TIME
“We got another one boss” lieutenant James said to detective Bradbury. “Jesus, again, that’s ten in just as many weeks.” Detective Bradbury took a moment to let the news sink in. This was the tenth prostitute to be killed in just ten weeks. The detective wasn’t necessarily a pleasant man but was worse now that there was a case on his desk that he couldn’t solve. He was usually the kind of man who could beat a confession out of a dead horse if need be. The problem now however was that no one saw, or heard anything around the time of these murders; with no witnesses there was no suspect, and with no suspect there was no way to solve this case. Detective Bradbury stared at the case file before him and noted how much it had grown in just a few short weeks. “Detective are you okay?” the lieutenant asked.
“I’m fine.” Was the short answer the detective gave as he was being torn out of his thoughts. “I just can’t believe how many people are dying and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it without a witness.”
“Well” the lieutenant said “we may have caught a break.” “I spoke with the ME before I came up here and he said that there was a piece of metal stuck in one of the victims bones.”
“Good, because we have one more week to find this monster before we find another body, and I will not let this case go unsolved any longer.”
“Good morning doctor” the nurse said as she saw Doctor Green walking into the office. She noted that he didn’t look too good this morning; he looked worn and was acting withdrawn. He usually said good morning to her, but today he went straight to his office. “Maybe his daughter is getting worse” she thought to herself. Doctor Green went to his office, and shut the door. He didn’t want to be there, but he needed the money to buy some new medical equipment. He examined himself in the mirror for a minute noting how much he had changed. His eyes looked sunken in, and lifeless. At one point they were a bright blue, but were now pale, his hair used to be an intense black, but was now becoming dull and full of greys. He noticed he had lost weight as well, his 6’4” frame was lacking in the muscle it used to contain. There was no denying it; his daughter’s illness was taking a toll on everyone. He had twenty patients to see that day, and didn’t want to have to deal with any of them.
“Karen” he yelled from behind his closed office door. “Yes Doctor.” “Will you get me the list of patients I have to see today so I can get an idea of what their illness may be?”
“Sure thing Doctor” She said.
After he had seen his last patient the doctor had gathered his things and was just about to walk out the door when his phone rang. “This is Doctor Green” “yes, I have time” “yes I can be there within the hour.” “God please make this quick, I need to be home to see my daughter.” He thought to himself.
“Hello Doctor” the lieutenant greeted, “I’m glad you’re here, we need your help to determine if this piece of metal may have come from a medical instrument.”
“The ME wasn’t able to tell you that?” The Doctor asked.
“No he’s fairly new and to be frank he doesn’t seem to know anything about the body other than the fact that’s it’s dead, which we all knew already.”
“Very well then, take me to the body so that I can examine it.” After a short ride on the elevator, the Doctor and lieutenant arrived at the morgue. The lieutenant pulled a magnetic key card from his pocket and held it to the sensor on the huge steel door, almost immediately the light went from red to green, and the door clicked open. The lieutenant opened it the rest of the way, although its massive frame groaned in protest.
“Sorry about the door” the lieutenant said “it hasn’t been used in a long time.” “We only take bodies here when we don’t want the media to know what is going on, most people don’t even know there’s a small morgue in the police station.”
“I understand” the Doctor said. “If what you told me on the phone is true, then the media would have a field day making the police look incompetent.” The lieutenant and the doctor stepped into the small room. Detective Bradbury was already there and had instructed the medical examiner to leave so that the doctor could take a closer look at the body in private.
“Doctor Green, it’s good to finally meet you. You are known as being the best doctor in New York.”
“Well thank you, but I wouldn’t say that I am the best, I just love what I do.” “On most days.” He thought to himself.
“Yes well” the lieutenant stated “maybe we should get started so the Doctor can go home.” “Very well then” said the detective “go get me the body from 10-02 and we can get started.” The doctor took his time examining the body despite the fact he really wanted to get home to see his daughter, and he still had an errand to attend to, he didn’t want to make the police think he didn’t care that he was given the honor of helping them. After a few hours passed, he had made several grave observations about the body.
“I have to tell you gentlemen, that this is no ordinary murderer you are dealing with. This is a surgeon or a doctor based on the fact that several organs have been removed and dissected. The spinal cord has been severed and I can tell from this puncture wound that there has been spinal fluid removed from the body. My guess is that this is a doctor who is doing this to sharpen his skills, or for some kind of sick amusement.” “As to the piece of metal you asked me to try to identify, it appears to be from a scalpel, my guess is that the Doctor went too deep, perhaps he had a tremor go through his hand, or was frightened by something.” “I can’t look at this anymore. Please return the body; I have seen all I need to. This is hard for me to deal with I have a daughter of my own and in a few years she will be about the same age as this prostitute.” The lieutenant noted the sorrow in the Doctor’s eyes which seemed to have taken on a new shade and now looked grey. His words, although he tried not to let them also portrayed the worried thoughts running through his mind. As soon as the doctor had left the lieutenant and detective Bradbury started to get to work. They had an idea of where the killer lived and worked based on where the bodies were being found. Central park was a big place but it was where all the bodies were being dumped. They figured that the killer had to either live or work around that area. “It’s more likely that the killer lives near central park based on the fact that there’s not that many doctors’ offices in that area” the lieutenant said. “I agree” said the detective “and I don’t think a doctor would want to dump a body right next to where he works, there would be to many witnesses, if he were dumping bodies near where he lived he would have a better idea of where to hide them so that he wouldn’t be seen, but they could be found.” “Get me a list of the New York city doctors that live near central park. Narrow it down to a five block radius, now that we know what we’re looking for it should be easy to build a suspect list.”
Doctor Green finally got to run his errand, and made it home by midnight.
“Dad is that you?” The fourteen year old was weak and still in bed when the doctor walked into her room.
“Yeah it’s me. Why are you still up you should be resting. You’re sick.”
“I know, but all I ever get to do is sleep and I’m tired of it I just wanna know what’s wrong with me so I can go back to school and see all my friends.”
“God, she looks worse than she ever has.” The doctor thought. “How much longer can she possibly hold on? I can’t do this anymore! I have to find a way to help her beat this thing.” The doctor noticed his daughter was frailer than she had ever been, her hair was dull, her eyes had dark circles around them, and she was very pail. “She used to look just like her mother did before she died.” “I miss her dark brown hair and eyes, and the perfect smile that could light up a room; I HAVE to find a way to help her. She won’t last another month the way she is now.” “I am going to the basement for a while do you need anything before I go down there?”
“No dad I’m fine for now I’m going to try to go back to bed but if I can’t I have books here that I can read to pass the time.”
The doctor walked up to the padlocked door that led down to the basement, and pulled a small gold key from his pocket, with a quick turn the lock gave way to the perfect fit the key created. There were twelve stairs, twelve stairs that separated his normal life as a doctor from his bizarre life as a serial killer. He walked to the small stainless steel table that housed his medical instruments, which was next to the large stainless steel operating table that held his latest victim. He picked up a small syringe full of a pink fluid from the smaller table, and placed it into a vein in the victims arm. Within seconds the victim was peacefully sleeping, and the doctor began his slow calculated procedure. First the doctor removed the liver, and tested the good tissue against a piece of the bad tissue his daughter’s liver contained. When that didn’t work, he tried the kidneys. No match, slowly and cautiously the doctor tried the healthy tissue from the victim against the dying tissue from his daughter to see if anything would help her tissue produce healthy cells. Nothing worked, so he moved on to the spinal fluid. He got a small tube of his daughter’s spinal fluid and placed a few drops from it under the microscope; next he got a syringe full of the victim’s spinal fluid, and mixed the two fluids together under the microscope. Something was happening, but it wasn’t what he needed to happen. Rather than his daughter’s spinal fluid producing new healthy cells, it was taking over the victims healthy cells and mutating them to match her own. “If only I could find a way to make the cells work together, it would be done and I could stop killing, and go back to my normal life.”
“Hey boss, you’re never going to believe this” the lieutenant shouted as he ran into detective Bradbury’s office.
“What?” the detective growled irritated by the yelling and screaming.
“Well we got the list of names you wanted, and we had over half the force out combing through the leads and nothing panned out, but there is one name I wanted you to check out with me.”
“Okay who, who could possibly be so important I need to leave my paperwork and go with you to check out?” “Doctor Green” the lieutenant said. “I didn’t think about it before, but he seemed to know a lot about what was going on with the case, and seemed almost sad to be looking at the body, rather than excited to be helping us out. “you know most people get that rush of excitement when we take them down there like their more important than everyone else, because the cops need their help, but this guy he was sad, and I think it was because he wasn’t looking at this body for the first time, but he was looking at it AGAIN he knew it was a doctor because he’s the one killing them.” The lieutenant was so excited he had saliva foaming at the corners of his mouth, and was out of breath.
“Okay we can go check it out but if you’re wrong I’m kicking your ass for wasting my time, the next body is going to turn up in less than twenty four hours.”
It took less than 20 minutes to get to the Dakota building from the police station, but the lieutenant was so excited that it felt like forever. He wondered what was up with the detective though, usually even he had a little flicker of joy when they were about to solve a case, but this time he was expressionless.
“Okay what’s wrong?” the lieutenant asked.
“Nothing I’m just not happy about the situation, if you’re right it means that we had a serial killer right next to us examining a body, and we had no idea. Usually I can read these ass holes like a book, but I didn’t get the slightest inkling that this guy is a killer.”
“Neither did I, and I’m the one who told you that you should call him, I’m the one who invited him into our station.”
“We’re here” the officer said. Do you want me to wait in the car, or do you need backup? “Just wait here; if things get hairy we will call for backup.” “Sure thing detective” said the officer. Detective Bradbury looked at Lieutenant James and asked “are you ready?” “When we go in there we may be walking into a serial’s den and things could get very ugly very fast, god only knows what kind of things he’s got in there.”
“Yeah I’m ready the sooner this is over with the sooner we get to go home and sleep for the first time in two and a half months.”
The detective reached into his pocket and pulled out the no knock warrant. Legally he could just break down this guy’s door without any notice, so he did. He was alarmed at what he found.
“Oh my god, there’s nothing here theres just a bunch of furniture.” The lieutenant looked around the room and was alarmed by its elegance. There were large overstuffed leather couches that looked almost like coffee in the light, there were landscape paintings all around the large room, and in the center of the room there was a coffee table, and on that coffee table was a medical book about cell restoration. “Detective, you may want to see this.”
“No” the detective said “You want to see this” There were twelve stairs, twelve stairs that separated the doctors normal life from his new life on death row.