Silent Evil

Part 1: Voices of Delilah

Chapter 2

Headquarters

In the boardroom, tensions were flying like sparks. Everyone who was working on the Dr. Feathers case was gathered in the boardroom, discussing the events of the previous day. After the ME had shown up, the sheriff had ordered all his working officers to go home and rest. Feeling refreshed and new, everyone was ready to bite each others heads off if one of them said something they didn't like. What had everyone especially on edge, was what the ME had told Harvey and Graves that afternoon. At first glance, Patricia Carlton had thought the bodies had gone into full decomposition. But after closer inspection, she had silenced the whole room.

" There are no bite marks on the bones that suggest that the bodies were placed outside or in a room where bugs could squeeze in. Tendons and ligaments are still intact, though there are no pieces of flesh on the bones." she'd said, frowning. " The only piece of flesh left is the scalp and that's still overflowing with hair. If you oversee the scalp, the

remaining tendons suggest that they've been buried in coffins. But the hair would have been gone and the bones wouldn't look like this."

" What're you trying to say, doc?" Sheriff Graves had asked.

" I'd have to put time of death at the latest one and a half months ago." Harvey couldn't believe what he was hearing. The creep had kept them for six years and had only started to kill them now? But Patricia wasn't done surprising them yet.

" What about the skin, insides and all that other stuff?" Harvey had spoken for the first time. Patricia motioned them closer to the bones. They were hesitant, but eventually knelt next to the tub. She pointed a gloved finger down the length of the arm bones and the ribs.

" See these little scratch marks on the bones? How they're not very deep but still very visible?" Harvey saw what she meant. Apparently, so did Henry. They both nodded. " Well, because they're so thin, they're likely to make a match with a surgical knife. Probably made postmortem." A knife? For what?

" Why? What did he need a knife for?" Henry asked. Patricia had looked at him like the answer was as clear as day.

" He skinned them, Henry. Shaved them of skin, fat, muscle and everything. The marks inside the ribs mean he'd been rough and cut deeply in in the skin, grazing the bone, to remove the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, everything." Harvey had been sick to his stomach and had proceeded to move away from the body. " And, since there seems to be a little more flexibility in the jaws, a large force has been exerted on the jaws in order to rip out the tongue."

" Fuck!" Henry exclaimed. " We're probably dealing with some Hannibal Lecter wannabe."

" I don't think so." Harvey disagreed. " This guy doesn't seem the type to me. Due to his obsession for black haired white women, I gotta peg the guy as someone with emotional distress. Not physical. He doesn't eat his victims. He probably keeps them as tokens." Patricia was nodding along.

" And besides," she added. " The brain and eye cannot be digested. Gag reflexes will react automatically and-" Henry held up a hand, signaling her to stop talking.

" Do you agree with Harvey, doc?" he asked, staring intently at her. She looked at Harvey before packing up her kit and signaling for her team to start bagging the bodies.

" I agree with Mr. Harvey." she said. " Maybe he gets rid of the fat, muscles and intestines, but he's likely to keep the eyes and heart." she shook her head and stood up. Her brown eyes were sad as she looked at the bodies being carried away. Harvey wondered distantly if his ex-wife was one of the women in the tub. He banished that thought immediately. " I know a really good psychologist that could really help you with this case. I'm working with him on a different case, the one in Chicago, which is still going on, but he's gotten us somewhere. His name's Dr. Vaughn. I learned a little from him and that's how I can really agree with Harvey that this guy isn't a Hannibal fanatic." she pointed to the bathroom wall, at the angry red writing. " Also, by that."

" What about it?" Harvey asked. She kept her eyes on the wall.

" Obviously, something went wrong with these women when he was trying to do something nice." she began. " It started out with one person, maybe victim one, and ended up with 36 women who resembled her. I don't believe he wanted to hurt them but ended up doing exactly that. It would explain the angry lettering." She started taking blood samples from the wall.

" How's that case in Chicago with that doctor going, though?" Henry asked, raising a curious eyebrow. " We don't want to give him a call unless he's free." She shook her head.

" He's still in Chicago, though he lives here." she said. " He's determined to be there when we catch this guy." Harvey stopped listening to there conversation about then. Now, everyone in the boardroom was either yelling at each other or glaring. Pacey was practically butting heads with Shawn, who'd been interrupting her every time she tried to speak.

" Look, we don't know anything about this guy other than his fierce obsession with black haired girls and his obvious distress." she insisted, slamming her hand on the table. " Look at all these women. Young, attractive, and every one of them loners. He's targeting girls like-"

" So what do you want us to do?" Shawn questioned in his patronizing Southern drawl. " Warn every girl with black hair and no life to stay indoors? Newsflash! They're already doing that!" She looked about ready to beat Shawn's head in.

" All I'm trying to say is we should do a full background check on all of these women! Maybe he has something against them that we don't know of." she argued. " He has some scheme that enables him to go into their apartments without damaging the place. I say we should hang up another safety schedule-"

" And what, Officer Pacey?" Bradly Parker, another officer, asked. " Put up a warning saying, ' Don't let this guy in your house!' with a question mark as a description? Be reasonable! And we've already run thousands of background checks, ran through every single chat room, and none of them have shown up on the radar." He gazed pleadingly at Pacey who was blushing furiously in what Harvey assumed was anger. " The only thing we can do is warn people to stay indoors-"

" But that hasn't worked!" she nearly screamed. " He doesn't break into their apartments, Bradly! He gets them to trust him and they let him in and then he strikes." her fist connected hard with the table as she leaned forward and gathered everyone's attention. " These girls have no friends. They don't go out much, and they're probably alone in their apartments thinking that they're only a large waste of space! Wherever he meets them, it is not outside. There has to be something on the internet we missed." Harvey pondered over this. They had checked everything. Fan clubs for numerous monsters, FaceBook, Twitter, Tumblr... Every dating site out there, and there was no sign of any of the women.

Unless...

Unless they had overlooked something in these girls. They were alone, sad little girls who probably regretted every waking moments of their lives. So, that could only lead to one place, Harvey concluded.

" It usually takes two people to cause a big problem." the sound of his quiet voice silenced everyone. Bradly him a "huh?" look.

" What are you getting at?"

" We overlooked something." he answered. " It's not only this guy who has a problem, Bradly. They all do. All these women regretted every single waking moment of their long miserable lives. And so does this guy. He doesn't stalk them, he's not like that. He only wants to fulfill what somebody refused to do for him." He looked at everyone, hoping that they would understand. He sensed they were on the verge of understanding but they needed a little push. " You checked every social network except one, guys. You missed the one thing we never suspected because we didn't think the mental instability went both ways."

" Are you suggesting that these girls... were suicidal?" Pacey asked, disbelief in her voice. Mumbles sounded across the room as they tested out his theory.

" But what of this man?" Shawn's voice rose above the others. " You think that he wanted someone to kill him?" The skepticism in Shawn's voice seemed to fuel the disbelief around the room. Harvey didn't need to explain any further. He simply got out of his chair and headed for the door.

" Check out all the available suicide chat rooms." he called over his shoulder.

" But why?" Pacey asked, her voice rebounding in his ears. He turned to her and met her gaze.

" Because I think he was just fulfilling his wishes."