Case File No.56

Case File No.58

“The third victim was a paranormal type. You know, the sort of person who decided to make her own ghost hunting team after watching any of those shows out now,” Anna said as we walked into the office. She hadn’t been able to sleep last night so I guess she’d started going through victim threes files.

“So what’s your point?” I asked. Sleeping on her couch every night was making me cranky but thankfully all the weird things had all but stopped happening and the paranoia and fear was dying down too. I could probably move back into my place soon.

“So, I don’t know. Hey, where’s John?” We walked into our office, boxes and coffee in hand. We sat down at our desks and sipped our coffee for a few minutes before diving into this God awful case once more. Before we could get too into our missing intern, one of the forensic scientists came into the room with an envelope.

“Here’s the DNA sample back, guys,” he said. We’d sent him the sample when we were working on the first victim. The CSI team grabbed blood samples from the candles he’d blown out in the first murder.

“And? Get a match?” I asked.

“Not even close. It’s not even human. I did every test I could think of a million times. It’s just not human. Humans have 46 chromosomes, right; this had 58. I have no idea what it could be.” Anna and I looked at each other.

“Weird,” she said. “Thanks Max.” He put the envelope with the DNA test results on my desk and left.

“Anyways,” I said. “I don’t know. I think someone said he called in sick or something. John did look a little under the weather yesterday.” Anna nodded in agreement.

“Hopefully he gets back soon,” she said. Anna and I went back to the pictures of the third crime scene. It was all the same. Blood, guts, unbelievable gore. I still wasn’t used to it though. It was all more grotesque and inhumane than I thought even possible. I got to a picture of her head. There was a slim white stick-looking item sticking out of her skull. Her hair had dried blood all over it and her eyes sat there open and unseeing, well, one of them at least, like that of a porcelain doll watching you as you sleep. From her mouth, blood ran down her cheek onto the ground. Her head sat in a pool of her own blood. But the bone-appearing item stuck into her head was pristine. A pure unsettling white. I showed it to Anna.

“I think that’s in the box,” she said, pointing to the stick. “Forensics determined it to be a bone.” I shuddered. Anna dug through the box and took the bone out. I took the bag from her and looked at it. Forensics is always careful to not disturb the way the evidence was found. And even with that care, it was disturbingly white.

“Let’s just watch the video and get it over with,” I said.

“It can’t be that bad”, Anna said. “We’ve seen two of the most brutal and horrifying murders already and this victim has most of her body parts still intact, unlike the first two”.

“I guess so. I just don’t want to have to look at pictures of dead people anymore. I’ve had enough for one year.” I said, exhausted. Before she pushed play on the video player, we just sat there. I guess we were preparing ourselves for it, even if we’d already seen it all.

It was then our boss came in, urging us to finish this case. We sucked up and got him out of the room. Anna pushed play.

The video started off in what looks like a bedroom. The camera was handheld. The victim sounded excited. She had a chipper light voice and the camera was moving around rapidly. We heard a bunch of clicks and snaps and sounds of clothes rustling. We figured she was getting something together or putting something on. All of a sudden the camera swung up and we could see her hands grabbing different electronic devices.