Ghosted ~ fiction thriller

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Detective Connor could hear the echo of her own footsteps in the hallway towards the morgue. The brick walls surrounding her made her feel the chills besides the cold air coming from the examination room where a man in a coat with black gloves turned to look at her from behind thick glasses.

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“Detective! Vacations have suited you well, you look even younger than before”

“Thanks, Friedrich. You don’t look so bad yourself”

“It's sad your vacation ends with such a grave sign” Friedrich sighed.

Detective Connor senses sharpened. For an entire career forensics to feel such heavy feeling towards a case meant a terrible omen.

“Tell me… what do we have here?”

The old forensics mood inmediatly changed. His eyes fixed in every sign with focus.

“A total loss to mankind. A very young, promising girl in her twenties” The forensic surrounded the big metallic table “Puncturing wounds in legs, arms but the final blow was in the neck. Cause of death: blood loss”

Detective Connor leaned over the young girl. Blonde and caucasian, she reminded herself, eager to eat life whole with deep ambition, even with the bluish color her body was starting to make. That feeling wasn’t sentimental at all, she was already turning gears in her brain to figure out what kind of person she was.

“Are these…?”

“Mhm… marks are consistent with an icepick. Not only that. The color around the wounds indicates these were made at different times.”

“A sadist…” She whispered.

In her mind, the broad picture was being drawn. The murderer attacked the victim and then pursued behind, each time stroking her and letting the bleed do the job of tiring her out until she could no longer escape. Someone with such a way of operation surely took the time to watch her bleed out.

Detective Connor would need to check the crime scene report to reach a further conclusion, but just as it is, the situation was most dire. Such cold-blood murder might indicate the presence of a serial killer.

“I better take this up to the commissioner”

Friedrich nodded. He wasn’t a detective himself but he could grasp the notion that someone out there hunting young girls wasn’t a situation to take lightly. As he watched Detective Gabrielle Connor leave the premises he stood by, softly combing the hair of the corpse once.

“We will catch the bastard who did this to you.”
He clutched his lips. It was inevitable to think about the granddaughters he had.

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The case started to fill on itself. Reports of similar crimes, with the same modus operandi started popping up in different states nationwide. The cause of death was always the same. It was as she feared, a serial killer.

Detective Connor softly clutched her eyes standing up from the desk of her study. It was filled with pictures of crime scenes and reports. She was tired, physically and emotionally, and somehow she knew her mind wasn’t going to find the means the killer used to get to the victims.

Looking for some comfort, she grabbed her phone compulsively opening her Tinder account. During her vacation, she managed to make contact with a handsome man who could stand her dark sense of humor or the discussion of the cases she closed. This godsend man could even give her further ideas or even guess which of the suspects was guilty. She realized how lonely she was after talking to him, how she had so much stored in her chest about the things she had seen and the people she had met but after a few days of sharing blissfully about their lives, he stopped answering.

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In family reunions her sisters would say all about dating guys, ghosting them when they were too needy or creepy, and now she wondered if sharing everything in her chest made her the creepy girl who no one wanted to talk to.

“Ghosted…” She whispered, biting her lower lip. Smiling bitterly she shakes her head. There are plenty of fish in the sea, right?

An entry call took her out of the blue.

“Sir Commisioner? Any news?”

“Yes, Gabrielle. Forensic results of the victim's phones just came. They share something in common, they all used Tinder quite often.”

“Damn dating apps… anything conclusive?”

“Well, we found an oddity. It almost slipped under the rug, but given the circumstances, we decided to press the company to give us full disclosure of the victims' conversations. Turns out all of them had a last conversation with someone days before their crimes. This person always erased his account afterward so he didn’t stand out in the preliminary analysis. Still, always using fake and different pictures, he managed to entangle them only to stop all interaction suddenly. A few days after that he hunts them. Presumably after managing to take an address from them. An expert is looking at every conversation as we speak to confirm”

A chill came across Gabrielle’s spine.

“So he… ghosts them before the crime?”

“Yeah. For the victim's pattern, he must be in another state by now. We have sent an alert to every station nationwide. I am going to need you here tomorrow to give a press release”

“Gabrielle? You there?” The commissioner's voice insisted, noticing the dead silence.

“Yeah. Right um… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Get some rest. I need you fresh”

After hanging up Gabrielle felt her pulse racing. It was like something inside of her had read between the lines a piece of information it had not made conscious all the way. She looked for the revolver in the drawer making sure it was loaded and secured. At that moment, she was no longer Detective Connor, but rather a trained woman who knew something was amiss.

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She looked behind the window curtains. Everything seems normal. Peeked in the door peephole. Nothing. Still, something new. An instinct that only a detective would develop over his entire career.

Exasperated she opened the door, gun in hand, flashing for everyone to see. She turned one side and the other and then pulled up her armed hand. The silvered polish shined below her porch lights and softly she pulled the safety back with a dead expression on her face. If someone was looking they would know she was no prey to have fun for. After heavy seconds occurred she came back inside. She didn’t go to bed but rather, sat on a sofa just beside the door, all lights off. She was hunting now, senses sharp.

The seconds turned into minutes, the minutes into hours, and the hours led to the sun’s bright light leaking through the curtains. With adrenaline still feeding her determination, she checked her Tinder account. Her beloved dark prince had deleted his account without a trace. She took a deep, heavy breath and quickly went out to the car and drove to the station. Was it too much of a coincidence? She dropped her phone at the forensics desk demanding a deep examination. The IP address was traced, he was long gone and on the outskirts of the state, fixed in a fuel station. When a police car dropped by to check the signal came from a trash can.

Detective Connor smashed her fist against the desk. It was now personal for her and she knew that made her unable to keep herself on the case. Looking up at the board, staring at each face that didn’t share her luck she felt this feeling… that somehow it was up to her to catch this monster.

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She made the technician swear he wouldn’t say a word about her involvement and then, later that day she could identify the feeling. Of every mother, of every elder sister who was left impotent after the loss of their loved one. Yes, it was personal now. And that was perfect.

Later, in the press release, the detective announced she would be participating in a special team designed for the capture of the “Monster of Tinder”. She was decided. That bastard wouldn’t play with any other girl to prey on their suffering. Not on her watch.

Images from pixabay