The Bathtub Strangler: Jacksonville FL, September 2016

The Bathtub Strangler : Jacksonville FL, September 2016.

Characters:  Jeremiah Dixon, Maddie Felix, Lena Barrett, and Steve's character (insert name here)

Over a span of a few weeks, the bodies of several young women were found in their homes, having apparently drown while bathing. The first cases rules as accidental, as they appeared to be a matter of fatal slip-and-fall accidents, 4 women had died by the time the police acknowledged that they believed there was a connection between the deaths and the investigation started getting broader coverage.

Investigators were stymied by lack of physical evidence according to sources in the local news, as their respective homes showed no sign of forced entry and little to no evidence of struggle. Moreover, the roommates of the third victim were in the apartment at the time of death, and did not witness any strangers or visit (The roommates, initially held as material witnesses in the death, were in police custody at the time of the 4th death). With no progress from the police, the people of Jacksonville were shaken by the prospect of a murderer free on the streets.

Story Part 1:

The scenes of the first 3 deaths were too contaminated to yield any meaningful leads by the time any of the character's make it to Jacksonville to inquire. Unfortunately, the scenes had been viewed as accidents and the authorities hadn't maintained the evidence. After the fourth death, most investigators begin looking for common threads between the victims to find a pattern.

Unfortunately, this leads to a different problem; 4 young professionals, ages 23-27, all college graduates who had been in a college town for at least six years. In short, there were almost too many common threads to follow up on. Background checks revealed that the first and fourth victims were friends, the second and third were acquainted, and that the second and fourth had at least taken a course together back in 2014. The lists of common places, acquaintances, and connections was massive.

The fifth death was different- a 19 year old sophomore living on campus housing at Edward Waters College, with no apparent connection to the other victims, other than that she bore a slight resemblance to the fourth woman- a light complexion with blonde hair and green eyes. When the sixth victim was the same, and the investigators started to say that their killer had narrowed down his choice in victim.

The first time the characters cross paths is at night, outside the campus housing building of the fifth victim. Jeremiah Dixon and Maddie Felix were among the dozens of people who had volunteered to join the community watch that night. Moving in teams of five or six, the main point of it was to be a visible, reassuring presence for the young people living there. Dixon had wanted an opportunity to talk to people living around there and ask questions.

Maddie, on the other hand, had come with a different idea in mind. Between patrols, she snuck away to get some privacy and try to commune with the spirits in the area and see what she could learn. To her surprise, this was difficult, as thought the neighborhood were spiritually barren. She had to wander the sidewalks for a few minutes before she could sense an entity to speak with, and it took more convincing than normal just to get it to approach, as though it were afraid.

Across the street in his van, that certainly got the attention of Inspector (Steve's Character). He'd been watching the building for two hours, hoping to see some sign of Extra-dimenal activity, and hadn't seen jack. He watched as Maddie came around the corner, making almost beckoning gestures, and up lopped a squat little creature that almost looked like a poodle, if it weren't for the six legs and glowing hot-pink in the scope of his special goggles. After a few minutes of her talking to the thing, it skittered off and he got out of the van to speak with this woman.

The next time any of the characters cross paths isn't until the scene of the seventh victim, which was different in a few way. This was the first victim found in a hotel, and the first who didn't live in Jacksonville. Also, she was 26 and Hispanic, which was a change in victim profile. The investigators quickly put together the connections; she was a friend of the first and third victims, all sorors of Alpha Omicron Pi, alums of University of Jacksonville. She had only even been in town to attend the funerals.

Each scene had been too chaotic so far, and the clues about the killer's entrance and exit were eluding her. Agent Lena Barrett's instructions to the local police were clear that she was to be the first on scene, so that she could finally put the missing pieces together. So it really pissed her off to find an agent she didn't know in the hotel bathroom before her, looking over the body. She's about to start cussing Inspector (Steve's Character) out, but gets thrown off by the bulky night vision goggles he's wearing...

Story Part 2:

Inspector Graham approached Maddie on the sidewalk in front of the student housing building, leaping immediately into questions about who she was and what she had just been speaking to. At first she was rightly concerned by a strange man coming up so abruptly at night on a empty street - then she was confused when he showed his credentials. He was baffled to see an otherwise normal enough person who could perceive the entity he had without special equipment. The conversation was as awkward for him as for her, though he hid it better- as taken aback as she was at a random stranger confronting her about speaking to a spirit, he was just as thrown by her matter of fact answers and how free she was with them.

The dog, a lesser servant of Tsillah Wedo, had answered her call for help, and told her that this area was dangerous to women and spirit alike, that something angry and potent had risen of late. In the recent weeks, spirits that normally crowded the area had been driven away by something- a force of cold bent on death. It had been hunting for young women, but not just any- for specific ones. The dog-shaped spirit had a persona of youth and lust, and did not truly understand what this dark force wanted, but recognized it was driven by hate for specific women.

Dixon, who had been following Maddie discretely after she left on her own, listened from around the corner of a building not far off. Convinced that these people, though not true believers, at least knew more than average, he revealed himself and approached just as she finished relating what she'd heard. It didn't take long after for him to make the leap- this thing that had risen was among the restless dead, and the spirit couldn't tell Maddie what it wanted because things like it don't understand motives like revenge. The three of them agreed that this killer likely felt it had been wronged by these victims, and parted ways to try and find the connection.

* * *

Days later, in the hotel, Inspector Isaac Graham introduced himself to Agent Barrett in the room of the seventh victim, reassuring her that he had not disturbed any evidence. After a few not so subtle comments about jurisdiction and threats about citations, she proceeded to reconstruct the crime. The layout of the body and the scene itself gave her clues that played out a scene in her mind, and it was just the same as the last scene she'd been to.

The victim had been showering, and suddenly they were no long alone in the bathtub. The killer blocked the drain, forced her down, and held her as the water rose up to drown her. Then the killer was gone- no footprints leading to or from the tub, no sign that the door had been forced, no prints anywhere other than the victim, no sign that anything had been touched but the woman. No sign of how the killer got in or out, which was where Inspector Graham spoke up. Through his goggles, he saw feint traces of energy emanating from the showerhead itself and the drain.

When Graham suggested that some kind of spirit or spectre is to blame for these deaths, Barrett started getting more frust with him. She ushered him out of the scene and let the other scene technicians in to catalog the evidence. As they began researching the victim and collecting information from the agents on scene, they discovered that she was a soror of the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority, like two of the other victims. Graham shared theory that some kind of vengeful spectre had targeted the women, and that they could find a lead that way. At that, Agent Barrett parted ways with the Inspector, unsold on his ghost theory. She went to the sorority house looking for concrete links, and he met with the others to share what he'd learned.

Story part 3:

Maddie and Jeremiah had spent those days meeting with the victims' friends and former classmates, as well as looking into their student lives, trying to find the common thread of what connected them. The first three victims, as well as the seventh, had known each other well. Three had been members of of the same sorority house, and the fourth was there with them often. Maddie met with a number of their mutual friends from college, talking to them and offering what solace she could, while trying to learn more. It was the day after the seventh victim that they found the link.

Talking to one grieving sorority sister, Maddie sat with her going through photos from their 'good old days'. While going through them, one leapt out at her: a shot of 5 young ladies at a table with fod and smiles- one was the woman she was talking to and three of them were the victims. Maddie didn't know the last, but she was the same age as the rest, with pale skin, blond hair, and green eyes.

Maddie called Jeremiah and Graham as soon as she left and shared what she'd learned. They agreed that this other friend and three of the victims looking alike wasn't a coincidence, and that the spectre might be killing women that resemble its last target. Maddie had been able to get the mystery girl's name, Rebecca Simms, and that she was a soror of AOP, but didn't have any current contact info. After a few minutes, Graham had found a current mailing address for her, and the three of them converged at the woman's home.

They arrived at the duplex where Rebecca lived to a scene of chaos; the door broken down, upturned furniture in the entrance, and sounds of a struggle from within the home. Inspector Graham lead the charge in gun drawn, and they found a fight in progress. A middle-aged man, whose skin looked bloated and mottled grey, was dragging the young woman by the legs down a hallway kicking and screaming. The door at the end was open, revealing a bathroom with an overflowing tub.

Over shouts and screams, the man ignored Graham telling him to release her. Graham fired his pistol, which he shrugged off with a grunt. With a howl, the walls of the hall shook and a picture frame exploded near Isaac, pelting him with glass shards. Maddie and Jeremiah rushed the man and broke his grasp on Rebecca long enough for her to scramble away. Graham, slapping a different clip of ammo into his pistol, fired another round into the man.

The man crumpled at that, and his appearance changed immediately: Grey, bloated skin dissolved in a mist leaving a healthy, if mildly bruised face behind. Above where he fell, a misty form took the shape of a short, thin form. For a fleeting moment they saw the image of a woman with rotting, waterlogged flesh standing there, before the mist flickered back through the open door into the bathroom. With a rushing sound, the misty form slipped into the water.

As Maddie and Graham stabilized the man, Jeremiah tried to talk to Rebecca. Sobbing and nearly hysterical, she identified him as her neighbor, and that it was like something was controlling him. She was dirty and dishevelled, and Jeremiah could see that she was terrified, even though the moment had passed. It didn't take much pushing before she admitted what was going on.

As the rest came out, it was almost like they'd expected it. She admitted that, five years prior, she had been friends with most of the other victims and that they had been at a pool party. They were screwing around and playing stupid pranks on freshmen. Things got out of hand, and a girl, Liz Beckett, had drowned. The authorities ruled it an accident, and another round of anti-hazing stories filled the news for a few weeks, but they all went free. When she heard of how the others were dying, she'd started to believe that something was coming for her.

Graham, Maddie, and Jeremiah deliberated on what to do, and agreed that something must have happened recently that caused, or allowed, Liz Beckett's ghost run free now, five years later. Basic research revealed that her family had lived in Jacksonville until two years prior, when her parents moved to Iowa. They discovered that she had been buried in town and, lacking any other leads and with rebecca in tow for her own safety, went to the cemetery to investigate.

Story part 4:

They arrived at Edgewood Cemetery late in the afternoon, and it didn't take them long to get an idea about what was going on. There were excavator vehicles on the grounds, and signs of lots of displaced earth and soil. A few questions to a laborer explained it all- when hurricane Hermine had come through just weeks before, several large trees on the property had been downed, and heavy rainfall had caused a lot of flooding and erosion in loose soil. The main building had been damaged, and had been brought in to remove and replace trees.

They located Liz Beckett's grave and found that it had recently been disturbed; recently planted sod, the tombstone itself a little loose in the soggy soil. They deduced that a work crew must have gotten sloppy and damaged the grave site when moving through the area. While replacing the soil and sod, they may have damaged the burial liner around the casket, disturbing the body itself. If her spirit were already uneasy, it might trigger her to become truly restless. And, since nothing that had ever belonged to Liz would have been at any of the victims' homes, if there was anything anchoring her spirit it was either the unfinished business, or something in that grave...

After that, they came up with a plan. First, Maddie and Jeremiah explaining to Rebecca that Liz's spectre was being driven by revenge, but that justice just might placate her. If she admitted to the authorities her role in the death, and faced punishment for it, that might be enough to put Liz to rest. They left her at a police station, saying they couldn't make that choice for her, and left her where she would be safe for the time being. After that, they met back up with Graham and returned to the cemetery that night.

None of them were experts at this, but digging equipment being right there on the property made digging up the grave pretty simple. They saw that they were right, that there were large cracks in the plastic of the burial liner and thus the casket itself had been flooded. Maddie had come up with the idea of setting the whole casket ablaze, so that if anything inside or even the body itself was an anchor holding Liz's spirit here, that could destroy it. Jeremiah, on the other hand, had been at prayer since they broke ground, hoping that faith and prayer could drive her to rest.

For his part, Inspector Graham was happy to stand guard with his shotgun and let them both try. They never did find out which one worked. As Maddie used the excavator to break the seal of the liner and expose the casket, a bitter cold hit them all. The spectre of Liz Beckett attacked out of the dark, slamming Maddie several feet through the air. The fight was chaos from there- Graham struggled to find a clear shot at the spectre as it struck then dissolved into the ground, only to strike from another angle seconds later. He only got one shot off, though the howl of rage told that it hurt.

The spectre did seem to move slower as Jeremiah gained intensity in his praying, which may be what gave Maddie the opening to rush to the grave with the gallon of gasoline. In the light of the fire as it consumed the casket and its contents, the three of them stood back to back. After a minute, the sounds of movement and the bite of cold simply stopped, and they were left there in an awkward silence. Nervous at the anticlimax, they cleaned up the scene as best they could, and made their way.

Agent Barrett was just as disappointed in the days to come- no new leads and no new evidence. The only development in the case was that some former friend of the victims had come forward with a guilty conscience and a story that didn't help her catch a killer or close the case. While she was somewhat happy as time went by and the killings ceased, the fact that the killer was still out there (as far as the public and her record were concerned) didn't sit well with her, and she welcomed the reassignment that came later that month.