Facilis Descensus Averno [REWRITING]

19. Crooked Smiles

When she saw the black sedan pulling up behind her parked car, Bishop told the rookie officer standing in front of her to console the man by the police cruiser, thanked him, then turned to face her partner as he emerged from the sedan.

"Another one?"

She greeted him with a thin-lipped smile and nodded. He said nothing at first, retrieving something from inside his car, then nudged the door shut with his elbow before striding over towards her. One of his hands held his bag, and the other held a molded pulp drink carrier carrying two steaming coffee cups. "How many are there?"

"Two." She failed to suppress her smile when he placed the carrier on top of her car, and handed one of the cups—the one without a tea-bag string dangling from the secured rim—to her. It was still hot enough that she was thankful for the cardboard sleeve, and perfect for the cooling summer morning air. "Christine George and her son Liam. Neighbor said the mother usually comes out at around 6 a.m. to water the garden, take out garbage, and whatnot—she didn't show, so he went over to check in on her."

She took a ginger sip of what she pleasantly discovered to be pure black coffee inside her cup, before panning her gaze over to the older gentleman standing by the cruiser, motioning for Gilliam to follow where she looked.

"Was she a single mother?" he asked as he turned back to her, and she shook her head.

"Karl George was on a business trip in Chicago for the weekend. He's on a flight back as we speak."

He furrowed his forehead, squinting at the glare of the sun just barely peeking over the edge of the cluster of soft pearl-gray clouds. "So this wasn't a family-annihilation."

"Could be a forensic countermeasure, leave no witnesses alive," she suggested, with some hesitation. The killer was certainly meticulous in some ways, especially to orchestrate such grand scenes for the police to find the mornings after, but at the same time, reckless in others—the messiness, the discarded murder weapon. They certainly had the confidence to do it, but what she doubted now was whether the killer would think these many steps ahead just to cover up their tracks, this far into their game. "Maybe the killer wasn't aware the father was out for the weekend?"

"It's possible," he agreed, "but the M.O. has been thorough, through and through. This had to be deliberate, or something else had changed. Have you taken a look at the bodies yet?"

She shook her head. "The neighbor's still pretty shaken from the news, so we've been having a time trying to get statements out of him. Dr. Wang is inside doing the preliminaries. I was waiting for you, actually."

Surprise briefly flashed across his eyes when he flickered up towards her, before quickly turning his gaze back over her shoulder to the direction of the cruiser. "Well, judging by the ones we've had so far, I can't imagine it would be a pretty sight. Did he see the bodies?"

"No, but he said the door was unlocked and checked inside. Nothing looked disturbed, then he caught the stench and dialed 9-1-1."

In his defense, she quickly thought, no one would ever expect to catch the stench of death at any given day, especially not in a morning like this—at least, no one who lived in this type of neighborhood, that is.

What was now their fourth crime scene did not look too far different than the others, or even its neighbors for that matter: two stories high, beige exterior walls with white and brown accents—the perfect suburban dream, excluding the yellow police tape surrounding the perimeter. The windowed front door had been left ajar for the technicians and investigators roaming in and out of the vicinity—the neighbor did say it was closed when he inspected it earlier this morning—but besides a few minor scratches on the metal from overuse, the lock mechanism looked otherwise untouched.