The Kitty Kat Killer (Chapter 1)

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 08:23:20 GMT

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Life or it's characters, but damn, I really wish I did.

Captain Tidwell came into his office, where he currently had his two lead detectives waiting for him and dropped a file onto his desk. “Well, boys and girls, looks like we're gonna have a busy week. For starters we got a tip on the anonymous line that you two get to go check out.” He passed a slip of paper across the desk to them, “Here’s the address. Let’s wrap this up quickly; I’ve got seven other homicides from just this weekend. Let’s move.”

Dani Reese had no trouble figuring out which loft was the victims. There were seven police cruisers parked out front with lights still flashing, the coroner’s van, and the crime scene unit’s SUV. She pulled up as close to the curb as she could.

There were several small groups of officers questioning people who they could only assume were the victims neighbors. A young patrol officer held the door open for Dani and Charlie. “Third floor.” They nodded their thanks and made their way to what looked like a freight elevator.

Charlie pulled the grate down and they stepped inside. After pushing the button for what turned out to be the top floor, Detective Crews looked over at his partner and smiled. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an apple. He held it out to her to which she shook her head. He shrugged and took a large, and very noisy, bite out of it.

As they stepped out of the elevator they noticed several officers standing in front of a very large sliding metal door. They walked into the loft and took in the scene around them.

The crime scene unit was busy dusting for fingerprints in the kitchen. They continued walking through until they came across the victim.

A blonde woman who looked to be in her late twenties was sprawled, naked across a bed with black satin sheets. She was laying on her back, her right foot on the pillows and her left foot tucked up under her right knee. She was at an angle on the bed so that her head was hanging over the side of the bed, her hair spilling down the side, a stark contrast to the black sheets. Her left hand was resting on her thigh, her fingertips on her labia. Her right hand was holding her breast. Her eyes and mouth were closed. She looked as if she could have been sleeping or posing for a picture if it weren’t for the round bullet hole in the middle of her forehead and the small amount of blood surrounding it.

Detective Charlie Crews tilted his head to the side, as if seeing the crime scene through a different angle might help him to figure it out, “Déjà vu.”

His partner looked at him and raised an eyebrow. She noticed a patrolman walking up to them and braced herself.

“That’s what I said, too. I’ll help you out. Miss April 1999, May 2002, and September 2005.”

Charlie’s eyes widened and he turned to look at his ex-partner. “Oh! That’s right, Bobby. She liked camping and bird watching.”

“That’s her.”

Reese accepted driver’s license that another patrolman was holding out to her and said, “Jeanna Hickinson.”

Bobby and Charlie grinned, “Jeeeannnna,” they said, almost reverently.

Dani took a deep breath and looked back over at the bed. She couldn’t quite place what was bothering her until she saw the crime scene investigator take a swab of the blood from around the bullet hole. “She was shot in the head, where’s all the blood?”

Charlie cocked his head to another side, “Where is all the blood?”

Bobby Stark motioned with his thumb to the adjoining room. “It’s pretty obvious that he shot her in the other room and then brought her in here.”

Crews started walking around the room while looking at the victim, “He shot you in there and then brought you in here and posed you like your first centerfold in Kitty Kat. Why?”

Reese looked at the crime scene technician as she walked by, “You got everything you need?” The young woman nodded and left. The photographer took one last picture and nodded as well. Dani looked over at the coroner and said, “Okay, get her out of here.”

The three officers moved out of the way as the medical examiner’s assistants lifted the woman onto a gurney, covered her with a sheet, and strapped her onto the gurney. They wheeled her out, Bobby and the rest of the uniforms following her.

Reese looked out of the window and saw the officers making a path through the press to get her to the coroner’s van. “Amazing. They sure don’t waste any time.”

Charlie looked at all of the windows and at the locks on the door. “Doesn’t look like forced entry.”

Dani nodded her head and added, “No witnesses, called in on the anonymous tip line.”

It was Charlie’s turn to nod his head, “Tidwell won’t be happy.”

She shook her head in agreement, “Copy that.”

As they strapped themselves into the car, Dani realized that she wasn’t going to be able to let something go. She was just going to have to ask about it. “Okay, so I have to ask.

How did you know about her if you were in prison?”

“Oh. Um, the prison library actually has several subscriptions to a wide variety of several, um, magazines. Kitty Kat happened to be one of them. Also, when Constance took my case and started working on everything she demanded that I be given certain things. She made sure I had a copy of every issue of Kitty Kat that had been released since my arrest.”

“Right. Your lawyer, your female lawyer, just demanded that you be given 12 years worth of porn? And anyway, they don’t allow that in prisons.”

“Actually they do.”

She glanced over at him. “Okay. So they allow it. And your attorney demanded that you have them?” she asked. Her eyebrows knitted together as she realized how high pitched her voice had become.

Charlie turned his head so he was looking out of his window and mumbled something that she couldn’t understand. She glanced over at him again. She could swear he was blushing! Her lips pulled up slightly at the corners.

“What was that, Crews?”

“I said,” he enunciated, “that I may have mentioned something to her about missing my subscription when she asked me if there was anything else she could get me while I was waiting.”

“I see.” Dani just smiled and let Crews continue to look at the window. For once, Dani Reese got a nice quiet ride back to the station.

crewszen

The Kitty Kat Killer (Chapter 1)