Understanding A Killer

Mentor me

The classroom was dark as always, only the light from the projector dimly illuminating the notebooks some students were writing in. The atmosphere was more grim than usual, and she could feel it on her skin as soon as Professor Graham walked in the room. There was no point in trying to write in such a dark room, Eliana figured, and tried to focus on the subject at hand, but her mind wandered off to the professor's worried expression.

He never looked happy, always kept his eyes either on the floor or some empty spot in the distance, barely ever interacted with them and rarely anwsered questions.

But today, it was different. Some deep worry must've caused the constant frown line on his forehead.

"8 girls went missing in the last 3 months. All had the same eye colour, hair colour, same height, same weight, around the same age... Then, yesterday, Elise Nicols was found tucked in her bed. It is his way of apologizing for killing her and not being able to 'honour' her body parts... This killer LOVES women. He wouldn't want to 'waste' them..." - Professor Graham explained the latest serial killer case.

All of this was intriguing, but so was that frown-line on Will Graham's face, so Eliana decided to analyze the thing that was more interesting of the two. The thing being of course...the second one.

He shifted the slide to another picture, one of a naked woman in the middle of a field, pierced through a stag horn: "Although it may seem this is another victim of the Minnesota Shrike, this woman was, very clearly, killed by a very different killer. This copycat killer is cruel. He sees his victims as mere meat. He will likely never kill this way again." - He explained.

Eliana looked up, woken from the haze she had been in, all of her attention suddenly on this copycat killer. She didn't understand what peaked her attention herself. There was just something... Oddly familiar in the way he described him. It was just an intuition thing, really. But her intuitions were rarely wrong, and Eliana considered them to be her greatest talent.

"Her body... Was basically gift-wrapped." - Will Graham finished the summary as he took off his glasses.

...Gift wrapped.

Gift wrapped.

A million things flashed through Eliana's head, and it was as if she went right back to her hometown 5 years ago. It was a simple phrase, just a simple way Proffesor Graham decided to express himself in that exact moment. But the word 'gift' had a different meaning in her vocabulary. A gift could never mean what it meant before. Before that event 5 years ago.

And that's when it clicked. She suddenly understood why the description sounded so familiar as her eyes filled with horror. She was staring intensely at the picture of the girl's dead body, and the Proffesor might've noticed the sudden change in her expression because he seemingly looked straight in her eyes for a second, before he focused his gaze back to that usual empty spot in the back of the classroom.

It was just a hunch.

Nothing more.

But it was worth following.

After all, it may be her only chance at doing what she came here to do.

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Students were picking up their bags as they prepared to leave the classroom. Will Graham hated the loudness, the laughing and the constant yelling of unnecessary things like 'Where will we go drinking tonight' or 'Have a nice weekend, Professor'. They were much closer to being FBI agents than kids, and yet, they seemed to be louder then ever. He greeted back some of them before turning around to take the USB from the computer. His head pulsed with an upcoming migrane, and he was thankful it got quiet very quickly.