The Loophole

Chapter 6- Don't Know Where To Start From

An unexpected gust of sweet fragrance replaced the monotonous pungency of machine fumes and caffeine in the office air. Detective Roger finally tore his red, drowsy eyes from the documents on his desk and took a moment to welcome the lovely diffusion.

Hmmm…. Roses and chrysanthemums… Must be for Miranda.

Last night, fellow Detective Miranda wisely showed a red signal to her career and a green one to another important aspect of her life-her marriage. She might have realised that her villainous vocation was starting to get too possessive of her. She came to work nonetheless, with all her well-wishers decorating her room with gorgeous bouquets.

Roger received the final call to the weekly briefing. He rose from his seat, with his bones annoyingly cracking in the process. He then sorted the unmanageable pile of papers, and tried to smooth his horribly creased up shirt with both of his hands.

Oh, never mind! It’s no fashion show over there!

***

“All right people,” Sergeant Adrianna said crisply, passing around the recent reports.

“For God’s sake, give me some progress or else we are gonna look like total assholes. The big guys upstairs are in agreement that at exactly eight we are giving our first press conference.”

Roger failed to discreetly slip into the conference room as Adrianna dangerously glowered at him for his slight delay. Exhaustion had taken such a toll on her health and appearance that it was becoming quite hard to recognise her at first glance.

“Roger, you finally showed up! I thought you were mysteriously dead at your desk.”

Roger made his humble apologies. He and the whole crew were already accustomed to Adrianna’s sharp retorts, so it was no big deal. He took his seat next to Detective Carl, and hence closed the circuit of horrendously clueless workaholics.

“So, as I was saying,” Adrianna continued. “We need news. Russel?”

Detective Russel was the head of the four-man squad in charge of compiling the list of missing girls. He frowned at his inadequate report and fidgeted in his chair hesitantly.

“Umm…you see. I personally feel like we are a swarm of buzzing bees who are trying to collect honey from a dead leaf. So far, we got 10 names of missing females from all over New England. Fortunately, none of them are Catherine, so they are not our headaches at the moment. You need to understand that we desperately need the post mortem reports of the previous victims to genuinely get us started. Unless we learn all the freaking features of a potential victim, we can’t even set proper criteria of investigation. I mean, we can’t expect the UNSUB to chase a vulnerable 90-year-old Catherine, can we? Besides, we also need the forensic anthropologist’s report for cross-reference. That’s all I have to report.” Russel realised that he was quite loud by then and so sank into his chair to calm his breathing.

“Hey Russel, relax! It’s only me who shouts.” Adrianna allowed some humor into the conference room as she could clearly see that her team was pretty stressed out. It was one of her many admirable qualities to do the right thing at the right time. That’s why she was always a step ahead of everyone else, including Roger. That’s why she was already a sergeant while Roger was still struggling not to get side-tracked by his emotions and conscience.

Not that I dream to be a sergeant one day. I’m fine...

“Ok, let’s move on to the next person. Carl?” Adrianna resumed her business-like tone again.

“Right, I’m the person who is in charge of the most stupid task around here- handling annoying phone calls! Gosh, I’m not telling mom that I look like a high-school wannabe kissing up to your cool gang, Adrianna.” Carl was never satisfied with his position. He was too smug to accept the fact that he was not yet experienced enough to be assigned with more difficult jobs. Besides, he was youngest in the team.

“Carl, get over your huge self for a while and land on the world of patience and perseverance. No one here is any less than he/she deserves to be. ”

 “Yeah, whatever!” Carl disregarded the boring advice.

“So, the homicide unit is going nuts with all the pathetic phone calls lately. Families, from all over England, are asking if this UNSUB had killed their daughters, wives, cousins, mothers etc etc who were also named Catherine and had been missing for years. It’s too painful to explain them that this particular UNSUB has started his operation only recently, so their missing a relative called Catherine is purely coincidental.

On the other hand, the phone calls coming to our office are plain annoying. Only yesterday, a so-called soothsayer narrated his vision of five “Catherines” getting abducted by aliens to some far away galaxy. Another wierdo called to say that the ghosts of all the previous victims are haunting him down and asking his help to avenge their killer. These people also had the tendency to hang up quick. Mental, I tell you!”

“Hmm…Interesting…” Adrianna frowned. “Speaking of mental, Miranda is soon going to visit the State Mental Hospital to collate information about both former and recent patients. Just to check if any of them sounds like our UNSUB. Serial killers are generally known to be the consequence of mental illness, so the mental institute might be housing valuable clues.

Anyways, we round up the conference with Roger’s report.” Adrianna glanced at her watch and started sorting her papers.

Roger leaned towards the round table and cleared his throat.

“Ok, let me start with Catherine#4.” He felt a sudden jolt in his stomach as he thought of her face.

“So far there has been no significant progress in her state of mind; she is still unable to recall her past in a logical order. The doctors said that she is suffering from ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’ and had already assigned her to a psychologist. We expect some progress after the first few therapies. I have an appointment with her this afternoon.”

“To give you guys something new- last week the police had been reported of a “Peeping Tom” at the Waverly Street. Apparently, a high-school Catherine lives there with her parents. Last week, at around midnight, an anonymous letter was left at their door, and it was addressed to Catherine.”

Roger felt a sudden injection of concern in the atmosphere; he even felt his own muscles tense.

“The father discovered the letter, and insisted the police to take immediate action. When I was informed of this, I called the father. He sounded pretty nervous and desperate, and he wanted to meet me in person.

Towards the end of our conversation, her daughter snatched the phone away, and I heard her say “Seriously dad, who am I?” Don’t know what that was all about but gonna find out when I meet them today in the evening. That’s all I have for now.”

“I’m so coming with you.” Adrianna announced.

“Alright people, looks like we have to bark some new trees. Till then, keep working hard.”

The busy-bodies collected their scripts, dragged their chairs in, put on a grave expression and went back to being sneaky again. Roger, on the other hand, started to prepare himself to give company to a mentally disturbed beauty.

***

Roger turned off the radio and sighed heavily. The traffic was taking longer than usual and a headache the size of Mt. Everest was building up in his head. It was the first time after weeks that he was visiting Catherine#4, so any sort of delay before that was the was least desired thing to happen.

After what felt like ages to Roger, the traffic signal had the mercy to go green, and Roger pulled off his Crown Vic quite instantly.

When he finally reached Catherine’s house, he did what a detective does best- observe the surrounding and see if anything looks out of place. No, there was nothing weird; everything around him was absolutely normal. Except… An unnumbered white van that was parked in front of Catherine’s house pulled off very fishily.