The Gilmore Files: Got to Love Some Body

=========<<< Chapter I >>>========

In all her year working homicide cases, Detective Megan Gilmore had learned that we as humans are the most cruel and sickest species on the planet, in the way that we treat each other. We just don’t kill other mammals for food or to protect ourselves as our four legged friends do we kill others of our kind just for the sake of killing.

So when Doctor Savannah Edwards began her explanation of what she was able see in her initial exam of what the killer may had done to the victims body both before and after her death, she began to fear that she was going to have to make a run for the closest bathroom out side the crime scene before her cheeseburger and fries became part of an evidence bag. To her dismay her fears suddenly began to become reality as she ran towards the apartments front door. Trying her best to keep it down until she could make it out to the curb, so that she wouldn’t destroy any possible evidence. At any worse then the attendant in the up stairs apartment’s had done in his futile attempt to steal the victims entertainment center.

As she reach the curb where there was one of the cities trash cans, just out the door, she lost the battle with her stomach and brought up everything up. Thinking that it was all over and that there was nothing left in her stomach, she turned to head back up to her crime scene.

After Megan reentered the small apartment Doctor Edwards called her over to show her a small puncture mark located at the center of the spine, right at the base of the victims skull. If it was a puncture from a needle the killer may have injected her with a drug or a poison of some kind but she could not be sure till the toxicology test came back. The other possibility was that he may have used air which would in injected in to the body, By using a needle which only had air in the barrel and inserted in to the victim, even with help, there would be no hope for her.

Just as the sick feeling began to pass, the skull splitting headache of doing the interviews kicked into hight gear. Megan was finishing up with the manager of the apartment building, when she happened to over hear the struggle that detective Fitzgerald was having with his first interview. To make matters worse she was a elderly woman who was having a hard time hearing the soft spoken new detective.

Megan started to stroll over to help him out when all of a sudden; she picked up a sound coming from the closet at the far end of the hallway. As she prepared to open the door, the only thought that was going though her mind was that this could be ether a witness or the killer himself.

Megan already had her gun pulled ready to use in the event that it was the killer. Upon tearing open the door the only thing that she saw was two f big brown doe eyes looking up at her from behind a stack of blankets.

Not sure as what to do, she bent over and lifted the little girl up, turned and walked away from the crime scene and out the back hall door to avoid scaring the little girl more then she already was.

As soon as she left the building she walked over to her truck and belted the girl in to the backseat, preparing to take her to the hospital. The thought of knowing that if the killer had sex with the body of a person that he had just killed she didn’t want to know what he might have done to this little girl.

As Megan was walking the little girl out of the apartment she heard a little voice from the girl asking where the man was that come early that morning. Just then it hit Megan that she had a witness to her crime after all. As she was walking around her truck, Megan pulled out her cell and made a call to her captain in order to see if she could get a child advocate officer meet her at the hospital.

When the E.R. doctor pulled detective Gilmore out in to the hallway, he informed her that the little girl, beside a small cold, was physically alright. Although although he thought she may need to see a psychologist to help with the PTSD from seeing her mother treated in that kind of manner.

After the young lady from child services finally showed up at the hospital to pick the victim’s daughter and take her into their custody, detective Gilmore had the nagging feeling that there was something that she missed a the scene before she left with the little girl.

Megan figured that the crime scene tech's would already be long gone, but to her surprise, as she pulled up around the corner she spotted the flashing lights still parked out in front of the building. Looking at the around the room where the body was found detective Gilmore found a single short strand of hair laying across a shoe belonging the victim’s daughter.

As the tech picked up the shoe just as she placed it in to the evidence bag Megan noticed that in the bottom of the bag there were several m ore hairs that no one would see at first glance. Moments later, one of the other technicians found a drop of white liquid on the hardwood floor in the kitchen.

After serval more hours of not finding anything everyone began to pack up when Megan told them all to pack it in for the night, On his way out, the lead technician told her that she should have his report by the end of the week and with that the place went dead quiet. Deciding that there was nothing more that could be done, Megan left for home just in time to catch six hours before having to be back up in order to get up and start it all over once again.

The first thing that Megan Gilmore spotted when she arrived the next morning was a pink post-it attached to her computer screen. She knew that it was a note for her to report to her captain’s office for a briefing of what her and her team found so far. This early in the investigation, all the progress that she could tell him was that so far that there was a murder. When her captain would ask a question the only thing that detective Gilmore could answer with was “No Sir”, until she hit towards the end of the meeting when she told him that she and some of the CST’s found a few stray short hairs in one of the shoes that belonged to the victim’s daughter, but didn’t belong to either mother or daughter as well as a few drops of a white fluid on the kitchen floor had also been found and that the results should be in later. Also she was waiting for the preliminary corners report later that day.

Upon returning to her desk, Megan noticed a small blue folder sitting on the edge of the computer. It was from the corner and contained the preliminary report. Upon opening the file, she could see that the pre-mortem part of the autopsy of Miss Caroline Fowler was pretty standard. But as she reached the post mortem section, her stomach began to perform summer salutes as she thought back to the crime scene the day before, and as she anticipated what Dr. Edwards suspected at the scene. When she was done reading the report made her feel like she needed to go home and take a long hot shower, not only with soap but to add bleach just to get the feeling that she had been violated by just reading about it.

Instead of helping to answer some questions, it just added to her ever growing list. So without waiting for Dr Edwards to get the final report, and to save time detective Gilmore decided to take a drive over to medical examiners office to try and to catch her before she left.

Just her luck, Megan missed Dr Edwards by only ten minutes. There was nothing else she could do till she could talk with Dr. Edwards about the questions that had been raised while she was reading the report on the Fowler murder. Just as detective Gilmore was heading to the parking lot to leave for the night, one of the girls she worked with when she was working in the Special Victims division came running over to stop her, as she made it to the main door to the parking garage. Once the young detective finally caught her breath, she informed detective Gilmore that there was a young woman up in her office, whom was claiming that she had almost been raped by one of her This in triggered memories in Megan enough that she stopped in her in her tracks.

Hoping to find some possible information detective Gilmore went up to watch the interview from the viewing room opposite the interrogation room. She stood there listening as the young woman as she began to describe how she a woke in a tub of ice cooled water, unable to move from the drugs that he had been forced to take. Then once her skin had become the ice cold he then moved her to the bed and then he proceeded to attempted to have sex with her, until he received a call on his cell, at which point he just rushed to get back in to his clothes before he was out the door.

She went on to say as the drugs wore off, she stumbled to the door, trying to scream for help. She tripped and broke her hand on the corner of the dresser, and she hit the floor in pain.

If her night could not get any worse someone came busting thought the door. Fearing that he had come back to kill her, she frantically tried to make her way under the bed. she was half way under when she felt a hand grab her ankle and pulling her out from under the bed. She could only think this way how it was going to end till she heard a voice telling her that he was a cop and was there to help her.

After detective Gilmore had wrote up her report from the chat that she had with the hooker, she decided when there was nothing left to do for the day. Detective Gilmore decided to go home for the night. As she pulled in to her driveway, the first thing that she saw was a pair of big brown doe eyes of her four year old daughter peeking out the picture window in the front of her house.

The only way Megan knew of decompress after a long day surrounded by death all day was to spend the night hanging out with her daughter, who was so innocent and had no idea about anything but who she was going to invite to her next tea party. When Megan put Jojo to bed that night she wished that Jojo could stay that age until the end of time.

After she went to bed that night she lay there in bed trying to find a way to somehow get just a few hours of sleep before the inevitable call that there would be yet another murder some where in the city.

Looking over at the alarm clock on the bedside table on her husband’s side of the bed she saw the little green numbers as they flashed telling her that it was mid-night. Flustered Megan flopped onto her back and when she thought that she could not take it a second more she began to drift off to sleep.

The next thing she could remember was the police siren that would not go away. As she began to awake up, she realized that the siren was really the buzzing of her alarm clock. As she rolled over to shut it off, she realized that what seemed like only a few minuets of sleep to her turned out to be six and a half hours. Rolling over and trying to get woke up, her phone fell from the headboard onto the pillow, missing her head by mere inches. Looking at the caller id, she just knew that there was yet someone else was dead. Jumping up out of bed and making it in to the bathroom just before her cell phone rang again.

This time it was detective Marshall calling to be sure that she was up, and that he was heading out for the new scene.

Megan took one of her famous three-minute showers and was just finishing up her morning rituals, when she found herself running around the house looking for her keys. Finding them under the table, she decided that she wasn’t going to have easiest of days.

Arriving at the scene in just under thirty minutes she rushed in to the house, almost slipping on the polished hardwood floor of the entry way. After making her way up the stair well, she ran full force into almost a solid wall of Detective Fitzgerald as he made his way back down to find out where the Crime Scene technician was. the guy had got lost as well as already being 45 minutes late.

While detective Gilmore was looking around to see if she could find anything that could help her with this murder investigation. The whole time she was looking, she began to run how she would have done this crime in her mind. When she came up empty, she sudden spotted a condom as well as some other trash under the bed.

When Megan spotted the condom, she felt like a kid in a candy store with the hope of having just a little more evidence so that when she caught the killer the district attorneys office could make the charges stick. Still waiting for the crime scene tech she made a note in her book, so that when they arrived she could tell them where the condom was located. Then she went about doing her search for more clues to the identity of the killer. The only other piece of evidence that she could find was a partial boot print in some flour that had been spilt during the struggle in the kitchen.

Minutes after the crime scene technicians began their tasks of collecting evidence, one of the few technicians that Megan could actuary call a close friend, officer Rachel Walker, found a single piece of evidence that Megan herself missed on her first walk though. This single piece of evidence brought a smile to detective Gilmore’s face; a one inch sharp hollow metal tube.

Megan didn’t want to get her hopes up, but she told Walker that she would bet money that the metal tube would come back as the end of a needle.

As the search dragged on they found a few strands of short blonde hair and a few drops of a milky white liquid to which detective Gilmore figured that they would both turn out to be pubic hair and semen.

Where all the evidence was located between the victims legs on the hard wood floor detective Gilmore said aloud and too no one person that she hoped that there would be more semen inside the victims body; enough that the lab could make a positive match and put the sick bastard away for good.

Back at the station, Megan sat at her desk waiting for that one piece of evidence that would break the case wide open. As she sat there starring at the board were her unit like to organize all of the information about their case, she pondered what would be the thing that would broke this case.

Jumping as she heard the ping of a incoming e-mail she moved to the mouse and was shock to see a message for the corners office with the subject line of preliminary report, upon opening the message preliminary corners report were it indicated that the victim’s body had large amounts of semen as well as saliva that covered the skin of the pelvic region as she read that, she became very happy to read that it appeared to be that the killer had oral sex with the body at some point at least she had enough DNA to put the killer away for a good amount of time once she had him in her interrogation room.

While reading the report, the phone on her desk rang. She picked up the receiver and the operator said that there was a caller who said that he had vital information for the lead investigator about the murder of Barbara Beck. With that, detective Gilmore asked to have the caller put though. When the caller started to speak detective Gilmore recognized the voice as a male. It was a short call since the only thing that the caller said was “you need to look at Cole Jay Meyers he was the ex-boyfriend of Barbara Beck”, then the was line went dead.

Before placing the receiver back in its cradle she quickly put a call in to the tech department to have the number traced. She had not released any of the victim’s names, or that she was looking in to the deaths of Misses Fowler & Beck. And then just for the plain fact that the caller’s voice made her skin feel as if it was going to crawl right off the her body.

Soon, she was getting ready to head off to have yet another look at both of the murder sites to see if she and her team had missed something their first time though, while she waited for the tech guys to get back with her with any information about the creepy caller from earlier.

Megan was standing in the second crime scene when all of a sudden she caught a small glint of reflected sun light coming form under the bed of Barbara Beck her second victim. As she walked over to lift the covers so that she could investigate the shiny object, she suddenly became aware that she might not be alone. Just then, vary large shadow crossed beside the master bedroom doors.

Fearing that the killer may have returned, she slowly drew her glock and knelt beside the bed closet close to the outside wall. As she began to take aim at the door she caught a glimpse in the mirror on the closet door of detective Fitzgerald entering the adjacent room. Just as she stood to walk out of the room, her phone rang with the caller id reading the office. Hoping that it was one of the tech guys with the mans identity who had called her before she left the precinct.

Hearing the voice of Brad, her favorite of all the tech boys her heart skipped of few beats from the anticipation of hearing some good news for once.

Unfortunately they could only tell her that the caller was calling from a burner phone and that they lost the trail there. Not knowing what the hell a burner phone was, she asked detective Fitzgerald as she entered the living room. He explained that a burner was a prepay cell phone that can be bought at any local shop, mostly gas stations, and that by the time that she could get a warrant to place a tap on the phone that the owner would more than likely already be onto a new one, he went on to tell her that the most that she could do would be to find out were the phone was purchased then find the name of the person who had been the one to buy the phone; but that trying that would most likely end up been bought under a fake name as those types of phones are mainly used by those in the drug world so they can make their deals without worrying about some law enforcement agents tracking them. Remembering that she never investigated the shine object in the other room.

Returning to the master bedroom she noticed that the object had moved further under the bed towards the head board. Reaching under she felt what resembled a human finger as it moved a crossed her wrist. Not knowing what it might be under there and fearing that it may have be a person hiding under the bed, she had to act quickly. In one quick motion, Detective Gilmore pulled her hand back and pulled her gun before saying anything to detective Fitzgerald about what had just happened under there. While trying to flip over the mattress and box springs, they found that they had no problems lifting the mattress but when they tried to lift the box springs they found it much harder to move. Once they had them both flipped over they looked at each other to make sure that what they were seeing was really there and just not some part of their imagination, there, writhing among the springs, was the unmistakable hood of a king cobra. Even to her untrained eye, it had to be six foot nestled among the spring coils. While Detective Gilmore watched in shock, detective Fitzgerald pull out his cell to call animal control. Detective Gilmore caught a glimpse of the snake as it reared its head to strike her partner. She leapt to tackle him just in time as the cobra embedded its fangs into the side of her boot heel.

Detective Gilmore looked down at her right leg when noticed that her leg was beginning to twitch, as the snake had bitten down with enough force that it got its top fangs stuck in the hard thick rubber of the heel of her leather boots, and was trying to get itself free. She got the nerve up to try and take it off her boot, and just as Megan reached down to loosen the laces, they suddenly heard a quick burst of chatter form the control officer’s radio as it neared the door. When the officers entered the apartment they began to laugh uncontrollably at the site of Megan and the snake as the two of them struggling to be freed from each other. By the time they all got the snake under control and unstuck from the boot, it was around six in the evening. Detective Gilmore decided that she and Fitzgerald couldn’t get much more done until the next morning. With that she told Grant to go ahead and take off for the night, and was preparing to make her own way home, it suddenly hit her that the man’s voice that she heard on the phone earlier that day sounded like one of those to whom she had interviewed just a few hours ago. So seeing that it was only eight o’clock on a Friday, she began to think to herself that she could make a stop off at the victims house and find out any more information on her mystery caller.

When she pulled up in front of the home of the late Miss Beck. Scanning the outside of the building, she couldn’t help but to see the little orb of light that was floating through kitchen of the darkened of the second floor apartment. Without thinking about it she pulled her gun and after checking to see if her mini-mag light was working and headed up. Once she cleared the first floor, she made her way up the back staircase to the next floor, smashing into Detective Marshal almost throwing herself down the stairs well in the process. After catching her footing, she moved the light back up in to position, blinding Marshal with the bright beam of light that was emanated from the twelve LED bulbs in her hand. Spotting who it was Detective Gilmore immediately started to question why the young detective was at a crime scene alone and at that time of the night, turning to point her flashlight at the window detective Marshall began to explain that she couldn’t figure out how the killer got in to the home without having a key and with no signs of braking and entering.

Not finding any new information, they both headed out of two story houses and detective Gilmore made her way home. On the drive home the same thought seemed to be on a loop what would have happened if she was only just a few seconds slower or hit grant at a different angle.

After her little encounter with the cobra, Detective Gilmore knew that she would not feel like trying to cook dinner when she got home, so she made a quick stop in at Pizza Hut. When she stood in the entry way to her house, Jojo ambushed her with a million questions about her day, then her most important of what was for dinner. But before Megan could answer, Jojo spotted the brown and red pizza boxes and was carrying them off to what Megan she hoped was the kitchen. At least that was the way she was heading. When dinner was finished, she had Jojo all tuck in to her bed and the dishes were done Megan thought that she would lay on the couch to watch a little TV before heading off to bed.

She nearly jumped out of her skin as her cell began to ring off the hook looking at the caller ID and seeing that it was an unknown number so she just tossed it on to the table by her keys and badge then headed up to bed and crawled, within no time she was out.

=========<<< End of Chapter I >>>========