The Traveling Killer and Jason Smith

by S Jay Starring

  They watch the footage from the camera in the driver room and it showed that the driver of the sky train was in the room throughout the journey between Beckman station and Longtime station. That guy told the truth.

  At 10:12, Bella West arrived at the police station to meet the investigation team. The short blond hair made her looked lively, energetic and eye-catching since walking in. It felt strange to see her like this after they just checked her corpse last night. Maybe she had twins.

  “Where were you last night?” Jason asked when they took her to the guest room with a little privacy. Simple sofas, plain color made the room looked good even after many years. Unlike the inspector's office, which was often decorated with bright colorful furniture but was often outdated quickly when the fashion changes the trend.

  “There’s a police call me this morning, he told that he found my body. Is it real, detective?” Bella said doubtfully.

  “Yes, we found a woman body in the sky train compartment last night. And we thoroughly checked that she was Bella West, it’s you,” Jason replied. “It’s not a coincident that you have twins and your parents separated you and your sister when you were young, right?” He asked, frowning.

  “No, can I see the body? It…it's hard to believe that someone said I'm dead and found my body on sky train like that,” said Bella with trembling voice. Everyone might be shocked if the police told you that you were dead.

  Jason nodded and called Todd to bring her to collect the fingerprint, scan the retinas to confirm that she was the real Bella West, then took her to the autopsy room. The doctor had just finished working, he came in since the body arrived last night. He was a little startled when Bella West was walking in.

  “Again? ... Well ... Have you got any twins?” He asked doubtfully.

  “No, I haven’t got twins,” Bella replied strongly.

  The coroner opened the cover of the body. The face, although white, pale and dead, but for those who were familiar with her could remember this was Bella West.

  “Her high, fingerprints, eyes and hair color the same as you, just your hair shorter than her,” Todd said.

  “I don't know what happened. But this wasn’t me, yesterday I practiced dancing until the early evening, then went home. I didn't even use the sky train at Longtime station. My house is on a different path,” Bella said, confused.

  Seeing our own body lying on the autopsy bed would shock many people both surprised and scared.

  The young policeman, Todd took a confused ballet lady back to the guest room again. He let her stay with detective Jason to continue talking. “I'm confused. Why did I become a corpse like that?” Bella said, shaking.

  “You aren’t the first person to feel that way,” Jason said, ensured then shown her the photos of the other two women. “Do you know them?”

  Bella considered looked at those pictures. “No, I'm sure that I never knew them before. Who are they?”

  Jason looked at the face of a concerned young woman. She didn't seem to lie or have anything suspicious. The confusion in her eyes was real.

  “We also found the bodies of these two women and they walked in to talk to me like you. I can't explain this, either,” He didn't want to tell her that he thought it was about aliens or mysterious things.

  Bella looked at the young detective face with curious eyes, without any explanation. They only knew that in this world, at this time, there was Bella West who still alive and Bella West who dead.

  “If you want to go home, sure you can, because you’re still alive and ....don't forget to tell your family that you aren’t dead yet because if they watch the news this morning, I assure you that they’ll come to the police station to see your corpse,” Jason said, shrugged.

  CHAPTER 3

  After the ballet lady has left, the coroner’s report was sent to Jason, the report told that Bella West had been violently raped several times but no sperm from the criminal. The left ear was cut and stitched back with the ear from the second woman’s body. There were signs of being shocked by electric stun guns many times around the neck and the back, but that's not the cause of death. Being slashed on the throat and lost a lot of blood that caused her to die.

  Then the heart was cut out and sewn the wound well. The body has bruises on the wrists and ankles, both were tied or hung. Under the nails, there was a little bit of soil, no DNA of the person who attacked her. Couldn’t identify the time of death because the body had been frozen, the assumption that she died many days ago. Everything that happened to her was the same as the other two women.

  “I think we may take a long time to figure it out,” Jason said to Ted and Todd, sighing.

  “Well…were there any victims? We got dead bodies, but they are still alive,” Ted asked with a face full of curious.

  “This may be a mystery, as Jimmy said,” Todd said. Everyone believed that, and Jason started to believe.

  Where should he find the information? Was there any aliens dump our dead body for studying our feeling? And after that what would happen next? Nobody knew.

  Based on Jason's working experience in the detective position of Wenkroy City Police Station for 10 years, although not very prominent, but he was accepted by many police officers. Even though many cases of crime he had solved but never forces strange cases like these before.

  A few days later after found a woman’s body on the sky train, everything began to back to normal. People in the city used sky trains for traveling through various stations as before, even the Longtime station that found the body of Bella West. Although most people return to normal life, but the train that passed through Longtime station, the first passenger compartment has fewer people than normal, even in rush hour in the morning with significant. No one knew which exactly train that found the body, but it's good to be like that.

  “The old gum found on the compartment floor, with marks like being blown from something, although it’s harden attached to the floor completely. Imagine it, it’s like a soft pudding that was blown by a strong wind blower. Blowing from the side until its shape like a wave,” Emma Johnson, the forensic science officer who examined and reported to Jason, when he went to see her at her office.

  “And what about the dust? Spreading in a thin circle on the compartment floor,” Jason asked.

  “I separated and classified the dust that you requested. Some of the dust is silica or can call it sand. Like the last time before this case. If you ask me, I think it might from some passenger shoes. They might just backed from the beach. There are stations of sky train at the beach, too. Others there are also soil and dust from streets, normal dust from concrete, nothing special or specific,” Emma explained.

  She was a frankly middle-aged woman, many people didn’t like to talk to her much but Jason thought she could explain difficult things easier to understand and hit the point.

  The dust didn’t have something significant like Jason thought, but what was the shape of spread dust while on the compartment floor? What the meaning of that circle? He never saw this kind of trace on the rooftop that he found the first woman’s body. Maybe because of the wind wiped it. He just found out the trace of the dust from the second woman’s body case. The dust must have something significant.

  Large cities like Wenkroy often have bad events happen almost every day, including robbery, rape, assault or murder. But we often found that people tend to forget it quickly, sometimes too quickly. The story of the three young women who were found in a strange condition and strange period of time was ready for faded away in less than a week, like any others matter as well.

  But for this latest corpse wasn’t like that. Because Jason’s received an appointment from a special unit that never heard before. ‘She’ would come to see him to discuss this strange case on Wednesday afternoon.

  “What the name again?” Ted and Todd asked together when Jason told them about the appointment and wanted them to prepare all the documents they had.

  “Well…the Agency of Civil for Peacefu
l something….I’m not familiar. She calls it ACPSW.” Jason answered with confused.

  “You said ‘She’? Woman?” Ted asked interestingly. Not frequency the government agency sent a woman to follow the case from the police.

  “Yes, I talked to her on the phone. Maybe she is an old maid or golden age woman who came to audit the financial accounts at our station,” Jason joked before all of them laughed together loudly.

  In every fiscal year, there must be people from the Office of Crime Suppression and Corruption came to survey the financial and accounting routes of the police station. Most of the auditors were old maid.

  Jason and his underling continued to work as usual of criminal detective officers. Crimes were occurring every day. Some cases were easy because the criminals left a lot of evidence. Some cases were so complicated that it may take a month to gather evidence or stories. Including all three puzzled women cases, but this case was no more evidence.

  They never touch the case again because there were no plaintiffs, and the three women who were identified as those bodies were still alive.

  Jason asked Emma to analyze the sand that was found on the compartment again but still didn't know where it came from. Because the shape of it didn't match the sand on any beach in the city. Then he has to stop interested in this case and deal with other cases that waiting for him.

  Until Wednesday afternoon, Jason still worked on documents and collect evidence of a murder that had just happened yesterday. And caused him to go home late two hours. Sometimes his job was boring. The murder dropped the girl’s body at the park before rushed out through the entrance door that full of security cameras. It wasn’t difficult to follow him to investigate. Jason bet this guy must be a lover of the dead. Because no property of the victim was lost.

  “Good afternoon, Detective Smith,” a young woman at the front door of his office said.

  Jason hurriedly looked up and found a long dark brown haired woman in a completely black suit. White shirt and black necktie. Her face was beautiful, charming, especially the sparkling eyes that fixed on him.

  “Well ... you are ...?” Jason said unsure because the things he had imagined about her were wrong.

  “Katherine Isaac from the Agency of Civil for Peacefulness and Security of the World. We have an appointment,” she said fluently, even though the name of the agency sounded strange.

  Obviously, she wasn’t an old maid or golden age woman who came to peck at his department. But she was a young beautiful woman, probably more than twenty a bit, then what did she want?

  “Umm ... you ... what agency you from again, Miss Isaac?” Jason stammered and frowned.

  “The abbreviation is ACPSW. The full name may be a bit too long. We are a sub-agency under the Ministry of defense. And you can call me Kate,” She said and blinked to him playfully.

  Agency that was under the Ministry of defense? Never heard that.

  Kate gave him a document from government agency to Jason to confirm the schedule.

  “Well... you want to see the documents of the three women, right?” Jason asked. His eyes fixed on her smooth and beautiful face but he had to suddenly stop because Ted was standing behind her. Mouth opened and moved his eyes along on her body. The skirt fit showed her body curves clearly. There was no doubt which part of her Ted was looking at.

  “Are you looking at my hips? Detective Ted Frinx,” Kate said without turned to her interlocutor behind.

  “No..No, I…I just came in,” Ted replied loudly, stood straight, hastily pulled his eyes out of her glamorous hips. Todd could only sigh for Ted cheeky behavior.

  Kate smiled before back to pay attention to Jason again. “Shall we start? I need all of the information about the three women dead cases and a background of the women who showed themselves,”

  Jason nodded agreement and let Ted and Todd brought all of the documents about the cases for her. They kept it in three boxes according to the number of bodies found.

  “Our agency will come to investigate the murders that occur with abnormality about the identity of the victim. As you all know, even though the bodies of those young women were found, but the next day, those others girls came to see you and testimony, still alive, and they still have fingerprints and retinas same as the body you found, but only a little different in appearance, instance, the length of hair or the style of dress. Including tattoos or marks on the body,” Kate said vigorously.

  Surprisingly, the Ministry of Defense knew about the case of three women very well. Though the police had never told anyone about the cases, even the reporters who desired this information until almost invaded Jason's office for an interview.

  “I need a very quiet room for reading all these documents… ‘alone’….Well,… don’t you have the electronic files?” Kate asked with scolded eyes on Ted and Todd. They looked at each other with confused then turned to Jason as a request for help.

  “We only have some parts. Each box has more complete information, but if you want to get the electronic files, too. I’ll let my man take care of it and send you an email,” Jason replied. Nowadays, everything was changed to electronic files. But the police station used both electronic files and papers.

  Kate made a thoughtful face two-second before responded with a smile.

  “If the boxes are complete, you don't need to send me an email, Detective Smith, thank you,” she said, turned her attention to the three boxes that Ted and Todd had brought.

  Jason smiled satisfyingly. She seemed to be a government official who wasn't fussy much. “You can use my desk. I and my man will leave you alone,” he said.

  “Oh... Well,…You are very kind but I need a private room. It will be more convenient for me,” Kate said, crossed her arms tightly as if insisted the message. Jason's desk was put with Ted and Todd’s, without partition to made a private moment. She demanding more than he thought. Even how beautiful she was but he just didn’t like her already.

  Jason looked at her strong confirmation of body language while thinking.

  “Ok... so, I’ll let you use our coffee room,” Jason said, he led her past next two rooms then the coffee room. It wasn’t much different from the storage room, untidy and smelly. With a lot of stuff like refrigerator, microwave, sinks, brooms, water tanks, lockers, old photo frames, magazine piles, glass trays, coffee cups and a small table with a few chairs. A bit narrow, but the window could help. Hopefully, this would be private enough.

  “Well,.... This is ... um… fine….” She said with unwillingly and sniffed like she could smell a sewer.

  “I’ll inform others to don’t bother you. Oh, air refresher is under the sink. I just bought it. Hope you like lemon,” Jason replied with a bugging smile.

  Ted and Todd left all three boxes at the table before they went out of the room. “Thank you very much, Detective Todd,” Kate smiled, flirted at him try to befriend by calling his first name. But Todd was just bowing his head to receive her thank you but didn’t care, then walk out of the coffee room.

  Kate frowned, doubted on her own charm. Did her lipstick color wasn’t good enough, or too thick makeup? Or maybe because of the new color eye shadow that she just bought.

  “Don’t worry, he’s gay,” Ted hurriedly whispered before she lost her confidence.

  “....Oh... that ... um ... explain a lot...,” Kate muttered before sat down on a chair and started to work.

  Before get off time, Ted and Todd came to the coffee room. In case if Kate needed any more documents but who they met was Jason, their chief. He disappeared from the office for more than an hour for stood in front of the coffee room’s door.

  “What are you doing, chief,” Ted whispered. He saw Jason was sneaking in front of the coffee room. The door was ajar very little and no one inside knew he was peeking.

  Jason was a little embarrassed before turned to them with a finger pointed at his mouth. “Shhh..... quiet,” He whispered.

  “What are you peeking, chief?” Todd whispered and moved to sneak at
the door’s gap. He saw Kate’s reading documents and photographing each page, stored it on her smartphone.

  “Does she taking pictures of our documents?” Todd whispered.

  “Yes, I’ve watched her for almost an hour. She kept reading the documents and took the pictures. No sign of calling us to provide information or comment on the case at all,” Jason said softly voice.

  Ted squeezed for peeking what happened in the coffee room, too. She was calling someone. And the three of them tried to listen carefully, almost held their breath.

  “I got some information of……..but still………I think it’s not enough…….us to…….him at all,” Kate’s voice while talking to the phone quite low almost whisper, they could hear just a missing sentence.

  “No…they still don’t know, yet…….but I must hurry…...bit…...I don’t want them to know what am I……”

  What the ‘I don’t want them to know what am I….’ couldn’t catch all her sentence made they awkward

  “She shouldn't come here alone, do you think so?” Jason whispered to Ted and Todd.

  Both looked at Jason, waited for an explanation.

  “Government officers never come to another agency alone like this. At least they should come with a buddy. Especially, a strange case that has happened, they should come in as a team,” Jason analyzed reasonably. The old maids who came to audit the accounting and financial of the police station has come in pack.

  “You mean she’s not from the Ministry of Defense?” Todd whispered.

  “I’m not sure, Ted, you find out information about her agency, if you could remember the name. Todd, you find out her background,” Jason commanded via whisper, then Ted and Todd separated to work.

  When Jason just left alone in front of the coffee room. He thought it would be good to talk to her a bit for more information. He pretended to knock the door and twisted the knob loudly as if the door had just been opened.

  “Is there anything I can help Miss... Kate?” Jason asked, tried hard to show her an innocent smile.