Chapter 1 - Knightfall

Once the place is swept and declare clear...Vlax tells the patrolmen to start setting up a perimeter, and to coordon off pretty much the entire building.

if tenants need to come or go, they will have to be escorted, and only after their identities and credentials are recorded. Tell them only that there have been multiple murders, and at least one person is missing.

Anyone puts up a fuss, detain them, as a potential suspect at a crime scene during an ongoing investigation, to be questioned by detectives. You can frisk, for officer safety, but don't search, not without probable cauae.

With that he begins his investigation of the crime scene, both inside and out.

Vlax convinces himself she would not have shot an officer, announcing himself. He thinks it might not have been Kim, but possibly an abductor, the person who took her electronics, or someone else.

He decides to look for evidence that she took her purse and other important things that no woman would leave without. He wonders if she left of her own accord.

On the off chance that there WAS a reson be in the closet, he focuses his search there for a hidden compartment, or a back door.

Vlax now thinks she was either not home when this happened, or she made a strategic exit.

Vlax is forced to resort to good old fashioned searching for clues. Are their signs of fixing a meal recently? Do the cabinets and refrigerator look normal with normal contents? Are their leftovers? Are their journals or a diary here? Do bedroom nightstands have anything? What does the medicine cabinet in the bathroom contain? Are their cleaning supplies in the apartment?
Are their financial records, taxes, receipts anything in the form of official paperwork? Looking under furniture to see if anything was accidentally discarded and overlooked? What about shell casings, were there any left on scene?

Vlax radios dispatch and asks if the person who heard the officer down can say woth any certainly if the voice on the radio was male or female, and if they record radio traffic?

Did the medicine cabinet contain prescription bottles or just over the counter stuff?

Once again, baffled, Vlax looks for some of the other officers on scene a lnd tells them we need another canvas. Maybe someone saw or heard something.

What kind of apartment doesnt have a bedroom? He says casually to one of the nearby officers. would you rent a place without a bedroom?. Vlax tries to recall if any of the documentation in the supers office indicated the size of each apartment. If there were any studios that would not include a bedroom?

Vlax continues his sideline pondering, boucing questions and ideas off of the officer. "Come on man! One of our own is down, and evenif he lives..." Vlax starts getting visibly angry, a mechanism for his anguish. "I mean, what moron would build apartments with no bedroom and hope to rent them?" He is definitely reaching.... his mind scrambling for reason. [b]Are there murphy beds in the walls? Something.. He starts pulling down portraits, anything on the walls. Bookshelves? Finny looking wall paper.

Vlax resigns himself to the fact that there is nothing more to find here, as much as it disenheartens him. He will now turn his full attention to this Kimberly Hale.

While he waits at the station for the results of the canvas, he thinks of the patrolman who is likely in surgery at the hospital. He.tells himself he should be there, stacked up in the waiting room, where undoubtedly the entire precint has taken up residency. Then he reminds himself that he can do more good tracking down the killer.

Vlax begins and all out background on one Kimberly Hale. He pulls out his notes and the information he took from her ID card. He calls every resource, every neighboring jurisdiction, the staties, the feds, national records, social security, the DMV, media resources, confidential informants. He wants a criminal history, verification of her birth, anything the proves who she is and more importantly who she knows. He has to track her down.

Ugh! What the..., Vlax realizes that he was so distracted by the damn creepy envelope that he misread the message, and thought it said to call her back, since she had called in. What a stupid mistake.

He rushes back to the scene to check her mailbox and to see if she has a lan-line phone and an answering machine. If he's lucky it will still have the cassette tape in it. She was into electronics, right.