(BOOK 2) MARK/HOFFMAN: A Saw Fanfiction

SEVENTEEN

It was the home stretch now. 

"Well, I wish you the best," Mark told Fisk. "You've always been a great detective. It'll be a shame to have you gone." 

"I really am sorry. I... I know we're the only two left." 

Mark and Fisk stared off into space for a moment. Tapp, Sing, Rigg, Matthews, Kerry, Fisk, and himself were all pretty close at one point. Before Angel died, he hung out with them often, went to bars, tried out bowling, hell, even went on a camping trip. Angel dying really caused him to pull away from everyone, but when Jigsaw came around it seemed that everyone walked around with no joy in their eyes. Everything was stressful. Everything was depressing. 

While Mark had assisted in the killings of all of those people, it often came back to haunt him. He would have never done it if he hadn't been blackmailed. Seth Baxter was the only person he wanted dead.  After a while he grew to dislike some of his coworkers, or at least not care about them, but more and more he would find himself having nightmares, the faces of the deceased scaring him awake. 

At least Fisk would make it out of this alive. 

"Yeah, isn't that crazy?" Mark huffed. 

"It is." They were quiet for a moment before Fisk stood. "Well, I'll be around for a couple more weeks. You're gonna catch him man, I know it." 

Mark stood too and stuck his hand out. "I hope so." 

They shook hands. 

"You will." 

"Well, let me know if you need anything," Mark told him. 

"Okay. Same here. I'll talk to you later Hoffman." 

He nodded to his coworker before he left the room, disappearing from Mark's view. 

Mark sat back down, looking up at the picture of Angelina on the shelf to his left. He clenched his jaw. With John, Amanda, and Gordon being dead or against him, he felt extremely alone. Doing all of this on his own made it hard to keep things hidden. He wasn't home near as much, so now Abby was beginning to shift her attitude toward him. 

She was suspicious. 

As he thought to himself, his phone rang. He recognized Erickson's number. After a few rings, he mustered the energy to answer. "Hello?" 

"Detective? Do you mind meeting us in the coroner's office? We have some things to discuss that could be very important to the Jigsaw case." 

Mark couldn't help the anxiety that seemed to make a permanent residence at the pit of his stomach. Whenever he heard about new leads, the anxiety grew. What if he slipped up?

"I'll be right there." 

He made his way through the department, not meeting people's eyes as he passed them. When he reached the coroner's office, he took a deep breath through his nose, then walked in. 

Listening to the tape from John's stomach was very vivid in his mind. Seeing John cut open on the autopsy table, brain removed, chest cracked open. It had been a sight for sure. He mentioned in the tape that he wouldn't go untested, but Mark didn't understand how that would ever happen. Gordon was the only one he really had to worry about, but Mark could easily overpower him if need be. Jill was a joke. 

As he thought to himself, he heard: "Look here." 

It pulled him from his thoughts. Mark turned and walked over to Dr. Heffner, their coroner that worked in the department. Erickson and Perez had already been there. 

"These are the jigsaw pieces cut from previous victims," he started. Mark took the pictures from him and studied them, admittedly unsure of why he was being shown them in the first place. 

"This is the piece taken from the latest victim." The victim, Eddie from the pound of flesh trap, laid on the table. Mark glanced at the puzzle piece, still confused. 

"It looks like all the rest," he said. 

Perez piped in. "Yeah, that's what we said too." 

Alarm bells started going off in Mark's head. Where were they going with this?

"The skin abrasions, they're indicative of a knife with a partially serrated edge," Dr. Heffner said. 

"So?"

"So all of the other cuts were made with a near perfect blade of surgical quality."

Mark came up with a quick lie-- or defense-- . "Obviously Strahm used a different knife then John Kramer."

"Right, but it got us curious, so we pulled the files to compare," Perez said. Her and Erickson both walked over to a whiteboard with multiple pictures of the puzzle pieces on different victims. "That same knife was used on only one other victim."

"That victim was Seth Baxter," Erickson told him. "The man who killed your sister." 

Hearing Seth's name was like a punch to the gut, anger immediately taking over him. His heart began racing with anxiety, but he managed to keep all of those feelings in. 

"You're telling me that you can tell a different knife was used from a photo?" Mark asked, joining them at the whiteboard. 

"No, but I can." 

He turned to look at Heffner. "I was the one who examined that body. I've examined every victim of the Jigsaw Killer." 

What do you want, a gold star? 

"Good work," Mark said, looking at him with slight annoyance. This might be an issue. He cursed at himself internally. He should have known. 

"The tape from the latest victim was missing, so we're looking into the Seth Baxter tape," Erickson said. 

Again, a sudden rush of anger and anxiety. 

"Why's that?" 

"If a different person cut the piece, then maybe a different person made the tape too," Perez explained. 

Mark didn't know what to say, so he just said: "Strahm." 

"Yeah, maybe," Perez said. 

He noticed the way both detectives looked at him. They were suspicious too. 

"Strahm's voice on that tape would be our smoking gun. If we had that, we'd go public with his involvement," Erickson added. 

Mark nodded. He handed the pictures back to Heffner and looked at Erickson and Perez. "Is there anything you need from me right now?" 

"Not as of right now," Perez told him. "We'll let you know if we get our hands on the tape." 

"Okay. Well, I better get back to work." 

His three coworkers nodded. Mark quietly exited the coroner's space, his heart racing. 

If they found that tape, that could be a very big problem for him. He had scrambled his voice to make himself sound like Jigsaw, but they could just as easily de-scramble it with the same technology. He had to hurry up and finish everything, while simultaneously figuring out a way to get out of this Seth Baxter tape situation. 

He need to talk to Jill Tuck. 

4 DAYS UNTIL WILLIAM EASTON'S TEST