CHAPTER FOUR #2
"She’s bounced back and forth between government organizations and private companies, but she mainly specializes in expert testimony.
She’s been in court over a hundred times, both here and in other states.
She gives testimony on psychological evaluations.
With the number of times she’s testified against crazy people in court, that’s where you should look, if you ask me.
Someone blamed her for being put away; they had just gotten out and came straight here. Absolute bloodbath."
"Thank you, officer," Moore replied. "What floor are we going up to?"
"The fourth," he replied.
"Okay, we can find our own way up."
Moore and Alison left the officer and entered the apartment building. They took the stairs instead of the elevator.
"No commonality in the places they were killed," Alison pointed out.
"If this is the same killer, then they don't need to kill people where they work or live. It could be either. And it was done on the same night. We’re talking hours apart. That shows an urgency to me. It’s one thing to plan to murder someone, but quite another to plan to murder two people on the same night. "
They reached the fourth floor, and Moore held the door open for Alison.
"Both connected to criminal justice," Alison added.
"That has to be the connection. One psychiatrist who evaluated defendants for competency and decided whether or not they would face trial, and an expert witness who likely presented either similar information in court, or even the information Dr. Langford supplied. "
"So, we’re looking for a trial that they were both involved in?" Moore asked as they walked the hallway.
"Yes," Alison agreed.
When they reached the apartment door with the officer stationed outside, Moore showed her badge. Down the hallway, an old man stood outside his apartment, watching the proceedings.
"Did you see or hear anything?" Moore called out to him.
"I have no idea what’s going on," he replied.
A faint metallic tang hung in the air. They entered the apartment to see the body blocked by the forensic tech crouched over it, between Patricia, who lay on the floor of the living room, and the door.
The blood wasn’t blocked from view. Long streaks of red on either side of the body, covering the surrounding floor, furniture, and walls.
"Detective Moore," Moore announced as they entered.
The tech blocking the body stood, turned, and then stepped aside to give them access to the scene.
What they found was similar but different.
The same ferocity was shown in the way the victim had been attacked, but they hadn’t been stabbed; they had been slashed.
Patricia’s bare arms were covered in lines of red where the killer had slashed her in a fury, over and over.
She had the same slashes covering her face.
And going by the blood-soaked clothes that still clung to her, she’d been slashed all over.
Alison walked over to the body and looked down on it, not fazed by the amount of blood in the room.
Then she saw a chunk of white in her peripheral vision.
When she turned and looked at the sheet of paper that had been set aside, she found a handwritten note that all but confirmed they were looking at the same killer.
The lies must stop! The lies must stop!
Alison looked back at Detective Moore to see that she had also seen the note.
"Do we have a cause of death?" Moore asked the forensic tech.
"Blood loss, most likely," the tech said. "We won't know when she was killed amongst all of"—she pointed to the body—"this until the autopsy is complete."
"We should check with the downstairs neighbor," Alison said.
"See if they heard anything that can give us a time of death.
If she had been attacked suddenly and cut over and over, she would have fallen to the floor at some point.
If this was the same killer, which it looks like it was, they must have gone from one crime scene to the next.
Or had very little time in between, if not. "
Alison walked from the body and toward the window, looking out at the world that carried on regardless of the two dead bodies.
"What are you thinking?" Moore asked.
Alison turned to face the detective. "Did they clean themselves up in between? No matter which one they started with, they would have been covered in blood after. Was there any sign of forced entry?"
"There wasn’t," the forensic tech said.
"I can't imagine they would have turned up to either crime scene covered in blood and for the victim not to put up a struggle or even try to call the police.
" Alison looked around the apartment. "It doesn’t look like they fought.
The killer attacked Patricia, and we can only hope it was a quick death. "
"The killer could have used the same knife for both victims," Moore pointed out. "We didn’t find the murder weapon at Langford’s office."
"They could be killing their next victim as we speak," Alison points out. "With the way both victims were killed, and how close in time both were killed, we can't rule out a third body being called in soon. It’s more of a frenzy than careful planning. They knew where wee Langford worked and where Patricia lived, and the killer is obviously killing people who decide who goes to prison and who doesn’t. We’re looking for a highly motivated killer. That gives more of a chance of them making a mistake if they’re not planning the murders as I’ve seen killers do in the past, but it also speeds up the timeline.
We need to find this killer before they strike again, but more importantly, we need to find the obvious connection between the two victims and discover if there are more targets.
If there are more people connected to this, I don’t think the killer wastes time killing them. "