Mask of Death

Results

THE RESULTS of the autopsy were handed down to him. According to it, the woman was drugged first, then was paralyzed, then strangled to death. Just as he thought. Given that there were marks of being strangled on her neck, and the necklace that was once there, he ended up with the that conclusion.

But why? Why would someone do this kind of brutality?

He did a background check of the woman himself. The facts: Trish Ocampo, 24, family lives in England but her parents got divorced which led her to come to Murray to live alone, worked as editor in a publishing company but got fired and served tables in a club to earn and pay for her living. Nothing weird about her: no criminal records, no weir family background; jut a normal person living a normal life. Only, there's a missing person report of her. For over two years, she has been reported missing by her family a week after her parents' divorce.

He decided to have coffee to help absorb all the pieces of information he got.

It's kind of a normal thing for someone to be killed for no reason nowadays.

It's more like convincing himself than stating the fact. Something tickles his nose with this case. It's like something in his reach but he just can't grab a hold of it.

The forensics informed him they already have the results. He rushed back to the station, hoping it would open up more to his investigation. Disappointment.

Only the traces of the victim were all they dug up. The only weird thing was the blood on the chalk. It doesn't match that of the victim's, and it was their only evidence they could hold in finding the suspect and bringing him down.

THE NEXT morning he borrowed the files of all the missing women around the town. He also followed the tracks of this Trish Ocampo, brutally murdered and found dead in the bedroom apartment. It was strange. They thought she lived in that apartment but found out that it was registered to someone else, a man unfamiliar to the town.

Andrew Williams.

This man - he needs to find him.

During his investigation he discovered that 27 more women were gone missing. Some of the corpses were not found but hose that were found were of the same conditions: bodies full of bruises, strangled, but the faces were left untouched.

There was one more detail: all the bodies including that of Trish Ocampo's have been found of the same golden chain necklace with a dolphin pendant. That was what's bothering him. It's not the woman he had seen before, it's the murder itself. He had once brushed a file of Lorna Hemmingway; a woman who suffered the same death: drugged, tortured, strangled, clean face.

A serial killer.

This man, whoever he is, kills women by torturing them then strangling them to then, and then leaves that necklace as a signature of him, like giving hints but not really directing it to him. That's what a serial killer does. He leaves some sort of signature and leaves the police hunting them.

He reviewed the files laid out in front of him. He stitched each one of it altogether and got the clues he needed and wanted to find.

So that is how it is.

All the women were found inside the apartment, where everything was a romantic scene. Until you find a woman's body there, and suddenly it becomes a crime scene. He got to the conclusion that the killer pretends to date women and then murders them when he and the woman were finally alone.

He has five suspects recently arrested for murder. He interviewed each of them, asking random questions with very particular answers.

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