My secret santa person was ScarletDragonChild, whose prompt was "A ZR crime procedural episode with the whole Abel gang as supporting characters and Van Ark as a notorious serial killer of the day."
I have to say, this one about killed me, so I apologize in advance for it. I can't write mysteries to save my life, and I don't watch any of those CSI-type shows. I came up with some angsty ideas ("You don't understand! Van Ark's got Paula!") and some stuff that was more serious, but then, unfortunately, THIS happened instead. Detective-Inspector Sam Yao solving crimes on Christmas Eve.
Without further ado, I give you "The Sports Bra That Saved Sam Yao's Christmas." I'm very, very sorry. Maybe I should have just knit you a scarf instead.
“The Sports Bra That Saved Sam Yao’s Christmas”
When Sam Yao was a child, he had dreamed of being a policeman. Okay, largely it was because the bigger kids at school liked to bully him, and he had harbored fantasies of clubbing them over the head with a nightstick. Doing good, protecting people, solving crimes… yeah, those things were important too. But mainly it was the nightstick.
All of his ambition, that had seen him all the way through the academy, hadn’t prepared him for how damned tedious it all could be at times. Take tonight, for example. Christmas Eve. Most of the force had buggered off, spending it with their families and loved ones. But not Sam. Nope. The newly-minted Detective Inspector Yao, the one with the least seniority, the lowest man on the totem pole, he was stuck doing the overnight shift at the station, monitoring the phones and emergency channels, just in case a supervillain decided that Christmas Eve was the best time to start a reign of terror. So far it had been dead quiet – not as much as a cat stuck in a tree or kids playing their music too loud. The later and later it got, the more and more Sam resigned himself to the inevitable: he would be spending Christmas alone.
He sighed and pulled up YouTube again. He’d worked his way through a pirated version of Love, Actually, which just made him feel more bitter and alone. Time for some Bing Crosby. White Christmas. Perfect.
The shrilling of a telephone about ten inches from his elbow almost sent his computer mouse flying. “Yeah? What d’you – er, I mean,” he coughed deliberately, clearing his throat. “DI Yao here,” he threw as much gravity into his voice as he could. May as well sound the part, right? “How can I help you?”
“Sam, is that you?”
“Maxine? Yeah, hi.” He dropped the bravado almost immediately. Dr. Maxine Myers was a colleague, worked down in one of the labs, doing some of that scientific, CSI-type stuff that Sam could never get his head around. She had tried explaining some of it to him one night, but he’d just come away knowing that no, you can’t get DNA tests back and solve crimes over the course of an hour. Pretty disappointing to learn, really. “What’s up?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you’re working Christmas Eve.”
“I should say the same to you,” the doctor replied. “Yeah, Paula had to work. Something came up at the university, she said. Wouldn’t tell me what. So it was either this or spend the night at home alone. I figured I’d come in, get a little work done. I need to finish that autopsy on the latest Kensaido victim anyway.”
“I’m not sure what that says about you, Maxine, that you’d rather spend Christmas Eve in the morgue, surrounded by corpses, than at home.”
“Why do you think I called upstairs to you? I ordered a pizza. Forward the phones down here and come keep me company.”
“Watching an autopsy while eating pizza? How could I possibly say no?”
***
Thankfully, by the time Sam got down to the morgue and the pizza had arrived, Dr. Myers was down to the paperwork. He tilted his chair back to balance on the back two legs and listened while she dictated her notes. He wasn’t technically assigned to the Kensaido case of course, it was above his pay grade, but it had gone on for so long now that everyone had started to take a crack at it. Five murder victims in all, each had been found with a document somewhere on their person: a Kensaido Manifesto. That was the title of it, at least. No one knew what it meant. The better linguists in the area had combed through every word, searching for clues, codes, something that would point the authorities in the right direction. But after months of work, they had called it quits. A dead end. The manifesto was simply that: a rambling diatribe that someone had liked enough to print multiple copies for hapless people to find. But of course at this point, they’d been calling it the Kensaido case for so long that the name had stuck.
Five victims, all found dead by strangulation but with no weapon nearby. The runners assigned to collect and tag evidence at the crime scene had come back with bags and bags of stuff, but none of it seemed to point toward the killer. One victim had been found with an axe and some light bulbs. Another with a box of 9-millimeter bullets and a bottle of pain meds. But no one had been hacked to death, shot or overdosed. No evidence of blunt force trauma on the victim found with the baseball bat. Sam didn’t even want to consider how a samurai sword or a radio fit into all of this.
“Victim was in her mid-twenties,” Maxine dictated between bites of pizza. “Blonde hair, up in a French twist, blue eyes. Dressed in trousers, a shirt, trainers, and a sports bra. Victim did not appear to...”
“Wait.” Sam let his chair fall forward to sit flat on the floor again. “Say that last bit again.”
Maxine clucked her tongue. “Seriously? I’m dictating here. You’re not supposed to interrupt me.”
“Yeah, I know, sorry. But … you said….” Sam thought hard. Something in her description of the victim’s clothing had fired an alarm bell in the back of his head. A faint alarm, but still.
She turned the Dictaphone off. “Blonde hair? Blue eyes?” She looked back through her notes, shrugging. “Shirt, trainers, sports bra…”
“Sports bra!” Sam snapped his fingers. “That’s it!” He reached for the phone, punching in the number to his immediate supervisor. He glanced at the clock as the phone started ringing and winced. He hoped that Janine didn’t mind being interrupted at church.
***
No, Janine didn’t mind at all.
“Mister Yao,” she sighed as she came through the door. “I sincerely hope that you have a very good reason for wanting to see the evidence files on the Kensaido case. If you ask my grandmother, it’s bad enough that I’m still single, but leaving in the middle of the Christmas Eve service is going to be unforgiveable.” She flicked through her impossibly large ring of keys as Sam followed her down the hall like a puppy, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“I sincerely hope I do, too,” he said. “I really do. But I just have this feeling, and I need to check it against the others…” Janine bent to unlock the door, and Sam stopped talking long enough to notice her. “You look nice,” he said. “All dressed up for church, I guess, eh?”
Janine flicked a glance his way, her eyes narrowing, but one hand went up a little self-consciously to pat at her hair. “Yes,” she said, her voice clipped. “Thank you.” A small smile peeped through her severe expression. “You don’t want to know how many pins it takes to keep my hair up in a twist like this. There…” She pushed open the door to the evidence room and unlocked a file drawer. “Now, I can’t just leave you in here alone,” she said. “Suppose you tell me what you’re looking for.”
“Sports bra.”
Janine blinked. She opened her mouth, closed it. Blinked again. “I’m sorry, I thought you said ‘sports bra.’”
“I did.” Sam took a file out of her hands, the one on the first victim. “Maxine – er, Doctor Myers – said that the latest victim was wearing a sports bra. Girls wear sports bras when they… you know…”
Janine raised an eyebrow. “Exercise?”
“Well, yeah.” He flipped a page. “But her hair was up in a twist. Like the one you’re wearing. Why would she put her hair up like that if she’s planning to bounce around? Know what I mean? Yes!” He stabbed a finger at a piece of paper in the file, so hard he almost perforated the paper with a fingernail. “See, look. Victim number one. Wearing an evening gown and heels. And a sports bra.”
Janine tilted her head. “Well, now that you mention it, that does seem a little odd.” She opened another drawer, handed Sam another file. A few minutes later, they had confirmed Sam’s suspicion. All five victims had been found wearing a sports bra. Specifically, the same brand of sports bra, manufactured and sold specially for VA’s Sporting Goods, one of the larger employers in town.
“I think it’s time to get the major on the phone,” Janine said, pulling out her mobile. “Someone at VA’s Sporting Goods is killing women, and we need to find out who.”
No, DNA tests don’t come back and crimes aren’t solved in an hour’s worth of television. But, even on Christmas, Sam was amazed at the speed at which things happened. It seemed like one minute he was watching old Christmas movies on YouTube, and the next, he was being credited with solving the Kensaido case – a case that had been redubbed the Sports Bra Strangler. When all was said and done, the head of VA’s Sporting Goods, Mr. Van Ark himself, was in handcuffs. He had used women’s own bras to strangle them, then had dressed them in one of his company’s sports bras to hide the evidence.
“He really should have gone generic.” The morning show host’s voice crackled out of the tinny speaker of Sam’s little office radio.
“Right you are, Gene. Nothing like leaving your calling card on the victim, eh, listeners?”
“True enough. Here’s another song.”
Sam turned "Jack & Gene In the Morning" down a little, now that they weren’t talking about his case anymore, and sat back with only a slightly-smug air. If he had to guess, he probably went up a few more notches on the totem pole. Monitoring the comms desk on Christmas Eve would be someone else’s problem next year.
