Hide and Seek

Matt stared at the blood-caked grass through the shield of his sunglasses. His face twisted up in concentration, trying to avoid the distraction that the flashing lights of the cop cars caused at the entrance of Emily’s dormitory building.
He ducked under the yellow tape and bypassed a patrolman, the humid, still hair hitting him with a lot of smells.
The scent of decaying flesh made his stomach clench. He’d been a cop long enough to be able to look at any grisly sight without flinching, but the smells always got to him.
Matt rolled up his sleeves, donned rubber gloves and crouched by the body. Emily stared at the sky, open eyes and open mouth, as if she had died of seeing something really terrible. Matt pulled off his sunglasses and chewed the earpiece as he stared at her.
Zacky Baker was once again one step ahead of him. He knew Brian was missing, and his gut told him that he was dead, but he had never expected to find Emily’s body. Yet, as he examined her body carefully, Matt noticed something weird. He carefully pulled the knife from Emily’s stiff chest, the handle revealing a partial bloody fingerprint. His eyes widened. Had Baker really gotten that careless? Could that possibly be the evidence that would end his life?
He suddenly got up, eyeing the crowd, paying close attention to the people’s expressions. Killers sometimes returned to the scene to witness the chaos created by their handiwork.
He bagged the knife and rushed to his car. Without taking his eyes off the road, he pulled the phone from his pocket and speed dialed the forensics lab number.

*

Victoria woke up with the smell of pancakes. As she groped the bed beside her, she noticed that Zacky was no longer there. A smile lingered across her face as she realized that he was making her favorite breakfast.
She sat on the bed and was about to get up when Zacky entered the bedroom, a large breakfast tray in his hands and a huge smile on his face.

“Oh Zacky, you shouldn’t have,” she smiled back as he sat next to her and placed the tray between them. “I love you,” she kissed him once he got close enough.

He kissed her back. “I love you more.”

That she didn’t doubt. Zacky could be a bit irritable every now and then, intolerant and harsh. His quick-tempered personality made him unpredictable and it scared her sometimes. But she knew he loved her more than his own life, he was possessive and obsessed over her and, as long as she didn’t make him mad, he would do anything for her.
She observed the tray full of blueberry pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs. The scent of fresh made coffee filled the bedroom and as she took it in, her stomach started to churn. The discomfort made her quickly get up and run toward the bathroom.

“Victoria?” Zacky called out as the bathroom door banged. “What’s wrong?” He got up and waited on the other side of the door, one hand on its handle. After a few seconds of silence he decided to open it.

“I’m okay, don’t worry,” she said, staring down at the sink, “I’m just feeling a bit queasy, it must have been something I ate,” she washed her face, the cold sensation against her skin making her feel slightly better. For the first time she noticed two long cuts on her fingers, one on her thumb and the other on her index finger.

“Where did you do that?” Zacky got closer and held her hand.

“I don’t know, it must have been yesterday, when I used the knife to kill Emily. I hadn’t even noticed them yet.”

She felt Zacky’s grip grow tighter around her wrist. “Didn’t you use the gloves I gave you?”

Victoria felt the heat rise up to her cheeks. “I forgot.”

“Well you shouldn’t have!” He started yelling at her, “Now they have your fingerprints and probably your blood!” Victoria stood paralyzed as his hand grasped hers to the point of making her whimper, but she didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he suddenly dropped her hand and closed his eyes, regaining his composure once he opened them. “You should have used them, I don’t the police to find out it was you who killed Emily.”

“Why?” Her voice was above a whisper.

“Because you are the victim and if someone finds us I’ll go to jail and you’ll be free. I don’t want them to know you killed her, or you’ll be treated like me, like a killer. No matter how things might end up, I don’t want you to have to suffer with the consequences.”

Tears started to well up in her eyes and she wrapped her arms around his torso. “I’m sorry Zacky.”

*

A phone call in the morning had forced Matt to finish his usual workout routine earlier than usual. As he walked down the narrow corridor that led to the forensics lab he hoped that Lisa, the forensic technician, had good news for him. She had sounded somewhat worried on the phone and had insisted for him to meet her as soon as possible.
With his coffee still in his hand, Matt pushed the large swinging door and found the golden haired woman examining some samples by the microscope.

“Sorry for making you come here so early,” She said as her eyes moved away from the microscope.

“That’s okay, I was already up,” he took a sip of his coffee, “What have you got for me?”

She seemed to mentally organize herself as she gathered some papers on her hands. “Well, I tested the bloody fingerprint as you asked me to. It was a partial fingerprint but it was enough to determine that it isn’t Baker’s.”

“What?” Matt had really expected it to be his.

“Obviously the person who left it do not have a criminal record, the fingerprint was not on the database. I waited for Emily’s body to arrive and compared the fingerprints, but they weren’t a match either.” Suddenly Matt’s coffee tasted bad. If it wasn’t Zacky’s or Emily’s it could only mean that it was Victoria’s. But what did that mean? “Then the report from the medical examiner arrived,” Lisa continued, breaking his chain of thoughts. She showed him the report. “Although she had lost a lot of blood, that wasn’t the cause of death. She died from asphyxiation.”

“She was strangled?” Matt examined the photos of Emily’s neck that were attached to the report.

“Yes and as you can see there are finger touch pad contusions cause by the assailant. The thumb impression contusion is more evident than the others and I tried to get a latent print from the thumb but it turned out nothing. They tend to vanish when the skin shrinks after death.”

“What about the blood from the fingerprint?” Matt’s thoughts raced through all the possibilities that the evidences gave him.

Lisa’s face seemed to darken. “It took me a while but I managed to run a DNA test on it. It isn’t Zacky’s either, nor Emily’s.”

“Okay, so maybe Victoria got hurt while trying to defend Emily from him,” Matt shared his theory. It didn’t seem Zacky’s type to kill his victims in front of her, he had always thought that Victoria didn’t even know how many people he had killed, but something might have forced him to act that way.

Lisa nodded. “That’s a possibility, since this blood is definitely from a female,” she looked him straight in the eyes. “The blood sample contained cell-free fetal DNA.”

Matt’s brows furrowed. “What? Does that mean that -”

“Yes,” she interrupted him, “whoever left that blood is pregnant.”

Notes

Ha! Who saw that coming?