Chapter Text
You worked hard to get where you were. You were the top in your class, not because you were particularly smart, but you read people. Well, less read them, and far more study everything that made them twitch. You had an eye for detail, even details that escaped the others in your class.
You were proud of yourself.
However, apparently you can be top in your class and still end up in a nowhere town. Well, not nowhere, Roseville had a steady population. Not a small town, but way smaller than a city. A weird in-between filled with mom and pop shops, but there were plenty of chain stores. But also, if you wanted anything you really liked like clothes, half of it was ordering online.
It sucked, it did. You were bored out of your mind, nothing more than petty crimes to be solved. The most interesting thing was figuring out why your boss couldn’t be bothered to pay you on time.
That was until “The Ghost Face Murders”. It was a stupid name, but it was also a stupid mask. You really, really hated that stupid mask. Though, you did have to give credit. The rest of the outfit was unique, like some super villain with strange cuts of fabric tied on. Did you understand it one bit? No, but you had some strange respect for the attacker's eye for design. You just wish maybe he could become spider-man instead or something like a normal person.
You stared at the board in front of you. Just last night, another murder, and finally you had some sort of idea what the assailant looked like. Maybe not under the mask, but it was still something. He purposely revealed a part of himself, you were sure of it. He wanted you and the public to put a face, or rather a mask, to the gruesome murders.
The murders kept you awake at night. You struggled to be at peace knowing the sorts of things going on in this town, how this killer can be anyone. You will say though, discovering they are, you checked your notes, a little less than 6 feet tall and seemed pretty lanky helps. You just knew you needed to catch him, and you were staying at the office until the middle of the night long after everyone else left trying to understand them. They had no pattern, no specific area, no call sign, nothing. Whoever it was, this was entirely for pleasure. That was the most horrifying part of it all, there wasn’t a messed up childhood making them hate women and kill them, or some bad run in with a doctor who let their dad die so they kill medical officers, it was just because they liked to take lives.
The only thing consistent is the amount of time between the murders, giving you roughly 9 days before the next one. Maybe 12, if you were lucky. Either way, you had to figure out who this Ghost Face killer is, or is going to strike next before then if you wanted to put a pause and hopefully stop to the spree. You weren’t a religious sort of person, not after what those years in college did to you, but you did pray you could halt it.
You paused while scanning the board, right at the center with the most recent article of the local newspaper printed in those big bold letters; “Ghost Face Caught on Tape.” written by Jed Olsen. You despised journalists, it felt disrespectful. There are people like him going to these brutal murder crime scenes and graphically telling the public, and the poor families having to know that everybody else knows all about how their child died. It sickened you knowing that the family would go to read the news only to read about their child.
The worst part was knowing how Jed Olsen could potentially help you.
The man had filled in blanks about the murders that only you would know from seeing the scene personally. Anyone who wasn’t you would know about details from the files stored in your office, only shared upon request from very specific people. But Jed Olsen… somehow, he knew what no one else did. He would stare for long periods of time while walking around the scene, you appreciated at the very least that he didn’t ask a bunch of questions. He would take photos, and he would leave. So how did he know the position the body was found in?
There was a long list of suspects.
You needed to interview your first one.