3am

Chapter 15

I am sitting in the waiting room of the morgue for Liam to arrive, and I am jotting down everything I can remember about the original "Field Strangler" case in a notebook that Graham was kind enough to loan me. And I mean everything. It is easy to list stuff from the case since it was technically my first homicide case after transferring up from patrol. I list names of the victims. I list the evidence against Garth Tanenbaum, the original "Field Strangler". I list the locations of where every victim was found, where they were taken from, where they lived... all of it. The only thing I don't list is the very last victim. We never found his body. He disappeared without a trace. He was my brother.

On all official documentation of the case, Gabriel Christopher Frost, is not mentioned once. When we arrested Garth Tanenbaum, I asked him where my brother was and he refused to tell me. He did not outright deny taking Gabriel; he just refused to tell me where he was. Tanenbaum went to his grave with the knowledge of where my brother was. That was the ultimate power for him. I never forgave him for it.

As I am writing, I hear a horn honk outside. Peeking out of the door, I see Liam waving frantically at me. I gather up my stuff and head out to the car. "Let's go!" Liam shouts. "We have victim #4!"

I hustle to the car and climb into the passenger side. Liam takes off with a squeal of the tires that makes me wince. "Hey! Easy! I can't afford to replace those tires!"

"Sorry," Liam says with a shrug. "Sarge has it out for us. If we aren't at the scene in ten minutes he said we are off the case completely."

"Where was the body found?" I ask, gripping the handle above the door as Liam takes a sharp turn onto Eastman Street.

"Forest outside of town," he replies. "Some hikers stumbled across the body while out exploring and called it in."

"That's odd," I mutter. "The last two bodies were called in anonymously. So why go back to risking no one finding the body for months..."

"Actually, I think the anonymous caller tried to report the body," Liam says, speeding up to pass a slower car. "911 dispatch reported a second caller reporting the body, but he hung up as soon as the dispatcher mentioned the previous report."

"Ah so it is a case of someone beat him to it."

"Pretty much."