This is my entry for the of_ficathon over at LJ. My prompt was:

Challenge 8
Genre: Romance, Suspense, Mystery
Rating: T
Like: White Roses, An Unlikely Suspect, Two Detectives Who Hate Each Other (Pref: The Leads)
Hate: Mary Sues, A Female Character Who Can't Stand Up For Herself, More Romance Than Mystery
Words/Quotes: Bookworm, "Bagpipe Mafia? What the hell is that supposed to mean?", "How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?"

As you can probably tell, I don't write much original fiction. I apologize in advance if this isn't very good.

The first time I wrote this, I did so listening to "All is Love" off the Where the Wild Things Are Soundtrack. But I was unhappy with that draft and pretty much rewrote it (some of the dialogue and a few scenes are the same), this time listening to "Chew Me Up and Spit Me Out," by Cobra Starship. And while that song definately influenced the story, none of the lines worked quite like I'd hoped, so title and lyrics are from "Never Ending Math Equation" by Modest Mouse. I think it fits.

"The universe works on a math equation
that never even ever really ends in the end
Infinity spirals out creation
We're on the tip of its tongue, and it is saying
We aint sure where you stand
You aint machines and you aint land
And the plants and the animals, they are linked
And the plants and the animals eat each other."

--Modest Mouse

They find the first one at noon.

She gets a call, (something about somebody blowing up an abandoned house), and they’re off, arriving at the scene just before the last of the fire trucks pulls away.

“You should see this,” one of the firefighters tells her partner, Detective Sanchez.

“What, exactly, am I supposed to be looking at?” he wonders, because honestly, there’s not much to see. There’s an upended refrigerator and a thin layer of ash coating the scene, like some bizarre mockery of a snow globe.

“Not this,” the firefighter replies, and he looks at his boots, uncomfortable. Sanchez has a habit of making people feel that way. “It’s…she’s over here.”

The girl’s nineteen or twenty at the most, and sprawled out across a four-poster bed, her arms and legs splayed out at odd angles – almost as if she’d been hastily dropped there, or, given the circumstances, blown backward by the explosion. Burns mar most her features, but they can still clearly make out the object clutched in her right hand – a bouquet of white roses.

Alexis lets her eyes wander from what’s left of the girl’s face. Remnants of a shattered music box crack under her feet, and a few singed photographs rustle in the breeze. She wonders what it would look like if somebody cracked her life open and scattered the pieces for everyone to see.

“Did she live here?” Alexis wonders.

“Nobody lived here,” the young firefighter chimes in. “Place was abandoned.”

“Then what was she doing here?”

“Trespassing,” Sanchez replies simply.

-+-

What’s funny is that the house was scheduled for demolition anyway.

“Who would blow up an abandoned house?” Alexis wonders, gingerly stepping over something that might have been a window frame in a past life. “Do you think it was the victim?”

“Punk kids, probably.” Sanchez pauses, his shoes crunching broken glass. “Or maybe it was those guys Jimmy’s been dealing with. You know, the Bagpipe Mafia.”

“Bagpipe Mafia? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know…they’ve been causing Jimmy some problems.”

“Jimmy’s got enough problems on his own.” Alexis loops around half an armoire, skirts the shell of an oven, and beats Sanchez back to the cruiser.

-+-

She spends the next few hours on the phone, gets nowhere, and is about to go for coffee when Sanchez breezes by, rapping his knuckles on her desk as he passes.

“You get anything?” he asks, perching on the edge of her desk.

“Unfortunately, no. A woman drove by the scene five minutes before the explosion, but obviously saw nothing. Nobody’s seen anything.” She shakes her head. “How about you? Do we have an ID on the victim?”

“Yeah – Jane Sinclair. Co-worker reported her missing when she didn’t show up for work earlier this week. Also, I just talked to the arson guys, and we can officially rule out faulty wiring, gas leak, and act of God.”

“Leaving…?”

“A bomb,” Sanchez replies, rifling through the papers on her desk. “With a remote detonator.”

“So, Jane Sinclair just happened to be in an abandoned house when somebody else, probably miles away, triggered the explosion.”

“Obviously.” Sanchez slides off the desk, snatching her keys. “But there is the slightest chance that somebody was trying to cover up a murder…and did a shitty job of it. We still managed to get an ID.”

“How?”

“Dental records,” Sanchez answers grimly, leaving Alexis to wonder why, exactly, she loves her job.

-+-

Sometimes she’ll sit outside on her balcony. She watches the city lights and pretends that there isn’t someone out there at that very second, being robbed or beaten or murdered, that she won’t wake up the next morning to find the world in an even worse state than it was the night before.

She likes Ryan because he’s quiet. He doesn’t press her for information, but she tells him about the cases anyway, and he shares stories of lives won and lost. He likes to say that they’re both in the business of saving people…or at the very least, trying to save people.

They laugh, but she knows he’s afraid she’ll turn up in his ER, and she’s constantly terrified that someday, they’ll be identifying him by his teeth.

“Did she die before or after they blew it up?” Ryan asks, feet propped up on the ledge. He’s still wearing his scrubs, and his blonde hair is tousled.

“According to the autopsy, she drowned,” Alexis replies, shaking her head. “It was tap water – it happened in the bath tub, probably – there was no head wound, but she had scratches all down her arms….somebody probably held her under.”

She wonders how long it took, but she’s afraid Ryan might actually know the answer, so she doesn’t ask.

The world feels too dark, but then Ryan says something to make her laugh, and for a moment, she forgets.

-+-

“I have bad news,” Sanchez tells her, and she isn’t surprised. Sanchez never calls with good news.

“What is it?”

“Dan Essex is working our exploding-drowned-girl case.”

Shit. She pauses, twirling the phone cord aimlessly about her fingers. “Are you sure?”

“Jimmy said he was poking around the scene.”

“Thanks, Sanchez. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

Because really, it wasn’t bad enough that she had a weird case and no leads – now she had a weird case, no leads, and a pretentious private detective ready and waiting to muck things up. By the time she managed to solve it, Essex would have wormed his way into the situation, sent it skyrocketing right into the media spotlight, and walked away with all the credit.

Not to mention, he just generally drove her up the wall.

-+-

She’s pretty sure she’d slept for about twenty-three seconds when the phone rings again.

Alexis would have been perfectly happy to bury her face back in the pillow and let it wait until morning, but beside her Ryan shifts and picks up the phone.

“Hello?” he mumbles sleepily. A moment passes in silence, then he hands the phone to Alexis. “It’s Sanchez.”

She sighs, putting the receiver to her ear. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t answer your cell,” Sanchez said as a matter of introduction.

“Oh…sorry, I forgot to put it under my pillow,” she says dryly. “What’s going on?”

“Break in at a jewelry store,” Sanchez tells her. “Looks like the same guy who blew up our building.”

She sits up, fighting to get out from under the covers. “You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. You’ll see when you get here.”

Sanchez gives her the location, and she leans across Ryan to hang the phone back up.

“What time is it?” he asks, fumbling for the clock.

“Almost three. Get back to sleep. I have to go.”

She kisses his cheek swiftly and he nods, already asleep.

-+-

The dead girl’s wrapped in a sheet, white rose petals strewn lazily across her body and amid the sparking shards of glass. Headlights flood the room, reflections and refractions culminating in a sort of hazy glow, that would be something like Alexis’s idea of heaven…not counting the dead girl lying in the middle of it.

“Did they take anything?” Alexis asks, surveying the smashed counter top. Every piece of glass, from the windows to the cases to the bathroom mirror, was shattered.

“Nope, nothing’s missing,” Sanchez replies. “And we’ve got her.” He nods at the girl.

Her eyes are shut – Alexis isn’t sure she could look her in the face otherwise. For a brief second she imagines that this is all a dream, and that she’ll wake up any moment, and her real life will begin. She counts in her head, one Mississippi…

And then she gets to work.

-+-

Dan Essex is leaning on a police barricade, arms crossed and a jaunty grin plastered on his features.

“Officer Moore here won’t let me in,” Essex complains, nodding at the perpetually frowning Jimmy Moore.

“That’s probably because I told him not to,” Alexis replies lightly, rather glad that Essex is stuck behind the barrier, with the peons and the press. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Ah, well,” Essex began – she had her back to him, but imagined he was probably preening. “I was hired to look into some local vandalisms, but when I came looking for break-ins, I found murders instead. Lucky me.”

“Go home, Essex,” she told him, finally turning.

“I could help,” he offers, still with that stupid grin on his face.

“Just go,” she tells him, heading back to the scene. She doesn’t wait to see if he’ll listen – in fact, she’s fairly certain he won’t.

-+-

Two girls, two days, no leads.

Alexis interviews the owner of the jewelry shop, the last tenet of the abandoned house, a high-school English teacher, coworkers, and somebody’s second cousin. Sanchez bustles in and out, dropping off tidbits of information like the newest victim’s name (Amber Fitzpatrick) and her cause of death (a single gunshot wound, to the back).

She also talks to the man who hired Dan Essex. Mr. Prewett, proprietor of several local businesses, had reported a string of vandalisms, and instead of going to the police, he hired a private detective.

Alexis fights the urge to roll her eyes. “This is a police matter. And Mr. Essex isn’t the police.”

Prewett crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. “Mr. Essex comes highly recommended.”

“I’m sure he does,” Alexis replies evenly, although she can’t think of anyone who has anything nice to say about Dan Essex…other than himself. “But I need you to cooperate, so we can get this straightened out.”

Mr. Prewett doesn’t seem to understand. She tells him the dead girls’ names, and slides the crime scene photos across the table.

-+-

As it turns out, there don’t seem to be any connections between Mr. Prewett and the dead girls, and anyway, he had a couple of solid alibis, so he goes home, and the closest thing they had to a lead walks out the door.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sanchez tells her that afternoon, as he microwaves something his wife shoved in a Tupperware container. “We’ll catch him.”

She hopes he’s right.

-+-

They find victim number three hanging by her feet in the basement of a church, white roses braided into her hair. Her cheeks are still rosy, and Alexis doesn’t think she’d been dead long.

“You know, this case makes absolutely no sense,” she says to Sanchez.

“Tell me about it,” Sanchez replies, shaking his head as a nearby investigator snaps pictures of the victim.

The girl has a pretty face, and Alexis finds herself glad they won’t have to use dental records to identify her.

“Who do you think she is?” Alexis wonders aloud. On her right foot is a pink ballet flat, the other is bare.

“She isn’t anyone,” Sanchez responds with a shrug. “Not anymore. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

-+-

“Maybe he’s a florist,” Ryan suggests that evening as Alexis fills him in on the developments (and lack thereof) in the case. Julia West, the girl from the church, was the third victim in as many days. She had been strangled. Yet another day of searching had yielded absolutely no connection between any of the girls – the sites and causes of death inconsistent, and if it wasn’t for the roses, there wouldn’t be a shred of evidence to tie them together at all.

“It’s possible,” she agrees, flipping through the pages of a bridal magazine. “He has to get the flowers somewhere.”

“Right.” Ryan pauses, grinning. “So…I’m guessing no white roses for the wedding, then?”

Alexis slaps him lightly with the magazine. “That’s so not funny.” But she can’t help smiling when he kissed her.

-+-

Day four rolls around, and the fourth girl shows up, practically on their doorstep. She’s found in a dumpster behind the McDonalds cattycorner from the police station, a white rose pinned to the lapel of her dress, and her throat slit.

“Here’s to hoping we find something useful this time,” Sanchez says as the coroner took her body away, but his tone is doubtful. So far, they hadn’t found a single fingerprint, or anything that resembled DNA evidence, to link them to a possible killer.

Alexis had caught wind of Essex skulking around the case, but he’d had the decency to keep himself at the fringe, at least until the morning after Katherine Colby (victim #4) was found. Alexis slips back inside the station, only to find him sitting at her desk, playing what looked suspiciously like Tetris on his phone.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she demands. He shakes his head and makes a shushing noise, not bothering to look up from his game. She stands there for a full two minutes before the tiny blocks fill the screen and he swears, sliding his phone away.

He looks up. “I’m sorry, what were you were saying?” he asks, spinning lazily in her chair.

“I said, what the hell are you doing in my office?” she repeats. She crosses her arms, to keep her twitching fingers away from her gun.

“Waiting for you,” he says simply. “And checking out your library.” He nods to the stack of books on the corner of her desk. “I never knew you were such a bookworm.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she shoots back.

“I know you need my help on this case,” he tells her seriously.

“What information could you possibly have that we don’t?” she asks, rolling her eyes. “And anyway, I though Mr. Prewett hired you to investigate the vandalisms. Why are you looking into my murders?”

“Well, they’re not exactly your murders, are they?” Essex objects. “I mean, that would imply that you’ve been killed…multiple times.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying,” Essex replies with a shrug. “Now, do you want my help or not?”

“No,” Alexis tells him flatly. “Now leave.”

“Don’t be like this,” Essex begins, but Alexis moves her hand to rest on her holster.

“I’m going to draw my weapon in three seconds,” she tells him. “One--”

Essex raises his hands in surrender and stood up. He passes by, heading for the door, but pauses, his hand resting on the knob.

“Detective Holtgrave?”

“Yes?” she asks, not turning to face him.

“Call me when you find the next one.”

-+-

Her name was Lizabeth Winters, and she was only fourteen.

They find her under the ice in the pond behind her neighborhood, but she’d been dead (courtesy of a brutal head wound) long before she hit the water. The coroner also discovers over a hundred white rose petals shoved inside her mouth.

That night, on her way out of work, Alexis places a call to Dan Essex. He answers on the first ring.

-+-

“And you made fun of my books.” Alexis shakes her head as she examined the crowded shelves lining the walls of Essex’s study – one of the two bedrooms in his small apartment.

“I wasn’t making fun of you,” he retorts, spreading a map out across his desk. “I just…didn’t think you were much of a reader.”

“And you are, apparently.” She runs her fingers along the spines, stopping at a spiral-bound volume and pulling it out. “Stargazing?” she asks, holding up a copy of Nightwatch.

“Actually, bring that one here,” he replies. He clears his throat, the beckoning her over to the desk. “Now, I want you to take a look at this.”

Essex had placed a red dot on all of the crime scenes, which zigged and zagged across the surface, like some ragged gash torn right through the city. She hands him the book, which he flips open and lays down – the next second he’s snatched up the map and repositioning it over the book. The star chart is just visible through the paper, and she watches silently as he traces his finger back and across to each crime scene – a perfect replica of….

“Cassiopeia,” she breathes, shaking her head in amazement. But one star was missing.

“Four girls in four days,” Essex says quietly, looking up to catch her eye. “If he keeps going at this rate, the next girl hasn’t got much time left…and we’ll find her, right here.” He taps the map quickly.

She swallows, unsure how to react. This could either be a huge break…or an absolute waste of time. A grisly recreation of the night skies did sound a bit far-fetched (not that any of her theories were any better), but that actually wasn’t the most pressing question on her mind.

“You had all this information,” she says, watching Essex carefully. “What do you need me for?”

Essex smiles grimly. “This isn’t about recognition, Detective Holtgrave. This bastard needs to be caught. And anyway…” he pauses. “I may know my way around weapons, but police backup is always nice.”

She nods, her mind made up. “Alright, then. Let’s go.”

-+-

“You’re doing what?”

Sanchez doesn’t sound particularly happy about being woken at four in the morning, and even less pleased that his partner was staking out a warehouse with Dan Essex.

“Will you come down here or not?” she asks, glancing out the window.

“Of course I will. But, Alexis…”

“Yeah?”

“Please don’t do anything stupid.”

She rolls her eyes. “You know I won’t.”

Beside her, Essex stiffens.

“Did you see that?” he asks, and the next second he’s opened his car door and slips outside.

“Shit. Sanchez, I’ll call you back.” She snaps her phone shut and calls to Essex through the open door. “What the hell are you doing?”

He leans back inside, his entire body tense. “Somebody’s at that window,” he whispers.

Slowly, Alexis turns, just in time to see a light flicker on, silhouetting a figure on the second floor.

A scream rents the air.

Alexis has her gun drawn and is out of the car in a split second – she heads straight for the warehouse, in the direction of the scream.

“Stay here,” she calls over her should to Essex – she can only hope he’ll listen as she slips inside the building.

It’s utterly dark inside, except for a light at the top of a staircase. With bated breath, her feet find the stairs and she climbs them as quietly as possible, the gun steady in her hands. A door at the top of the landing is ajar, the light coming from within. Alexis opens it gently, on alert for any sign of movement.

The room is empty, except for a lone figure twitching spasmodically on the ground – a young girl, no older than eighteen or nineteen, with a horrific slash in her chest that pumps blood effortlessly. Her eyes are open and panicked – her lips move, but the only sound that escapes is a desperate gurgle, as blood wells up in her mouth. Alexis kneels down, ready to put pressure on the wound, when she hears a metallic click behind her. She turns, just in time to see a tall, thin man in a mask framed in the doorway, a pistol in his hand, pointed directly at her.

He pulls the trigger.

-+-

It feels as much liked being punched in the gut as….well, as being punched in the gut, but the next thing she knows she’s on the ground, and she can’t seem to draw a breath. The bullet enters just below her ribs, and she can feel the blood slicking her blouse as her fingers grope the wound.

Her assailant takes a step closer, and this time, he aims the gun between her eyes.

Another shot rings out, but this one comes from outside, on the staircase, and embedds itself in the doorframe. The masked man starts, then bolts outside, firing his weapon again before taking off down the hallway. From her vantage point on the floor, Alexis watches as Essex skids to a halt at the top of the stairs, firing once again down the hall – then he glacnes inside the room, taking in the sight of Alexis, and all of the blood. He hesitates for about a second before hurrying to her side – he drops down on one knee and presses both hands down, hard, on the wound. She gasps, swatting at his hands feebly.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, and for once, he sounds sincere. “But in case you haven’t noticed, you’re bleeding. A lot.”

“Follow…him,” she grinds out, but he shakes his head, applying more pressure to the wound than she thinks necessary.

“Not a chance,” he tells her, still looking serious. “I might have mentioned this before – you’ve been shot.”

She wants to make him understand – she’ll be fine, he needs to chase down the killer, before he gets away – but she can taste blood on the back of her tongue, and none of her words quite make it to her lips. She reaches out with shaking fingers, trying to grab ahold of the girl beside her – but when she does, she realizes that the girl has stopped moving.

“Is she…?” Alexis breathes, but Essex shakes his head. Alexis tries to choke back a sob, which comes out as a raspy wheeze. Her lungs constrict suddenly, and for the first time, she thinks that maybe she’s dying.

Red and blue lights flash outside the window, and everything fades to darkness.

-+-

Ryan is there when she wakes up.

His hand is wrapped loosely around hers, and he’s staring at the wall, apparently lost in thought. She squeezes his fingers and he jumps, swinging his head back to look at her. When he catches her gaze, she sees a look of relief wash over his features, and his entire body relaxes. He wraps her hand tightly in both of his own.

“What happened?” she asks, her voice hoarse.

“You’ve been shot,” Ryan tells her, his voice (and hands) shaking. “You almost died.” He looks at her like he’s afraid she still might, but she feels fine, and tells him so. He doesn’t seem convinced, so she changes the subject.

“Did they catch him?” she wants to know next, and slowly, Ryan shakes his head. The reluctantly, she asks, “…and the girl?”

“They couldn’t help her,” he says gently, “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” Alexis turns away, noticing for the first time a vast arrangement of various candies and flowers on the table across the room.

Sitting front and center is a bouquet of white roses.

-+-

It could have been worse. She could have died…and she almost had.

Hours in surgery had repaired the damage to her lung, but it’d still be a while before she was fully healed…and even longer before she’d be back at work. Even after she leaves the hospital, Ryan doesn’t want her off the couch – but she figured that as a doctor, he is prone to overreacting about those sorts of things.

Nobody could figure out who left the roses. There wasn’t a card, and a convenient power outage meant that the cameras hadn’t caught whoever it was, and none of the staff had noticed anything out of the ordinary. All the same, the department sent someone to guard her room.

It’s been two days since she woke up, and since then, two more girls had been killed.

Sanchez comes to see her, but won’t give any details – other than the fact that there had been roses at both scenes.

“I don’t even want you thinking about this case,” Sanchez tells her sternly. She’s fairly certain that he and Ryan would prefer it if she convalesced forever.

“Then what am I supposed to do?” she demands.

“Get better,” Sanchez tells her, and refuses to say anything else.

-+-

She’s flipping channels vaguely, when three knocks rap on the door in quick succession. She glances up to see Essex leaning in the doorway, hands shoved deep in his pockets. A slight frown tugs his lips downward.

“Where’s your fiancée?” he asks, peering inside.

“I convinced him to go back to work.”

“And Detective Sanchez?”

“Not here.”

Essex grins. “Perfect. May I come in?”

She nods her assent and he enters the room, taking in the stark surroundings.

“Nice place,” he jokes, then looks at her seriously. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m alive,” she says with a shrug. “And I should probably say--”

“Oh, don’t--”

“Thank you.” She frowns. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to hating your guts.”

“Why do we hate each other, again?” he asks, cocking his head to one side.

Alexis shrugs. “I’m always in your way, and you’re always underfoot. Or something like that.”

“Right.” His face brightens again. “Well, I’m here to make up for that.” He pulls a file from his briefcase and hands it to her.

“What is this?” she asks, flipping it open.

“Everything I have on the last two victims.” She looked up in surprise as he continues, “I know you’re technically not supposed to be back at work yet, and I doubt the department would let you anywhere near this case…but I can’t figure out the pattern this time. I thought a fresh set of eyes couldn’t hurt.”

Alexis is busy marveling at the vast amount of information within the file folder. “You’re bribing someone in the department, aren’t you?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. “Where did you get all this?”

Essex shrugs. “That’s unimportant. What’d I’d like to know is, why did he break from the pattern?”

“And how do we stop him from killing any one else?” Alexis muses.

“Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it, then,” Essex says – Alexis manages a nod, already absorbed in the file, and he lets himself out.

-+-

She’s still reading two and a half hours later, when the door clicks and Ryan slips inside.

“Hey,” he murmurs, leaning over to press a kiss to her hair. Then he stiffens, taking in the stacks of notes, and the grisly array of photos adorning her bed.

She counts the seconds in her head until he finally says, “What is this supposed to be?”

“What’s it look like?” she snaps back.

“Sanchez asked you to look at the files?” he asks, trying to keep his voice light, but she knows that tone.

“No,” she mutters darkly.

“Thank god,” Ryan breathes, and she turned to face him.

“What do you mean, thank god?” she demands.

“I mean, you were just shot,” he says, his voice raising. He takes another breath, trying to calm down. “You nearly died. And if I’d--” He breaks off, shaking his head, then reaches out to capture her chin in his palm. “I know you’re ready to go back, but I can’t face losing you again. Not yet.”

“You shouldn’t worry about me.”

“Yeah, well, how about you stop jumping in front of bullets, and I’ll stop worrying.” He leans forward and picked up a photograph, fingering the edge thoughtfully. “Hey, if you’re not back on the case, where’d you get this stuff from?”

“Dan Essex brought it over for me,” she states matter-of-factly.

“I thought you hate him.”

“I do. But…he did save my life. And he’s the only one who’ll let me help, and I can’t let this guy get away.”

-+-

The seventh and eighth deaths don’t seem to fit into any sort of pattern – Alexis spends days poring over the files, both in her hospital room, and later, after she’s been released, back in her apartment.

But then, the police find victim number nine, and everything makes sense.

“We’ve been looking at it all wrong,” she tells Essex, her voice a revert whisper. He’d shown up that morning, with the file on the latest victim in his hand. “I can’t believe it’s this easy.”

“What are you talking about?” he asks. He picks up one of her pill bottles, probably reading the back for side effects like delusions and hallucinations.

“Look,” she insists, dragging the map to the top of the pile and highlighting several new locations. “We were so focused on where we found the bodies, but that’s not where the pattern is.”

“But…that worked last time,” Essex protests, sitting down at the edge of her bed.

Alexis waves her hand dismissively. “No, there’s a bigger picture here – alright, look here – these locations,” she pointed to all of the new pinpoints, “are where the victims lived.” Now she rummaged for the star chart, laying under the map just as Essex had done days ago. “Before, it was Cassiopeia, but now…”

“Virgo,” Essex fills in, shaking his head. “I can’t believe it. But how does this help us find the next crime scene?”

“It doesn’t,” she explains, “but we can find the girl who lives here, and we can warn her.”

“I’m on it,” Essex replies, standing up and exiting the room swiftly.

-+-

It doesn’t take long – a few phone calls later and Essex comes back in from the hall, shutting the door behind him.

“Her name’s Louisa Talbot,” he tells her, “she wasn’t home, but I talked to her brother – she works at the outdoor mall, about half an hour from here.”

“We have to find her,” Alexis says. She shoves shoots to her feet and instantly regrets it, as her wound throbs painfully. She’s somewhere between stumbling forward and falling back onto the couch when Essex puts a hand on her shoulder to steady her.

“Hey, be careful,” he warns, eying her with concern. “I’ll find her, you stay here.”

“No,” she hisses, shaking off his hand and lurching away from the couch. “I’m coming with you.”

“Detective Sanchez will kill you,” he says thoughtfully, frowning. “And your fiancée will probably kill me.”

“Just shut up, and let’s get out of here,” she retorts, grabbing her keys and bolting out the door. There wasn’t any time to waste.

-+-

As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered – the girl had been dead for hours before they arrived. She’s cold and stiff, propped up like a mannequin in a store window.

Alexis reaches for her phone to call Sanchez as gunshots ring out in the courtyard. She hurries out of the store just as Essex lowers his weapon and nudges the body on the ground with his foot. The bullet had made a perfectly round hole between the man’s eyes.

-+-

Several people are blindingly furious with her, including, but not limited to, her superior officers, Sanchez, and Ryan.

But seeing as she’s helped to bring a string of grisly murders to an end, nobody was really complaining. Granted, they’d done so through on a stroke of absolutely dumb luck – she supposed they’d never know why the killer had been hanging around the scene – but at least no other girls were in danger…at least, from that particular psychopath.

They indentify the killer as Brian Wilcox, and seeing as he’d had the murder weapon on his person, and the tenth’s vicitm’s blood all over his clothes, it seems like a closed case. After several days of an angry silence, Sanchez gives her some interesting news.

“Looks like Brian will be able to tell us something after all,” he says, plopping down at his desk.

“What?” Alexis asks, looking up. “How can you talk if you haven’t got a brain?”

Sanchez laughs. “That’s not what I meant. A couple of the later girls fought back pretty hard – we found skin underneath their nails – at the very least, we can link the DNA to the guy Essex shot.”

And then, she hopes, she can let all of this go.

-+-

It should have been that easy.

Alexis is sitting at her desk, finishing up paperwork when the DNA results turn up.

“Oh shit,” she breathes, staring at the screen, and the mugshot of the man that the DNA belongs to. “Shit.”

The DNA under the girls’ fingernails hadn’t belonged to Brian Wilcox – it belonged to his brother, Andrew. According to the file, Andrew had been dead for five years, but Alexis knows this to be false, seeing as she’d just solved a murder case with the man whose picture was staring back.

-+-

Dan Essex – or Andrew Wilcox’s – apartment is empty when she gets there – empty, save for a copy of Nightwatch, sitting forlornly on the shelf.

She opens the book and pulls out the folded up map that’s waiting inside.

Her fingers are shaking as she spreads out the map and traces Virgo’s constellation. She’d thought it was all over, so she’d never looked ahead, to see where the last victim lived. She moves slowly, because part of her already knows where he’s going to be, while the rest hopes she’s wrong.

-+-

“Why?” she asks, trying hard to speak past the lump in her throat. Essex is standing in her kitchen, wearing the same grin he’d sported the night she talked to him outside the jewelry shop – only this time, his fingers are wrapped around the hilt of a skinning knife.

“I wish I could tell you,” Essex replies breezily. He runs a finger down the blade, ignoring the fact that Alexis has her gun leveled at his heart. He knows she won’t shoot, not as long as he’s within striking distance of her fiancée.

Ryan had been the first thing she’d seen when she entered the apartment that night – he’s slumped over in a kitchen chair, blood caked in his hair and running down his face. She can’t tell if he’s breathing.

“If you’ve, if he’s…”

But she can’t finish the sentence.

“Oh, he’s fine,” Essex says dramatically – as if to emphasize, he kicks Ryan roughly in the leg – he groans, but doesn’t wake. “But maybe you should put down the gun.”

“Brian was your brother,” Alexis blurts out, trying to change the subject.

“He was unnecessary,” Essex counters. “And so is he.” He nods at Ryan’s still form. “So put down the gun, Alexis. Now.”

Slowly, she lowers her hands, letting the gun rest on the counter.

“And your phone,” he adds, and it joins her weapon. Essex makes a flicking motion with his wrist – Alexis backs up to the far wall, and steps forward to take the items.

Behind him, Ryan starts to stir. Alexis holds her breath and prays that he doesn’t try to do anything heroic, or stupid, willing him to sit tight and let her sort things out.

“So, you killed them, and he disposed the bodies – is that right?” She swallows, shaking her head. “Was I supposed to die, that night he shot me? Why did you save me?”

“He wasn’t supposed to shoot you,” Essex replies softly, his grin flickering, but just a little.

“What?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Alexis,” he explains, taking another step forward.

She stares back, uncomprehending. “Are you kidding me?” she asks. “What the hell is this, then?”

“I was trying to get your attention.” His eyes are focused, watching her reaction intently. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do this whole time.”

“You…” she shook her head, still not understanding. “You wanted me to catch you? To stop you?”

“God, no,” Essex answered, laughing. “What would be the fun in that?”

“Oh, so this was fun for you.” She tries to keep the disgust from her voice, but fails. “Ten girls are dead.”

“That’s not my fault,” he replies angrily. “I expected you to figure it out sooner.”

Behind him, Alexis sees that Ryan has opened his eyes, and is working to free his hands. She’s thankful he knows to keep quiet, but is careful not to look at him all the same.

“Honestly, I almost gave it away the night you came to my apartment,” Essex goes on, shaking his head. “I mean, didn’t you think it was strange that the killings matched my star chart? It was right there, why didn’t you see it?” His face is only inches from hers. “It doesn’t matter. You’ll do better next time.”

Her stomach drops away. “What?”

“Come with me,” he whispers, and she can feel his breath on her neck. “New names, new place. We can switch roles, if you’d like. Just leave me a trail, and I’ll follow you home, every time.”

Ryan manages to free his hands, then moves to untie his feet. He catches her eye, and nods.

With one swift motion she draws up her leg and knees Essex in the groin – he buckles over and she shoves him to ground, making a grab for her gun.

The next few moments are a hazy blur – she feels the knife graze her side, and fingers wrap themselves around her throat as the gun skitters away across the floor. Ryan’s shouting, and she can’t breathe. She claws and kicks and tries to break free – with a furious growl Essex clocks her in the temple with the handle of the knife.

She gasps as the lights flicker out, and in the distance, she hears a gunshot.

-+-

The truth comes out in bits in pieces.

Andrew Wilcox, the man she’d known as Dan Essex, and the man Ryan had shot and killed on their kitchen floor, was linked to all ten of the murders in her town, as well as fourteen others across the country.

She wouldn’t understand why Essex had fixated on her, or why he’d started killing in the first place, but she knows that he wouldn’t be hurting anyone else, and that was enough. It had to be.

Neither one wants to return to the apartment, or has it in them to plan a wedding, so as soon as she’s released from the hospital (for the second time) she and Ryan elope.

The world would never be a truly safe place, not really. She wishes she could lock all the doors and barricades and keep the monsters locked outside forever, but she knows that she can’t. Little girls will be born and die, roses will bloom, only to fade away. All she can do is try and find the beauty in the madness, and when that’s impossible, do her best to pretend.

END