S6: Chapter 02: Chain Letter

“Patricia Warner, age 31, was found on the north jogging trail of Lancaster park. She was frozen for a period of at least three days; body was still in a solid state upon discovery. After thawing her, coroner notes that the marks found on the victim were indeed postmortem. The ‘X’ carved in her left breast was done with a tool that could have been a scalpel. Cause of death was respiratory failure as a result of a congenital heart defect.”

“The drugs found in her system were enough to sedate a horse, thus leading to her premature expiration. Our perp never got around to slicing her up like his other victims before she passed and no presence of seminal fluid was found on or around her body,” Yvette read the coroner’s report for the others as they gathered around. “Unlike previous victims, Warner had no defensive wounds or vaginal tearing that would indicate rape.”

“Alright so what do we know?” Brett asked and waited for Dustin to pull up the screen. “All four victims attended the same high school. They were in separate grades and ran in separate crowds. There are no common friends, boyfriends or activities and each one took a different route to school.”

“We’ve toyed with the idea that the unsub is a faculty member but no reports or evidence thus far supports that theory. School records at the time indicate a total of 2,031 students were attending Bloomingdale in 1998. It’s possible our unsub was a student himself or had some other affiliation with the school.”

“What about a parent?” Victor asked looking over the information in front of him. “We’ve mentioned the possibility of staff or student but, it could very easily have been a parent that may have seen these girls on campus and became fixated on them.”

“And the suspect pools yet again rises,” Ryan sighed in frustration. “This is ridiculous. I’ve been going over psych reports from the guidance counselor around that time and he indicates that 310 students were having emotional problems to the point of being ‘social outcasts’. Out of that number 132 of them were male. Any one of them could be our perp. And that’s only assuming this guy was emotionally damaged then or even spoke to the counselor. He could have been one of those ‘below the radar’ kind of guys.”

“Well we’ll start there. I need names. We need to get current addresses and information on these 132 students. If any of these guys remembers our victims’ fondly they move up the suspect list.” Brett pulled the bulletin board from behind the glass wall and began pinning information to it.

The phone in the unit room rang and Dustin answered on the third ring. “Where?” he asked the voice on the other end. “No, just keep the area contained, we’ll be there shortly.” He hung up and stood from behind his desk. “Another body was just found on platform 6 of the A train at Butler station, same M.O., rose on the corpse, ‘X’ on the chest.”

Rushing to the garage, the team pulled out and headed towards the subway station. No one wanted to admit it but this was a decent break. Although it was not ideal, getting a new victim usually lead to more clues and placed them one step closer to finding the suspect. No one wished for another victim, but it was always helpful and hopefully the latest body narrowed the search radius for them. 

Pulling into the station, Brett parked behind the yellow tape, flashed his badge to the officer nearest the doorway and lead the team down the platform where another swarm of people gathered. Between the flashing of camera phones and flurry of questions, they pushed forward into the darker area where police had the body roped off and partially hidden from the fanatical reporters. “Agent Knight,” he spoke towards an officer starting towards him. “Who’s in charge of the scene?”

“That would be Lieutenant Campbell,” the man motioned towards the familiar face standing with another officer by the railing. Brett started over and the Lieutenant excused the officer in his company to address the approaching agent.

“Agent Knight, glad to see you’re still working on this.” He shook Brett’s hand and walked with him towards the body. “The girl was found on the train but another passenger,” he replied pointing towards a distraught man being questioned by Dustin, Ryan and Victor, “pulled her off. He thought she was in need of medical help he said and he moved her to keep the train from leaving with her injured there on the back bench.”

“Did anyone notice her with someone? Maybe being dropped there or being carried down the platform?”

“No and that’s the thing about it. From the people we’ve questioned so far, they all said the same thing; she walked onto the train beneath her own power. No one helped her on and she never spoke a word about being injured.” Yvette joined her husband at the man’s side and listened to him recount witness statements. “When the passenger got ready to get off at the next stop, he mentioned noticing blood leading from one of the doors to where the victim sat.”

“Said he approached her and asked if she was alright. When she didn’t say anything, he shook her. At that point her insides touched the ground. He screamed, the train came to a stop and he lifted the woman in his arms to get her to the platform and seek medical aid. The train took off with a new set of passengers and he laid her body on the ground there and called 9-1-1. We got the call and I had one of the officers ring you up when I noticed the flower in her left pocket.”

“Where’s the train now?” Yvette asked looking up the tracks.

Lieutenant Campbell sighed and glanced down the tunnel before responding but directed his answer towards Brett as he spoke. “I had the Transit Authorities stop it at the next station.”

“We need to get a team on that train ASAP,” Yvette suggested and took out her phone. Stepping away momentarily from the two men she dialed HQ to request CSU head out to the Butler station for evidence processing.

“How many people got on that train at this station?” Brett asked.

“Who knows? At any given time there could be numbers in the hundreds waiting on the platforms for their train to get here. This is one of the busiest stops and the one before it is even busier; that was where she got on.” Noticing Victor and Ryan finish with their interview, Brett motioned them over.

“Take Dustin and get down to the Union Street stop. Find the operating desk and have them hold any video recordings they have from today. We have to make sure it’s not recorded over before we can comb through it.”

“Got it.” They headed off and Brett turned his attention to Lieutenant Campbell again. 

“Have you received any strange mail or any suspicious phone calls from people making claims to being involved or taking credit for these killings?” Lieutenant Campbell looked at him in surprise and Brett sighed. “With cases like these we notice a lot of media coverage. Whack jobs that want to make a name for themselves may take credit for someone else’s work or claim to have knowledge about the murders for a little air time. But a lot of the time we find the killers themselves will call in and we can make voice identifications from them and produce suspects. They like to taunt authorities about evading capture or being smarter and most times it simply aids in their capture.”

“No we haven’t gotten anything like that.”

“Would you be willing to allow the Bureau to setup a recording station at your department to take incoming calls on the off chance our perp does call?” Yvette asked to which Lieutenant Campbell readily agreed.

“If it’ll help put this psycho behind bars of course, you have my complete cooperation.” He looked towards the body bag and sighed gravely. “I’m not so sure you want to see what’s in that thing. This one is the worst yet. And to think that she was still able to walk after what that monster did to her…poor thing. She really suffered.” Lieutenant Campbell hung his head and wandered off towards the railing again as Brett and Yvette started towards the body bag.

Kneeling down beside it, Brett held the zipper within his fingers, breathed deeply and exhaled slowly as he opened the bag to reveal the badly beaten and eviscerated corpse of a young woman. Her blonde hair was bright red and stained in her blood, her face was hardly recognizable outside of a smear of lipstick indicating where her lips would have been. There were marks on her wrist indicative of also being restrained at some point but the massive amount of damage was done to her stomach. It appeared the suspect, in some strange attempt to simulate birth, tore into her belly, scooped out much of her organs and intestines to make room for a plastic doll that was halfway shoved into her uterus.

“Jesus!” Brett screeched and turned his attention to his wife who only stared at the condition of the body. Yvette leaned forward beside him and as gently as she could, moved the woman’s soaked blouse to the side revealing the ‘X’ over her left breast. Brett quickly closed the bag up again and motioned to the M.E. that she was free to be removed from the scene. “We have to find this asshole before more women suffer,” he growled and pounded his fist into the palm of his other hand.

“She was married,” Yvette replied a little out of it as she watched the bag being carried off. “There was a tan line on her ring finger, but that’s not all.”

“What else did you see?”

“She had stretch marks on her stomach and an inflated uterus, Brett.”

He gasped as he followed her train of thought and bit down on his bottom lip. “She was pregnant.”

“I think the baby doll was replacing the child he must have removed from her womb. He needed to keep her ‘whole’.”

Brett and Yvette followed the body back to the morgue both waiting for the fingerprint card so they could quickly ID the woman on the slab. If she had a husband out there, he needed to know and they had to find out more about their latest victim. Grabbing the ten-print card from the lab tech, Brett rushed it towards the CSU lab for them to get to work on it right away. Yvette lingered behind a moment near the body and watched the medical examiner get to work on the autopsy. Sighing woefully as she watched the doll slip from the woman’s uterus, she lightly touched her own belly and started after her husband.

Brett tapped his fingers impatiently on the young man’s desk as he waited on the results of IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, to find the woman’s ID. “You know this isn’t comprehensive right Agent Knight? I mean if she has no criminal record or arrest it’s not going to tell me who she is–was.” The tech watched as he became more agitated by his words and Yvette rubbed her hand across his shoulders pulling his gaze towards her.

“Just do what you can,” he growled and started with her towards a corner of the room. “Are you ok Yve? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No I’m fine Brett. Just that poor woman in there; I can’t imagine what she must have been thinking going through what she did. He is really losing it. With every new victim we find, he’s growing more and more depraved. I’m starting to wonder what kind of psycho we’re really dealing with.”

“Doctor, Doctor, I need help,” Dustin moaned and collapsed on Mica’s table as she placed her last patient in his kennel.

“Oh dear, what could be the issue?” she mocked concern as he scratched himself like a miserable dog.

“Fleas! They’re everywhere I think I need a bath!”

“A flea dip?”

“Nix the fleas and add a Doc and you got yourself a date!”

“Ah now I see your end game, Mr. Kimura. But unfortunately for you, I am a huge advocate of Advantage and Dawn liquid soap.”

“But Dr. Valentine, I’d love to take advantage of this situation too!” Dustin shook his brows, swooped Mica into his arms and kissed her passionately. “Are you almost done here,” he smiled against her lips as her arms closed around his neck.

“Cleaning up the last bed now,” she replied and dropped the sheet into the hamper from the bed he was just on. “By the way, you might just have fleas now. Roscoe here is suffering big time.”

“Well then,” Dustin smirked and took her back against his chest. His hands slowly worked up her hips stopping on the small of her back and he tipped her head with his lips until she was looking at him, “how about that dip, Doc?”

“Only if you’re good. I don’t treat my bad patients.”

“And how do I get on the bad list?”

“You can only get there if you bite me. But you wanna be careful about that Agent Kimura because I bite back,” she replied in a tone so light and seductive it made him shiver. Her lips touched his sweetly and he groaned in anguish when she pulled away. “I have to finish closing. I’ll meet you at the car.”

“God! Hurry up, Meeks. I have a bone to bury!” he flushed and watched her ass wiggle beneath her coat as she started towards her office in back. Dustin exited the front door and leaned against his car as he waited on her to finish up. Pacing anxiously around the lot, he noticed a black SUV parked across the street from the clinic and squinted his eyes to make out more details. 

The driver was sitting idled behind the wheel and he could see the man’s eyes were focused on him. Touching the gun on his ankle, Dustin started forward but the truck quickly hit the gas and sped around the corner rushing away from the block. Before it got out of sight, he noticed the object hanging around the rearview mirror and swallowed hard. It was a recognizable symbol for anyone that grew up on the streets of Seoul. The sketched dragon in yellow ink around the black background was one his grandparents fought hard to keep him away from. 

But no matter their influence, a boy learning about life from the many out of school punks hanging about on the corner would inevitably find himself idolizing these people. He thought about the letter he’d received shortly before leaving for the States with his Grandmother and sister. It still remained safely tucked away in an old shoebox of his then only possessions when they got off the boat. He could never bring himself to show anyone or do the things the letter asked of him which is perhaps proving to have been a mistake.

“Ready to go?” Mica asked smiling as she made it out to his car. Opening the car door for her, he watched her slip into the passenger seat and shut her in tight.

Gazing off in the direction the SUV sat for a moment Dustin pondered just how long they had been sitting on the block and what all the man had seen. Before allowing his history with the symbol to invade more of his thoughts he remembered the beautiful doctor sitting in his car waiting to be driven home and sighed. There was no way, after all, that these people would leave the solace and comforts of Korea for a twenty year old vendetta; he had no reason to fear. But if Dustin was wrong, then that meant his past was about to catch up to him in a very ugly way. “Kkangpae,” he whispered and slid into the driver’s door.

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