"It was the man's birthday." Emily said. The day after Ray's night-out with his colleagues, Emily called him to let him know of their new assignment.
"His daughter is outside the room, waiting for us to call her. But Sean and the rest are still busy in the other room, and we have to wait until they finish." she said.
A young man entered the room and talked to Emily. When he's gone, she turned to Ray."I'm going to call her in."
When she entered, the girl sits on the chair, her head slightly down. She looks timid and shy. Her hair is slightly longer than Emily's shoulder-length hair and she is undoubtedly beautiful.
"Miss," Ray called. She looked at him and maintained her neutral expression. He continued. "Please introduce yourself and your relation to the victim. If you can, you can talk about it in detail, whatever you're comfortable with."
The girl cleared her throat and started talking. "I am Milly and he is my father. My Dad and I have been living without my mother for five years. She got into a car accident a long time ago. He is a responsible father, but we are not that close."
"Can you tell us about the time when you discovered what happened?" Emily asked.
Milly sighed and continued. "I just got home from school. It was an exam day, meaning school ends at three. I didn't come home immediately. I lied to my Dad about it being a normal school day, and decided to hang-out with my friends. I originally planned to come home at four but they took me to a party and you know, time. I got back at one. That's when the found yellow tapes plastered all over our house."
"Did you see his body immediately?"
"I did. I was initially scared to go home because I know he was going to get mad at me but he had never hit me before, and I know he would never. So I was a bit nervous, but not that much," Milly admitted. "But the body, yes, I saw it immediately. My Dad had bruises all over. In my mind, I was screaming and crying hard, but no tears came out, at first. Maybe it was because of shock."
It is Ray's turn to speak. "Did the police immediately talk to you?"
"They did. I am his only immediate family and the only person living in his house. I'm still scared of the whole thing. I haven't gone to school for a week. I just can't process it."
"What was the reason you were not close to him?"
"My mother was a kinder person. I'm not saying my Dad is awful, he's just cold sometimes. We had a decent relationship, it's not as if we don't talk. Of course, we did." Milly said.
After the interview, the other investigators came inside the room. "They saw something on his foot," one of them said to Emily and Ray. "It was a the shape of a star inside a circle. Looks like the murderer did it. It wasn't a tattoo, the wound is fresh."
"That's familiar," Ray had to say. "But I can't put my finger on it. Maybe I've seen it somewhere or someone has showed it to me before. Is it familiar to you, too, Emily?" he asked and she said, "No. I mean, these are common shapes, but I don't know."
The investigator handed them a picture of his corpse and there it was, on top of his ankle are the shapes engraved on his skin. "What's the purpose of it?" he asked them.
"We don't know, Jake had it, too. Wasn't he one of your colleagues, Ray?" one of them replied. This stunned Ray, but he cannot just let it go. "On his foot? Was it in the same position?"
"Yes, and there are similar cases happening around that had the same marks, but the people working on those cases aren't from our team. Looks like there's a specific person doing all of these."
