The Longest night

冬至 [5] / [16]

"Oh, that serial child abuse case. I heard about it. Haven't you guys solved all those cases yet?"

"Not only are we dealing with those cold cases, but now we have another. And this one just happened. I guess everybody has been summoned to the meeting."

"Shit," John shrugged his shoulders,

"It'd be better to arrest the criminal quickly, you know, cold cases are a thorn in the bosses' sides. Especially when you're dealing with cases of serial 'child' abuse.”

John tapped Alexander's shoulder lightly. John went outside and wrapped his arm affectionately around a pretty woman completely unknown to Alexander. He looked vacantly as they walked away together.

John was a very handsome speciman. Tall, with a body shaped like a sculpture, good at both work and sports, cheerful with a manly attitude. Some of their female coworkers had even often flirted with him, but, to Alexander’s knowledge, John steered clear of workplace relationships since his divorce from Cynthia.

Alexander stepped into the office. The atmosphere of the office was grave. Cynthia was briefing everyone on the case.

“We’ve been investigating another case today. The victim was named Carlos, a 6-year-old boy, and the person who reported the case is his mother. The time of reporting was around 9:30 p.m, soon after his mother discovered what happened after work.

But it is assumed that the alleged incident took place at approximately 6 p.m. We don’t have further specifics about this case yet. The only thing the mother heard from Carlos is,

‘Mom, I sucked an uncle’s peanut today and he gave me sweets as thanks.’

She brought Carlos to the police station right after she listened to this, but we could only collect buccal epithelial cells from inside of his mouth, because he fell asleep as soon as they arrived. One positive development is that the place where the alleged incident under investigation occurred was specified. It’s a parking lot of a deserted building where Carlos often played. Brown will interview him tomorrow.

As all you guys know, this case is very similar with those 6 cases we’ve already been investigating. The commonalities, for example, being several kids were abducted by a person, most probably a male, who said to each victim,

'you want some sweets? come on, I`ll give you some if you do whatever I tell you',

and the victims, who followed him, were forced to perform sexual acts. All victims are children under 6 years of age, and from poor rural areas.

According to the statements of the victims, what the alleged perpetrator in each case said seemed to be consistent, as was the manner in which the crimes themselves were committed. The possibility that the suspect might be the same person seems very high, unless other evidence to break this pattern emerges.

Of course it’s also possible that it could be multiple people who are using the same method. One of the obvious similarities is that the suspect targets boys of similar age in places where there is almost no CCTV coverage.”