Chapter Text
Wednesday, July 10, 9:29 a.m.
“We got another one.”
Grey sets the box down on top of the table in the roll call room, where a handful of officers wait. The box is nondescript, the white label on its side bearing the now-familiar block print of the station’s address and the neat ATTN: Esteemed Detectives of Mid-Wilshire. The lack of a return address comes as no surprise.
“Sir, you really should be wearing—”
“TID’s already been over it with a fine-tooth comb,” Angela interrupts.
Glaring across to Nolan, who snaps his mouth closed, Grey continues to reach into the box and pull out the latest scene: a scaled-down replica of the Farmdale metro station. Even though it’s been a few days, Lucy doesn’t need to see the crime scene photos to compare; Nolan and she were the first officers on scene. The same pale blue benches, the same yellow tactile flooring of the platform, the same overflowing trash can. The same dismembered torso and left arm of John Shore, ten feet from the rest of his body, spread along the bloodied tracks.
Nolan lets out a low whistle. “It’s like a piece of art.”
“Because it is,” Aaron agrees. “But a little too macabre for my taste.”
“And the blood, is it…?” Lucy trails off as Nyla nods.
“It’s a match for the victim’s. Same as the others.”
The group studies the scene for a moment more until Tim, hovering near the back, speaks up. “It’s the third one.”
“Yes.” Heaving out a sigh, Grey casts a glance across his officers. “Which means we now have a serial killer on our hands.”
At once, Lucy perceives the sensation of being watched. When she shifts to do a cursory sweep of the room, she catches hold of Tim’s gaze where it rests on her. She isn’t sure what he’s looking for – surely he doesn’t expect her to keel over at the term? He knows her well enough that while her interest in true crime waned following her abduction, it hadn’t disappeared completely. Apparently unbothered by her scrutiny of him, he stares back for a long moment before focusing to the front.
“I want patrol to assist Harper and Lopez as much as they can,” Grey continues. “Our number one priority is catching whoever this is. I do not want a fourth one of these showing up.”
Wednesday, July 10, 10:06 a.m.
While Nolan and Celina split off to attend to a welfare check, Lucy and Aaron stay behind to help the detectives with the more menial tasks of reading through case files. Lucy isn't sure why they requested her presence, given her low ranking on last year’s detective exam. But if it keeps her from a morning of traffic citations, she isn’t going to bring it up.
“These are from Las Vegas PD.” Aaron holds up the manila folder emblazoned with the other department’s seal as if they need proof.
“Good eye,” Nyla says with her usual level of snark.
“Cut him some slack.” Angela’s face lights up with a smirk. “He was probably still in diapers when Natalie Davis’s crimes were in the news.”
Scanning the file quickly, Aaron scoffs. “I was nine, alright.”
The name rings a bell; Lucy grabs the folder and spreads it across the desk.
“I remember this,” she says. “They called her the Miniature Killer because of the miniature models she left at the crime scenes. She killed five people, including her younger sister, when they were kids.”
Nyla nods as she scans over Shore’s bank statements. “And she abducted one of the investigators and trapped her under a car to drown in the desert.”
“Wait, how exactly do you drown in the desert?” Aaron asks.
“Rain storms are no joke out there,” Angela says, “especially when you only average five inches a year.”
Lucy halfheartedly listens to the conversation as she sifts through Davis’s folder. Pinned to each case file are photographs: an elderly woman collapsed over a window, her throat impaled by a shard of glass; a man slumped over a dining table, his head bashed in; a man facedown in a shallow pool, his features frozen in shock. Each crime scene is accompanied by a top-down shot of the corresponding miniature models, each just as detailed as the actual scenes. The similarities to their current killer are too much to be a simple coincidence.
“It’s only a matter of minutes before the press gets wind of this,” Nyla sighs.
Angela rolls her eyes. “Yeah, and they’ll probably come up with some terrible nickname, like Miniature Killer 2, like it’s a bad horror movie sequel.”
“Which they’ll shorten to MK2,” Aaron adds. “Make it easier for people to tag it on ClipTalk.”
Lucy bites back a shudder. A few months ago, she came across fans of Rosalind on the platform. After scrolling through video after video, watching people spout baseless theories that Rosalind wasn’t actually dead or that there were more acolytes out there, she blocked the dyehard tag and tried to forget about it.
“I’ll request records from the psychiatric hospital where Davis was sentenced,” Angela says. “She died in 2007, but maybe she made a connection with someone there who was released and is carrying on her interests.”
“Are you comfortable assuming this is a copycat's work already?” Lucy asks.
“Not really, especially when copycats typically strike within two weeks of high-profile crimes, not seventeen years later.” Nyla shakes her head and rifles through another stack of files. “Then again, this is no ordinary crime. Little things – like using the victim’s blood to match the blood pool – are too similar. Besides, what really matters is finding the link between our victims, so we can use that and work backward to figure out who is targeting them.” She hands one file to Aaron and another to Lucy. “Take a look at these and tell us something we don’t know.”
Closing Davis’s folder, Lucy studies the new file before her. Simone Basaldella smiled up at her from her DMV photo, her brown eyes framed by round glasses. A history teacher who lived with her wife of three years in Brentwood. No children and both parents deceased as of last year. Her employee file shows a few complaints from parents, but seemingly nothing worth how her wife found her: zip-tied to the steering wheel of her car inside their garage with the engine still running. When interviewed, neighbors recalled hearing a car horn at random intervals, but the sound ceased within the hour, so they thought nothing else of it. Basaldella was the first victim, so the miniature’s arrival following her death was a grisly surprise.
Laying out the glossy copies of the real crime scene and the recreation, Lucy starts comparing each scene to spot any differences. On her second round through the photos, she notices an unusual spot of bright color among the miniature scenes. A purple butterfly sticker adorned the tailgate, which the corresponding crime scene photo is missing.
“Hey, guys, take a look at this.” She sets the two photos in front of the team.
“What, is this like those Highlights magazines when you were a kid at the doctor's?” Leaning across the table, Aaron’s brow furrows as he examines the photos. “I gotta be real, I’m not that good at playing spot the diff— oh, I see it.”
“Good,” Nyla says. “Now, see if it appears in the other murders.”
Within a few minutes, Angela locates another in their second victim’s apartment: a purple butterfly stitched across a throw pillow on Tony Altruda’s couch, where his miniature body lay, the knife lodged in his throat. Aaron finds the last butterfly within a graffiti tag on the rail and busway map on the station’s platform.
“Davis did the same with her miniatures,” Nyla explains. “Except it was a bisque doll, likely to represent her younger sister. It could be that this is similar, like a calling card.”
“So, very likely a copycat,” Angela declares with a sigh, “or at least someone heavily inspired by her.”
Aaron perks up at that. “Well, that’s good then, right? At least we know what to look for.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t really part of the issue.” Nyla motions to the photos of all the miniature models. “At the end of the day, whether or not they’re copying Davis doesn’t help us catch them. Whoever this is, they’re good. No DNA at the scenes or on the replicas, no security footage at either residence. I hope we get lucky since the latest dump was in a public space.”
Very few clinical analyses were done on copycat criminals; Lucy knows that from her struggle to find sources for a paper in undergrad years ago. Statistically, copycats had little to no secondary education and a lower social status. The motivation for the crimes tended to be tied to the media: how much coverage the original crime was getting and how sensationalized social media could make it. Along with that came the ability to cause panic in thousands of others, which was made easier by trending topics and tags, just as Aaron mentioned.
“Was there a recent documentary about Natalie Davis?” she asks the group. Fingers like lightning, Aaron taps away at his phone before shaking his head.
“No, but there was a Dateline special about her back in 2010. She’s also got a subreddit, but there’s not much activity. Last post was a couple of weeks ago, and it only got a few comments.”
Lucy motions for the phone and taps on a random post. An innocuous comment about the significance of bleach in Davis’s miniatures devolved into an argument about the death penalty. It isn’t exactly the case-breaking information she’s looking for.
“Look,” Nyla starts, sympathy lining her face. “I get where you’re going with this, but in my experience, it’s a waste of time to focus on this aspect of the case. Not every serial killer is going to be haunting their own message board. We can look more into it when we’ve exhausted other avenues. Right now, it would be more useful to find a connection between the three victims.”
Lucy takes the re-direction in stride. “Well, what about the miniatures themselves? It takes time and talent to make those. Unless they’re commissioning someone, which would mean a money trail of some sort.”
“Good idea,” Angela says. “Start calling craft supply stores. See if anyone has—”
“Chen, Thorsen!” Grey calls from his office. “You’re needed as backup for a robbery off Beverly and La Brea.”
The two scramble out of their seats and across the station. Angela types in the search on her computer and can’t help the little sigh that escapes at seeing over fifty results. Across their shared desks, Nyla grins and resumes scouring the bank statements.
“I’ll split them with you if you buy me—”
“Deal.”
Wednesday, July 10, 12:11 p.m.
Lucy hears the television in the break room before she even reaches the doorway. Smitty sits in his usual spot, lunch halfway to his mouth, enraptured by the weather forecast. Or, rather, the leggy meteorologist who is advising them all about hurricane prediction models that anticipate a tropical cyclone across the southwest US next week. One of the cleaning crew rolls her eyes as she wipes the counters down and empties the trash. Before Lucy can voice her plea to turn the volume down, a grumpy voice sounds from the corner.
“Smitty, for the love of god, I can’t hear myself think.” Looming over the coffee machine, Tim glares down at it as steam spews out into an empty cup. The look on his face suggests that it hasn’t been the first time this happened.
Lucy holds a quick debate in her head before taking pity on his obvious need for caffeine. Besides, it wasn’t like they hadn’t spoken since that night. They work in the same station, after all, and have even ridden together a few times since. Tim still texts her with Kojo updates regularly, and they even held a cordial conversation at Jack’s birthday party. A short interaction in the break room isn’t going to make or break whatever odd friendship they formed after everything fell apart.
“Need help?”
“No.” He glances at her and then back to the machine. She waits a beat. “Yeah,” he said with a resigned sigh. “Go ahead.”
After locking the portafilter in place and pushing a few buttons, she makes a dramatic gesture as it begins dispensing. Tim rolls his eyes, but she catches the corner of his lips quirking up in amusement.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You know, I did– I looked it up on ClipTalk, but I couldn’t find whatever tutorial you must have found before.”
“Careful, because that sounds like another admission that my so-called ‘social media addiction’ came in handy again.”
“You said it, not me.”
“Hey Chen,” Nyla calls from the open doorway. “Nice catch earlier. I’m headed out to check on CCTV from the area around the Farmdale station. You want in to help canvas?”
“Absolutely!” she gushes, then tries to reign in her obvious enthusiasm. “I mean, yes, I’d like to help.”
“Meet me in the garage in five.” With that, Nyla leaves, and Lucy spins back around to spot Tim watching her.
“What was that about?” he asks, grabbing his cup and sipping at it as she preps her own.
“I spotted something in the miniatures.”
He hums and hovers for a moment longer than he normally would; she knows him well enough to know he’s warring with himself about something. The relative quiet of the room is broken when Smitty gripes about the cleaner blocking the TV.
“Well, be safe out there,” Tim says, all but bolting out of the room.
“You too,” she murmurs, watching his retreating form with renewed interest.