Officer Dan pushed open the gate and pranced towards the front door. It was his first-ever case. And a good one, at that. A man suspected of being a serial killer had been murdered by his last victim. It was what was called an open-and-shut case. Evidence collection was a formality in such cases, but he was determined to do his best.
The house was huge, and its front yard was filled with pine trees. It was the middle of autumn, but very few leaves had fallen on the lawn. There was a faint smell of freshly cut grass in the air. He pulled a notebook and a pencil from his coat and started taking notes.
Two-storey house, painted beige. The front yard was raked probably two days ago yesterday morning. Grass mowed around the same time—no track marks on the driveway.
He put away the notebook and made his way in. Being inside the house felt like being inside the killer’s mind. On the surface, it was a mundane house. Beige sofa, beige carpet, beige plates. He dug through everything, taking meticulous notes about how he had found the things before he opened them up.
Behind a non-functional vent, he found the evidence that he had been sent to collect. He pulled out the ivory box, dusted it, and opened it. The contents made him gag.
Toenails painted red with white-yellow flowers. Matches the fingernails of the yoga instructor found dead in the public park on December 28th.
He bagged it and wrote a quick note for the forensic team.
By the time he was done, he was in possession of twenty-three bags. Some of them were easily identifiable, like the yoga instructor. The others, he was about to find out.
The next day, he invited the victim to the station for an interview. Miss Charlotte Donahue sat in the conference room along with her lawyer. The thirty-one-year-old had unkempt, dirty blonde hair and a pale complexion, though he assumed part of it was because of the trauma she had recently suffered. She wore a white blouse and some black trousers. She carried a small beige purse with her.
“Could you please state your name and age for the record?”
“Charlotte. Age thirty-one.”
“Miss Charlotte, how did you know Mr. Scarn?”
“I met him on a hike across the national park two weeks ago. I had run out of water, and he offered me some. We got to talking. Before parting, we exchanged phone numbers.”
“When did you see Mr Scarn next?”
“We went on two dates after that. For the first one, we went to a coffee shop near his house, and for the second one, we went to the park for a walk.”
“Tell me about the last time you saw Mr. Scarn.”
“For our third date, we had agreed to meet at his house. I showed up there at about 5:30 PM. We had some food and a couple of glasses of wine, and then I started feeling dizzy. I must have passed out. When I woke up, we were in the basement. He was facing the wall, sharpening his knife. I could hear the sound of metal scraping against stone.”
“Did he notice that you had woken up?”
“No. He wasn’t facing me. I could only see his back.”
“Please continue.”
“My hands and feet weren’t tied. I could see a wrench in his toolbox a few feet away from me. I slowly crept to my side and grabbed the wrench. Then, I hit him as hard as I could and ran out the door. I didn’t stop until I reached a convenience store, where I called the police.”
“Thank you, Miss Charlotte. We will be in touch.”
The very next day, Officer Dan went to the morgue to collect the autopsy report for Mr. Scarn. A copy had to be attached to the original case file. It was simply a formality to close the case. Another officer would have left it at that, and they would have been justified in doing so, but Officer Dan was nothing if not meticulous.
He sat at his desk, reading the report. Post-mortem revealed that injury to the head was the cause of death. Blood splatter analysis indicated that the weapon of assault was a wrench. No other perforations were noticed on the skin. No signs of struggle.
He was about to put the report away when the red on the back of the page caught his eye. He read through the tox screen results very carefully to check what drugs were found in Mr Scarn’s body – indicated by a red underline. He found something shocking.
Mr. Scarn had been given drugs that made him pass out.
This was a breakthrough he wasn’t expecting to see. Had Mr. Scarn accidentally ingested the drug, or was he the victim? Regardless, he had his work cut out for him. The case had just gotten a lot more interesting.
If he considered the possibility that Mr Scarn was a victim, Miss Charlotte would become the primary suspect. He pulled out the transcript of their interview and his notes from it. He combed through them several times, then started making a list.
- Obtain details of the hiking group
- Talk to the hikers about Miss Charlotte
- Obtain a warrant to ping the location of Miss Charlotte’s phone on the days the murders happen
He spent the next hour on the first task on his checklist. By lunch, he had interviewed two of the seven names on his list. By the time he came home for dinner, he had ticked off five of the seven names. Four of them had similar observations. The fifth hadn’t gone on the hike.
It did not appear as though Miss Charlotte had met Mr Scarn on the hike. She had walked up to him, talking to him like she knew him, and he had told her to stay away. Without being discouraged by the clear rejection, she had asked him out, and he had – quite loudly and publicly – declined. For the rest of the hike, she had pestered him constantly, until the organiser had asked her to leave.
That had strengthened his suspicions. Miss Charlotte had now become the primary suspect in his investigation.
He struggled with the revelation. On the one hand, there was enough evidence to suggest that Mr Scarn was the serial killer. He had a record of misconduct in the past. Remains of several victims had been found in his house. The testimony of his latest victim sealed his fate. Dan’s superiors had assigned him this case with a very simple order. Complete the paperwork. Who was he to challenge the orders given to him by people working in his office since before he was born?
On the other hand, he could not ignore what he could not explain. And he could not explain Mr. Scarn’s tox report. He could not explain the testimonies he had collected that very day. Was he following this line of inquiry only to satiate his personal itch? Was he wasting departmental resources for personal gratification?
Lost in thought, he reached home. As he unlocked and opened the door, a spicy, garlicy smell pulled him out of his thoughts. He could identify the smell of Susie’s leftover lamb roast any day. He wasn’t expecting her to be home so soon. Excited, he walked in with hurried steps, but as he turned into the kitchen, his keys fell from his hands.
The woman standing inches away from him was not his wife. It was Miss Charlotte. She wore a white dress with loads of tiny yellow flowers. In one hand, she held the lid to Susie’s pink casserole, and in the other… her other hand was wrapped around a knife… that was sticking out of his gut. He tried to grab the knife, but she quickly pulled it out. Thick, warm blood started to gush out of the wound as he collapsed to the floor. She walked back to the counter and rinsed the knife under cold water.
“Are you surprised to see me, Officer Dan? Of course. This is your house. I am not supposed to be here. Just like you were not supposed to be talking to the hiking group. That’s right. I know all about your little interviews. After twenty-four murders, you would assume that I would be careful not to slip up. How clumsy of me! But hey, I am only human, after all.”
She knelt beside his face.
“Since you are going to die anyway, let me tell you why I did it. I had been trying to get Jimmy to go out with me for two years. For two years, he kept rejecting me and running after all these terrible women. One day I asked him, Jimmy, if I was the last woman on earth, would you go out with me? And he replied maybe. So, I started killing any woman he got involved with. And then, when we finally went out on a date, he had the audacity to tell me he didn’t see me like that. Can you imagine how much that hurt? I brought him up in therapy, you know? Like, a lot. My therapist said I had to get out of this toxic loop, so I did. I killed Jimmy. And I put in so much effort into framing him! All you had to do was file it away. I want you to know that you would have been alive if you had done your job as you were supposed to. Goodbye now.”
He could hear her footsteps as she walked out of the door.
Anagha Baheti 
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