The Perfect Emma

Chapter Eight

Grayson Todd

A murder and a kidnapping all in one night. Fucking hell. Back at the PD, Gray and Aaron were already starting to work on both cases when their captain called them into his office.

"I'm giving this to Missing Persons."

Both detectives reacted adversely. "What?" Gray replied incredulously. "Why?"

Zachary Malcolm shook his head and tapped his desk calmly. "Because it is a missing person. And you boys are overworked as it is. You are fantastic detectives. But you can't find this woman and solve this murder at the same time."

Gray scowled and crossed his arms, glancing at Aaron, who looked just as annoyed. "Zach, we find this woman, we do solve this murder," said the blond one.

Zach shook his head again. "You don't know that. It is likely that the killer is the one who took Mrs. Mabel, but we don't know that for certain. You don't know that for certain."

"Zach," Gray murmured imploringly, but the man remained unconvinced.

"Zach...." Aaron started. "This is a Ghost Killer murder. Nobody's found him thus far, and at this rate nobody will. We can handle both cases."

Grayson didn't like that Aaron was implying they could handle both cases because the murder would inevitably go cold, but if it managed to convince Zach, he would let it slide. "Emma is our witness, Zach," he insisted. "Finding her should be our responsibility."

The man glanced between the two of them, his face unchanging, until finally he let out a sigh. "Alright. Fine. But if this woman turns up dead, I'm giving it to someone else."

They both scowled. "You mean you're taking us off the Ghost Killer entirely?" Aaron asked, his eyebrows shooting up. "Zach—!"

"You boys have been working these murders since you got your shields. A fresh pair of eyes couldn't hurt."

At this point, Gray had gone silent. The idea of losing this case was unacceptable. This case was the reason Grayson had even become a cop. The day he let anyone else take it without a fight was the day he returned his gun and badge. "She's not going to turn up dead," Gray muttered.

"You don't know that, Gray."

"Sure I do," the detective retorted, turning for the door. "Because I'm going to find her."

—

It was a big promise Grayson was making, but he was bound and determined to keep it. He was the one who kept Emma at the crime scene, he was the one who brought attention to her, who exposed her to the killer's sights, and god damn it, he would be the one to make that right.

"What've we got?" he asked the medical examiner, standing across from the woman, a body on the table between them.

"Her name's Lara Akers," said the ME, folding the sheet back from the dead woman's face. "Twenty-five years old. Medical student. Went missing about nine months ago."

Gray nodded. "I remember her case," he murmured. Her disappearance had gone to Missing Persons, because it hadn't been in relation to the Ghost Killer at the time, but far be it from Gray not to poke his nose into every kidnapping that involved a young woman. "Alright Wendy, lemme guess; she's not a brunette."

Wendy Griffin shook her head. "Redhead. Curly redhead. Keeping her like this," she gestured at the straight, short, brown hair. "Must've been a bitch."

"I'm not surprised," the detective responded, frowning. "He probably got tired of the maintenance. Explains why she's early." Ghost Killer victims were usually gone upwards from a year. This was first that had been missing for less since....

"I'm running tox right now," Wendy said with a nod. "I'll let you know as soon it comes back."

Gray hummed, continuing to stare at the body with furrowed brows, before giving a nod of his own. As he turned to go, he said to Wendy, "Bet you twenty she's got traces of chloroform."

Wendy chuckled. "May as well give me your wallet now."

As he was leaving the morgue, Aaron was on his way to enter it, and they stopped outside the door. "What's Griff say?" Aaron asked, leaning against the wall.

"It's that med student, Lara Akers?" Grayson replied, touching his temple and closing his eyes briefly. "Christ, wasn't she here?"

"Before she went missing?" Aaron murmured, nodding slowly. "Yeah, I remember that. Wasn't she studying to be an ME? Griff showed her the ropes for a day, if I remember correctly."

"Sounds familiar," Gray agreed. "We'll know more about what happened when the tox screens come back."

Aaron shook his head, starting back for their desks. "That'll take forever. We may as well start working on Mrs. Mabel's case."

Grayson agreed, following after his partner. There wasn't much they could do for Lara anymore, but Emma was—hopefully—still alive. The more they could find out about her while the information was available, the better chance they would have to find her.

And by extension, find her alive.

"Should we bring in the husband?" Aaron questioned, leaning back and tapping a pencil against his desk, gazing at Gray.

Gray made a distasteful expression. "If our first meeting with him told us anything, he'll more than likely put his wife in the best light possible. We don't want light, we want truth." Not to mention that Mr. Mabel rather annoyingly had a habit of speaking on his wife's behalf, and while that was technically what they wanted right now, the man wouldn't even attempt to be unbiased. No. It would take longer, but getting the information themselves would prove more effective.

As the detectives began searching, it took a surprisingly short amount of time to get something. "Oh look at that," said Aaron. "AFIS you beautiful program."

"What?" Gray murmured, leaning over to look at Aaron's computer. Then he furrowed his brows at the screen. "She's a teacher?" Well, that explained why she had a record. Gray would be lying if he said he'd been surprised to find her so quickly, seeing as she hadn't seemed capable of committing a crime. But teachers were required to have records.

Joy.

"Third grade," Aaron confirmed with a nod. "Well this is good. We can ask the school for her records there too."

"Mm," Grayson hummed, staring at the screen. Emma's smiling face stared back, her long blonde hair falling over her shoulders. Gray frowned. She probably didn't look anything like that by now. Dammit.

No. This was a good thing.

"Aaron, do me a favor."

"Mm?"

Gray pointed at the picture. "Send that to imaging. Make her hair short and brown, and then put out an alert."

The other glanced between the computer and his partner with a cocked brow. "You think that'll do anything?"

"Dunno. But it's worth a try." No Ghost Killer murders started out connected. The girls went missing and it was impossible to know whether they would turn up with short brown hair until they did. But Emma? Emma's disappearance was directly connected to her involvement; she was a witness. Gray was positive that turning her into a short-haired brunette themselves would help.

Because he was sure that's what they would be looking for.

"Alright," Aaron agreed skeptically, beginning to perform the task. "But y'know, I doubt she'll be seen by anybody—kidnappers don't exactly take their victims outside. Not unless they're confident or it's been too long."

Unfortunately, he was right. If Emma saw the light of day again, it would probably be a year or more from now, and it would probably be the last of it she ever saw. But Gray was persistent. "It's still worth a try," he insisted, returning to his own computer. If he could say nothing else, he could at least say he tried.