Location: Achat City, Marina. 09:00 am
The dock is empty, All boats are either on the water or tied to one of the jetties. But even those are scarse with people, empty, hardly a soul is heard amongst the slowly swaying boats. It’s still early and most occupying these yachts have only just turned in for the night. Parties are common in the marina and often the sun starts rising before the last head off, for soft sheets and fluffy pillows. A seagull screetching now and then is the only noise heard, besides the purling waves around the hulls of the boats.
The subject to the intrusion, the “Mathilda”, is docked at the end of pier 69, yellow tape wrapped around the wooden beams that run into the water, securing the crime scene from unwanted visitors. The ‘Mathilda” is massive, 105 feet long, 35 feet wide and with at least 2 stories above the sealine, the deck hiding the gantry and guest bedrooms below. She sits alone at the pier, taking most of its length and just its presence alone claims all attention.
The yacht is still buzzing with activity when we arriove and techs walk on and off the gangway, back and forth between the on site lab-van and the ship, dressed in white, plastic suits to prevent contamination of the crime scene. As soon as we are spotted, a red headed woman with a quick step, starts walking towards us, her look strict and proffesional.
“Strike! Venice! Overhere..!”
“doc Gracious!”
Her pace quickens as we turn towards her and wave at her at the end of the gangway, her cheeks flushed and red, matching the color of her hair. As soon as we are face to face, she starts blurring out information about the scene, clearly upset by what she has found.
“So far we collected over 100 hundred samples of bodily fluids. They are everywhere.. It’s a madhouse. The chromosome analyser has overheated because it’s been processing samples constantly”
Her hands move urgently and she toddles from left to right, clearly overwhelmed with the situation.
“When we scanned the bed…. It was amazing… There is no doubt there were at least 8 people on the boat that had intercourse with eachother. And I mean, everybody had sex with everybody.. so you do the math.. And it could be much more.. But we were able to differentiate at least 8 sets of prints. All of them unknown in Codis though.. I’ll show you.. This way..”
Without waiting she turns and charges up the gangway, turns left and disappears behind a side panel of the ship. I turn to Jaz with a questioning look and am answered with the same. I shrug my shoulders and step onto the dangling gangway. But as soon as I am over the gap between the ship and the pier, I start getting dizzy, gripping the ropes that act as railing but offer no support whatsover. Only the grip of Jaszmin’s hand on my arm, prevents me from stepping back onto dry land or tipping over the side and taking an unwanted dip in the sea.
“Come on Johnny-boy, I know you don’t like being on the water, but the ship will feel like land. Just three steps.. Go on.. Go on, big boy..”
I take a deep breath, set my mind to oblivion and take the three steps, letting out a sigh of relief as i feel the sturdy wooden deck of the boat beneath my feet. While I grip the mahogany railing with my left hand, I extend my right to Jaszmin and feel her slip her fingers into my fingers. With a smile on her face she lets me help her on board and I am rewarded with a brush of her fingers over my cheek. Without missing a step, she walks towards the back of the ship, following the direction of dr. Janice Gracious.
With a deep sigh I start following her, keeping my left hand on the railing that runs all the way to the back and around the stern of the ship. I get seasick as soon as I feel the floor move underneath me, a quality that disqualified me from stepping into my father’s footsteps, sailing the waves as a crab fisher on the Beringsea. He took me with him once, but was forced to sail back after 3 days. After 3 days of vomitting I was so dehydrated that I had to stay in hospital 3 days. He never let me live that trip down.
I reach the stern of the ship, the back open, allowing a perfect view of the coast and the ocean behind it, the sun slowly climbing into the sky. Techs are busy powdering each inch of the surfaces of the ship, swabbing the leather couches and chairs in the lounge and collecting the sheets of the masterbed at the centre of the room. Dr Gracious, a briljant technician and responsible for processing this crime scene, stands in the back of the room, between two ceiling high cupboards, her arms crossed over eachother across her chest, her fingers tapping impatiently asw e walk through the busy techs.
“Jaszmin, you should have left him on the docks. I don;t want my crime scene contaminated”
The sparkle in the eyes of the docter, along with the slightly curled left corner of her mouth, betray the tease behind the remark and immediatly she starts pointing at interesting locations within the aft deck
“It seems like 5 people at least were active on the bed. It’s too early to tell if that concurred at the same time, or if there was an order. All the couches and furniture have been used for coitus, which leads to believe this was planned. But I will have more conclusive results later.”
“Were you able to find evidence that something was stolen?”
The sweet-toned voice of Jaszmin sounds firm and decisive while I start to shuffle through the room, letting my eyes drift around aimlessly, focussing on nothing in particular, trying to capture everything in one image. While I hear the docter answer in the background, I suddenly see a white slither of paper sticking out from under the door of the left cupboard.
“Do you have a pair of gloves and tweasers?”
Rudely I interrupt the answer of dr Gracious, feeling the look of Jaszmin on my cheek. As sweet and subtle as she can be to get what we want, as rude and direct I am when I find something that needs a closer look, much to her dislike.
“Sure. David?”
(http://imageshack.us/a/img138/2614/yachtclue1.jpg)
At the call of dr Gracious, a tech wearing protective glasses, pulls out a pair of latex gloves from his suitcase and hands them to me, along with a pair of plastic tweasers. I lean in, grab the slither of paper with the tips of the tweasers and carefully pull it free from the door. Then I bring it up to my eyes and hold it in the light of the sun. The wrinkled paper looks like the torn corner of a news paper and when I look closer at it, I recognise the font of the letters printed onto it. There is some scribbling as well, numbers in blue ink.
“It’s a torn off piece of the ‘Tattler, and there is some writing on it.. At the top it says: ‘E=+5, followed by a series of numbers: ‘23.22.13 & 2.13.4.7.7’, space, ‘1.13.4 21-09’, space, ’22:00’.
(http://imageshack.us/a/img827/6351/clue1copy.png)
Jaszmin steps in close to me and I feel the warmth of her body on my skin as she takes the tweasers from my hand and holds the piece of paper close to her face. After examining it for a few minutes, she hands the paper over to the docter who stepped in curiously.
(http://imageshack.us/a/img833/7461/johnnyjaz.jpg)
“It is definitly the handwriting of a man, but we need to have a closer look at the lab at headquarters. We need to find out what it means, it’s the best clue so far”
{TO BE CONTINUED}
Captain Mitia leans back in his chair, opens a file and starts reading, our signal to leave the room and get back to work. Jaz and I exchange looks, then leave the office, closing the door behind us. While Jaszmin walks to Rose to check for messages, I walk to my desk and quickly check my mail. There is one email that attracts my attention and with a click I open the message.
‘Lab reports done. Please meet me at office. Need to show something
dr. Gracious’
When Jaszmin joins me, I let her read the email, which is rewarded with an excited pinch in my sides.
“Oh goodie, we get to see dr Gracious at work…”
“Then we’d better hurry, donation hour is almost over…”
I look at my watch, the hands showing 12:50 pm, and when I look back up, Jaszmin is already charging through the department room. She loves seeing dr. Gracious at work and takes great inspiration from her. That inspiration has often left me breathless, brought to a climax in the most unexpected places, at the most inconvenient times, indulging in the need of Jaszmin to put her newly learned techniques to the test. Not every try was that rewarding though and some I plainly refused. When Jaszmin showed me a pair of clamps that she wanted to put on my balls, I threatened to apply for a different partner. But overall, our little visits to dr. Gracious’donation hour were very satisfying to us both.
We can hear soft, muffled sounds coming from the lab office as we enter the small lobby of the crime lab. The room is empty, the volunteers dispursed after the last donation was announced. Without knocking I open the door and step silently inside, Jaszmin pressing in behind me in her eagerness to see. When we step into the room, dr Gracious is leaning forward in her chair, holding the member of her donor firmly in one hand, while the other is massaging his globes. The muffled sounds we heard as we approached the door, are emitted from the officer’s throat, his head leaning back, his eyes closed as he is drifting in pleasure.
Dr. Gracious slowly bobs her head up and down, taking his shaft deep into her mouth, her fingers pressing into her lips each time she sucks him in. The officer’s hips are strapped in with leather belts against the wall, keeping him restrained as dr. Gracious draws his donation from him. Jaszmin pushes herself into me, clasping my arm with her fingers while she watches, clearly excited when she sees dr. Gracious’ cheeks collapse. The increased vacuum forces the donor to gasp for air, sharply sucking in his breath, the tug on his member almost painful. Dr. Gracious doesn’t let go once she has him right where she wants him and her head moves back and forth in a steady rhythm, her cheeks collapsing and releasing around him, milking him for his semen.
The donor moves his hands down and tries to entangle his fingers in her hair, which is rewarded with a hard tug on his balls and a destructive look from her eyes. Grunting with pain, the punishment for his misconduct, he pulls his hands back and submits to the urgent call for his juices. Dr. Gracious picks up the speed, now only interested in getting her sample as quickly as possible, twirling her tongue around the shaft in her mouth, to give him that final push. As soon as his body starts shocking, she squeezes his testicles and forces him to jet his semen into her mouth.
Eager to get finish the procedure, she sucks him dry quickly, then places her lips to a small plastic cup and lets the sample slide in. Quickly she puts a lid on the cup and places it in the freezer below the examination table. When she turns to face her donor, her eyes are still flickering with anger and she raises her hand, the officer crouching in fear.
“Get untied and leave. I don’t want to see either of your heads in the near future. No touching!”
As the officer leaves in silence, she bring her pinky to the corner of her mouth and whipes off the last drop of his donation, sucking the fluid from her finger in clear delight.
“Such a shame he couldn’t keep his hands to himself. His semen is first class.. You should have a go at him Jaz...”
Jaz’s cheeks blush bright red, making her look at the floor, stepping away from me which causes dr. Gracious to smile.
“Oh I know Jaz… But let’s get to business. There are 2 things I wanted to show you. One, remember the torn piece of newspaper? Besides the scribbling, we found something else. A fibre attached to the rips of the paper. Mass spec showed it as alpaca wool, dyed blue..”
(http://imageshack.us/a/img20/7906/clue2o.png)
She walks towards the mircoscope, adjusts the lenses and nods with her head at me. I lean in and focus, finding the blue fibre isolated in clear resin. The shape and edges irregular, frayed, betraying the natural origin. The color blue a shade of aqua, clear, vibrant, as if the fibre is brandnew. I lean back and offer Jaz a look, but am answered with aquick shake of her head. Microscopes make her dizzy. I turn back to dr. Gracious who has opened an evidence box and is feeling around until she finds what she’s looking for.
“And number 2, dr Gracious?”
Just as I open my mouth, she lets out a sigh of relief and pull out a small evidence bag, with inside what looks like a grey button. She places it on the examination table and pulls the lighted lense above it.
“I just found it amongst the numerous swabs. We found 9 seperate dna-profiles and determined all bodily fluids you can imagine. Saliva, semen, female juices, sweat and even some blood. Somebody got a cut when opening a champagne bottle. But this is what might interest you..”
On the table is a small, grey button with the text ‘20 mm’ imprinted on it…
(http://imageshack.us/a/img254/9904/knitclue1.jpg)
More code!!
A (which is 1) + 7 = 8... so A is 8 and that makes Z = 7
Then you wheel the rest of the numbers and letters.
The notes read:
Clothes
PAGE: 73
POSE (which, I believe, is supposed to be POST): 8
LINE: 1
WORD: 8 (minus the 74)
MATHILDA
Funny Finds
PAGE: 4
POSE (again, I believe it should be POST): 4
LINE: 2
JORD (which, I believe, should be WORD): 6
SUNDAY
Be on the MATHILDA on SUNDAY (but not during the Giant's game)
More story...more story...More story!