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Chapter 7: Wolverine's Nail Clippers

The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen on interests of community welfare and existence.

Robert Peel

"Are you sure that he's okay?" Jinet asked, trying not to smile to obviously.

Cooper glared at him as the old man who's name he couldn't remember gave him another once over. "I don't know, maybe you could tell me what was in that jam and I could tell you how long it would be before I can actually help you."

"You mean you had some of Meillenski's goat and blueberry jam?" the doctor said with an awful attempt to cover up his laugh.

"Did you say blueberry?" Cooper repeated in surprise causing several of the officers in the hallway to turn towards the noise.

For once the area was full due to the fact that the station had a partly caved in roof from the snow so the off-duty officers were working overtime to try and keep the files and computers dry and to get the roof back up.

"You're more worried about the blueberries than the goat intestines?" Jinet said, studying Cooper in a new light.

"I'm allergic to blueberries, they don't go down well." Cooper replied, he blinked and jerked back up. "Wait, what did you just say?"

Jinet quickly shook his head and tried to change the subject by asking if he'd finished reading over the case files yet, which he hadn't had time to seeing as he'd only had them for twenty minutes.

Even though Cooper wasn't the qualified doctor that most of his coworkers were he was able to tell when someone was making a joke at his expense, besides, he'd had goat intestines before and they tasted nothing like the jam he'd eaten, leaving him to spend the next hour of going over files wondering exactly what he had eaten.

It was during this hour that Cooper began to realize that his bosses had drastically misjudged the situation in Boslone. They had told him that there were simply four unsolved murders in the same area, not that all of them took place inside of a mental institution, let alone the Boslone Institute for Mental Health and Wellness, the place was notorious for its safety protocols.

He hadn't been informed that the victims were all girls between 14 and 18, the youngest being Misa Robinson, the second victim, the oldest Marie Vonn, at 18. No one had mentioned the messages written in blood on the wall, the time codes on the video, the silent and impossibly quick kills or even that they all took place in less than a few weeks.

Also not mentioned were the astonishing physical similarities between all of the girls, with their pictures taped to an old and cracked white board, without the labels identifying them, he might have thought they were sisters.

More disturbing though, were the after shots next to the photos that had been given by family members. It was like a home makeover show, from grass and smiles to red on white.

There were no other boards to write on as Cooper soon found out, apparently the only one that they had was a donation from one of the schools on the island, after the mine closed down it did too, and any children on the island were shipped off to the nearest school on another island about half an hour away, if you took the boat bus as the locals had called it.

This meant that the suspects had been taped, pinned and balanced precariously to stay somewhat flat on the wall of the detective's room, there were 28 faces on the board with a number beside them corresponding to the file that was organized in order on the floor directly in front of the wall.