Luke sauntered back into the precinct the next morning to see Calum and Michael already gathered around their desks. He had three coffees in one hand, the other in his pocket, and a look of pure bliss on his face.

“Well don’t you look cheery,” Michael said, grabbing one of the paper cups from Luke. “I thought you had to cancel your date with Ellie.”

“I did have to cancel my date with Ellie,” Luke said. He sat down in his desk chair. “But right around the time I was supposed to come pick her up, she comes waltzing in the precinct with pizza.”

“No way.” Michael shook his head. “She’s hot and she brings you pizza?” Pizza, or any other greasy delicacy, was the way to Michael’s heart. “Fucking hang onto her forever.”

“But that was it? Just pizza at the precinct? Nothing else happened?” Calum asked. He had quite a different taste in dates.

“Hey, we had some deep conversation over that pizza. And I drove her home afterwards, I kissed her,” Luke said. “I get the feeling she wants to take things slow, but she likes me, like a lot.”

“Enough about Hemmings’ evening,” Captain Irwin said, barging into the conversation. “Though I am impressed he got the balls to ask her out, we have a case to solve.”

“Okay, so did the lab testing come back on the substance we found in Smith’s apartment?” Michael asked.

“Yep,” Irwin said. “It’s a bag full of cocaine. That half of that bag alone was worth thousands. Something isn’t right about that.”

“I’ll say,” Calum said. “A college kid with thousands in coke?”

“It’s a pattern,” Michael said. He stood up and walked over to the murder board, a large white board that the detectives used to keep track of the case. All of them were either super super high when they died or super super drunk.”

“So, what, are they trying to OD?” Calum asked.

“Probably not on their own. For the victims to still retain that level of intoxication at their death, they would have  had to ingest the drugs right before their deaths,” Michael said. “All three vics were tied up shortly before their deaths, right?” Michael said, stepping toward the murder board to confirm his suspicions.

“Yeah!” Luke exclaimed and then began to fumble through the case files.

Finally, Michael found the pictures of the victims from the crime scenes. He picked them off the board, and turned around to his partners. “Guys, we’re dealing with a sadist.”

This revelation, however small it may have seemed, open new doors to the detectives. They now had an idea of what they were looking for. Sadists got off on seeing other people suffer, and this explained the contusions and the lacerations on all of the victims.

Michael looked down at the photos again.

“I think I’ve seen this somewhere else,” Michael said.

“What do you mean?” Calum asked.

“How the bodies are laid, how they look…I’ve seen it somewhere before,” Michael said. “We need to go to the DA’s office. Right now.”

“Why?” Luke asked.