#Lore24 – Entry #283 – Sentinel City by Night #9 – Another Victim, Another Clue
From the Journal of Sheba O’Rourke, Private Investigator
“It was a handful of nights later, after I’d hired a Chinese botnet to start the blowback campaign against Emmerson’s article and begun contacting her myself in the guise of a trio of new sources that were emboldened to tell their tales after reading her article to start the feed of misinformation that I got word that another body had been found with the same MO. As soon as I got Walsh’s call, I rushed to meet PD at the scene, pushing my Taurus as hard as it could stand; not sure what that grinding sound is, or the wobble when I get up to speed. Really have to get a mechanic to take a look at that; should probably ask Becky if she knows a good one that works late hours and won’t charge an arm and a leg.
Think Walsh is starting to warm up to me, or he was just too tired to fire up the hatred tonight. He looked strung out. Anyway, this was another dump near the Red Light District. It had occurred to me that with the many waterways in the city, and its proximity to the Great Lakes, there were plenty of better spots to dump a body. That could indicate that maybe some part of the killer’s psyche was crying out to be stopped, or that the body disposal was simply an afterthought.
Either way, everything tracked with this being another victim and not a copycat, in spite of Emmerson’s article. This victim, Sidney Clark, hadn’t been reported missing, however, and this was definitely sooner than the previously established timeline had indicated. The killer was escalating, though I couldn’t say it had anything to do with the article or not; the timing didn’t seem to track. As I examined the body, Emmerson showed up and had another confrontation with Walsh, this one rather heated. She kept trying to draw me into the matter, but I ignored her attempts to speak to me. I had plenty of lines of communication open with her already, didn’t need a face to face.
It was when I examined the victim’s ID to see where they lived that I made a most curious observation. Though I couldn’t know what her face had looked like before it was removed, her ID showed a woman who was not up to standards for the killer’s appetites. She looked to have been severely overweight, the deep scowl on her plump, pitted face only marginally distracted from by her bright green and red hair dye and side-shaved cut. The body couldn’t have been even half the weight listed, even before the pieces were removed. The ID was barely more than a year and a half old based on the date on it. Did we have the wrong ID? Was there perhaps another victim with whom the IDs had been switched?
I knew what I had to do, however much I disliked using that particular ability on a corpse. Call me old-fashioned, but using my heightened perception to read the psychic echoes on a dead body seemed a bit too invasive, not to mention that it always left my skin crawling for days, even gave me daymares. Might have been a little selfish of me, but it’s why I hadn’t done so before and had kept to the evidence and proper investigatory techniques till now. Still, things had escalated to the point that I suppose I had little choice but to give it a try.
I waited for Walsh to shoo Emmerson off before I showed him the discrepancy between the ID and body, then told him that I needed a few minutes alone with the victim. When he asked what I had planned, I simply told him it was better if he didn’t know the particulars. Though skeptical, he obliged and pulled his people back. Once I had readied myself, I removed my gloves and touched the body, peering into its past.
I saw flashes of the victim’s last moments, felt the echoes of the violence she had suffered, saw only a brief impression of the killer themselves, a cold, doll-like face smeared with blood, fangs gleaming as they wielded the scalpel. Then a much clearer image emerged, one that wasn’t nearly as horrible, though perhaps even more confusing. I clearly saw a red-headed woman, kind and energetic, showing the victim a computer-generated image of another beautiful woman, a sense of elation and happiness, contentment. Then there was a sensation of awakening from a deep slumber, of peering into a mirror, the victim seeing the image of the woman that had been on the screen. As I pulled myself out of the psychic vision, stumbling back as the connection was broken, I realized what it was I had witnessed, why the victim’s ID didn’t match her current appearance.
The red-headed woman had flesh-crafted her! The red-head was a Tzimisce!”