Back at the dorms, they spoke to a roommate who was rushing to get ready for class but expressed her concern. It seemed Kaylie Summers had not shown up overnight. The roommate claimed Kaylie Summers had been planning to go to an art gallery the night before. “Is there anywhere Miss Summers would go if she was in trouble?” Stephanie asked. Her family appeared to live out of state, so it was unlikely that she was staying with them, but they would have to check with them eventually.

“Maybe Brent Collins’s apartment. He’s her boyfriend,” her roommate replied, then she stopped in her rush, “Is Kaylie in some sort of trouble? What is this about?”

“We can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, but if you hear from her please have her call us,” Hale gave the woman one of their business cards. It wouldn’t take long for information about the murder to circulate, but by then, Stephanie hoped that they would have identified the victim, and hopefully the killer as well.

“Thank you for your time.” Stephanie replied.

“Right,” the woman looked worried momentarily. “Is there anything else you need to know?”

“Does she have any friends or enemies on or off campus?”

“No enemies that I know of. Kaylie and Brent had some arguments a few months ago, but nothing recently. She keeps to herself for the most part,” the roommate tapped her foot impatiently. It was obvious that her worry was being overpowered by her need to get to class.

She didn’t seem to be hiding anything so Stephanie added, “You may leave if you like. We shouldn’t take long here. We’ll give the key to the front desk after we’re done.”

“Right, thanks. I’m worried about Kaylie, but I have a presentation in an hour, so I can’t be too late to class.”

The moment the roommate was gone, Hale sighed, “I don’t think I’ve met anyone so incapable of giving us useful information.”

“Don’t say that, we got the name of her boyfriend,” Stephanie looked at the textbooks on Kaylie Summer’s side of the room. She was obviously an art major based on the sketchbook and drawing utensils, but she had a textbook on mythology. “What are Miss Summer’s courses this semester?”

She heard the rustling of paper as Hale looked for the relevant paper. “Four different courses that are part of the art program and one literature course.”

“What’s the literature class?”

“Comparative Folklore. Sounds like some sort of class that someone looking for an easy A would go for,” Hale huffed.

“Doesn’t look like an easy class,” Stephanie said as she held up the thick textbook. Kaylie Summers had bookmarked several pages with tabs and dog-eared others. “What were the art classes? Maybe she’s using the class as the basis for one of her projects in another class.”

“Still life, an art history course, a portrait course, and something called Art and Mythology. It looks like a high-level course if the course number is any indicator. You’re probably right about her using the literature class for material. I don’t think it has anything to do with the investigation though.”

“Might explain what she was doing at an art gallery on a Wednesday night,” Stephanie shrugged. “Maybe another student was at the gallery too.”

“And they might have seen something,” Hale nodded. “I’m not seeing anything of note. No laptop, no cell phone, no journal, no backpack.”

“The sketch pad is almost empty, just a bunch of half-finished drawings in there. The rest have been torn out. Probably she turned them in to her professors. I think we can leave.”

“Agreed,” Hale grumbled.

“I don’t have an ID on the victim yet,” the medical examiner sighed when they returned from questioning Miss Summer’s boyfriend. He didn’t know anything about her whereabouts and provided an alibi for the night before. He had been at an overnight workshop to prepare for his midterms. Several of his classmates confirmed it, so she returned to the station to talk to the chief briefly. After exchanging information on the case, Stephanie and Hale went down the street to the medical examiner’s lab.

“What about a time of death?” Stephanie asked.

“The rain is making that a little difficult, but my best guess is sometime between eleven and midnight yesterday evening. I’d really like the rest of the body, but I have a cause of death for you.”

“Right,” Hale sighed, “How did the victim die?”

“By the look of things, she was beheaded. Her limbs were removed perimortem, not postmortem, same with her head. I’m not sure what type of weapon was used. I’m not finding any traces of metal in the wounds nor an indication of any common weapons being used in the crime.”

Stephanie felt a little sick at the revelation. “Was she tortured?”

“I doubt it. She probably would have lost consciousness shortly after the murderer started. Regardless, the killer must have been fast. These wounds would have bled a lot. There was no sign of cauterization, so the killing action would have needed to occur within five minutes of the initial dismemberment. The killer had to be well organized to manage this, but without the head, I’m not sure the exact frame of time they must have used. If she suffered a head wound in the initial attack, the killer would have an even shorter window.”

Not enough time for torture, which was good in a sense. This had all the hallmarks of a serial killer, but at the same time it had personal written all over it. “What’s your best bet for weapon?”

“I’m not sure. It’s definitely nothing that I’ve seen before. I’ll do some research and get back to you,” the medical examiner’s computer system let out a little alert. After a few seconds of tapping on the keyboard she sighed, “It looks like Miss Summers is the victim. Her parents had sent her prints into the database in case of child abduction.”

“Thanks. Call us with any news,” Stephanie said quietly. She had worried about this. At least, the boyfriend’s alibi checked out.

“Do you want me to contact her next of kin?” Hale asked as they arrived back in the office.

“Please. I’ll look in the database for similar murders,” Stephanie sighed.

She informed Chief Isiah Thompson of the new developments. “I see, and the boyfriend’s alibi checked out. I’ll check on the man who found the body, but he was likely home at the time. I don’t see this being a local, but we better cover all our bases. I assume you’re going to be looking in the directories. I hope we find the killer quickly. We don’t need this kind of madman loose in our city. Perhaps you should stay with me and Carmen until this case is over. I know that she would love to have you and Hale over for dinner more often.”

“Thanks for the offer Chief, but I better not. I’ll be more tempted to take my work home with me if I do that,” Stephanie smiled.

“You’ll probably do that anyways, no matter what I say. Just be careful, okay. I doubt this murderer will have any trouble going after a cop if they got too close,” Isiah warned. The chief always treated her like a child in situations like this.

“I’ll be careful,” she sighed.

“Right,” he didn’t sound like he believed her.

“I will,” she insisted.

“Okay,” he sighed.

She left the chief’s office with a little huff. The chief was overprotective of her. It was understandable given her past, but it still bothered her. She was cautious, but she just seemed to draw in trouble. When Hale and Stephanie were sent to the big cities to assist on cases, she almost always ended up being the one who got into a confrontation with the criminal. It was like she had a neon sign over her head that said easy target, despite the fact she took them down again and again. She knew for a fact that Hale had turned down a few of their requests because of her propensity to become a target. It wasn’t like she didn’t notice either. Most of the incidents had been thanks to her doubting her own instincts. She learned from that. Stephanie didn’t doubt her gut as often as she used to.

She sat down at her desk and logged into the police database. At least Hale was taking over the notification. She could manage it, but not with as much finesse as Hale. She much preferred paperwork and the tedious job of searching the database over personal interactions. She located the index for unsolved murders and typed dismemberment. That produced several thousand results. She eliminated gang related crimes and was left with just over one thousand results. Beheading was next, which yielded a few hundred results. Stephanie hesitated before adding rain and staging. The killing was obviously premeditated, meticulous. She wouldn’t put it past the killer to have expected the rain to contaminate any evidence they gathered, and the arm being in the wooded area of the park appeared to be intentional. Maybe the killer wanted them to identify the victim, but why? Was it to send a message to someone the victim knew? That only produced fifty results.

Stephanie peered at the evidence log. One black feather found with the arm. She added feather to the results and got a big fat zero. Stephanie sighed, and removed feather and instead input raven. It was obviously a raven feather, more pointed than a crow’s and large. It didn’t look fake either. Again, that yielded no results. Something about the lack of results unsettled her. She went back to the fifty results and started reading through the summaries. Stephanie ruled out most of the cases with barely a glance. Those cases had obvious suspects and were only unsolved in name only.

“Find anything?” Hale asked from behind her, startling her from her seated position.

“Unless you count completely unrelated cases, then no, nothing,” Stephanie muttered.

“It’s time to call it a night,” Hale said firmly.

Stephanie looked outside and frowned when she noticed that it was already dark out. Just how long had she been staring at these reports? She still had almost twenty cases to look over before she could claim that all the cases were unrelated. “But,” she started.

“Yeah, no. The chief ordered me to get you home. You didn’t even take lunch today. You need to eat, and sleep.”

“Fine,” Stephanie grumbled walking towards the door ahead of Hale. She knew from experience that Hale wouldn’t stop hounding her until she left. She rode to the apartment building with Hale. She had her own car, but in their rush that morning she hadn’t thought to drive her own. Unfortunately, that meant that Hale wouldn’t leave without her, so she took the ride and tried to think of how she could work on the case after he dropped her off at her door. They both lived in the same apartment complex and he only lived a few doors down, so he would notice if she left for the office again.

Stephanie resigned herself to go home, get some sleep, after she organized her thoughts that was. Hale wouldn’t be able to stop her from doing that. They mumbled their goodbyes and once she heard his own apartment door shut, she walked over to her refrigerator and grabbed the leftover pasta that Carmen had given her the last time she had dinner with her and the chief. She didn’t even bother reheating it. It didn’t taste the same when she did that. She sat down at her table and took out a notepad. What did they even know about the case? The victim, Stephanie wrote down, was Kaylie Summers, an art student staying in the dorms. Her family didn’t live in state. Her boyfriend had an alibi, but the couple had a few arguments a month or so ago. She didn’t appear to have any enemies, or any friends for that matter. They would have to question her classmates and check the art gallery. She didn’t think the art gallery was open past ten, so where had Kaylie Summers been for an hour? Maybe she had gone to eat somewhere.

When had the killer taken notice of her? Was she a victim of opportunity or specifically selected? She would talk to the owner of the art gallery after she checked in with the chief and the medical examiner. She kept coming back to the way the victim was killed. Why dismemberment? The act in and of itself was so violent. What type of weapon was used? Damn that rain. Why had the killer moved the arm into the wooded area of the park? Had the killer wanted the identity of the victim discovered or was it part of an unknown signature? How could this type of killer go unnoticed? The method was too distinct not to be noticed, and it definitely didn’t seem like the murderer’s first kill. It was too precise for that. And why a raven feather? For some reason the feather seemed important, but why? Stephanie shook her head before continuing on with her notes.

Unknown murder weapon. Unknown motive. Unknown signature. Why take the head, or was it just still missing in the woods? Maybe the head would have given away the killer, Stephanie reasoned. She groaned. She was getting nowhere. She had no viable suspects, and not nearly enough information to make a conclusion about why Kaylie Summers was killed. After an hour, she relented and slipped into bed to let sleep overtake her.