Danse Macabre (Angel Devourers #4)

5

When he was back at the precinct, he immediately reread the case files from the other murders to see if there was something that he missed and to refresh his mind.

All of the victims were young adults around 20-23 years old, and they were all young and beautiful despite their gender. They also wore similar clothes – some kind of a working out clothes that consisted of leggings and crop tops for the three females and a tracksuits for the sole male victim.

Toru scrutinized the pictures one by one and suddenly he caught something shiny on one of the photos. He couldn’t see clearly on the printed copy so he called up the digital copy and zoomed in to see what was that thing that had just caught his attention.

He was so immersed in the picture that he didn’t realize that someone was looking over his shoulder, until they started to talk.

“That looks like a keychain.”

Toru almost jumped from the surprise and he turned around to see the newbie was standing behind him with such a sweet smile on her face.

“Hi Boss, nice to see you again.” She offered her hand and Toru shook it.

“Kira, right?” He saw that Kira came in with Lee and the man smiled brightly. “So, how do you know that it’s a keychain? It didn’t exactly look like one.”

“Ah, that’s because I’ve seen one exactly like that before.” Kira suddenly became sheepish and Toru wondered what it was all about. “It was back when I worked undercover as a… dancer, so I have to take special lessons. I registered at one of the dance schools for idols and the keychain to their dance studios were identical to that one.”

Kira then took a piece of paper and started to draw the keychain’s design.

“There.” She turned the paper around for the others to see. “As far as I knew, they did not let any students borrow the key unless it was approved by a higher authority, or they just snuck it out. And believe me that there were a lot of students who snuck the key out because they wanted to practice around the clock.”

“Okay, let’s find out if those victims were the students of the same dance school. Where did you say it was again?”

“It’s Morgan Academy.”

After they dug deeper into the victims’ finances and the testimony from their close friends, they deduced that all of the victims were indeed the students of Morgan Academy that was very famous for producing very successful idols, models and actresses – and one of their most famous faces was Artemis.

She was the hottest commodity ever since she appeared around 5 years ago, and she quickly became the darling of the media because she was super beautiful, talented, and most of all, super secretive. No one knew about her private life, and it was all thanks to Blake Morgan who put the lid on his most precious talent.

From what they gathered, Morgan Entertainment really protected their stars’ privacy and they paid very exorbitant fees to their artists, that’s why a lot of people wanted to be a part of them – hence, the Academy.

Aside from the obvious, the victims did not really have any personal life because they spent most of their time practicing for their debut, and that actually lessened the pool of suspects.

“We should go there and ask some questions.” Toru pointed to Lee and Iseul. “Lee, Iseul, you guys go. The newbie stays, since she has been there. Go ask around and shake some trees to see what comes out.” Then he continued to talk to Kira. “And you. Let’s go to the morgue.”

When they entered the morgue, Geraldine was in the middle of her break and her face lit up when she saw Toru. She quickly swallowed the food and brushed off the crumbs of the sandwich she held, and she almost ran toward Toru when she saw Kira.