Page 58 of Don't Shoot Me Santa

The heater clicked as he shut the door.

The desk was a mess. Printouts, crime scene photos, psychological profiles, scribbled police notes fanned out like a paper autopsy. He’d laid it all out the night before. After the fire. After the mince pies and the mellow music. After Aaronhad brushed his teeth and mumbled something half-snarky, half-sweet on his way to bed.

Kenny had followed not long after. Body humming. Cock aching. So damn ready tohavehim. Fully, deeply. To take Aaron the way he’d been holding back from for days now. He could’ve. Aaron was soft. Pliant. Already slipping under in that way Kenny loved. Trusting. Open.His.

But instead, Kenny had curled in beside him. Pressed his hand to Aaron’s chest. Matched their breathing until it slowed. Until Aaron melted into sleep, still hard and aching, but safe. Becausethatwas the connection.

Holding him there. Holding him through it.

So now, with the ache still faintly present, Kenny welcomed the distraction and let the crime scene spread itself across his desk, a puzzle begging to be solved. Something to keep his hands busy. Keep from climbing back into bed and pulling Aaron into ruin.

At least for a little while longer.

He plugged the flash drive from DS Parry into the laptop, opened the file index, and began.

Three victims.

Three signatures.

One worldview.

Luke Wells, seventeen. That one he knew. System veteran. Couch surfer. Bright, distrustful, and brutally clever in all the ways life demanded from boys like him. No one reported him missing. He’d been dead ten hours before anyone noticed he wasn’t loitering in his usual spot, in the corner where he could find a warm body and enough cash for something hot to eat. A body for warmth, a meal for survival. That was the trade.

Then there were those who could have come before him.Noah Finn, eighteen. Former care home resident, transitionalhousing. Found in a Portsmouth field last month. At first glance: exposure. Underneath: sedative in his system. A peppermint sweet in his coat pocket.

Isla Cross. Twenty. A rough sleeper in Southampton. Found dead in an alley behind a church hall. Nothing unusual on paper. The coroner ruled it an accidental overdose. A sex worker. Another tragic statistic swept into winter’s tally. But Kenny knew better now. He saw it clearly; the pattern snapping into place like the final click of a lock.

There’d been no signs of a struggle. No convulsions. No frothing or vomit, no claw marks in the dirt. Only a stillness that didn’t fit the chaos of overdose. Isla had looked… peaceful. Clean. Body washed, repositioned, redressed. Left like a gift.

And there, tucked beside her like a calling card, had been the candy.

Peppermint.

That cloying sweetness lingered in every scene. Pocketed, placed, presented like a blessing. Or a curse. Kenny sipped his coffee, letting the bitterness ground him as he slid a fresh page into his notebook. He didn’t have to search for the shape of the killer anymore; it was already coalescing. Precise, ugly, terrifyingly composed.

What pulled at him now was the break in the pattern. The earlier bodies had been washed. Every trace the killer could remove, gone. That spoke of time, forethought, and a working knowledge of forensics. But the last one? No washing. No attempt to erase the skin’s record of touch.

That wasn’t sloppiness. That was pressure. A lack of time. Or a shift in priority.

Escalation was the most dangerous phase. Behaviour driven by compulsion, even when it increased the risk of exposure. The contamination levels would be obvious tothem; they weren’t ignorant. Which meant whatever was changing inside them was more urgent than the need to stay hidden.

The question was why. And who, or what, they were willing to risk everything for.

So he made his notes.

UNSUB:Likely late thirties to mid-forties. High-functioning. Quiet. Ability to slip into vulnerable spaces. Outreach work, volunteer circles? Without drawing suspicion. A loner hiding in shadows. A participant. Trusted. Admired, even. Didn’t avoid the broken; sought them out. Not out of pity. But recognition.

Modus Operandi:Sedation. Then restraint. Then asphyxiation. Likely manual. No struggle. No blood. Clean deaths, quiet as snowfall. The bodies were washed, dressed post-mortem. Tucked into place like dolls in display cases. Reverent. Ritualistic. This wasn’t brutality. It was choreography.

Signature: The peppermint wasn’t decoration. It was a message. Reinforcement. A calling card laced with saccharine intent. Mercy? Reward? Forgiveness wrapped in cellophane? Or a benediction. A final rite. The last sweet handed out at the end of a sermon. Gift tag found only on one victim. Change? Intentional?

Victimology: Marginalised. Forgotten. Survivors of systems that failed them. Former foster kids, rough sleepers, sex workers. People invisible to the public eye unless they were in the way. People society let fall through the cracks and then blamed for the bruises.

Kenny scribbled a note:Check sexuality.

If Luke had been queer, it might suggest the others could have been too. And if that held true, the motive wasn’t random, it was refracted. Tilted through the lens of projection. Because if the killer saw queerness not as a threat, but asa fracture, something sacred, invisible, and quietly broken, it offered a throughline.

Not salacious. Not sensational. But significant.