Figuring Out Homicide's Case Before Them

The sun has just begun vanishing beneath the City’s skyline. I put my plate into the dishwasher, leaving the chili pot out for my roommate. I walk out of my kitchen, into the larger main living space of the sixteenth floor apartment. The orange glow, while beautifully lighting my apartment with its sparse decorations, grime, and my pants splayed across the couch’s backrest, is not conducive to actually working. And this whole paperwork business has got me too stressed not to enjoy myself. Taking my augmented reality sunglasses off of the most logical place for them, the fishbowl, I put them on and check my messages. Nothing new. Grace is still going to meet me tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder why time takes so long to pass. Pushing that from my mind, I focus on relaxing. I pull out a cigarette, lighting it as I open up the file my partner, Detective Martin Wilton, sent me today.

Taking a deep drag, I press a button on the wall, and the window shutters slowly begin to close. Each section of metal falling hard with a thunk, one by one. I ignore it, instead grabbing the first crime scene photo and pinning it digitally to the air beside the window. I enlarge it to occupy that whole corner. After all, there’s only two right now, so I’ll have space a plenty. And I need to be able to see it in detail. With the shudders down, it feels too warm. Always does. I begin to unbutton my shirt with my left hand then shimmying out of it. Meanwhile, I keep going through, carefully recreating the more detail of the scene by putting the photos around the room, where they belong relative to the main, enlarged picture. The smoke begins to hang near the ceiling. Less than ideal for detail work. It would have set off an alarm, if I’d ever bothered to put a smoke detector up for our safety. Rather than stop my smoking, I head over to my liquor cabinet. On the wall beside the cabinet, I flick a switch up one tick. A light fan begins to run in the background, pulling the smoke out of the room. While there, I figure, why not help the focus. I open up the cabinet and pull out a handle of what may well be the cheapest bourbon in the world, and is most certainly the cheapest in the City. I keep three handles here at all times. Spinning off the top with practiced ease, I take a swig. Then I take another drag. Finally, I return to my pictures.

I ignore anything that Homicide has written in the file. That’s useless for me, because those are the avenues they’re taking. If I’m going to beat them to this killer, I need to find a different route. So I begin to note everything down in every picture. Swiping a finger past the brim of my glasses, a green, neon pen digitally materializes between them. Using it, I write in the air near each noted detail. The brands of the discarded items, the directions of blows, the state of every bit of furniture in the place. Even the color of the hair dye, though admittedly that was a one of three possibilities due to it’s aged nature and the blood mixed in. Not just anything that seems interesting or important, but every detail I can think of. Because the key isn’t looking for something. The key to knowing is seeing everything.

Once that’s done and double checked, I put away the digital pen and tap the air to open the menu. I add a new layer, and turn the opacity down on the previous photo layer, as well as the previous notes layer. Slowly those fade from view, replaced once more with my dingy, sparsely decorated apartment. Disappointing, but such is my life. I open up the next case and put the first crime scene photo in the same place as the last, positioning the body in the same way. The corners of the room do line up fairly well. I can see why they’d think it might be serial. Then I go about the same process with the rest of the pictures, recreating the crime scene.

Somewhere during my third cigarette, after I’ve taken out the now neon blue pen but while I’m still writing down the notes, a voice cuts in from behind. “Chance, how many times have I told you to keep your goddamned pants on?”

I don’t even turn to look at my roommate yet. I finish noting the angle of the crime scene couch to the wall and to the body, then I turn around. Davina Darling is putting her keys and coats on the coat rack, rather than the floor. I can feel the judgment oozing off of her five foot six figure. “I need to be free if I want to see the truth,” I jokingly insist. I take off my pants all the time, and she only grumbles about it when she’s had a stressful day, so I try to lighten the mood whenever she does. That said, I do only take off my shirt when I’m trying to feel the world of crime more fully. Get myself into that space.

She does laugh at my joke, a cold but welcoming laugh. Turning to face him, she asks, “Did you make food, or are you too case-y to remember to eat?” We’ve been roommates for near two years at this point, she knows how I can get.

I turn back to the pictures, and pull back out my blue pen. “Chili is on the stove. Put it in the fridge once you’ve served yourself.” I get back to work.

It takes a few notes later, and she waits for me to be taking a swig from the bourbon handle, but she once more interjects. She’s sitting on the couch, which unfortunately for me is right behind the almost entirely opaque image of a dead body. “You know,” her voice comes out from the dead body, “You mutter to yourself when you do this.”

I shake my head. Putting away the pen, I turn down the opacity of the image layer and look at her. This time it’s my turn to be disappointed. “I do, but thanks again for reminding me,” I reply.

“Any time,” she jokingly replies, before taking another large bite of chili.

“I’m aware,” I say, shaking my head. Then, after a deep breath, I ask, “So, how was your day?”

She groans. “Not great. Light loads, and Butterhead over in the Skyside Plaza tried stiffing us.” Then, with a furrowed brow over her dull green eyes, she realizes something and wonders aloud, “By the by, you know why Narco would be cutting back on their packages today? Told the bosses they’d be only shipping half the product in the near future.”

I grin. “A bit my fault,” I admit, “Internal’s looking into Vice, because of the low arrest numbers. Who knows why that might be?” We both know about my friendship that definitely doesn’t trade any information with Harry on twenty.

She nods, understanding. Vice is about half of the drug dealing Narcotics officers’ distribution network, as Vice wants the drugs for their less than legal operations. Not that either of us will admit that out loud. Because admitting aloud that she delivers drugs around the city and I know that fact might make me complicit. Or worse, out a roommate. “Get back to the muttering,” she insists, “It’s really entertaining. Best I can tell, there’s a dead body and you think a Neutrohealth Plastics Hand Sanitizer bottle being on the coffee table might be key to solving the case.”

“Never know,” I joke as I pull the opacity back up and get back to work. “I once found a guy because he always used the couch as a jumping point for his attacks, and so the angle of the couch and the impact on the neck combined to give me approximate weight-height proportions.” I pull out my blue pen once more and start noting more details in the air.

“Sure you did,” she says sarcastically, clearly not believing me. To be fair to her, I am a bit of an exaggerator, there were some other elements to that solve. But the weight height profile was a useful suspect eliminator.

Shaking my head, I keep going. I hear the sink running as I finish my notes. Pushing the butt of the latest cigarette into an ashtray, I light the next as I open the menu once more. This time, lower the opacity of the pictures, and raise the opacity of the other notes layer, as well as creating a new notes layer to write on. Swiping along the rim of the sunglasses once more, my pen switches color to red. Because the next part is circling time.

See, there are a lot of things that can be considered similarities, when one is looking for similarities. People tend to gravitate towards similar numbers of objects in rooms, or sorts of objects based on the room of the apartment, or even certain brands that are either cheap or well reviewed. A lot of potential white noise. That’s why when I do this, I prefer to have three dead bodies. And why I always take my notes without accounting for the other dead bodies. Pretend they’re separate, find what feels important, and see what’s too similar to not be a connection.

There are a couple that definitely stand out. Like in both places the laptop is open, but the blood seems to not match its surroundings, meaning it was at the very least moved by the killer. The lack of any prints and fibers on the scene tells me that, if these are connected, there will be other cases that match it somewhere in the database. Or in one of the other Seven Cities, if it isn’t a local. Both of their keys are on lanyards around their necks, though I admit that might be white noise as many middle management types do that for ease of access for their fobs. Both of the murder weapons were knives from their own kitchen. Both were left in the corpse post mortem, meaning they knew nothing was on the knives. Meaning they were probably wearing thick gloves. Thick gloves in this city’s summer, but no witnesses according to the file. If it were in Undermarket, I’d say it was a bunch of civilians lying to us because they think of us like the mall cops. But it’s in Heavens’ Lane, which is filled with that middle class type who think of us as the heroes due to our great PR from all those TV shows over the years. They wouldn’t be intentionally unhelpful to protect themselves, because they imagine us as protecting them. Which tells me they have a job which no one would look twice about wearing heavy gloves.

Trash burning. It’s waste disposal season. Twice a week for this whole month the City burns through a large swath of its garbage to recharge the emergency backup systems. And no one looks twice at someone wearing industrial rubber gloves as part of their trash burner uniform.

I skim through the notes from Homicide, to see what they think. They’ve got some elements of the profile, including figuring out that this is probably not the first crime scene of this killer. But they haven’t found the garbage connection. The vents in the Wellspring district means most detectives, who can afford to live there, probably don’t need to smell the stale scent of burnt trash hanging in the air every day this whole month. I can’t help but grin as I walk over to my own laptop. Davina sees me grinning. “So you figured something out?”

“Maybe,” I admit.

She nods as I log into my laptop. She asks, “Will you be heading out tonight?”

I think about the question. I could, depending on how quickly I figure this out. I open up the files on unsolved murders from a year ago this month. “Probably not,” I admit, “I’m taking tomorrow off for unrelated reasons, so even if I figure it out tonight, I can wait til then.”

Davina sighs. “Okay,” she says.

“I will be up late,” I add.

She shakes her head at me. “Your delivery is on the liquor cabinet,” she tells me, “This time, remember to use the gun in the hall closet that you found in the alleyway. I don’t want to deal with you being suspended again.”

I shake my head, knowing she’s right. After she heads back into her bedroom, I open up the package on the liquor cabinet. Rubbing it onto my gums, the rush hits me hard. It certainly is the cheap stuff, but it packs a punch, I muse as I take it back to the computer. Time to figure out who this killer is.