The Second Murder

Posted on Tue Nov 3rd, 2015 @ 5:19pm by Captain Landon Mabrade & Colonel Wilhelm Baron von Hackleberg & Lieutenant Aria Kanzaki & Lieutenant JG Jane Porter

1,129 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Ghosts of Mirror's Past
Location: Arboretum

Jane was the first to arrive in the arboretum, as was her custom. It gave her time to put on a pot of tea and to have a few minutes of quiet to wander through the trees and see how they were doing.

Today, she took her cup of tea to the tree house so seh could have a good look over the arboretum and enjoy a few moments imagining she was in one of her favorite books.

She climbed the ramp to the main room and pushed open the door with her hip as she backed into the room. As she turned, she noticed a body laying in the middle of the floor. The gentleman in question was clearly dead. His lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling with a look of utter horror frozen on his face. His skin was parchment-white and there was an odd mark on his forehead.

Jane screamed, her teacup falling from her nerveless fingers to break on the wooden floor.

She quickly regained her composure and tapped her combadge. "Porter to von Hackleberg. Wilhelm, there's a body in the tree house."

Wilhelm was sitting in his office doing paperwork with the temperature in the office turned up thinking that he should go to sickbay to see if they could give him anything to kick this bug when Jane called, "WHAT?!?! How did... never mind. I'm on my way right now." He said as he clicked off and headed out the door towards the turbolift bank.

She next called security and informed them of the situation.

Aria was next to arrive on the scene with two security officers. She immediately went over to the body and pulled out her tricorder.

"Damn" she said to herself. She turned to her two security officers. "Seal this area" she explained.

She tapped her comm badge to open up a channel to ops.
=A= Kanzaki to all security teams. Lock down all airlocks, and shut down all transporters. No one is to leave or enter this starbase =A= she ordered quickly.

The trigger of a base-wide lockdown would get the attention of the Captain pretty quickly. However Aria couldn't risk who, or whatever was killing people to leave Typhon without being found.

She turned to Jane. "I need to know what happened" she said simply.

"I don't know. I found him this morning," Jane said. "What's going on?"

Wilhelm showed up in the entryway of the tree house. "Jane are you alright?" He said scanning Jane quick and looking around looking for any telltale signs without getting in the way of Aria and her team. "Any progress Lieutenant?" he asked Aria.

Aria shook her head in response.

Jane moved around the security officers and over to Wilhelm. "Yes. Thank you for coming." She put a hand on his arm and smiled up at him, "I am much better now. I found him here when I came in."

From this vantage point, she noticed something she'd been too preoccupied to see before. "Look," she said to Wilhelm. "There's moisture on the ground. That's not supposed to be here."

Mabrade walked onto the scene wearing more casual clothing; slacks, a turtleneck under a button dress shirt and light vest, obviously h e had not been on duty at the time of Station alert.

"What is the situation?" Mabrade asked of the Security Chief.

"There's been a second murder. Lieutenant Porter found this man a few minutes ago" Aria reported. "Its the same symptoms from what I can tell, this is no accident and this is no strange death. We have a murderer on the loose. Typhon is on security lock down so that whoever has done this can't escape" Aria explained. "All security teams are now reporting to all airlocks and transporter rooms. We're also raising the stations shields so no one can be beamed on or off of Typhon".

She crouched down to look at the body. She flicked open her tricorder and ran it over the man again. "According to the Tricorder and his DNA, this man is Ensign Marriot from the Science Department" she explained.

The medical Technician came through the doorway with her medical kit, kneeling down , bringing her tricorder probe she scanned the victim. "Time of Death will be hard to pin point." She said aloud. "There is a great variation in the body's temperature, the inner organs are much cooler than they should be, like the organs were exposed to different temperature conditions than the outer body." Her probe continued. "Also, the whole body is quite cold as though it were here for a long time."

"Same as before" Aria muttered. She walked over to the replicator and replicated some chalk. She then drew around the body on the floor. "Beam him to the morgue, once again seal off this area." Aria ordered. "I want a full forensic analysis of everything in this room, No. Of everything on this damn deck!"

"You are the chief and I leave that to your training and expertise to bring this to a close." He looked towards her. "Quickly would be best." He hinted.

Aria sighed as she nodded to Mabrade. "I'm going to go to the Science Lab" she said. "I need to know every single thing that happened on this deck, from the smallest of sensor readings to who was wearing what" she explained. "I do not want another murder happening. I will find the culprit!"

Mabrade gave a knowing grin. "I have the utmost faith in your ability." He assured. "You seem to have things in hand." He glanced around the scene. "Anything other than the body to connect these crimes?"

"Just the way they died" Aria said. "Both died in exactly the same way" she explained. "But, there's no sign of weapons or trauma". Safe to say she was confused about how they had just frozen to death.

Jane stayed close to Wilhelm and out of the way of the investigation. At the same time, she paid attention to the conversation around her as the murder had taken place in her arboretum and if someone was killing people, she didn't want anyone else on her staff to fall victim.

"Right. Lets seal off this area" Aria announced. "This is now a crime scene, I don't want anything else to be contaminated" she explained as she looked around.

Her security officers backed people away slowly as she stood there looking down at the body as it was transported away, the chalk lines still around where the man had been laid. "I'm not liking this..." she muttered to herself.

Posting by

Captain Landon Mabrade
Commanding Officer

Lieutenant Aria Kanzaki
Chief of Security

Colonel Wilhelm Baron von Hackleberg
Marine Commanding Officer

Lieutenant JG Jane Porter
Botanist

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