It was a dark, overcast morning. A Tuesday. Adelina Azzarello was gathering the tools she would need for the day when she got the call. She could hear the wind outside tell her what to expect. Rain. She'd better hurry. She rushed as she gathered her flashlight, magnifying glass, jar of black powder, clear tape, blank index cards, disposable camera, and latex gloves. She tossed them into the beige tackle box with a green handle sitting on the kitchen counter, regretting not having restocked her evidence kit until now.

     Adelina was 24 years old. She had long, silky black hair that stopped at the middle of her back. Her hair was cut straight across and always worn in a low ponytail. She was a good natured woman, always caring for those weaker in spirit and mind than she. She had lived with her parents until she finished her Master's degree in college. The college she went to was not a prestigious one, but one that was inexpensive and offered classes that piqued her interest. She took forensics, science, criminology, and psychology. During that time, aside from school and study, she spent her time volunteering at the local police department in the city of New York.

     Azzy was now living in a small apartment in the city of Queens, which was not far from where she earned her degree. The apartment was on the third floor, with no elevator. The exterior was brown with a pink hue. The
windows were covered with black rod iron and the inside had green walls with thick white trim at the edge of the ceiling and floor. There were no separate rooms. It was a studio with a twin bed that folded against the wall. From the doorway, everything could be seen. The area to the right was the kitchen. The area in the middle was the living room and bedroom. The area to the left was the bathroom. Exposed was the toilet and a drain on the floor. The drain served two purposes. One for the shower and one for the reoccurring toilet overflow. From the ceiling was a spigot which hung above the drain. Next to the spigot was a brass, dingy, circular rod with white plastic loops that clasped a lime green shower curtain. The curtain also served as the bathroom door.

     The wind picked up and Azzy could hear and feel the vibrating crack in the sky. The rain was coming. She was already dressed and prepared wearing a gray slicker rain jacket, rain pants, and rain boots. She felt a sense of irritation thinking the rain would take some of her clues away. She grabbed the box, ran out the door, and down the three flights of stairs to her black, Ford Mustang. As soon as she drove off it started to rain, so she drove slow.

     After she parked in her assigned space, she opened her red and white striped umbrella and got out of the car. She headed straight through the double doors of the station and passed through the lobby to an elevator on the right. She went up to the fourth floor and down a long hallway. Her office was the last one on the left.

     Outside the door hung a crooked placard by a thin, shiny, silver chain. It read, “Azzy”. That was what the boys called her. She felt a sense of accomplishment as she entered her office. She had established her self during her internship and was hired immediately after graduation. She was a natural and had solved more cases than most of the guys who had been around for awhile. When she walked in, there were stacks of cases piled around a calendar sized area on her desk. She grabbed the “Johnson” file and headed out the door, realizing “Azzy” was now covering her title, “Forensic Psychologist”. “Johnson” was title for an unidentified body and the file contained all the paperwork to begin a profile. As she passed back through the lobby, she grabbed a cup of freshly poured coffee from the hand of a uniformed rookie getting ready to sit at the front desk. She kept walking, right on out to the rear parking lot.


     She got in an unmarked police vehicle and soon got call on her cell phone. It was an officer from the 73rd precinct- Belmont division. “Azzeeee, how much longa yous gonna be. This crap ain't gonna preserve fo eva ya know”. “Twenty minutes tops.” She went straight to the crime scene.

     When she pulled up, she saw red and blue lights flashing and handful of officers in uniform standing around the perimeter of a garage, where yellow evidence tape had sectioned the area off. Once she got past the officers “bustin' her chops” for taking so long, she went in. A sergeant approached her and told her the body had been there for sometime. He could read her like a book. “The guys jus doan wanna be standin' 'roun all day. Evidence ain't goin' no wheres.”

     The bloated and discolored body was laying towards the back of the garage made apartment. She started taking pictures while slowly walking towards it. She could see the person had been wearing blue jeans and a tee shirt; both had been ripped at the seams. She looked at the sergeant. “From da swell. Clothes is from da swell.”

     The body was face down on the floor next to a counter that held a make shift sink and portable stove. Azzy looked around and could see signs of a careless lifestyle, but it didn't look like a burglary. She saw a frying pan on the floor a few feet away and looked around again. She did not see anything else around the body. She snapped several photos before asking one of the guys to check the body for a wallet and to turn it over. No wallet.

     As they turned the body over, she could feel herself begin to gag and fought to keep the contents of her stomach in tact. Maggots were crawling from the sides of body's mouth and a yellow towel was stuffed in it. She held herself together enough to take a few more photos and remove the evidence she needed. Evidence collecting wasn't part of her job, but she did it because inevitably there were items missed; the ones she needed most. After removing the towel, she saw a thick, black mustache and determined it was a man. She could also see something protruding from the back of the man's throat, but the swollen uvula kept it hidden.

     “Yous know why yous was called Azzy? Joey dare tinks it's a serial,” shouted one of the officers. “Well, he may have something. There's a couple of things that make this look like the guy knew what he was doing.”

     Azzy went back to the station house and finished filling out the pages in the “Johnson” file. A pattern began to emerge, bringing a lump high in her throat and an empty feeling inside. She finished tagging the evidence she retrieved, went to the evidence technician, and instructed him to submit it to CLOVIS.