Chapter 1 –
Sleep Sweetly
11 Mar 05 - 11 Mar 05

Gabriel Ackerman rolled over in his small bed, yawning as his hand fumbled to find the ringing phone on the nightstand. Admittedly, he would rather have not answered it, but there was the chance it was work and that was something he could not ignore. People counted on him and his colleagues. They were, after all, the defenders of the law. Finding the phone, he picked up the handset and brought it to his ear with another yawn.

“Ackerman speaking.”

“Hey, man. Sorry to wake you up after the night we pulled yesterday, but we’ve been called in for a case.”

It was his partner, Thomas Parker. “Kay, Tom,” Gabriel yawned again. “What are they hitting us up with this time?”

“Some broad in Glen Mount Park. She has a single, well-aimed knife wound to the abdomen and minor rope burns. Jeanie says there could be a developing mark on her face, too; most likely a slap for something of that sort. We won’t know for sure until Jean can get her back to the lab.”

Gabriel nodded to himself as he started up out of bed, balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder. He made his way to the closet and pulled out some jeans to slip into as he responded.

“Alright… any idea who the perp is? Finger prints? Skin under the victim’s finger nails? Possible splatters of blood from him?”

He could here Tom chuckling on the other side of the line. “It’s not my first day on the job, man. We’ve done most of the standard procedures already. Cursory examinations are looking bad for us, though. Our best bet would be some of the perp’s blood but I got to tell you, man, whoever did this know what he was doin’.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it. I’ll be down there in about ten to fifteen minutes.”

The two men said their brief good-byes and Gabriel returned the handset to the base before grabbing a shirt. He stood in front of the mirror, buttoning it up over his white muscle shirt and shook his head. He wondered if the woman had known her attacker; from the sound of what they had so far, she might very well have.

Ten minutes later, Gabriel Ackerman was pulling up to the entrance of Glen Mount Park and cutting his way through the forest towards the crime scene. When he reached Tom, he gave the man a nudge.

“Who found her?”

“Teenager out for a jog… the kid called it in from his cell phone and then waited a deceit distance away for us to make the scene. Smart, too; kept in take the most interesting mystery so far in this case.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow and looked his partner over, “Which is?”

“There are no foot prints. Fact is there are no tracks what so ever. Come here,” Tom walked over to the tree in front of which the woman’s body had fallen. “We were considering the possibility that she’d been moved, but look at this...”

Gabriel examined the tree before holding out a hand, “Get me a glove.” When he’d been given one, he slipped it on and very gently ran a finger over part of the tree which seemed to have been stained with the victim’s blood. After a long pause, he spoke again. “It’s dented… bastard who did this drove the murder weapon right through her body and into the tree. That’s sick.”

Tom nodded slowly. “Yeah. We noticed, not to mention the manner in which the body fell and the way the ropes are sprawled out… all suggests she was killed here.”

“But it still doesn’t explain how she and the perp got here. Or how he got away.”

“Course not, man,” Tom snorted disdainfully. “That would have just been too easy.”