"'Lucifer,'" Levi glanced up at the chief and the intern, flickering them back onto the page and adjusting his reading glasses once he pondered about the name for a few moments. "'Nothing is known of the killer other than that they have a very specific method of killing. No name was given to us by the serial murderer themselves, but because of the horrific scenes that they left behind, this murderer was deemed with the official name, Lucifer.
"'Lucifer's method of killing is an elaborate ritual consisting of throat slitting, dismembering and mauling limps, and terrifying mutilation of the body to the point of unidentification. These murders have been going on for the past few months, just after the arrest of Kenny Ackerman, named the source of the Skull Ripper Case.'"
Levi shivered, closing his eyes and taking a breath as he collected himself, clenching his jaw as he continued reading the file.
"'Over the past six months there have been exactly seven murders. Inside these ghastly scenes, the victims, mainly males and females within their late teens to early twenties, were tortured viciously with earlier said methods; another chilling connection between all of these victims were that they were all current or future students of Trost Prep School for Law and Crime (TPrep) who held rather high rankings in their class.'
"It seems Lucifer is after the more potentially great detectives that will rise in the future, as though he wants to eliminate the young investigators altogether."
He paused for a bit, clearing his throat as he processed the text through his head.
"'In comparison to the Skull Ripper Case, investigated by the...admirable Mr. Levi Ackerman," Levi scowled, growling a bit before continuing, "Kenny the Skull Ripper, or 'Kenny the Ripper' for short, and Lucifer both mutilated their victims immensely, slitting their victim's throats in a very similar way with a consistent slash of ten centimeters across and three centimeters deep; there is visual evidence that these two cases, one solved and one unsolved, are indeed linked.'
"Hold on a second," Levi spoke up, breaking away from his reading. "You're saying that Kenny was a part of this case too?!"
Erwin stared at his detective with icy eyes.
"You've seen the evidence," he rumbled darkly, grabbing a picture on his desk. "Look at these slashes across the throat; they're all exactly ten centimeters across and three centimeters deep, just like all of the Skull Ripper's murders."
"There must be a misunderstanding!" Levi insisted, furrowing his dark brows as he skimmed over the passage again. "There must be a misinterpretation in here somewhere!"
"Levi," Erwin said lowly. "How do you think this all adds up?"
"It wasn't him!" Levi screamed, throwing the papers onto the ground. "God fucking dammit, I swear to god it wasn't him!"
"Well what do you think, Levi?" Erwin retaliated, standing up suddenly from his seat and slamming his hands hard onto the wood surface of his desk, raising his voice. "That someone actually practiced slitting things just so they could mimic Kenny the Ripper exactly? Did someone admire Kenny the Ripper, so they wanted to become Kenny the Ripper?!"
"Shut the fuck up!" Levi screeched, now slamming his hands onto the desk, getting into the chief's face. "How many fucking times do I have to tell you to stop calling my father that?!"
"Stop bringing personal matters into your work life, Ackerman!" Erwin spat back. "Your love for your excuse of a father is blinding you from the justice these victims and their families deserve!"
"'Excuse of a father?!'" Levi raged. "You fucking DARE speak of my father like that?!"
"I dare speak of Kenny like that for the sake of the people he's killed -!"
Levi threw a massive punch, landing it square in Erwin's jaw. The impact sent the large man to the side, stumbling as he held his face, yelling out in pain as the bruise immediately grew to an angry red. The moment Levi threw the hit, a shriek erupted from the lips of the girl next to the infuriated investigator.
"My father was a great man!" Levi screeched, clenching his fists even tighter. "He was a great man who did many great things; including being a glorious father to his only child! I may be the only one here who believes he doesn't deserve the fate he has recieved, but I can say now that I will get him out of that fucking prison!"
Erwin, clutching his jaw in agony, slowly turned his face to glare at the raging detective, a frightened college intern backed up against the glass door to the side. The chief's cold, icy eyes pierced into Levi's, his deep voice rumbling as he spoke. "Get out."
Levi scoffed in disbelief.
"Excuse me?" he spat back.
"Get out of my office," Erwin snarled, standing up straight once more, realigning his jaw.
Levi glared at Erwin with steel-blue eyes, fuming as he scoffed and picked up the scattered papers, stuffing them and scooping the images back into the manila folder before storming out, shoving the terrified Aria out of the way.
He marched over to his car in the pouring rain, slamming the doors of the SDA open and frightening everyone else in the faciliy. He tucked the manila file under his coat and fumbled with his keys, his fingers trembling in rage as they clattered against each other on their lanyard.
"God fucking damn, fuck, fuck, fuck..."
"Mr. Ackerman!" a voice called from the entryway of the agency.
Levi snapped his rigid gaze over to the source, seeing a frantic Aria trotting quickly over to him, battling against the pounding rain.
"What are you doing, Stefani?" Levi barked at her. "You'll catch a cold out in this weather!"
"I'd say the same to you, Mr. Ackerman sir!" Aria shouted, holding up a binder she had carried out over her head to protect her from the icy needles of rain. "I'm coming with you!"
"What?" Levi yelled back at her. "What do you mean you're coming?"
"With you!" Aria howled back, her voice barely making it to his ears through the pouring rain. "We still need to discuss my opinions on the case!"
"I don't need anymore opinions!" Levi swatted his hand at her, turning back to fumbling with his keys. "I'm taking this case on by myself!"
"As a seasoned detective, don't you need more than one opinion on a file to check your logic?" Aria persisted, shivering as the rain soaked through her blazer.
"My logic is fine!" Levi hissed. "I don't need your help!"
"Please Mr. Ackerman!" the girl yelled out.
"Go inside!" the detective barked. "Just get away from me!"
"But sir!" Aria called out to him once more, grabbing his arm in desperation. "I've already done some research, and I can boost your investigation...because I think I know where Lucifer is going to strike next!"
Upon hearing this information, Levi stared at her with round eyes, freezing in place as though the rain had soaked him straight to the bone. He stared at the girl with wide eyes, his glasses misted and dappled with drops of icy rain. He stared at her for a little while before growling to himself, shaking her hand off of his arm and finally finding his car keys, manually unlocking the doors.
"Get inside the car," he snarled at her. "Now."
The girl stared at him with a certain thankfulness in her honey eyes, scurrying over to the passanger's seat and yanking the creaking door open. She scuffled inside, flinching at the frosty touch of the worn leather. Levi, dripping and soaking wet, hastily climbed in and locked the car, snapping his sharp gaze over to her.
"What do you know about the kill site?" he growled, only to shake his head and wave his hand quickly at her, silencing the girl. "No, nevermind that. What I really meant to say was...
"How did you know this about the kill site?"
Aria slicked her dripping hair back, smiling sheepishly as she poked her glasses back up on her nose.
"Well..." the intern began, pondering a little as her finger rested on her glossy lips. "I did a little investigating for myself yesterday at some murder sites, and I found a small link that may connect them all."
"Something that connects them all?" Levi furrowed his eyebrows in doubt. "You mean you've discovered a pattern in the murders?" He scoffed. "Yeah right, not even I can find out patterns in a killer's style in a day."
"But sir," Aria insisted, holding out her hand, pleading for the files. "They're really obvious if you just look deep enough into the reports."
Levi stared at her blankly, blinking a few times before he frowned, handing over the papers over to the intern; she took them gratefully, extracting the somewhat soaked papers from inside the manila folder with the utmost care.
"Look at these file reports, Mr. Ackerman," Aria said, finding the semi-crisp paper she was looking for. "These investigations were led by Detective Mike Zacharius, another one of the top detectives in Trost. He's a cold case detective, you see; so I suspect Mr. Smith left all of the hot trails to you, considering how quickly you solve these mysteries, and gave all of the cold cases to Mr. Zacharius, who really has an unusual hunch for these types of things; I even hear his nose is more sensitive than a bloodhound's, so he can pick up even the faintest trails from a case, say...thirteen years before. Amazing, isn't it?"
Levi glared at the girl through glinted spectacles, growling internally as his lip twitched downward.
"What does Zacharius' fucking supreme smelling skills have to do with anything?" he snarled.
Aria blinked her round hazel eyes.
"Mr. Ackerman," she said plainly. "If his sense of smell leads him through the most difficult trails, why does his file reports all state that he lost the trail of the killer in the city wash?"
Levi just sat there, working his mind so that he could make some sense out of the things she seemed to be pulling out from thin air.
"Trost is a rainy place," Levi said back, shrugging. "And the area got a pretty hard dousing of rain in that time period, so it would be plausible that the trails had all washed away by the time Zacharius had taken a sniff around." Levi paused for a bit, clenching his jaw in disdain. "I remember the rain vividly, Miss Stefani. I remember seeing by father with his arms cuffed behind his back, being escorted into the S.W.A.T van with six men around him with loaded firearms.
"I specifically remember how the rain made my body shiver because it soaked me to the bone. Miss Stefani, any trails left over from that three month time period of the heavy rain would have been washed away by the second hour the trail had been created; there was just too much flooding in the area, and all trails for even a hundred bloodhounds would have been swept away."
Aria knitted her caramel brows together, clearly getting a little frustrated at explicating her logic to the top detective in the country.
"But Mr. Ackerman, sir -"
"There's nothing more to say on this, Miss Stefani," Levi said bleakly, crossing his arms and turning away from the girl, gazing solemnly into the pouring rain outside. "Rains like these can wipe any palate clean."
"Mr. Zacharius had found the trail," Aria nodded, "and then wrote down that he lost the scent," Aria turned back to the files, skimming through the text with frantic eyes. "Then that means...there was at least a minuscule amount of scent left for him to detect! Therefore, there actually was some trail left, but Mr. Zacharius had lost it inside the wash!"
Levi scowled.
"The trail could have ran thin because of the rain." He shrugged the matter to the side, never tearing his eyes away from the gloomy rains that pounded onto the pavement.
"That's the point!" Aria rose her voice, her tone getting stronger with every word. Her sudden change of pitch made Levi turn around, staring at her with one brow raised. "All of Lucifer's murders had taken place in the city wash, where the rain would sweep his away his scent."