~~
Trinity
~~
Next, it was time to call in the girl that had found the victim. She would be able to tell us more of what happened, or what the scene looked like. Ashlynn was called into the morgue, though Andrea was covered back up and stored in the drawer so that she would not cause the same hysterics as she had for Nick.
“Hello, Ashlynn.” I reached out to take her hand. “I am Trinity Gray.”
“H..hello, Queen Trinity. Th..thank you for meeting with me.” She was a pretty young girl, she was clearly a water shifter. She had a beautiful warm mocha complexion that just made the bright green of her eyes pop. She had beautiful chocolate brown hair with the most adorable curls that bounced when she walked. She was shorter than Andrea, but she didn't seem to let that get to her. She was about my height though she seemed to carry herself like she was over six feet tall. She was definitely a confident person, even though she was feeling distraught at the moment.
“Ashlynn, can you tell us what happened last night?” I asked her to explain things to me, but I didn't lead her to where to start.
.....
“W..well, I had asked Andrea out on a date. We were both excited and we were meeting at the beach because we both love the water. I was running just a few minutes late because there was a lot of traffic and a train that stopped me on my way. I was only five minute past the meeting time when I got there. I didn't see Andrea where she was supposed to be, and she had texted me that she was already there. I did see her phone laying near the parking lot though. It wasn't broken or anything. It had just been cast aside. I started to look around for her and that was when I saw that there was someone out on the sand. They were past where the lights reached, but the man had on a silver cloak that was glowing in the moonlight. When I started to walk over there, I saw the man leave, but he just disappeared. It was like the moment that he was moving, he was invisible. B..but where he had been was Andrea. She was laying on the beach with her dress ripped. She was covered in blood, a..a..and he..her heart.. her heart had been ripped out. It wasn't there though. H..he took her heart. A..and her underwear had been ripped off. S..s..so I knew then that.. that he had raped her. If I hadn't been late. If I had left ten minutes earlier, I would have been there before her. If I wasn't late, th..then Andrea would.. Andrea would still be alive.” She was sobbing while she spoke. She stuttered a lot, but I managed to make out what she was saying.
“This isn't your fault, Ashlynn.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and soothed her. “This man is the one to blame, it is not your fault.”
“If I wasn't late though, th..then he wouldn't have been able to.. he wouldn't have been able to hurt her.” She turned toward me and pressed her face into my neck as I held her against me. “I..I failed her. I never even got to tell her that I loved her all throughout high school. I was just too stupid to realize it.”
“I am sure she probably knew. It's easy to tell when you love someone that much. And I can tell you that Andrea is probably happy that you weren't there to get hurt. If you had been there when the man showed up, he might have gotten you both. Andrea wouldn't have wanted that. She was a strong woman that would have wanted to protect you.” I was trying my best to comfort this girl. It wasn't easy though, since I didn't know her personally.
“I wanted to save her, to protect her. I wanted to be with her. Now I can't. Now she has been taken from me.” Ashlynn was still crying into my neck as she clung to me.
“She will always be in your heart and your memories. Never forget her, Ashlynn. Always keep her memory alive.”
“I..I will. I promise I will.”
“That's good. And I promise you that I will catch this man. I will get justice for Andrea. I promise you that I will.”
“Th..thank you, Queen Trinity.” The girl continued to cry for a little while. When she was done though, Rawlynne took her upstairs and had another uniformed officer take her home. It was best to be careful with them both. I didn't want these people to get hurt from not paying attention on their way home, escorts were a good idea here.
“Keep an eye on her as well, Doc. Both of them are not doing well. I am guessing it is the fact that they were both in contact with the victim so close to her death. But they need some time to heal, and someone to help them.” The words were out of my mouth without me even planning to say them. It was just something that needed to be said so it forced its way out.
“I will, Queen Trinity. I will.” He nodded in agreement.
It was just after Ashlynn left that Talia finally came out of the office. She had Alexio and Rudy with her, but I had no way of knowing if Andrea was still with her or not. When she saw me looking at her and the area around her curiously, she spoke up.
“Andrea has moved on. Lucifer took her to the underworld for me.”
“L..Lucifer?” Dr. Long sounded shocked by the name. Doc looked shocked too, but he didn't say anything.
“Talia has been receiving lessons from the current leaders of the underworld for eleven years now. Lucifer is one of them. And, oddly enough, he is quite the nice man. All things considered.” Alexio was the one to answer that for us.
“Oh.” The two men said together.
“Who would have known.” Doc shrugged. “Well, Talia, did you learn anything else? Or is there anything that you can tell us?”
“Ashlynn said that the man disappeared when he moved.” I told her. “Do you know if that happened when Andrea saw him?”
“I think that Andrea saw him the whole time. She was following him. However, he disappeared in my dream as well. I think it was the cloak. It was hiding him thoroughly. I didn't even see him when he was standing still, just his cloak and his gloved hands.”
“Ahh, so we won't be getting fingerprints from the cell phone then.” Jackson sounded a little defeated as he said that. It was a depressing development, but we were used to it.
“However, Andrea saw his face, quite thoroughly at that. And I have a sketch of him.” With that, Talia handed the paper in her hands to me and then looked at Dr. Long. “I am sorry that I went through your office to find something to draw on. I ended up taking paper from the printer, which I should have done in the beginning.”
“It's fine, Princess Talia. I am not worried about you stealing something from there. Everything important is locked away, and you don't seem like that type of person.”
“This is a very detailed image, Talia. You managed to get her to describe him very well.”
“I was asking about him bit by bit. I didn't want her to remember the whole face at once, just one piece at a time. That way she wouldn't get overwhelmed by it all.”
“That was a good idea.” Rawlynne praised her. “You would have a future in law enforcement if you weren't already set in your plans.”
“Thank you, Aunt Rawlynne, that means a lot to me.” Talia smiled at her.
Now that we have an image, we can use it to scan against different databases. We could find him if he had anything with his picture on it. And we had his DNA as well. He wasn't very smart when he decided to add an extra step in the process. This man should be easy to find and catch. I hoped anyway. And then when we found this one, we could locate all the rest of them.
From Waterton we took a helicopter to the next murder site. It was in Davenport, California. There we met with the local leader of the felines. They had lost a werecat by the name of Paula. She was murdered like all the others but, thankfully, not sexually assaulted. The investigation and removal of the soul was a lot quicker than it had been in the past. This was mostly due to the fact that we were getting a system down, and there were so many of us now.
From Davenport, we flew over to Elk, California and then to Shelter Cove. We repeated the same process there that we had in Davenport. Talia interviewed the soul and helped them to move on. The scene and witnesses were taken care of by the rest of us.
Still, with how fast we were moving through these scenes, it was already getting dark by the time that we flew over to Crescent City. We would have to wait on that scene until tomorrow. Thankfully, we were able to fly straight to Star and Artem's place, so we didn't need to be picked up at an airstrip. That was going to make things a lot easier on us all.
