While Pack Simmonstook a still upset Tibby downstairs, I stayed and waited for the forensics team to arrive to collect evidence.
I was glad that Theo and the rest of the pack hadn’t ventured further into the apartment. I couldn’t help but feel grateful to the stupidly named mixer on the ground for distracting Tibby and the rest before they saw the true extent of the destruction that had been wreaked upon her apartment.
The apartment had a hallway next to the kitchen and I headed down the length of it. As I walked, broken glass crunched underneath my foot from a broken picture frame that featured a photo of Tibby and Eloise Taylor. Peeking into the first room I found it to be empty, it was probably Eloise Taylor’s old bedroom. There was no damage to it at all and I closed the door.
The next door was a bathroom that was meticulously clean except for the mirror which was covered in more photos of Tibby.
Finally, I made it to the room at the end of the hall, Tibby’s room. Surprisingly, there was minimal damage inside. However, what had been done to the room made my blood run cold. On the wall behind her bed, in dripping black spray paint, was the same symbol that had been tattooed onto the wrists of the four who had been found dead. The tattoo that, while faded, was also tattooed on the inside of Tibby’s wrist.
Laid on the neatly made bed was a single photo of Tibby, taken when she was younger. She was probably fourteen or fifteen and was dressed in a pastel pink dress that looked like it was meant for someone much younger than her. Her red hair had been plaited into two braids that hung on either side of her face. In the picture, she sat at a table and a man was sitting next to her and speaking quietly with her. I realized, with a jolt, that this was a picture from Hezekiah Jordan’s trial. Cameras hadn’t been allowed inside of the courtroom, so who had taken it?
“Collins!” Emerson’s voice came from the living room of the apartment and figuring out where the picture had come from would have to wait.
“Back here,” I called and pulled out my cell phone, snapping a picture of the wall before meeting Emerson in the hallway. The other agent looked completely exhausted after dealing with the scene from this morning.
“Whoever this guy is, he never takes a break, does he?” She peeked into the bedroom over my shoulder and shook her head in disbelief, “The timeline for the body was around seven this morning. How did he know that she’d be out of her room for that long?”
I knew the answer to that, but that didn’t mean that I liked it. “She was in heat services for three days before this morning. She only stopped by to change her clothes around ten and was out until we came up here to pack up some of her things.”
Emerson grimaced, “so whoever this guy is, he knows when her heat cycles are? That is so creepy.”
Not only did he know her heat cycles, but he knew enough about her schedule and academy security that he could get in and out without being caught.
“I’m more worried that he has access to academy files. I swear this place boasts the highest-end security, but this is my second experience with them failing to protect their charges.” The building housed over two hundred omegas at any given time. Not only that, this was the second breach of information on the academy’s part, the first being with Eloise Taylor. They were a federally funded institution, this meant that their security should be a hundred times better than it currently was. Just how much more information had been compromised with their wide-holed net?
“I’ll see if they can pull her files from the online database. The crew will get started on gathering evidence.” She hiked a thumb over her shoulder at the group of agents and a single disgruntled security guard who stood together in the living room.
“Sounds like a plan. Just to let you know, I’m going to ask Director Cruz to be on Tibby’s protection detail. Which means that you are in charge of the ground team.”
“You could say that you want to shirk your work onto me.” Emerson’s words held a teasing note to them and I laughed, nudging her playfully with my shoulder as we returned to the living room. She and I both knew that I didn’t want to give up the reins of an operation so easily, but I was doing so to be on Tibby’s personal protection detail.
“Yep, I was just thinking that I needed a vacation.” Not that watching a wayward omega, who was currently the target of a serial killer, was much of a vacation. But hey, at least I might get a full night of sleep for once. The image of the red-headed omega came, unbidden, into my mind. She looked like trouble and something inside me told me not to count on that full night of sleep. Tibby seemed like a handful and a half (figuratively and literally). Between panicking, passing out, and crying about a kitchen appliance, I’d nearly laughed several times since meeting her. That was a big no-no as I was in the middle of working, not making a new friend.
“Alright everyone,” I clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention. “I need everything photographed and dusted for prints. Bag and tag anything that you think could be useful. I want samples of the spray paint in the bedroom to be collected, maybe the bastard used a special kind and we can get him that way.”
The techs immediately got to work and soon the apartment was filled with quiet conversations and the flashing of cameras.
“How long do I need to be here?” The security guard, who I’d forgotten about, asked. His words ended on a whine that grated on my already fraying patience. This asshole was supposed to be keeping these omegas safe and, instead, had let a literal serial killer into the elevator. My thoughts turned to the little girl who’d seen the man enter the apartment. She could have been hurt. What if Tibby had decided to come back to her apartment while he was inside? We could be investigating another murder rather than a B & E.
I looked the security up and down, unimpressed with what I saw. He was dressed in black pants and a black polo shirt with the academy’s logo embroidered on the right breast pocket. The shirt was untucked and contributed to the generally unkempt look that he had going on. There was also a smear of mustard on the collar of his shirt. Just by looking at him, it was easy to see how the intruder had gotten past him unnoticed. This guy was a glorified mall cop, not a security guard at one of the most expensive institutions in San Francisco. I couldn’t help but wonder where all of the money that the federal government provided was going.
“You are going to be here as long as I want you to be here. One of your omega charges’ homes was broken into on your watch, and you are going to explain exactly how that happened.” The clear disdain in my voice made the man flinch, but at least he had the decency to look guilty for his failure to do his job.
“I went to the bathroom for five minutes, and I asked Amber to watch the elevator, but she must have gotten distracted.” And thus the hot potato of blame was dumped right into the assistant’s lap.
“So you are telling me that this academy doesn’t have at least two security guards on shift at a time so things like thisdon’thappen?” Surely they could afford two security guards to watch one damn elevator.
The guard just shrugged, “Everyone’s out with the flu. I wasn’t even s’posed to work today.” The flu. That had been something that had come up too often today for my liking. Even if half the staff is out with the flu, it was the academy’s job to adequately staff their building. I’d have to ask Director Cruz to give their higher-ups a call and figure out just what the hell was going on here. This place stunk of misappropriated funds.
“Fine. You can head back downstairs, I’ll send a tech down shortly to get the security footage from you.” I turned away from him, effectively dismissing him from the room as I watched the techs move around the apartment, continuing to collect evidence.
“How likely do you think it will be that they find any forensic evidence?” Emerson asked, joining me again.
I already knew that our chances of finding anything useful were slim to none. We’d only managed to find a few foreign hair fibers at the other four scenes. All we’d been able to do with those was determine that they came from the same person and that person was of European descent, probably caucasian and a brunette. If any usable DNA evidencehadbeen left behind, it would have been charred along with the bodies of the victims. So, I could only answer with what I’d seen so far in the investigation: “Whoever did this is good. They know how to avoid leaving evidence behind, so I doubt we’ll get anything here.”
“I was afraid that you were going to say that.” Emerson sighed and rubbed her face, it had been forty-eight hours since either of us had slept and it showed.
“Why don’t you submit your notes to the profiler and head home for the afternoon and take a nap?” I offered, “I can hold down the fort until tonight, then I’ll head to Theo’s place.”
