Picture Perfect

Chapter 5

    It was nearly six and I was ready to go home. Between court and the mountain of paperwork I had chipped away at for the rest of my day, I was drained. It had been quite the day and I just wanted to curl up on my couch and fall asleep to some stupid movie or cheesy cop show.
    As soon as my hand hit the down button on the elevator I heard, "Morris, wait up."
    I turned around and sighed, this could not be good. When the captain comes chasing you down that means someone's dead and this late in the day it must be bad if he's wanting me on the case.
    "I'm glad I caught you before you left. Call just came in, three victims dead on arrival. First responders say it's pretty weird, I want you and Williams on it. You can call her on the way."
    "Alright Capt." I had no choice but to agree, it was my job. "Where are we going?" I asked as I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
    "72nd and Beloit. House is right on the corner, can't miss it." He said as he walked back towards his office.
    That was only a few blocks from my house. The energy I had been lacking all day suddenly came flooding into my system at that realization. I pulled up my partners number in the elevator and hit call as soon as I stepped out since the elevator was infamous for having crappy reception. She answered on the second ring.
    "Well since you have no social life I'm assuming this call is business, right partner?" She joked in lieu of a more formal greeting.
    "Yeah, are you home yet?" I asked.
    "Nah, got take out from Wing Ho on the way. I'm currently waiting at a red light at Beloit and Oklahoma. Why, where should. I be heading?"
    "Actually go home; put your food in the fridge them walk down Beloit, I'm sure you'll see where to go. I'll be there in about 20 minutes hopefully. How was traffic?"
    "Not too bad considering all the construction. So are you serious, we're investigating something in our own backyards?"
    "Yep! See you soon."

    The captain wasn't lying when he said you couldn't miss the crime scene. The neighborhood was lit up like a freaking Christmas tree. As I walked up to the house I recognized many of the uniforms on scene as my neighbors. I assume they felt as jolted as I did about this crime taking place in our neighborhood.
    As I approached the door I saw my partner chatting with the uniform on the door.
    Before actually entering I walked around the outside of the house to get a feel for the scene. I know some of my colleagues found my crime scene ritual silly but it had gotten me to lead detective so I stuck with it. Nothing seemed unusually disturbed around the house; whoever killed these people didn't leave in a panic, they were calm. If it weren't for the police cars, no one would know there was anything amiss.
    As I rounded back to the front door Williams approached me, "Hey lady, find any stray psychos in the backyard?"
    "Unfortunately no, what do you have?"
    "Three vics; man, woman and teenage boy." She ticked off as I signed in, put on gloves and shoe covers. "Looks like they were killed in the kitchen and moved to the dining room."
    I immediately looked at my partner and said, "Moved?"
    "Yeah," she responded while shaking her head. "This is pretty weird honestly. I've never seen anything like this."
    "Captain did say this was a weird case. Do we know who the three vics are? Are they the residents of the house?"
    "Don't know yet." Hayley said reluctantly. "We should head into the kitchen."
    "Okay." I said slowly then added, "How do we not know if these people lived here or not? Don't people usually keep photos around? Or ID of any sort?"
    "They're looking, trust me Ash but it seems that any pictures that were in the house have been removed."
    "I guess that qualifies as weird." I said with a slight shrug. So far in comparison to some of our cases this was fairly tame.
    "Don't get all sarcastic yet Morris. Let's quick check out the kitchen, check out what your sister's got then we'll discuss weirdness factor."
    As we walked towards the kitchen I noticed the combination of smells: air freshener, garlic and blood. No matter how many scenes I've been to I'm still not used to the overwhelming smell of blood. My first visual of the kitchen revealed a few clues to what horrors transpired here earlier. There were two pools of blood; one by the basement stairs and one by a breakfast bar next to a stool with some blood spatter, my first guess would be this blood evidence implies gun shot wounds. There was a third pool of blood by a doorway leading further into the house with a large amount of blood splatter on the surrounding surfaces making me think a knife wound. This was the first element of this crime scene that did seem odd to me, killers don't usually use multiple weapons at the same scene, especially if the killer had a gun. Why not shoot all three victims?
    Just before I could ask anything of the officers milling around the Crime Scene Unit arrived so I turned to Hayley and said, "Let's go check the bodies and let the CSU boys work their magic." I added a smile and nod to the head of the unit as he walked into the kitchen and began to bark out orders.
    "Good call cause your sister has been asking where you were." Hayley replied.    Suddenly an all too familiar voice called out from the dining room, "Took you long enough to get here sis!"
    "Yeah well it appears I was the only one of us that didn't leave work early today."
    "I didn't leave early, I was on last night so I should be sleeping but oh well, no rest for the wickedly smart." She replied with a grin.
    Hayley laughed, "Well I'll let you wickedly smart ladies chat. I'm gonna go have a chat with the first responders."
    During our short conversation I had walked into the dining room and had begun to take in the bizarre scene. Seated at the head of the table was the body of an adult male, across from him was an adult woman and on the side of the table was a teenage boy. It looked like a normal family dinner except the people seated happened to be dead.
    "You slipped into detective mode didn't you sis?" Kayla asked after I had been quiet for too long by her account.
    "Yeah, sorry. It tends to happen at crime scenes. So who am I looking at oh wise sister?"    "Meet John, Jane and little Johnny Doe. Beyond that your guess is as good as mine. The two males don't have wallets, haven't found a purse anywhere as far as I know. They told you about the lack of personal photos in this house, right?"
    "Yeah, Hayley mentioned that." I replied then noticed a table in the corner where pictures were obviously missing, the dust lines told the story. Someone had removed picture frames on purpose, but why? It was possible it wasn't the killer but the most obvious explanation was usually the correct one in most of my cases. "So what can you tell me?"
    "Given that rigor has set in, time of death is at the latest 3:30pm but I would guess probably a few hours earlier so maybe around noon or 1pm."
    "Well that's something." I said with an eye roll. I hated this part, having to wait for information. Kayla was the best ME in the state but she needed time to do three autopsies and do the necessary testing.
    I kept looking around the dining room to find anything that could help but the scene was so bizarre. It looked like a family sitting down to dinner, complete with place settings and a pitcher of lemonade. They looked like the picture perfect family if you looked past the fact they were dead.
    "So have you figured out why the psycho left the happy family ready for dinner yet? Hell, the scene's complete with the food cooked in the crock pot none the less." Kayla chimed in.
    "I wish. So far this crime scene makes no sense to me whatsoever, yet." I said with a slight smirk. I know I'm good at my job so in the end I'd solve this case.
    Kayla replied with a smirk confirming my thoughts, "But it will because the Morris sisters are brilliant. I'll find the scientific proof and you'll do your creepy get inside the killers head thing, then the case is solved."
    "Hey Ash, I got someone you should talk to." Hayley broke into the conversation.
    I was slightly annoyed because I wasn't done looking through thee crime scene. "Can't you take care of it or get one of the uniforms to do the interview? We still need to look around a bit more; as of now we've got next to next to nothing about this case."
    "I suppose." Hayley said mockingly. "But I thought you'd want to talk with the possible suspect we have."
    "Wait, we have a suspect."
    "Yeah, she was out with the onlookers and seems to know a lot about what is going on in here."
    "She?" Kayla and I questioned at the same time.
    "I know it's rare but women can be a bit unbalanced too." Hayley said with a slight smirk.
    "Don't I know it." I said reflexively. "Wow, I probably shouldn't have said that out loud."
    "Well beyond the usual crazy women in day to day life, some are killers. You know in America women account for 8% of all American serial killers. And that 8% accounts for 76% of all female serial killers worldwide, that a known obviously."
    "Look at you partner, pulling out statistics. But no one said anything about a serial killer."    Hayley shrugged then replied, "Valid but we have three victims. Serial killers have three or more victims so I figured I'd throw the info out there. Plus doesn't this staging kinda scream fucked up serial killer?"
    Kayla nodded and said, "She's not wrong Ash."
    "I didn't say she was wrong I just don't want to jump to any conclusions." I replied. "Let's go interview this suspect. Maybe we'll get lucky and this bizarre case will be the quickest one we've ever closed."