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Saturday: J & A Inc. Part V - Jacob Martinez

“So the killer is Henry Ericcson then, you’re sure of it?” asked Edward.
“This ain’t no Women’s Murder Club, Mr Jones. The most obvious conclusion is most often the correct one, it’s more than likely him.”
We were back at the office, and Edward and I waited around in the Parlour while J filled in Addison on what happened in his office. I rested on the couch, the adrenaline rush had now faded and left me feeling quite tired, wearing a wire and spying on a killer, I can officially say is much more exciting than working at Dairy Queen. That was my first job; making sundaes, listening to country music coming from a beat up old boombox in the back room, I was 16 and that six bucks an hour bought me a movie ticket every Friday night. At the time I thought that was what it was going to be like for the rest of my professional life, I thought that was what work was, little did I know that in only a few years I was going to be working for a crime fighting couple who employ gadgets and code breaking skills, along side a geeky math major.
“Do you think he has batarangs?” I heard, from the opposite couch, interrupting my reflection.
“What?”
“Batarangs, you know like Batman.”
“Well, I’m not sure they can be called ‘batarangs’ if he’s not actually batman, but even so, I’m going to say no.”
“What about grappling hooks?”
“Yeah I can see J having grappling hooks, but maybe just one. I can assure you though, Edward, that we have yet to scrape the surface of J and his toys.”
“Call me Mr Jones.”
“No”
“OK”
Addison and J walked in then and sat down on one of the couches.
“What’s our next plan of action boss?” asked Edward.
“What we need to do is figure out who’s next, we can leave the how, why and where to the police.” responded J.
“What if he doesn’t kill again?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t he? I mean, if you wanted to kill someone and not get caught, and not get noticed, you’d do it and then make sure no one ever knew. You’d get rid of the body somehow, you’d cover up your tracks. You would absolutely not kill someone, take a part of their body out of them, leave them in a warehouse where they are bound to be found and also leave a note mocking the detectives. He did this for a reason, he wanted to get noticed, to start a chase. Why not kill again? You’d almost need to, or everyone would forget, and no one would care. Already people are going about their business, people die every day and the police never told the media about the message. As of right now, there is no killer, just a dead body.”
“So what do we do?” asked Edward.
“Identify potential victims —save them if we can. We need to go back to the office, assemble profiles of all Ericcson’s female co-workers, sift out any that fit the profile of our victim.”
“But we only have one victim, how can we assemble a profile off of that? What if he kills a male this time?” I asked.
“Well we’re going to have to risk it and assume that he won’t kill a male, and I can do a little background search on Ericcson, see if I can find anything on his former girlfriends, if they all match a similar pattern, and if our victim falls into it as well then we’ll know for certain. We do know that Ericcson was attracted to her, or at least we can assume that he was, what with the spying and all.”
“Well, you guys go ahead and busy yourselves with that, I’ll be in the back.” spoke Addison, and she rose from the couch and left the room.
“Is something wrong?” I asked J.
“She’s never been really into the whole … you know … actual part of this job. This isn’t what she grew up dreaming her life would be like, it’s not what I imagined either, but I happen to enjoy it very much. But, it’s not a problem really, maybe another case will pique her interest.”
I realized then that although this job was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me and Edward, we would eventually leave it and start our own careers, and do what we were going to school for. A and J were stuck in this profession forever. Just then I felt a jolting in my leg —my cell phone vibrating, which catches me off guard every time. I took the phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen. J and Edward must have noticed the puzzled expression on my face and Edward asked what it was.
“It’s a text,” I responded, “but I don’t know this number.”
“What does it say?”
“Nothing, it’s just numbers.” I repeated them aloud and J wrote them into a notepad, “8.2 7.4 3.2 3.2 6.1 3.2”
“Is it some kind of sequence? A math thing?” I asked Edward.
“It might be, let me see it,” J handed the pad to Edward and he began making some notes. After a few seconds, he looked up saying “I don’t see anything obvious here as to what it is. I mean, sure it could be something but I’d have to work on it longer.”
“No doubt the number it came from is a disposable,” said J, “and I don’t think this has to do with mathematics either if the answer can’t be easily found, but I do know just who to ask,” J paused, and Edward and I looked at him intently. He cleared his throat and continued, “Addison! Can you come in here please? We need you.”