Chapter Three

 

It was now three weeks after the murder of Caroline and he had been staring up at the ceiling in his office for hours. Muhammad was seated behind his desk with his brain and mind at work.

It was a Monday morning. He had gone back to the Adeniran’s residence a day after Caroline was murdered. Luckily, he had met Caroline’s brother. He also met both Mrs. Adeniran’s parents and the parents of the late Mr. Adeniran. He had personally questioned them but ended up leaving the house with nothing substantial.

From what he had seen and found out about Caroline’s family, none of them had anything to do with her death, either directly or indirectly.

Time was his enemy because the longer he took in solving the case, the more the possibility of another family experiencing what the Adenirans are currently going through. Caroline’s death was the first murder The First One has committed since he took over the case. Muhammad stood up; he needed to visit the previous crime scenes. He needed to see for himself because he was tired of going through the files of the previous murders and coming up with nothing but a dead end. Sometimes there were mistakes or something overlooked at the murder scenes. He needed to be somewhere the killer had been and try to analyze the mindset of the killer.

The only reasonable and useful explanation Muhammad had come up with so far was that the killer wasn’t a drifter because finding a needle in a haystack could be much easier than finding a killer who was a drifter. The problem with a killer who was a drifter was that you never knew where and when they would strike next. The victims of a drifter were most likely picked up at random but in this case, each murder was premeditated.

The death of his colleagues and the other victims were patiently planned and executed. After profiling the killer, another conclusion Muhammad reached was that the killer was an educated individual with probably a degree or advanced degree. The killer was also from a high or middle class family and he was also charming or diplomatic because all the victims had somehow known him as a friend prior to their deaths. Caroline and the other ladies had been murdered by someone familiar, which gave the killer an edge because they had all let down their guards in his company.

The body of the first victim was found in her car at the outskirts of town. She was a lecturer at Abuja Polytechnic and 33 years old. The second victim was found in her bathroom, she was an air hostess and 24 years old. The third victim was found at the parking lot of a midnight cinema, she was a chef and 27 years old. The fourth victim was a journalist and her body was found at a cemetery, she was 30 years old.

The two officers from the SSS had been murdered by the killer to cover their tracks. The officers must have been making progress on the case and that did not go down well with the killer and he had decided to take them out of the picture. Unlike the ladies, the first officer had been killed with a bomb planted in his car and the body of the second officer had been found with a bullet in his skull at the murder scene of the 4th victim. Ballistics report had shown that the bullet that killed the second officer was fired from a semiautomatic pistol which had a silencer installed to its barrel.

Muhammad knew the two murdered officers and they were ahead of him in rank. They were good guys and top professionals. The fact that the killer had succeeded in eliminating them meant they had to be agile. Muhammad left his office. He had changed his mind about visiting the other crime scenes as he headed towards the forensic department to examine the car that the first victim was found in. Her name was Dr. Margaret Soludo.