“We can’t have this happening again and again,” said Dylan. “Enough lives have been lost. There has to be something we can do to stop him from murdering more people.”
“You don’t say, Chief. How long have we been on this case? An entire week? Even you can’t figure it out! What do you expect me to do? Go knock on his damn door and ask why he has been killing people? He left no traces at any of the crime scenes!”
“There has to be something we can do, Michael. You should never give up hope.” Dylan sipped his coffee and sat down in front of Michael. “Have we looked over all 5 crime scenes, Michael?”
“Yes.”
“Have we checked the windows for fingerprints?”
“Yes.”
“Have we checked the dead bodies?”
“Chief, he burned the bodies.”
“Oh right.”
“Look,” said Michael, exasperated, “he is obviously very skilled. He broke into the victim’s house and broke the window. He made the kill inside the house because people close to them have proof the victim is inside their house in the evening. Then they wake up and the person is gone. He wiped the floor with hydrogen peroxide after he killed the victim. He then transported the bodies to the local square and lined them up, propping them on spikes. Then he torched the victims so that their skin is crispy and burnt. And we can barely make out their face and body. He blocked security cameras. He probably wore a shower cap or something because there was no hair. No fingerprints. No blood — no nothing. We just woke up the next morning with a call from the old lady down the street asking us why there were people hanged on spikes in the town square. The bodies were covered with snow by the time people found them, so there were no tracks either. And they keep adding up. One here in Boston, one in Newton, one in Waltham, one in Dorchester and the one yesterday was in Brookline. Everything I just said are in the reports. The reports that you just read over like 3 minutes ago.”
“Right, right,” said Dylan, distracted. “Since he was going out of town, have we tried tracking his license plate?”
“Chief, we don’t even know who he is. How do we track his license plate?”
“Security cameras.”
“At this time of the year? Everyone is going back home for New Years. Cars are packed on the highway. We have no idea who is who. You should be happy I am still sitting here in this cold police station with you trying to figure out this case rather than being next to a warm fireplace back home.”
“You have a point, Michael.”
“You don’t say,” said Michael with an eyeroll. “I’ve checked everything. They put me on this case for a reason because I pay the most attention to detail in this entire police station. And yet I still can’t find out who he is. At this point, just drop the case.”
“Michael, we cannot have more lives lost,” sighed Dylan, his voice hoarse and dejected. “Stay at the police department today. We need to work this out somehow. There has to be something we missed.” Dylan stood up, swirling his coffee. “Look over the case files one more time. Check all the photos one more time. Perfection doesn’t exist, Michael, and it never will. We need to figure it somehow and we need to do it quick.”
There was a moment of silence as Michael looked up and just stared at Dylan. Michael’s dark blue eyes locked with Dylan’s, a slight hint of coldness flickered across it and quickly disappeared. Michael’s face remained motionless as he tilted his head a little, his eyes still fixated on Dylan. Then the corners of his lips twitched and he gave a little smile.
“Of course it doesn’t,” he said, blinking slowly, “Of course it doesn’t.”
***
After what felt like seven hundred cups of coffees, both men’s eyes were bloodshot and sore. Dylan kept his eyes fixed on the telephone line, paranoid that it would ring any minute, a signal that the murderer would strike again. He pictured the dead bodies, his mind piecing together all the evidence they had. Everything seemed so perfect, like the murderer has been to every murder scene known to man, silently learning. It was miraculous. No blood, no hair, no fingerprint. Nothing. He or she is the epitome of perfection. But all night passed, and the police line was not wrung once. No murder tonight? thought Dylan. He looked up at Michael, who had his back turned, staring intently at the string covered evidence board.
“Got any clues yet old chap?”
“No chief,” replied Michael, shortly.
Dylan hesitated before he spoke again. “Did you notice something today, Michael?”
“No chief. Everything was as it was yesterday. The crimes are still perfect and security footage of him is still non-existent.”
“No Michael. Not about his previous crimes. About today.”
“Enlighten me,” said Michael, shrugging his shoulders.
“The telephone. It didn’t ring today.”
Michael’s body stiffened and he slowly turned around, meeting the chief’s gaze.
“That means no crimes were committed last night,” Michael whispered in a hoarse voice.
“Exactly.”
Dylan nodded, absently running a finger along the rim of his coffee mug. He wasn’t even sure why the silence between them suddenly felt different. And Michael’s eyes, those dark blue eyes, felt almost…off.
Then Michael spoke again.
“Maybe he finally ran out of steam,” he said, turning back toward the evidence board. “Five murders in the dead of winter… dragging those bodies through fresh snow like he did—he’s gotta be tired sometime.”
Dylan’s brow twitched.
“…snow?”
Michael kept on talking, oblivious to the change in the chief’s tone. “That square in Brookline had to be hell. With the slope, and the wind. The snow probably drifted over the drag marks almost immediately.”
But Dylan wasn’t listening anymore.
The snow had started falling before dawn on Friday. By the time the body was discovered, the storm had already buried everything. There were no marks. No prints. No tracks. Every cop at the scene had said the same thing: It looked like the body had just appeared out of thin air. No one knew when the body was put on the spikes.
That is…
…except the person who placed it during the snow.
Dylan slowly sat up straighter, heart turning to stone. He opened the Brookline file again. Scene photos. Witness statements. Time-stamped logs. Not a word about the condition of the snow. Nothing to suggest the body was dragged.
And yet Michael had just blurted it out so nonchalantly.
Dylan’s mind whirled and his heart skipped a beat. His raised his head and stared, aghast, at Michael’s turned figure, who was still going on about how hard it must have been to murder someone through the winter. But things were not clicking for Dylan. Things don’t make sense.
How would Michael know the murderer dragged the body during the snowstorm? How did he know it wasn’t before the storm hit? Even weirder, Dylan vividly remembers that out of the 5 cops investigating the scene, Michael was not one of them.
Dylan’s heart raced and his hands started to shake.
Michael was still facing the board, tone calm, reflective. “And the way he propped them up—same angle, same pose every time. Even the wind didn’t knock the Brookline one over. You’d think that—”
“You weren’t at Brookline,” Dylan said quietly.
Michael stopped mid-sentence.
“What?” he asked, turning slightly, his dark blue eyes staring directly at Dylan’s.
“You weren’t at Brookline,” Dylan repeated, firmer this time. “You took leave on Thursday. Only 5 cops were there and you were not one of them. No one else got there before the storm covered everything. No one saw drag marks. No one even knew the body had been moved.”
Michael didn’t blink.
“Maybe it was in the report.”
“It wasn’t.”
A long silence settled between them. Only the faint tick-tock of the clock and the distant humming of the radio could be heard.
Then Michael smiled—small and unreadable. The corners of his lips tugged and he took a step forward. “I knew you were the best police officer, Chief.”
Dylan’s heart thudded hard. “Michael…”
Michael stepped even closer, his face inches away from the chief’s. His smile was widening as he blinked. “I didn’t think you would guess so quickly, Dylan.”
“Michael,” Dylan said, backing up slightly, “is there something you want to tell me?”
Michael slowly put his hands on the table in front of Dylan. “I proved you wrong. Perfect murder does exist. I paid attention to every detail. I studied everything. How our team reacts. How long the hydrogen peroxide needs to sit before it erases trace blood. I even studied how you lead an investigation. Every step. Every doubt. Every weakness.”
Dylan’s mind raced. Michael, the apprentice he personally trained. Michael, the most studious boy. Michael, the most meticulous. Michael, the station’s best candidate for future chief. Dylan shook his head. His pupils shook and his mouth was dry. He took a shaky breath.
“Why…”
Michael’s voice was calm. “Because I wanted to see if perfection could exist. I was perfect my entire life. I will always be perfect. I wanted to conduct the perfect crime and leave unnoticed, even in a city full of cameras, sensors, and cops.” Michael emphasized the last word, his smile spine chilling. “I killed five people, Dylan. Five experiments. And each time, I left you a puzzle. You almost solved it. Almost.”
Dylan’s hand was on his holster, but Michael didn’t move.
“I was going to do a sixth,” Michael said, “but then you made me stay here tonight. And for the first time… I hesitated.”
They stared at each other. The humming of the radio drowned out all other sound. The clock clicked eerily on the wall as the two men, one standing and one sitting, stared at each other as their noses almost touch. Dylan’s face remained motionless, but his mind was a mess. Finally, he slowly shook his head and scoffed. He took a deep breath.
“Bravo. Bravo. I should clap for that wonderful show. If I were not a cop I would have clapped at that perfect performance. But I am, and I should kill you now,” Dylan said, quietly.
Michael smiled. “But you won’t. Because if you do, the public will never know the truth. You’ll become the man who let a killer sit across from him for weeks and never noticed. And I’ll be remembered as the perfect cop… until someone tells a different story.”
Then he placed his badge on the desk. “Consider this my resignation.”
He walked out the door without another word.
***
Two days later, Dylan sat down on his couch as he sipped his morning coffee, and haphazardly turned on the TV.
“Breaking news. Another body was found in the local square in Boston this morning with the words “PERFECTION” written on his forearm. The victim wore a police uniform and was discovered this morning. Investigators are now looking into his cause of death—–”
Dylan let out a soft cry.
The police uniform. The word “perfection”.
This was the 6th and last murder…