Scream 4

Chapter 3

"Sure is dead, alright."

The Sheriff scratched his chin and sent his collegue a pointed glare. "We've got a genius on our hands."

He glanced at him, and the side of his mouth tugged up into a slight grin, but the expression was quick to fade as he turned his attention back to the crime scene in front of them.

It was an apartment on the more decent side of Roseville. The kind of neighborhood filthy rich people wouldn't be caught dead in, but where families with two working parents could scrape by without worrying their children would be shot, robbed, or kidnapped while they were away.

The room itself was small, but relatively well furnished; a living area with a second-hand sofa and a small, wall mounted television that was attached to a kitchen with all the necessary amenities and a rickety, round dining table. The window above the table was closed, blue curtains drawn tightly shut.

Spread-eagled on the floor beside the table was a balding middle aged man in a pair of plaid payjama pants and a well-worn grey shirt, both of which were soaked through with slowly drying blood.

One of the man's arms was bent at a hideous angle, and there was a glint of white where the bone poked sickenly through the elbow.

The investigator wordlessly accepted the gloves the Sheriff offered him and, when he had managed to force the tight latex onto his hands, crouched down beside the body.

The first thing to be done was searching the man's pockets. Fetching a pack of cigarettes and a wallet that identified the man as a 33-year-old American.

"I don't think we need to determine the cause of death."

Ten, if not more knife wounds littered the body, and a quick slit of the throat had finished the job—exactly the same as the last five crime scenes they had examined the past few months.

The Sheriff's heart sunk as his collegue gave him a look that confirmed what he had already begun to suspect.

Three brutal stabbings at a murder scene was an unfortunate coincidence. Four was... Well, four was even more of a coincidence. But five? Five was a serial killer, no reasonable doubt behind it.

"Damn!" The Sheriff swore empathically, standing from his crouch beside the victim. "No way this is a coincidence."

These five crime scenes shared more than a common cause of death. They had all been astoundingly, frustratingly, almost impossibly clean of evidence. No security camera footage. No living eye witnesses. No conveniently abandoned murder weapon. Certainly no DNA to be tested.

And it wasn't like the person behind all of it made a point to keep things clean, either. Blood was everywhere and each time, the victim seemed propped up into a different angle. Posed, almost.

The police were as close to finding the guy as they were a five legged unicorn. They didn't even know where to start.

This series of murders was of a different kind, and had struck the Sheriff as such from the very beginning. Despite what the crude nature of the injuries suggested, it was instantly clear that the amount of skill involved in the killings was insane.

"Sheriff," a female officer beckoned him over to the green couch that hadn't been spared from the brutality of it all, and was scribbled on with very neat handwriting.

He made sure not to touch it, bowing down just enough to read the few taunting words.

'Might want to consider hiring a few more men. Best regards,