Sleuth

Run

"Sheriff" Kaddian said as he approached her position, but she did not answer him. "Sheriff Hale" he repeated again, this time touching her shoulder. She jumped, startled by his presence, and reached up to rip out the earphone tucked discreetly under her hair.

"Lord, you scared me. Goodness" she said. She quickly shimmied off the car and dusted herself off.

"I apologize" Kaddian said.

"Oh, it's alright. I'm jumpy by nature. Not necessarily a good thing when you're a cop though. Anyways, I was just looking at the crime scene photos and I noticed something odd" Lauren said, walking toward the tree. Kaddian followed closely behind her, positive she was, at any moment, going to trip and kill herself on a leaf. The rest veered from the trail and went to explore the surrounding area.

"So, I was looking at the photos and I noticed that the 'X' on the tree is always placed a consistent distance from the ground. However, there are two heights that appear. Now" she continued, with a slight grunt, "I am by no means short, I'm about average, close enough to make this 'X'" she said, outlining the letter that was a littler over her head. "But only someone your size could make this 'X'"she said, holding up an image of an 'X' at a different dump site. This 'X' was considerably higher up than the other. "And they would have to reach a bit as well" she said, completely immersed in her explanation. She reached behind her and grabbed Kaddian's arm, pulling it above her head and then pushing it from the elbow so his long span was stretched to a little above eye level. Kaddian looked down at the top of her brunette head as she continued to ramble to herself. She released his arm and dropped down from the tips of her toes and tried to back up but ran directly into his immobile form.

"Sorry" she said, brow furrowed and stepped around him. He lowered his arm and stepped away from the tree, watching her as she speculated.

"Don't you see? There is no height that is comfortably between the two of us. The unsub would have either had to jump up or stand on something to make the high 'X' and would have had to hunch over to make the low one. Unless... there are two unsubs" she said, finally looking Kaddian in the face.

____________________________________________________________________________________

"I've been keeping them in the cooler, with Lauren's official letter of request that is" Lizbet Penner said as she slid five bodies from the horizontal coolers.

"How long have you been the medical examiner here?" Scottlin Reik asked, looking around the basement area hesitantly.

"I'm not the official examiner, just an assistant while I finish my schooling, but the Head is a ninety year old man with cataracts. He basically is still employed for logistical purposes... and pity" Lizbet said. Scottlin wondered what it was about the people in this Sleuth with being emotionally neutral all the time. He had to admit that Lizbet was attractive, in a simple sort of way, and she did smile more often than some of her Sleuthmates, however if she was not conversing with someone, her face expressed about as much emotion as the corpses she worked with.

"You enjoy this?" Rory asked.

"I wanted to be a doctor, then I realized I don't like people. So this is the perfect answer. I get to handle medical procedures without having to deal with the whining and crying of injured people. Plus, these people are already dead... that's one less worry for me in the long run" Lizbet explained.

"You are very interesting" Rory said with a disbelieving chuckle.

"Thank you" Lizbet flashed a glaring smile that made her, in that instant, beautiful, but it quickly fell away again, leaving Rory and Scottlin with the plain jane that tended to be a bit erie.

"What did you find during their autopsies?" Scottlin asked, looking over the faces of the people he recognized.

"Well, the first thing I tested was the blood used on each red 'X'. I only have the blood samples from the last five murders of the case, as they happened in our county, but I do have the records from the other stations testings. Each time, the blood used on the 'X' above the person is not their blood, but the DNA match of the body discovered directly before them. It was like the unsub was watching, waiting for the body to be discovered, before they deposited another. These two" Lizbet said, gesturing to a man and woman named Robert and Ellen, "were murdered at roughly the same time based on rigor, but were dumped weeks apart from each other. Three days after his body was dumped, hers was unloaded on the opposite end of the forest" Lizbet finished.

"So if the blood on the tree is always the person from before, then whose blood was on the first tree?" Rory asked, looking up from her examination report.

"I don't know. The police station tested the sample and came up with no matches" Lizbet explained.

"Could it be the unsubs?" Scottlin asked.

"That's what I have been wondering" Lizbet said as she began sliding the bodies back into their coolers.