Shadow of Perception
Hunting.
    “Stuff’s gross anyway,” he said to Rachel. “Oatmeal’s what you need. It’ll put hair on your chest.”
    Rachel walked to one of the computers, then hit a key. A TV screen jerked to life showing the victim from the DVD lying on the operating table. “Hair’s not what I need. And if your theory on oatmeal is true, this guy must have eaten it by the barrel.”  
    She hit a few more keys and the other TVs, one by one, came to life, each with a different still shot. “Okay, show time,” she said, then began punching more buttons. “Watch screen number one.”
    He moved closer to the screen and tried to ignore Eden’s coaxing scent as she stood next to him. “What am I looking at besides a foot?”
    The keyboard tapped behind him, then the screen enlarged. “See anything interesting?” Rachel asked.
    He shook his head and started to say no. Then he saw it. A tattoo, buried beneath thick black hair and just above the victim’s ankle. “Wait. Got it.”
    Eden pointed to the markings on the screen. “I see it, too. Letters?”    
    “Greek actually,” Rachel clarified. “Sigma Alpha Mu.”
    “Do you think he was a Sammy?” Eden asked Rachel.
    “Makes sense to me.”
      “Hold up. A whatty?” They might as well have been speaking Greek at the moment. Hudson had no idea what the hell they were talking about.  
    Rachel hit a few more keys and the screen changed to a website. “The Sammys, or Sigma Alpha Mus, are a fraternity.”
    “Jewish,” Eden added.
    “Yes. And according to their main website, currently fifty-four chapters are recognized in universities across the country.”
    “Currently,” he echoed. “This guy’s gotta be somewhere in his mid to late forties.”
    Rachel switched from the website’s home page to its alumni page. “That’s my guess. So figure this guy was in college twenty plus years ago.”
    Eden leaned against the metal table. “Not to sound negative, but without a name or a...body, this isn’t going to help us right now.”
    “True. But it’s given us a few leads. The vic is Jewish and had at one time belonged to a fraternity.”
    Hudson nodded to the Sammy alumni page on the TV screen. “I’d be interested to know how many alumni in the vic’s age group ended up as plastic surgeons.”
    “Plastic surgeons?” Eden repeated.
    “Think about it.” He pointed to one of the still shots on the other TV screens. “The guy doing the slicing wasn’t torturing our vic to gain information, but to send a message. He gave him breast implants, then went on about how we’re all being poisoned by airbrushed images.”  
    “There’s no such thing as perfect, only perception,” Eden quoted the doctor.  
    “Right.” He moved a finger over the screen. “Look at the operating room. This guy did some serious planning. I doubt our vic will be the last, even if you were to somehow air this DVD or found a way to let him know you’d received it and can’t air it.”
    Her knuckles grew white as she grabbed the metal table. “I worried about the same thing, especially when he made the comment about my beauty pageant series.” She looked at him, her green eyes forlorn, distressed. “This is personal, isn’t?”
    “It’s revenge.”  
    “Dun, dun, dun,” Rachel mumbled, and pulled a pencil from behind her ear. “Are we done with the melodramatics? Because I have something else I want to show you.”
    “I’m not being melodramatic,” he countered. “I’m being realistic. This is a plain old case of revenge.”
    “Just a cut above the rest?” Rachel tapped the pencil eraser against her chin and pursed her lips.
    “Smart ass. Do you think you could somehow, preferably legally—”
    “Search the Sammy data base for any males who would have graduated twenty to twenty-five years ago with a degree in medicine.”
    The corner of Eden’s mouth tilted and the anxiety in her eyes momentarily disappeared. “I think Rachel pretty much has it

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