Always Here: A Jay Halstead fanfic

Chapter Seventy One

It was the next day and they were about to go work surveillance but something had stopped them. "What the hell?" Harper muttered, showing Jay a bunch of newspapers of women who were raped and killed. "What are you talking about?" he asked, walking over to her. 

"All of these women were raped and killed, same M.O. Five foot seven, green eyes, brown hair, all in or near Chicago, this year and last" she said, looking up at him, while Jay narrowed his eyes, her hands shook as she pointed to the paper, before she pressed her fingers into the desk.

"Found it outside our room this morning," she whispered, Jay studied her face, knowing how much serial rapist cases bothered her. "Son of a bitch. I bet Roger sent it," Jay started off, muttering a slew of curse words. "If he sent it, what was he trying to say?" she asked, glancing up at Jay, not being able to look at the articles anymore.

She hated subjects like this, after everything Lily and Emily had been through. "He's a bastard for sure..., but I don't know if he...if he does this, this isn't human..." Harper trailed off, looking at the newspapers.

Jay sent a concerned glance over to Harper, "We need to call Voight, call Kim and ask her to access the cameras on this floor to see who sent that," Jay explained. He wasn't someone who was known for following orders every single time but when it came to Harper he would never put her in danger by deciding not to listen to Voight. "An employee at the hotel brought it by," she said, getting off the phone with Kim.

"Voight said we can't pull back now, the commander's up his ass about solving this, threatening to shut Intelligence down" Jay explained, angrily, a pit falling to his stomach, he didn't want to say it, he couldn't say it, but he knew exactly what this meant. "It probably doesn't mean anything, we don't even know who sent it" she tried to assure him, but she was preoccupied with the thought of the amount of articles there were, "Well I'm sure as hell going to find out," Jay said while Harper looked up at him, assessing him, before returning to looking at the articles.

"I'm going to make a few phone calls, I need to talk with some of the employees and Burgess," Jay said, before leaving the room. Leaving partner alone at the desk, she blinked twice, trying not to focus on how horrible it was, how her sister Lily had gone through the same thing, how Emily had to deal with the same things over and over again, everyday. She tried focusing on the content of the papers, drawing on a dry erase board.

"Jay?" she asked as he came back, several hours later, sitting on the bed, head in between his hands. "It was one of Roger's associates," he explained, his hands clenched in tight fists, when he walked over to Harper to see what she had come up with, he could tell she was tense too.

"M.E. reports say cause of death was due to blunt force trauma to the head or bleeding out, severe vaginal tearing is consistent with every single victim, I--," Harper sighed, not wanting to continue, the victims reminded her of what happened to Lily. Whichever bastard did this, she was going to get them.

"One victim, his first one, she got away, but died at med, I guess he got scared and ran, she didn't make it, there was too much bleeding," she whispered, a sad look covering her face. She looked up into Jay's gorgeous eyes, trying to calm down, but judging by the look in his eyes, she knew she wouldn't be able to, he had just realized something, something really bad.

"What's on your mind?" she asked, eyes traveling down to the ground. "Those women are exactly like you, same build, same height, same eye color and hair color" Jay started, looking over at her. "What? I--," she started thinking about it all and realized that what Jay was saying was nothing but the truth, she lost herself in the articles once more, what those women had gone through, whoever did that to them wasn't human, they were a monster, just like Jason and his men for what they did to Lily and all those kids.

"Hey, hey," she heard Jay say, feeling a warm hand on her wrist, looking up at him. He shook his head, taking the articles, wanting to protect her from the unnecessary pain. Their eyes lingered on each other for too long to just be friends before Harper broke the gaze, green eyes traveling to the ground as she prepared herself to tell Jay the worst part of all of it.

"Jay..." she started off, trying to brace him for the news he was about to hear, but as she studied his eyes she knew he already knew. "They haven't found the guy doing this," he whispered, knuckles pressed hard against the table, looking down.

"Yeah," she whispered, glancing over at him. He screwed his eyebrows closer together, he always conveyed his expressions with his eyebrows, but this time not even Harper could tell what he was feeling. "Shit, do you know how this looks?" Jay sighed, knowing Roger had something to do with it.

"But that doesn't make sense, there's no evidence of violence against women in any of his files, it's all about illegal military grade items," she said in disbelief, wondering how someone could use that as a cover for so long. "Let's call Voight, we can't go back to the district to brief everyone, we could get made and it's too far," Jay spoke while Harper nodded, still shaken by their observations.