By proxy

Chapter one: The little girl and the professor.

Mona Qassimi's brain works in rather strange ways, making the queerest connections, seeing clues where another would not, finding answers in the unlikeliest of places. Of course, to her and the likes of her, none of it is quite unlikely, on the contrary. If most think of Mona's talents in deduction a prouesse , I love using French if you haven't noticed, to Mona it is nothing special, just her regular self being her regular self.

It is heavily raining outside on this fine Saturday morning. The odd twins are at the Tachfini Library, discussing matters of the utmost importance .The thing with serial killing is that you never really know who might be next.

- 'Professor Bennani.'

- 'Detective Qassimi.'

They both nodded and shook hands before sitting themselves around a table, it was exam season but because of the rain the library was quite remote.

- 'Alright, at first I tried to approach the problem a pedibus usque ad caput, from feet to head. I mean from the last victim to the first one, I found, however, a very important information comparing Habib and Little Aya. So the first murder was in the early 2000s and made a victim out of a ten-year-old girl. The last one and I pray it is the last one, was only recently and took the life of a forty-year-old professor.' Mona began.

- 'That already limits the list of suspects, it couldn't have been someone from Lachelier's , it's someone older, but not too old either.'

- 'I feel like it she's in her thirties, if she was as old as Habib she would have been fifteen or twenty at the time of the first fake suicide. It wouldn't make sense.'

- 'You think it's someone who went to school with Aya?

- 'Yes, maybe, but let's get back to Habib. If it's not someone from our school, then who in the world could it be?' Mona was biting her nails.

- 'Mona, I was meaning to tell you.' Said got closer and whispered. 'I feel kind of ... watched these days. The other day I was having dinner and I heard some leaves rustling in the backyard, it wasn't even windy.'

- 'It could have been Tux, or Oumayma for that matter.'

- 'No, I don't think so. It was in our side of the yard and I heard some heavy footsteps, you know it really freaked me out. What if someone's onto us?'

- 'Okay, let's take a few steps back here and not get too ahead of ourselves. So, what you're saying is that the killer knows we're not buying it and are gathering proof against them?'

- 'Yes.'

- 'Well, I don't know what to make of that.'

- 'It puzzles me, how no traces, no DNA was ever found on any of the crime scenes, it's like they actually managed to trick those people into killing themselves. Habib and the drugs, Aya who jumped from the school roof. Doghmi who was found hung in his apartment and Mahdi who drowned himself in the Oum Rabii River. No suspicious phone records or chats, no sudden change in behaviour , no questionable transaction . And most importantly, how did they get the victims to cooperate, without even retaliating, I mean I could understand for Habib, but Aya? What could a little girl be blackmailed about? I could understand if it was an adult but if we follow your reasoning and consider the killer to be a child at the time, then it makes things incredibly difficult, if not absurd. You sure you're not wrong in your calculations?'

- 'Said, I get a whole lot of things wrong but this, this is my field of expertise. I trained myself for over ten years in order to master the fine art of deduction. Like I said, it makes more sense for Aya to have been tricked by a peer rather than by an adult or a teenager.'