Damien wasn't a homicide detective, so he only learned about the second body after the M.E. came to deliver the report on Kieri. He'd been right in the middle of filling out a missing person's report.
"You look like shit Kimmy." He joked, noticing the dark circles under her eyes, and her worn-out appearance overall.
"I feel like shit." She responded wincing when she caught sight of the little boy in his stroller a few feet away from where a young woman sat filling out paperwork. "Oops. I caught another body early this morning." Kimmy said in a lower tone of voice while setting the report for Kieri on top of the desk.
"Like the last one?" Damien asked with both interest and dismay.
Kimmy nodded. "I think she might have been a dancer."
Damien's stomach churned, his heart sank, he turned and looked at the woman and the little boy. Kimmy seemed to understand.
"Are they here filing a missing person's report?"
"Yeah. That's Marissa, the babysitter. She says the boy's mother never came home from work last night, a dancer at Club Good Times. I was getting ready to head over there as soon as we figured out what to do with the boy. Looks like I'll need to call social services after all."
Kimmy grimaced, "Did they give you a picture?"
Damien nodded, pulling the picture out from underneath the statement he'd been writing up, and handing it over.
"That's my Jane Doe alright."
With a sigh, Damien stood and walked over to the young babysitter, Kimmy looked on, her heart breaking when the young woman slumped in her chair, burying her face in her hands while she began to cry, the sound ringing loudly throughout the bullpen, and drawing several of the other officer's attention.
"You're sure?" She sobbed.
Damien shook his head. "The M.E. confirmed it, but since her next of kin is in Miami, and you're listed as her emergency contact, I'm going to need you to formally identify the body for me."
Marissa looked at Joey, who sat peacefully in his stroller and looked around all wide-eyed clutching a tattered teddy bear to his chest. "What's going to happen to Joey?"
"We'll have to get a hold of the boy's father, but until then, the state will find a family to take care of him."
"Oh God, I can't believe this."
"Let me know when you're ready to view the body."
Marissa nodded, pulling Joey and his stroller closer to her, whether to comfort herself or the boy, Damien didn't think it mattered, they'd both need it.
Stopping for a second to talk to another officer to inform them of the situation, and directing them to see to Marissa and contact social services, Damien walked back to Kimmy, who sat at his desk, waiting patiently, and asked her to take him to the latest victim.
"This one isn't quite like the other." She said on the way to the morgue.
"How so?"
"I found multiple ligature marks, so it looks like she'd been restrained, probably to a table or something, but no pre-mortem wounds like the first time."
"They didn't torture her?"
"No. Whoever did this killed her quickly, I doubt if she felt it at all."
"Okay, so what about it is the same?"
"Well, if you had read over my report on the Krycek woman, you'd know that the damage to the throat appears to be animal related trauma."
Damien stuck his hand out in front of him, stopping Kimmy before she'd reached the door to the exam room. "Say that again?"
"Something bit into her throat. She had teeth marks on either side of the wound, large incisors, about the size of a small bear or a large wolf."
"That doesn't make any damn sense."
"That's what I said too, which is why I've called in a veterinary pathologist. I've got someone coming in to look at the wound on the Krycek woman, I suppose I'll have them take a peek at this one too, it looks nearly identical, if not slightly smaller but some kind of animal ripped these poor girls' throats out."
Kimmy opened the door, pulling out two masks and two sets of gloves handing the extras to Damien. The scent of bleach overwhelmed him.
"He bleached the body again?"
"Yes," Kimmy answered pulling the sheet down far enough that Damien would be able to see the exposed wound. "Whoever did this was much cleaner this time around."
But certainly no more merciful, Damien said to himself as he examined the wound. Kimmy was right, without all the blood and gore the last body had, it made it pretty easy to see the distinct outline of a large animal's incisors on either side of the gaping hole in her throat.
"I don't get it." Damien groused. "Why would anyone use an animal as a murder weapon?"
"I don't understand it myself, but I'm definitely curious as to how they got the animal to attack her without so much as inflicting a single scratch on the rest of her body. A bear trained or not, would have clawed her to shreds."
"A trained attack dog?" He asked, wondering about Keith once more and the fact that he had a slew of aggressive dogs at his disposal.
"No. That's no dog bite, the teeth are too big, and spaced too wide. The incisors are larger than those of a dog. Like I said, it looks like a small bear to me."
Damien thought about that, remembering her earlier observations and imagining the wolves in Keith's care. "Or a large wolf?"
"Possibly." Kimmy agreed, covering the body back up and disposing of her gloves and mask as they left the room. "Wolves have been known to go for the head or throat, but there haven't been wolves in Pennsylvania in over a century."
"Who caught this case?"
"Torres and Fields."
"Great, thanks, Kimmy. And uh, can you get me a copy of the pathologist's report when it's finished?"
"Sure, no problem."
Kimmy was right, there hadn't been wild wolves in Pennsylvania in a long time, but he knew of an entire pack of domesticated ones that might have been trained to do the job. Picturing the implications, Damien hurried back to the station, nearly running through the bullpen on his way to see the officers who'd gotten the case after a brief check in with his Captain to tell him he would be taking it from them.
"Yo, Frank? Where's Fields?"
Frank Torres shook his big beefy head, "I dunno, bathroom? What's up?"
"I need you to tell me what you've got so far on the body in the morgue, I need to see your reports."
Frank glowered but shuffled around a few papers until he came up with the folder. "Yeah uh, the Jane Doe..."
"Alexis Johnson." Damien butted in.
"You know her?"
"No, but I recently filed a missing person's report on her, that's not the point though. What do you know?" He asked again, taking the folder from his meaty fist and looking through it himself.
"Right, Ms. Johnson, we discovered her body near Gordonville, some farmer found her out in his field wrapped in a tarp. She was naked, curled up in a ball clutching her purse. We didn't find a wallet or identification, only a cell phone, some makeup and a hairbrush, along with a business card, forensics has everything, they're supposed to give me a report here in a bit."
"Great. I'll go talk to forensics and you go see the Captain."
"What?"
"It's my case now Torres."
"The fuck you say?"
"Talk to the Captain."
Damien walked away, headed towards the forensics lab and laughing to himself as he imagined the bigger man scowling at his back and in all likelihood flipping him the bird.
When he got to the lab, he immediately headed to see Thompson. "Thompson, my man, I'm here to see you about a purse."
"I'm not so sure it's your style." Thompson joked, spinning in his chair and picking up a small ziplock bag. "Glad you're here though Crow, I meant to ring you this morning before they brought in all this shit."
"Oh yeah?" He asked, perching a hip on the edge of the other man's desk. "And why's that?"
"I got a hit on those fingerprints you gave me," Thompson remarked holding up a finger before Damien could get a word in. "Wait, wait, I'm not done, it gets even better. The fingerprints on the folder you gave me match those on the business card they found in Jane Doe's purse."
"You don't say?" Damien smirked.
"Yes, they belong to a Mr. Keith Welker, he was fingerprinted when he took a job at the National Institute of Health back in 1978."
"Wait, what? That can't be right. That guy is like seventy."
Perplexed by his response, Thompson turned around and grabbed the printed copy he'd made of the comparison. "What do you mean that can't be right?" he asked, showing the pictures to Damien. "It's an exact match, are you trying to tell me a seventy-year-old can't commit murder?"
"But this guy isn't seventy."
"Okay, now you've lost me."
"Is there any way to manipulate your fingerprints?"
"Well, sure, I mean, to some degree. You might be able to burn them off, scarring and what not, but not like this, you can't fake someone else's fingerprints, Damien. You wanna tell me what's going on here?"
Damien shook his head, he had a hard enough time trying to figure it out himself. "No, not really. What else did you find in that purse?"
Accepting the brush off, Thompson picked up another set of papers that had been stapled together, "Here's a copy of all the text messages and phone calls we found on the vic's cell phone, some pretty juicy stuff in there. You'll find the conversations between your vic and your perp to be the most interesting."
"My perp? This Welker guy? There are text messages between him and the vic?"
"Mmm-hmm. Quite a bit of them, going back about a week, and he seemed pretty angry." Thompson rubbed his chin as he appeared to ponder something. "Are you sure a seventy-year-old wouldn't commit murder? You might rethink that idea once you read some of those texts."
Leafing through the pages, Damien looked up and replied absently, "Yeah, maybe. Thanks again Thompson, come see me if you find anything else."
"Sure thing boss." He said to his back, shaking his head as Damien walked away.
Thompson had been right, Damien told himself on his way to the Captain's office. The text messages between Alexis and Keith got quite graphic, with some extremely violent undertones. And there was no mistaking it this time since it showed Keith's number listed under his name in the text message.
The message that disturbed Damien the most as he knocked on the Captain's door, however, was the one where Keith said he'd rip out her throat and feed it to the sharks if he didn't get what he wanted, and that would be the first message he showed his commanding officer.
"Does this qualify as definitive proof?" He asked.
The captain read over the messages for himself, frowning as he did so. "It's still speculative if you ask me."
"You're kidding, right? He threatens to rip out her throat, and two days later her throat gets ripped out, and you think that's speculation? Well, how about this, we found his fingerprints on a business card in her purse. Is THAT definitive?"
"Well, yeah, I guess it's better when you add the two together, but it seems a little sloppy if you ask me."
"So maybe he's getting sloppy."
"The bodies are bleached, no hair, no fibers, no nothing, and you're saying he's sloppy enough to leave behind his business card?"
"I said a business card, not his business card," Damien argued, leaving out the part about the card belonging to Robert. "He probably didn't wear gloves when he took her wallet out of her purse and accidentally grabbed the card."
"I suppose. It's a good theory. Alright Crow, go bring him in, but understand that if you're wrong about this it's your ass that lawyer of his is going to nail."
"I'll remember that." Damien laughed, rushing out the door and making his way to the DA's office to get a warrant.