The list of sinners

...Donovan...

The hot water felt soothing and comfortable. The water droplets slid along my shoulders and then joined together at the bottom of the shower cabin. Taking a shower calmed my senses and felt like a form of meditation. Amidst the shower's sound, I heard the phone ringing, filling the air molecules floating in the silence of the house. I turned off the hot water and hurried towards it with a towel wrapped around my waist.

"Detective Mayfair," a voice was heard.

"Doctor Santes, how can I help you?" I asked, wiping the water dripping from my soaked hair.

"The new year started bloody for Connecticut," she said.

That was enough to understand that we were dealing with another murder. Even though we were still in the agony of the new year's beginning, the killer seemed relentless. With this snow around, the tracks could be hidden very well. This was a favor the killer wouldn't overlook and would use as victims kept increasing.

"I'll be there soon."

As I dried myself and got dressed, I informed Cameron to get ready. The snow had decreased its intensity and was falling more lightly, but despite this, it was stressing quickly. Without wasting time, I took the car out of the garage. This time, we wouldn't head to the victim's location but straight to the examination laboratory, as the body had been moved due to the weather conditions that had taken over us.

Cameron was waiting for me outside the house, smoking a cigarette as usual. The road, in general, was calm except for the part where I always scolded him for smoking, and when I explained to Cameron the reason we were going to the department.

After parking, we got out and went straight inside to Doctor Santes. Opening the door, a characteristic smell of medical tools, solutions, and the occasional click of a fresh printer filled the laboratory. The victim's body lay on the examination bed, checked by the forensic doctors, now covered up to the head. One of the doctors handed us a mask and a pair of gloves. I put them on carefully and approached Doctor Santos, who was examining the victim for us.

"What do we have... a male?!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, we have a male, 20 years old identified as Alan Frank," the doctor informed me.

The victims had only been females around the age of the boy, but this was something new. He too had been stabbed with six full strikes. His body had turned very pale, also due to being left outside in the snow for several hours. It seemed like the Lord had cut him to test me every time I was sure of something.

"The analysis shows that he was a drug user," she added.

I took the white analysis paper that Doctor Santes handed me. It was still warm and left the feeling of a cotton swab. Signs of drugs, although not very small, were found in his body, but this wasn't the cause of his death. The sin he had committed was the cause.

"Cameron, let's talk outside for a bit," I said.

We left the laboratory quietly. We took off the masks and gloves, throwing them in a bin nearby in the corridor.

"It seems that the victims are not only females," I said.

"The commission of sins has no gender or age," he replied.

He was right in his reasoning. The influence of sin affected both the guilty and the innocent alike. Today, in this society, you could count the seeds in an apple, but you couldn't count the apples in an orchard.

"First, we need to read Diana's file and focus on that," I said.
"There will be the answers we've been looking for for months."

Cameron nodded twice. After we finished the examination and filed our reports, I didn't think of anything else but to hand him that file. But first, I had to leave Cameron at home.