THEN IT GOT PERSONAL

Chapter Four

Bisi rolled in her chair and squeezed her stress ball. The vic from earlier had a wife and a teenage daughter. When they came in by noon to identify the body, their worse nightmare was waiting for them. The hysterics were more than Bisi could bare, her heart seized in her chest as the wife stumbled on words while she was being questioned. Mez the charmer had suggested they allowed them go home after the wife's incoherent responses. Grief was a powerful emotion that reduced even the most articulated to a babbling idiot. As they returned to the office from the morgue, he stated clearly that she was the first suspect on his list. His conclusion was baseless of course since they had hardly begun investigation. In cases like this though, the spouses or partners were the likely suspect.

While Mez wanted to start with the wife, Bisi was leaning more into another partner. Her gut told her the man was cheating or had dabbled into something dangerous. If he had been mugged, he would have likely been stabbed multiple times at the chest area and not mutilated in the groin. If it was a hit, the method in which he was killed could be a message. A message to whom though? He wasn't in a diabolical cult, was he?

Bisi wrote down her theories and questions. They had to start looking while waiting for the Lab to process every evidence gathered at the crime scene. The case was already priority number one in her district so the body was already being processed. There was barely time to wait, it was murder for god's sake.  She was going with Mez in the evening to see his wife. They hoped by then she would have gathered herself and be logical.

Bisi searched for similar killings in the police database and only found two that looked like her case. As she delved further, she found that the first was a jealous wife who poisoned her cheating husband before killing him in rage. She went through the pictures taken and studied the body. The wife had been arrested immediately as she called it in herself. It was pure ol' rage, plain and simple, case closed.

The second killing was a rapist that was tortured then killed for assaulting a five-year old girl. The killers decided to mutilate him as a lesson to other rapists in the neighborhood. The people involved had been arrested so that was also a dead end.

Bisi searched their names to know if they were out of prison. The husband killer was still serving time while the rapists killers were free. Bisi found herself in a rabbit hole as she tried to find the three people arraigned for the alleged rapist's death. She found their places of work and wrote their info in her note pad. She could stop by to speak with them. The cases weren't so related but she needed to cover all her bases.

Bisi went to Mez's desk and took the bottle of peanuts that was always in there. She chewed and rapped the pen on her notepad as she got lost in thought. Mez walked in with a flash drive containing tapes from the traffic cams of the area where the body was found. Since the time of death was put at 1 am, he had asked for tapes within that timeline. He sent her the tapes from 11 pm to 1 am while he dealt with the tapes from 1 am to 6 am.