Clowns, Crimes and Case Numbers

Chapter Three

Cecil set a styrofoam cup of coffee on the desk across his own, and sat down to sip his own cup of coffee. Kathy, owner of aforementioned desk, looked up, “Does it have milk and sugar?”

He swallowed and looked up, slightly taken aback, “What?”

“The coffee”, she replied, raising an eyebrow, “Why, what else were you thinking of?”

Ignoring the question, he replied, “Since when did you have your coffee with milk and sugar?”

“Since pigs flew”, she took a sip from it. For Kathy, it was physically excruciating to refrain from excessive sarcasm, eye rolling and eyebrow raising when in a conversation with Cecil. Unfortunately for her facial muscles, they would be getting too much exercise, since they were partners on the head of the Serial Crimes case together.

“When did that happen?”, Cecil asked, looking genuinely frantic, rustling through his newspaper, “Please don’t tell me we’ll have to investigate that as well. I don’t have the right facts, I didn’t watch the news this morning”

“I don’t drink my coffee with milk and sugar, Cecil”, Kathy replied, adding in yet another irresistible eye roll, “Calm down”

“Never say that again”, he sipped his coffee, sitting back in his chair, “Especially when I haven’t watched the news in the morning”

“Gullible”, Kathy muttered, sipping from her coffee as she read through her own newspaper, “Nothing new on the Serial Criminal front, is there?”

“I’ll have you know that I just keep an open mind”, Cecil replied, “And there’s nothing new. No robberies nor murders with the same MO”

“So we’ll have some time to analyze the previous ones for a pattern before they throw a curveball like they did last week”, she downed the rest of her coffee in a few gulps, “Ask a rookie to bring in the papers”

“Mal”, Cecil beckoned to the newest and most inexperienced FBI agent on the case with them, who ran over immediately, earnest and serious, “Bring the case files”

He ran off again to the filing room, and came back shortly with a heavy, dusty box of files which he struggled to carry with his scrawny arms. As soon as he set them down, Kathy spoke, “Call the others on the case too. Tell them we’re symbol searching through sensational literature. Bring your own chair”

Cecil gave her a look, and she sighed after trying to resist his puppy dog eyes, “What is it?”

“You could have let him rest a bit”

“Being a newbie is tough”, Kathy replied, taking out a file, using it to swipe her cup into the garbage before opening and reading it, “And if he can’t handle that, then his luck’s tough too”

Cecil threw her another look, one that said, quite plain and simple, “You’re mean”

The others on the case gathered around, dragging over their chairs, turning Cecil and Kathy’s conjoined desks into their private conference room. Mal, who was the last to join, was left awkwardly standing in order to see over all the chairs that had already covered the perimeter.

Everyone had a case file, which was saying quite a lot, possibly even screaming, since the fact that each person could have their own case file, including Mal, meant a lot of cases.

Highlighters were gathered in the middle, taken, returned and passed along, and rookies were sent with coffee orders, coming back with trays laden with travel cups aplenty.

At the end of the forty five minute mark, they took their coffee break, chattering and going to get their own refills, before coming back in the second hour.

“So now we have to find the pattern”, she looked around at them, “Everyone get into groups of three and four and start listing the similarities in your case files”

They did so, and after much quiet, adult like squabbling that resembled siblings in the back seat of a car after a toy was accidentally thrown out the window, they had similarities between three and four cases.

“Alright”, Cecil opened his mouth before Kathy could, and she threw him a look, to which he replied with an innocent, uncomprehending one, “Every group, take an ambassador with a list of similarities, and join up in groups of three. Rinse and repeat”

And so they did, in the same nature as kids who just got scolded by their parents because one of them tickled the youngest a bit too much.

At the end of the next hour, everyone was much too busy thinking about the final result to go get coffee. Only one defining point was left, and had I been there myself, I could have told, it was one hell of an MO. Deception and murder methods in the nature of circus tricks. And if you had been there, and seen them search for how many circuses were in some particular places on some particular nights and seen there had been almost a hundred, you would have known without so much as a soul telling you, that they were completely, utterly, and royally screwed.