riley. Stalked, called repeatedly by someone with a voice modulator, SA'd, stabbed nearly to death with a Buck 120 hunting and carving knife. Then, she was fighting for her life trying to escape through the doggy door."
I sighed
"Let me guess. Ghostface copycat turned the garage door open after she got stuck to it, and she was electrocuted to death as the final blow?"
She nodded
"Yep. I take it this is straight from the movies?"
I shook my head
"Worse than that. It's two characters' fates merged in one. And not following the original order either, making him or herself, or even themselves harder to trace. Where's a real-life Sidney Prescott or the Carpenter sisters when you need them?"
My girl eyed me strangely
"Gonna guess they're the survivors. Haven't done the extensive movie research quite yet."
I nodded
"Yep. Anything on what the actual call said?"
She played it for me, and, as suspected, the voice boasted that they were alone in the middle of nowhere, no cop could save our victim, the voice knew physical features of our victim and was inside her house. I spoke again
"Voice is modulated, won't work on scanning. Phone was probably cloned , too."
We sighed as I crossed off any information on Maureen and Tatum from the list lifted off of Scream lore. Then I spoke
"And the second victim?"
My hopes for a bit of copy-paste movie predictability were soon bolstered when she replied
"Casey Stevens. Stalked, called with the same modulator, cloned phone and talk. Chased, stabbed with a knife of the same sort, disemboweled and hung from a tree."
I nodded
"More in line with the first movie, back to basics. One mix and one more normal? Is that the pattern? Though the call to Maureen Riley is more like the call to Casey Becker in the film, and not like the one Casey Stevens got. In the movie, Casey Becker and Steven Orth are a couple, she gets stalked, told all that Maureen Riley was told, then chased, stabbed and disemboweled, then hung from a tree. Both our vics got quizzed in horror movie trivia, that's consistent with most movie kills. Not movie Tatum or movie Maureen, though. Whoever this is, this killer is not following the lore to the letter, just enough to have us chasing our tails."
She wrote down the new info on our board right as another report came in. I looked over her shoulder at the info and crime scene pictures
"Kate Meeks. Stalked, until she called the killer BACK. Ok, I see the Meeks connection. Randy Meeks did the same thing in the second movie, but it did not end well for him. Kate was stabbed with a letter opener through a door, same as Kate in Scream 4, just FYI, then Kate Meeks was dragged into a van in broad daylight near a music festival to hide the noise she was makin while she was stabbing Miss Meeks repeatedly inside the van. Yeah, mixing Sidney's Aunt Kate in Scream 4 and her friend Randy Meeks in Scream 2. We gotta check the inner circles of our vics, usually the killer is already in their friend or family circle. Or the odd infiltrator, like Mickey in 2 and the long-lost relative in 3."
We immediately started combing through the people in our three victims' lives, hoping for a connection. After all, now we had a serial killer having a deluded killing spree in our city based on a pretty helpful formula to get that done.