The Doll Collector's Son

Chapter 1: Jordan

There she was, split open like a watermelon, her flesh crowding with maggots. My partner, Annalise, was having a little trouble keeping her breakfast down as the sickly sweet smell of decayed flesh wafted out from the trunk. She pulled on a cloth mask and leaned in. With her pen, she lifted the victim's blouse. Underneath was a gaping hole where I imagined her stomach had once been. The forensics' camera flashed as he took photos.

A sheen caught my attention. Its presence was subtle, deeply embedded in the crimson gore of what was left of her gutted stomach. The cuts hadn't been clean, and almost appeared to have been rushed. I slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then grabbed my own pen as a makeshift shovel. Her guts squelched as I lifted a bloody chunk. M pen was soon slick, but the reflective object rustled under my digging. I chucked my pen, opting for my fingers instead. Annalise grimaced as I lifted a glossy sandwich bag. Inside was a wallet and a set of car keys.

My thumb brushed away coagulated blood revealing several cards inside the wallet. I opened the plastic bag, replacing my bloodied glove with a new one, then reached in for the contents. The wallet had been worn by time, but still able to hold onto its cargo with no problem. Her ID had taken some damage, looked like maybe a dog had chewed it. Martina Perez was still legible, as was her address 3224 West Eagle Avenue in Bakersfield. A local gal, so not a drifter who got picked up and disposed of like garbage on the side of the road. She was 27 years old, brown hair, brown eyes, 5'4" and 180 pounds. Annalise held an evidence bag out to me to toss the wallet inside. I dug around some more, finding expired coupons, faded movie theater tickets and a punch card to a nail place.

The most recent had been the day before. I snapped a photo of the card for its address, then handed the evidence bag to a CSI tech. Annalise and I adjourned to our car to head down to the field office. Some similar cases had landed on our desks not two weeks earlier. One was a Jane Doe with her stomach removed and stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car left on the highway. Normally we didn't take traditional murder cases, but she'd been the fourth one in the span of just two months.

The FBI didn't take the possibility of a serial killer lightly, and with a fifth one just now popping up, it definitely wasn't going to be ignored. No notes were left behind and minimal evidence, except for a partial thumbprint that ended up belonging to a new CSI tech who clearly didn't know what he was doing. The reports were laying on Annalise's desk. We'd begun to think it was a man targeting prostitutes, as three of the four previous victims had been identified, but checking our missing persons records revealed the identities of three of them. Anais Wexler, Emily Sanchez, and Carla Wang had been working towards their PhDs in psychology at nearby universities. All three had disappeared just before their final exams and were discovered just one week after their disappearances. I had a feeling we would discover the same about Martina Perez. Whoever he was, he certainly believed in sticking to a pattern.

I sat at my desk, just as Annalise arrived with two donuts and two cups of coffee on a cardboard holder. Annalise was nothing if not the most considerate of my diet. Work took a lot out of us, but she was always sure to find us some morsel to eat before we passed out of starvation. My empty stomach ached at the thought of more coffee, but in it went anyway. The donut was overly sweet, and gone in 30 seconds. I opened up a file on my desktop to begin writing the report for Martina Perez while Annalise continued to search for the identity of our fourth unidentified victim. Several universities had reported female students matching her description missing, but so far had not hit a positive match.

The other four women had all had their stomach cut out, with Martina's being messy. The various injuries pointed towards a man, because a woman wouldn't carve something out like that. This seemed to be some kind of message. I studied the reports from the medical examiner, hoping to find some evidence to support my theory that this was indeed a type of communication. All four women had their stomaches removed along with their uterus and fallopian tubes. Maybe this had to do with child bearing.