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Atlas Missing - Part 12

Hannah chimed in. 'You need to reach #satori.'

'Isn't that like nirvana?' Jaci asked.

'Something like that,' Hannah replied. 'Are you ready to focus on the case again?'

Jaci took a deep breath. 'I'm ready.'

'Good. Are we going through the timeline this morning?'

***

'We'll go through the reports for each victim, jotting down notes about times and places, then we'll go #back and write it all down on the big board. Hopefully by combining all the data we can get an idea of what happened when.'

'How long will that take?' Hannah asked.

***

'It depends entirely on how much is in the reports.  Based on what I saw yesterday, it could take us a couple of days to go through everything.'

Hannah smiled. 'I'm not a delicate little #flower. I can handle it.'

'Good. This is just the start. It's going to get worse.'

***

'Hey, watch out for that #cat,' I yelled as the small black furball darted across the road.

Hannah swerved to avoid it and noticed two huge dogs chasing it followed by their terrified owners.

'That's something you don't see every day,' Jaci muttered.

'That's Anjelica.'

***

'You know that cat?' Jaci asked.

'Sure. Anjelica is the neighborhood #nomad. She goes to everyone's house begging for food. We all feed her.'

'So you see this all the time?' I asked.

'At least once a week, but she's normally not brazen enough to go after those dogs.'

***

I had more questions but my mind kept wondering what we would find when we finally got into the case. I wanted to catch LaShonda Marcus #because she was a serial killer and  it was my job to catch her. That she had evaded me before didn't factor into the equation.

Yet.

***

The boxes were waiting for us when we got to the conference room, but nothing was laid out. We set everything up while Hannah grabbed coffees for us.

'Are we all ready to dig into this?' I asked when she got back.

'Coffees all #round,' she said. 'I'm more than ready.'

***

Hannah set her phone on the table and selected a playlist to listen to as we worked. I was startled when I heard man-made animal sounds.

'What is that?' I asked.

'It's a reindeer #joik. My friend introduced me to it,' she said as Jaci walked up to the board to write.

***

'We'll #chat about the music later,' I said to Hannah as Jaci wrote numbers on the board.

Jaci spoke as she wrote. '15 weeks from first kill to last. Murders one through five were two weeks apart, then a four week gap, then murders six and seven a week apart.'

'And?'

***

'No "and". I'm writing down what I know,' she told me. 'The first five victims were found #naked and bound, with an oak leaf stuffed into their mouths. Currently no one knows why the oak leaf holds so much power over him, or her.'

'What else do you know?' Hannah asked.

***

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