(19) I am what I am

~ Quinn ~

By the time we arrived at the newest murder site, the ME and the CSI team had things well in hand. They were only waiting for us before moving the bodies so that they could finish up.

The two victims, both young men in their late teens or early twenties at first glance, were leaning against the walls of a small nook leading to the entrance of what had at one time been a store of some kind. They looked…posed for lack of a better word. I asked the ME and she said it had happened before they died.

“Someone, the killer I’d presume, used a mace/pepper spray blend on them. They were incapacitated within seconds, I’d guess, leaving them vulnerable to whatever the killer chose to do to them. In this case he knocked them out, cut off their penises, undoubtedly inserted them in their rectums, and then posed them. They died from bleeding out."

That last was apparent from the amount of dried blood surrounding each man. One of the CSI team came over to hand us the victims’ wallets. According to the ID in them they were Carlos Martinez and Robert Johnson, both aged nineteen. I’d be willing to bet they had rap sheets as long as my arm, considering they were in this area of town late at night.

As Jack called in to check, I asked the CSI primary if they’d found anything that could give us a clue to the killer’s identity.

He shook his head. “Prelim on the mace says it’s a standard mix that can be found on a lot of websites, despite the fact that mace per-se is illegal in most Western countries. They get away with it by marketing it as pepper spry, only in this case it was a blend.”

“Okay. So we know our perp goes out prepared, because I really doubt this was a planned murder. More likely one of opportunity. And that’s all you’ve got, the pepper spray?”

“Until we get their clothes to the lab, yes. Even then we may get nothing definitive. It was windy this morning, which blew God knows what onto them from the street. Your killer is lucky that way. There was so much crap on Doctor Freer, just from lying in that stairwell for most of a day, that it’s going to take a while to sort what we found on him and then compare it to what’s on these guys. Our best bet is the trace evidence we got from the vic in the apartment. At least that place was fairly clean. But it’s going to take time, Quinn.”

“Yeah I know. Hurry up and wait as always. Thanks man.” 

Jack came over to confirm what I’d figured. The victims were petty criminals into minor dealing, vandalism, assaults during the commission of a robbery, the usual things young punks did to keep their street cred with their friends.

“No loss if you ask me,” Jack muttered.

I knew how he felt, and that he didn’t really mean it the way it came out. He wouldn’t be a good cop if he actually condoned murder, no matter what the cause.