"Sure is dead, alright."
The Sheriff scratched his chin and sent his collegue a pointed glare. "We've got a genius on our hands."
He glanced at him, and the side of his mouth tugged up into a slight grin, but the expression was quick to fade as he turned his attention back to the crime scene in front of them.
It was an apartment on the more decent side of Roseville. The kind of neighborhood filthy rich people wouldn't be caught dead in, but where families with two working parents could scrape by without worrying their children would be shot, robbed, or kidnapped while they were away.
The room itself was small, but relatively well furnished; a living area with a second-hand sofa and a small, wall mounted television that was attached to a kitchen with all the necessary amenities and a rickety, round dining table. The window above the table was closed, blue curtains drawn tightly shut.
Spread-eagled on the floor beside the table was a balding middle aged man in a pair of plaid payjama pants and a well-worn grey shirt, both of which were soaked through with slowly drying blood.
One of the man's arms was bent at a hideous angle, and there was a glint of white where the bone poked sickenly through the elbow.
The investigator wordlessly accepted the gloves the Sheriff offered him and, when he had managed to force the tight latex onto his hands, crouched down beside the body.
The first thing to be done was searching the man's pockets. Fetching a pack of cigarettes and a wallet that identified the man as a 33-year-old American.
"I don't think we need to determine the cause of death."
Ten, if not more knife wounds littered the body, and a quick slit of the throat had finished the job—exactly the same as the last five crime scenes they had examined the past few months.
The Sheriff's heart sunk as his collegue gave him a look that confirmed what he had already begun to suspect.
Three brutal stabbings at a murder scene was an unfortunate coincidence. Four was... Well, four was even more of a coincidence. But five? Five was a serial killer, no reasonable doubt behind it.
"Damn!" The Sheriff swore empathically, standing from his crouch beside the victim. "No way this is a coincidence."
These five crime scenes shared more than a common cause of death. They had all been astoundingly, frustratingly, almost impossibly clean of evidence. No security camera footage. No living eye witnesses. No conveniently abandoned murder weapon. Certainly no DNA to be tested.
And it wasn't like the person behind all of it made a point to keep things clean, either. Blood was everywhere and each time, the victim seemed propped up into a different angle. Posed, almost.
The police were as close to finding the guy as they were a five legged unicorn. They didn't even know where to start.
This series of murders was of a different kind, and had struck the Sheriff as such from the very beginning. Despite what the crude nature of the injuries suggested, it was instantly clear that the amount of skill involved in the killings was insane.
"Sheriff," a female officer beckoned him over to the green couch that hadn't been spared from the brutality of it all, and was scribbled on with very neat handwriting.
He made sure not to touch it, bowing down just enough to read the few taunting words.
'Might want to consider hiring a few more men. Best regards,
-the Ghost Face'
The ride back to the station was tense. The Sheriff drove on autopilot, his eyes fixated on the road as he thought about the possible pattern. It wasn't long before he put the car in park in front of the station and they got out.
Once inside, the man headed to his icy office and plopped down onto his chair, pulling out a manilla folder from one of the nearby drawers. Skimming through the papers with practiced accuracy, he let the sheets of gory images and identities of the victims flip past his eyes.
Pièrre Christensen, 23-year-old male. 5'11". Plumber. Stabbed to death.
Melinda Sacchez. 33-year-old female. 5'6". Chef. Stabbed to death, torn open. Organs removed and put out on display.
Olive Santiana. 19-year-old female 5'8". Student. Stabbed to death.
Sophie Merro. 29-year-old female. 5'8". Single mother. Stabbed to death.
That was still excluding the case of today. All were discovered in their homes within four days of time of death, either by roommates finding them or neighbors reporting them missing.
"So what do they have in common?" The Sheriff murmured to himself, putting the files down and noting the faint imprint of his fingertips upon the papers from his constant grip on it.
He recrossed his arms, one finger tapping the opposite in a steady rhythm. He needed to think harder.
A deathly calmth chilled in his crinkled eyes as a thoughtful expression creased his features. There seemed to be no connections between the victims. There was no evidence, and the fact that the murderer managed to elude the authorities for such a long time was certainly a blow to the pride of the police force.
The only thing that all of them seemed to have in common was that they all had recieved a phone call weeks prior, and the women had their locks changed not long before their deaths, which would indicate that they had been feeling unsafe.
They could very well just be picked at random, which was very unusual for a serial killer. Most liked to leave clues for detectives to find, others used signatures or at least had their victims related one way or another.
He hadn't even finished his coffee when he got the call from one of his men informing him that they had discovered yet another body that looked like their killer.
"Fuck," he cursed under his breath. "Okay. Where is it? I'll meet you there."
The address was rattled off. This time it wasn't a home, but a hotel room. A fairly expensive one too.
The Sheriff hung up the call and was on his wat with a sinking feeling in his heart. Looked like their killer was becoming more ambitious. Two kills in one day, in total opposite sides of town. The murderer must be gaining confidence. And why shouldn't he? The killer had to know the investigators were making progress like a sloth through quick sand, having proven himself scarily intelligent.
When the Sheriff arrived at the scene, his collegue was already there along with other officers who had taped off the room to prevent civilians entering.
One officer was comforting a sobbing woman outside the door. He nodded at the Sheriff as he arrived and slipped under the tape reluctantly.
The victim was a young woman with dark skin and long, curly black hair who was sprawled out across the bloody hotel room bed atop the covers, emerald eyes frozen open and unseeing.
The dark halo of curly hair did nothing to disguise the fact that the top of the victim's skull was caved in. As if that was not enough to finish the job, the rest of her body had been beaten broken and bloody.
Even without the head wound, she'd probably been dead. Her chest had been torn open too, and in her right hand laid her own bloody heart.
The left hand had been angled in a triangular position towards her head in a way that models would do when they had their pictures taken.
There couldn't be a bigger clue, truly, there couldn't be—but none of them would be any wiser about its significance.
The image that was now engraced into the very pupils of his eyes was now an eternal imagine in his buzzing mind.
Something about this kill struck the Sheriff more than the others. They all looked like whatever sick fuck took pleasure out of it all had also taken their time here, but this one almost seemed to convey some sort of message that wasn't purely taunting.
"'Ghostface', ay? Hope I'll be the one to put a bullet into this son-uv-a-bitch's head!"
One thing was for certain. The media were going to have something to talk about for years to come.