Taddio

Crossbow Killer Case.

Thomas was listening to AC/DC’s ‘Back in Black’. The morning was frosty and damp from last night’s rain. His Uni mates thought he was bonkers but Thomas knew that more calories were burned running in cold weather than in warm. He was in the zone, he was Superman.  He bounded across the track through the forest. He felt alive and free.

Thomas stopped suddenly. A young woman was lying next to the path.  He called out to her.  He looked down at her frozen face. Her emerald  eyes stared sightlessly at the steel sky. Her black tresses fanned out beneath her body.  Her blood was in frozen from on the ground. It looked like a raspberry slushy.  Her delicate white hands were clenched over the gaping hole in her chest.   A crossbow bolt protruded from the her chest, right where her heart was located.

  She was gorgeous, tall and she was most definitely dead. Thomas screamed into the empty air, “Help!”

Four Months Later

Detective Armando Taddio was holding up a single green and orange stripped sock on the end of his pencil. He was staring at it quizzically.  Constable Constance Blackwell was staring at the same striped sock with fixation. The sock just swung gently to and fro. The overweight Detective said with tired resignation, “It is most disturbing Blackwell. Okay- go over the facts again.”

 Constance reluctantly tore her eyes from the sock,  “Jenny Graham is a twenty year old University student and a student of Chemistry .  Her body was found by one Thomas Snelling, who was jogging on that particular path. She was shot with a crossbow bolt. Ballistics experts believe it was done at close range.  She was last sighted at a bar on the outskirts of town. It is believed that this establishment sells alcohol to minors. She left  the premises at eleven pm in her red 1998 Ford Accord. " 

Suddenly their Cheif came storming in, his face red and his small eyes darting around, "Have you two solved anything yet? I am tired of making excuses to the flaming press. Bloody vultures!  You both seem to be working on enlarging your arses but you are doing piss all else. Do something!" He then slammed his door causing the windows to rattle.  Taddio, had not even glanced at the Cheif. He gestured for Constance to continue.

Constance cleared her throat and continued to read out loud, "The car was found with the bonnet up, some ten kilometres from the bar.  A friend, a Richard Hayes,  noted that Jenny’s phone was down on charge when he used her phone to phone his girlfriend. Jenny did not appear to have been interfered with. Beside the actual killing there was no sign of  struggle or of bodily assault. She was not reported as missing prior to her body being found. Forensics stated that her time of death occurred six hours prior to the time she was found- meaning she was murdered around midnight.” Armando nodded through all of these details. 

The case was getting old. The Chief had been barking at them for months to solve this mystery, however, there was not enough to even find a person of interest.  Blackwell had run herself ragged on this crime. She had rung every person she could think of. Even Taddio had run out of leads.

The Constable kept reading from her notes on the case, “All of the people in Jenny’s life have their whereabouts accounted for and I have verified their stories.  It is so odd that Jenny was found with car keys next to her and a single stripy sock beside her corpse.  She was wearing high heels and the sock did not appear to fit her. I have been through her personal effects and there was no pair for the sock.  Nobody had ever seen Jenny wearing a sock of this nature before. I was able to prove that the keys were hers.  So far it looks as though Jenny was taken in a crime of opportunity.  Hopefully this new case will shed some light on the poor girl’s fate.”

Constance was referring to the fact that just one week ago another body showed up fifty kilometres away from Jenny. This new victim was a female who was wearing the matching sock. Forensics had confirmed that the sock belonged to the second woman.