Topic: Suspicious Death, Case No. 14-AUG-261, West End.

Alex Waterman · Date: 2014-08-19 07:36 EST

FROM: West End Watch Prescient.
RE: Suspicious Death, Case No. 14-AUG-261 notes forwarded to all Watch Houses.
Copy to 27th Special Division, For 27th Div. CO.: Capt. Ravenlock, Brian.

DATE/TIME STAMP: 19/08/2014 20:17 (US EDT, Earth)

At approximately 07:21 AM this morning, an unknown male body (John Doe) was found, seemingly drained of much of it's blood. John Doe was discovered in an alley way off Broad Avenue, West End. Autopsy reports reveal that the upper dermis of the deceased's torso, when put under Ultraviolet light, was bruised, indicating he was tackled from behind and dragged into the alley, where upon he was bitten in the neck and drained of blood.

The wound tract implies a vampire was behind the attack, however, given the vast number of such beings who also live from fresh blood, it is difficult to ascertain exactly who might be the guilty party.

Very little information about the John Doe is available, however preliminary information he was a small time drug dealer, and was found carrying proscribed drugs. Given that he was found with the drugs still on him, and his pockets seemingly undisturbed, the belief is that John Doe was possibly killed at the order of a rival, or a completely random attacker.

The John Doe is 5 Foot 11 Inches tall. Has short cropped, blond hair. Was found wearing White sneakers, black sweat pants, black t-shirt and a purple jacket.

Given the angle of the puncture wounds and the way in which the John Doe was attacked, it can be said that his attacker was anywhere between 5 foot 8 inches and 5 foot 10 inches tall. The other thing, most curiously of all, is that the deceased appears to have no defensive wounds on him and, when found in a state of rigour mortise, he was smiling despite the process tending to cause the facial muscles to form a grimace.

The coroner that performed the autopsy is inclined to believe that this implies the victim was smiling at, or around his death, as rigour mortise begins to set in within two to three hours and starts in the smaller muscles first.

Whether by result of the apparently vampiric bite to his neck or as some sort of signature, is unknown. All other Watch Houses are advised to be on the lookout for such signs in case of a serial killer being on the lose.
Should the killer be a vampire, all caution is to be exercised and heavy weapons loaded with silver bullets to be used if they can not be apprehended peacefully.

Brian Ravenlock · Date: 2014-08-24 16:17 EST

The report had been delivered straight away, as Brian began to read the contents. It wasn?t an overly complicated ?doc?, so it went rather---

?The hell??

Brian?s eyes blinked, as he read once more and began to speak to himself a bit, as he did so.

?Bitten and Drained??

?Drug dealer with drugs on hand, and undisturbed pockets??

?No defensive wounds? Smiling, no less??

The report was set down, as Brian looked through a stack of other reports for a moment. ?Kerri come on in here, when ya get a sec!?

?I know it?s here somewhere?ah got it. Hey Ker??

Before he could finish what he wanted to say, the ?other? Captain Ravenlock poked her head into the door, ?Whatcha got, man??

?Come here and take a look at this?? Brian held the report he had just received earlier out for Kerri who snagged it up and took a seat on the edge of Brian?s desk, ?Lemme see here, Bro-Chacho!?

While Kerri looked the report over, Brian opened the other file he had. ?What do you think??

?What do I think? I think someone?s hungry for blood, or just doesn?t like this piece o? work. Maybe he smiled cause it was a hooker-bot, or something?? An why the hell does everyone wanna use the term serial killer? Is that some new catch-phrase we missed somehow? Cause I?m tellin? you, I am the APEX of catch-phrases, baby! The literal queen of the??

?Ker!?

?Oh sorry man, you know how I can get after that 3rd cup, yanno? Okay, lemme see that other one? Lessee?case 8675309?heh, that never gets old? Two-Tone forever biznatches.. Okay--- he, hold the phone? Okay, Bri I see where you?re goin? with this. Yeah, this?well those other ones had NO wounds at all, and we had all that psychic friends network stuff too. All Dion an junk, anyways--- no defensive issues, nothing disturbed. I see why you?re concerned. This is what, a month or so ago?and nothin? else similar and now this? Okay, I?ll bite.?

Nodding to Kerri, Brian replied. ?Get a hold of Waterman, too. Let?s put our heads together on this, also we need to send out a directive?no more of this ?Serial Killer? crap, unless we have a body count and MO to warrant such an issue.?

?Copy that, Boss! One call to Alexander the Grrrrrreat with a side of ?quit cryin? wolf? to the troops!?

Kerri went on her way, leaving Brian to look over the pair of reports as he mused to himself, ?I really hope this is just a coincidence??

Alex Waterman · Date: 2014-08-30 10:51 EST

Alex sat in a small cubical that served as his office, buried up to his elbows in paper work for the last month. After having been set on the trail of whatever had set off all this talk of a "Serial Killer" with the interesting side effect of leaving them grinning like delusional mad men, it'd taken awhile to track down all the bits and pieces. Rhy'din was not a large town. It also lacked any semi-balance to what Waterman, a career cop from England's Metropolitan Police, London, would have called "Law and Order". It also lacked anything resembling a centralized method of keeping all the odd bits of paper and case notes from all the various Watch Houses in one place. So it'd taken a while to get to this point, but, he'd found something now.

There was something odd in the city of Rhy'din, and it'd started at the beginning of the month, or there abouts....He frowned, looking at the report that'd originally put a bee up the Captain's backside and sighed. He wasn't going to like this.

Several minutes later, and there was a knock on Brian Ravenlock's door and Alex was holding three additional folders. Four cases with a similar MO didn't bode well in Waterman's mind.

Brian Ravenlock · Date: 2014-09-01 20:23 EST

Brian had also been going over reports, the most recent being the file package that Dr. Appleton of the Medical Examiner?s Office had given him recently.

"So lemme get this straight, you have bodies rising up and all that fun stuff?"

"Right. The body rising.. isn't the person on the tag who is supposed to be checked in. A lot of the cases have been patients, as I call them, who are marked to be cremated per their DNR's and other documents." She motions to a copy of a prelim-report.

"So-- what you have risen, isn't what came in? So are we looking as a literal swap possibly, or perhaps a metaphysical change? Also, any of your staff-- were they attacked or harmed?"

"One or two yes, we don't have any way to know how many slipped through. The first one.. woke up in the middle of autopsy. The attending examiner was lucky to get into the safe room alive as he's still on medical leave to recover." She shakes her head, the normal playfulness falling aside to a grim ire.

"No one was bitten?"

"No one was infected, correct. We've increased security measures and installed additional surveillance, and nothing further has happened. However, who is behind it still needs apprehended."

"I agree-- this is no joke.. Alright, lessee... Any dots to connect with the patients that came in before the changes? Locations? Family? Anything at all? Also, if they replaced the original bodies, where the hell did the switch happen-- not to mention the one that rose... Wait, I'm sorry. I'm going in too many directions, even for me. Let's back it up a sec... Alright, do we have anything in regards to the bodies that can link them together-- family, or locations? Primary Care Physicians??

"Not yet. At present there have been a total of six incidents documented. One woke up in autopsy, another on the way to the funeral parlor where the original body was dated for cremating, three on their gurneys awaiting processing into the database, and the last one came too in cold storage...after autopsy." She shakes her head as a deep sadness replaces the flash of anger from just a moment ago. "My theory, and that of my boss, is whoever is behind it is out to kill vamps, and is using both the doctors, and the cremation facilities to do their dirty work. They bag and tag the poor souls, hope we'll do the rest and be none the wiser. Again, we have no idea how long this has been going on, that's the scary part."

?Well if they are targeting Vampires, why go through the trouble? I mean, it's a lot easier to simply take them out then to draw it out like this... I mean, there's collateral damage across the board here, and of course loads of chaos, so I can see that-- if someone were looking to stir trouble. As to killing them, it's just a lot easier to take them out. But if their goal is to have you do them in, in the end-- how the hell did they manage to subdue them for so long?"

"I actually have an idea. The only thing that fits, would be a stasis spell of some form. On average, vampirism makes the individual highly resistant to mesmirism and mind affecting arcana, but when captured at rest, during peak sun time, or noon while they are literally dead to the world. Again, species variances not taken into consideration, they can be manipulated in this way."

"True-- but if they're that dead to the world, one could just take them out. I got a feeling there's a bigger picture here... Gina, how many bodies do you get, on the average-- say a week?"

"I'd say...seven or eight, but we're constantly in backlog working on the oldest cases first, unless a new resident has some urgent mark-up on it from higher up the chain."

"Any of these 'risers', were they marked for a quicker processing?"

"Now that I'm thinking on it...they all were. However the slips aren't all from the same person. One was from Watch Captain Cullen, the ?vic? was a friend of the family sort of thing. He wanted the body back to them quickly to expedite their grieving."

"Cullen... Hmm, can't say we've met... But that's expected, considering most of the watch is privatized now." Brian set the file down a moment, and took a glance around the square a bit. His gloved hand lifted, as fingers stroked his chin. "All were streamlined... Do we know who authorized the others?" He scooped up the file and took another look.

She blinks.. and takes out her datapad and begins to furiously swipe at different folders..."One thing stuck out. In one of the cases.. the assailant was marked as still at large. The rest have all been caught by now. So we have Cullen, and another for two of them was judge Mombutu, the attacks were caught on surveillance which negated the need for a follow through autopsy."

"So you have two of the risers, in custody?"

"They were released after interrogation. I can get you copies of the audio, the transcripts are in the file towards the back.

"There's definitely something going on here, Gina. No doubt about that... I think we need to find the judge, and maybe ask why these particulars were marked to be sped up, as a starter."

There were still many more questions the Watch Captain had, first being why the hell were the ?risers? released so quickly?especially given the circumstances involved. Why the Judge wanted two cases expedited, and that just a pair of the many questions in mind. Mind you, this came at a time where the 27th was looking into several other cases where the possibility of ?undead? involvement was rather high and probable.

So when Alex was at his door, Brian did not seem too surprised. In fact, he was rather concerned?

?Alex, what do we have??

Alex Waterman · Date: 2014-09-01 21:25 EST

Alex stepped into the office with a dip of his head to Brian. "Captain...I think we have a slight problem here. You remember we had the case note from the West End? I've been going over the case notes for similar deaths across the city-" Can you imagine the number of papers he went through to do that? Alex's tone of voice certainly implied it was a huge piled! "-And I think this might be bigger than we first thought.
It looks like there have been four 'Suspicious Deaths' attributed to Vampire attacks, where the victim was attacked from behind or the side, near a quiet place where they could drain the victim's blood without disturbance. All the vic's died smiling."

Waterman grimaced slightly. "I don't think they were crying wolf when they said there might be a serial killer on the lose, Sir. All these attacked, from what I can tell, seem to have been committed by someone of the same height and in the same manner. Two of the attacks were in Old Temple, one in Dragon's Gate and the latest one in the West End. I think this vampire might have been betting us having trouble keeping track of the deaths..." Waterman shrugged, he was only just starting to form his theories about what was going on here and waited to see what his captain thought.

Brian Ravenlock · Date: 2014-09-17 13:17 EST

When it came to Alex, Brian knew better than to let things simply be. Alex Waterman was one of the few new arrivals that Brian trusted to no end, which was no small feat at all given the Captain's past dealings with other members of the Watch, not to mention the Governing Council.

Alex was one of the few who stood toe to toe with Brian, when it came to the terrorist one known as Raven, and more so was one of the few who told the Captain exactly how he felt, even when it didn't seem to be on the same page as Brian, which was something Brian valued very much so.

So if Alex Waterman comes into an office and tells you what's what, then there is no other choice but to listen and take in everything the man had to say, which is exactly what Brian did.

After Alex had finished, Brian looked to the Sergeant and nodded in agreement.

?Alright Alex, let's change the M.O. Pattern, ramp up this case and get some additional heads on it. This will be your party, Alex. You make up the guest list, and we'll back you all the way. This gets priority.?

Alex Waterman · Date: 2015-01-13 18:15 EST

It had been, far too long, since that conversation with the 27th Watch Commander, Brian Ravenlock, about these suspicious. In that time, Alex had used the newly opened resources, and some he'd had before, to begin his investigations.

They had not, gone well. Each killing appeared to follow the same modus operandi, Method of Operation. The killer, presumably a vampire, stuck from behind, always. This wasn't a peculiar thing, since vampires moved so quietly and quickly, they could easily sneak up on a chosen prey.
And that was the other thing, the prey. Whoever was targeting them? Either didn't care for the product the drug dealers dealt, or simply wasn't interested in their product, which implied it wasn't a rival knocking off the competition.

Then there were the other factors as well, how the "prey" always seemed to be real, rotten customers, truly appalling examples of the human race. Loud, appalling examples. The kind that everyone knew was nasty. And they were always male. Women beaters, thugs, dealers of dangerous and deadly drugs. Often, these were the same person.
The attacks were, it seemed, completely random but for those same facts.
The victim was always guilty of something, and they always died from an attack that was often shorter than them, with a smile on their face. Like they'd enjoyed the experience...

Grumbling to himself, Alex rubbed his face. A small task group, was effectively what he had, with an intelligence network of beggars and thieves, tunnel rats too, when they decided to show up. And still, they didn't seem to have anything more to the cases, which had grown from the original 5, to 12.
It looked like, whoever was behind the attacks, knew exactly how to hunt undetected. All it really took to case out a single street was to wear a different style of clothing as you went from one end to the other, and a vampire could walk across the whole city and change cloths several times before finding the right target of opportunity. And suddenly? They just sort of stopped. Then started again, no warning or anything, just one day, nothing. For weeks, and then another body was found.

Maybe....Maybe what they needed was a trap.