“The only eyewitness said he didn’t actually see it happen. He was in his apartment when it happened, but he could hear the screaming and yelling and banging from his living room, given that it shared a wall with the apartment next door. According to him, it sounded either like very enthusiastic sex or a very violent fight. He thought he heard two voices but said they were rather similar so it might have just been one person.” Porter flipped his notebook closed and looked at his partner.

“Jack, I’m not sure we can trust the word of a drunken slob who was already wrecked at 10 in the morning – his testimony will mean nothing. Then again, nothing will mean anything if we can’t even find a suspect.” Lacey stopped walking, having arrived outside the apartment. Porter looked at her, keen enthusiasm in his eyes.

“We’ve not even seen the crime scene yet, I’m sure we’ll find something. It doesn’t exactly sound like a clever murderer, given that he or she was heard arguing with the victim.”

“Porter, we don’t even know if it was the victim, stop speculating. It just makes you sound like a dumbass.” Flashing her badge to the officer standing outside and slipping on a pair of gloves, she pushes open the door to a team of investigators. The living room she finds herself in is small, almost claustrophobically so. There are four doors in the room, all of the doors are open, barring the front door. One leads to the kitchen, which appears to have been searched – all the drawers are pulled out, and the contents of the cupboards are all over the floor, another to the bathroom, and the final to the bedroom. There is a single window, smashed, that leads out onto the fire escape. There’s a single loveseat in almost the dead centre of the room, pointed directly at the flat screen TV on the wall. Each surface in the room was cluttered with sentimental knick-knacks – plenty of photos and souvenirs from what appeared to be a very well-travelled woman. The rug on the floor, likely once white, was stained crimson from the victim’s blood.

Lacey made her way over the victim and removed the sheet. He was completely unidentifiable – his face was fully caved in from his hairline to his lower jaw. Looking lower, Lacey saw what appeared to be around twenty stab wounds littering his torso. She took a quick glance around the room and didn’t notice a weapon of any kind, blunt or sharp. Beckoning one of the many investigators around the room, she asked if any identification had been found. Before the investigator could answer, Porter chimed in.

“No ID has been found on him – he didn’t have anything in his pockets, no wallet or anything. Before you got here, I asked the owner of the building who lived in this apartment, and he said it was a woman, a Miss Irene Gleen.“