(10) I am what I am

~Quinn Eddison~

Jack came into the squad room, heading straight for me. 'Me' being Detective Quinn Eddison. I looked up when he tossed a file in front of me.

“We’ve got a nasty one here, Quinn,” he muttered as he flopped down in the other chair by my desk and waited for me to read it.

I had to agree. A man’s body had been found in a vacant semi-furnished studio apartment. He had been cuffed hand and foot to the bed, gagged and then stabbed numerous times. That in itself was bad enough. The topper was what the killer had done afterwards. He, or she, no telling at this point, had cut the man’s cock off and stuffed it up his ass. Someone had a big hate on. Now we had to discover if it was specifically for him or just for men in general. Gay men if what had been done to him was any indication.

“John Marcum Ward,” I read aloud when I got the identification part of the report. “Not a local so was he here on a business trip?” I look over at Jack.

“No clue yet, I just got this an hour ago. I’ve got men calling all the hotels in the vicinity where he was found to see if he was registered at one. If not we’ll spread out the search. According to what was in his wallet, he’s forty-eight, married with two kids. I made a call to the police department in his home town. They’ll notify his wife and hopefully get some sort of positive ID from her once the ME has taken pictures of his face we can fax them. At least the killer left that undamaged.”

“Nothing indicating where he met the killer, I see.”

“Not so far. If he was gay, and the fact that he’s married says otherwise, it could have been at one of those clubs.”

I didn’t contradict him on that even though he should have known better. After all, just because a man was married didn’t mean a thing. He could have been deeply closeted. I should know; I was that way for years before I decided it wasn’t worth the damage to my psyche.

“So we check those clubs out just in case, though as you said it’s probably unlikely. We’ll get on them and the regular ones in the area as well. Who knows, we might get lucky and put this one to rest fast.” I glanced at the file again and added, “Let’s hope we do, I don’t want to think that we have some serial killer starting a spree.”

“Or continuing one,” Jack pointed out. “Maybe new to the city from somewhere else.”

“Good point. I’ll run a check through the Feds to see if anything like this has turned up anywhere else.” 

“Yeah, and if it has, they take over the case,” he growled.

“Better safe than sorry and you know it.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, you get on that. I’ll see what’s turned up on the hotels and get some men going on the clubs as soon as I get Ward’s picture from the ME.”