“Hold on your working for the FBI now?” Syd said on the phone. In the background, I could hear a feint beeping. She must be at work. “Geez Tom, I thought I finally beat you by becoming a surgeon. But somehow you still have the cooler job. ”

“I would say this was exactly my plan, Syd.” I laughed. Sitting back in my chair and looked at the clock. The briefing starts in 10 minutes. I should head down soon. “Plus, the physical training was really tough. The most workout I’ve ever done is typing 80 words per minute.”

“Sure, whatever Tom, watch the next time you’ll call your probably you work for the pentagon in their cyber crimes department.” Syd chuckled.

“Ha. Ha. You're hilarious.” I said. I rested the phone in between my ear and my shoulder. Now with my hands free, I looked for my notebook and a pen. “I have to go to a meeting now. Are we still good at grabbing dinner on Friday?”

“Of course!” Syd said cheerfully. “I haven’t seen you since you went off to the academy. Do you want to go to Penultimate for desert? Fall told me they have a new cinnamon bun that has peanut butter in between the swirls.”

Drool came out the side of my mouth. “Syd, that’s a silly question. You know I’m always down for a cinnamon bun from Penultimate. Oh, speaking of which I haven’t seen Autumn and Summer in forever. Wait, are they still fighting?”

“From what I hear, they’re still not on speaking terms. Which is a shame because they were such good friends.”

“Oh, that’s a bummer. I’ll have to give Autumn a call later.” I said, looking at the clock. “Alright Syd, I have to head over to my meeting. I’ll talk to you later.” As Syd said goodbye, I left my office. The briefing office was just down the hallway from where my office was located.

When I opened the doors to the large meeting room, standing at the podium next to the projector screen was Detective Rose. In front of her were long tables with chairs that filled the room in rows leading up to the door. “Hey there Tom, are you excited? This is your first mission in the field.” She said without looking up from her laptop.

“Hey Detective…”

“Please, just call me Kalina. We’re both detectives now.” Kalina said, interrupting me.

“Uh sure Kalina… yes I am excited, but just a little nervous.” I said, taking a seat at the first table in front of the projector.

“There’s no need to be nervous. Just remember these three things. Take it slow, examine everything, and only one truth prevails. If you remember those facts, then no criminal will ever escape you.” Kalina said. She finished what she was typing and turned on her projector. The screen showed the FBI logo.

The door opened, and people started filling into the room. Some were detectives, some were from the cyber department, and others were from the response unit. They all filled into the empty spaces at the tables behind me. “Nice to see a familiar face.” Someone said.

When I looked over, it was officer Clark and officer Broody. They went through the academy with me, and we all graduated at the same time. They each took a seat next to me. “You know people are still calling me Broody. My name is Eitan. It’s not that hard to remember, right Malik?” Eitan said.

“Don’t look at me, they are still calling me officer Clark. They could at least call us detectives.” Malik said.

“Alright, let’s quiet down. It’s time to start the meeting.” Kalina said. The room grew quiet, and all attention was on the screen at the front. The image on the screen was a silhouette of a man, and next to him was bullet points describing a person. “As you all may know, we have been trying to track down a new serial killer that we have called the Killer Moderator.”

Kalina walked away from the podium and was now standing near the screen. “This individual is highly dangerous, and we suspect that his body count is around 20 people so far. From the information we gather, first he works for a content creator as their editor and moderator if they stream. Then, when they have gotten close, he kills them. We know little more about him, only that he kills within a 3-month time span. With this in mind, we suspect he has some psychopathic behaviors as he can grow so close to his victims in such a brief time span.”

Kalina used her clicker to click to the next slide to an image of a man with wild hair and wearing bright colored make up. “We believe this creator is his next target. His name is Bruno Lopez. He creates make-up tutorial content under the name Lucious Lips.”

“Thanks to Detective Morningstar, we could narrow down our search and find him.” Kalina said. She looked over at me and continued. “Would you like to explain what you did to help with the investigation?”

“Sure,” I said, standing up. I walked to the front of the room and stood on the other side of the screen. “So, when I was assigned to this case, I worked with the cyber department to create a piece of code can sift through video to find similar visual effects and patterns after a video has been rendered and encoded. Then we worked with the developers on various content platforms to search for the patterns similar to murders previous works.”

A woman raised her hand in the back of the room. “Could you explain that in similar terms for those of use who are not tech savvy?” she said

“Essentially Detective Morningstar created a program that will go through videos based on certain criteria, then give us the results with he closest match.” Kalina said, turning to me. “Thanks, you can have a seat now.”

I walked back to my seat, and Malik gave me a fist bump. Kalina turned to the next slide of a convention.

“As we are approaching the end of 3 months since his last kill, we have determined that he will strike again soon. Bruno is scheduled to speak on a panel at a local fashion convention. We believe the Killer Moderator will make his next move soon.”

Kalina clicked to the next slide to show a bullet train. “From our investigation, we found Bruno purchased three tickets for this train leaving tomorrow. We suspect he is taking both his editors, including the Killer Moderator. We’ll also station a few detectives on board to observe and try to determine which editor is our suspect.”

Kalina clicked to the next slide. Across the screen was, That’s all Folks. “If there are no further, there are no further questions, then we can conclude this meeting and prepare for tomorrow.”

No one answered, so the meeting was called to an end, and we all left the meeting room to return to our offices.

I sat at my computer and read over what my task would be in the operation. Tomorrow’s my first real case. I need to do everything I can to make sure it goes smoothly.