They took too much.
Left too little.
I had nothing to lose... until her.
TW: The following content includes themes of sex, sexual abuse, trauma, etc. Reader discretion is advised. If you are not comfortable with these topics, please consider skippin...
As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.
—Albert Einstein.
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MIKHA
I finish off my croissant while staring at the gory crime scene photos.
Blood is smeared across the walls with a paintbrush, just like the other four cases we've managed to link together. It's one of the few things that remains consistent. The unsub always paints a wall red with the victim's blood.
"How can you eat while seeing that?" Sheena asks while wrinkling her nose and sitting down on the edge of my desk.
Ignoring her question, I ask, "What did they find out about Ben Harris?"
"The M.E. estimated that he was tortured for at least three days. He has parts of him that have been cut off, just like the others. Including the penis," she sighs.
That has me cringing, just like any man would. One of these images is supposed to be a dismembered penis?
"His fingers were all cut off," she goes on, pointing at one picture that was snapped of ten severed fingers lying on the ground. "His chest was slowly pulled off piece by piece. The unsub stopped the bleeding each time by using a barbaric method of cauterization. He wanted the victim alive for those three days specifically. His penis seems to be the last thing to have gone. Ligature marks were found again, and chains were hanging from his basement rafters. We think the unsub stayed true to his profile, leaving the victim strung up in their own home. So far, all the men have had isolated homes too far away for any neighbors to overhear or see anything."
And he's not devolving either. His strikes are controlled, well planned out, and meticulous in detail, even if we don't understand the details.
"The unsub should be a female, considering the groin mutilation in all the kills," Jhoanna says, shuddering as she walks up on our conversation. "Only a woman could handle cutting off a man's junk."
"Women serial killers statistically don't torture. They're actually far more efficient and harder to track down because of that," Sheena says dismissively.
"Well, he has to be impotent. Most serial killers are," Justin chimes in, joining us.
There's a reason he and Jhoanna are not profilers.
"I think he's more of a sexual sadist," Sheena explains. "Impotence likely plays a part, but just calling them impotent isn't a profile."
"So an impotent sexual sadist?" Jhoanna asks, confused.
"Sexual sadists are often impotent, and they seek out their sexual release through the torture. No signs of rape were found, but it's likely the unsub hasn't evolved and grown the confidence to rape the men yet."
