Sam Walker and the Grim Reaper Services (ONC 2021)

12 - Halloween

The night passed with thermoses of the GRS' black coffee and an abundance of sketchbooks. Selena sat on the couch, the sketchbook propped on her lap as her hand moved constantly, drawing the pen across the page. Marcus sat next to her, studying Selena's brain scans in between tearing out pages of the sketchbook once they were full or switching out the pens once they ran low on ink. Soon the floor was littered with the torn sheets of paper, crowded with drawings of flowers, guns, wounds, buildings, chairs, and everything else imaginable – and some that weren't so imaginable. Sam had had no wish to see what happens when a human skull is shattered beyond repair. Even just as a drawing, it looked horrific.

He and Raj sat nearby, examining Selena's drawings, looking for something promising, some sort of lead. But nothing stood out to them, nothing that seemed to bear similarity to Jake's death.

As morning dawned, Sam leaned back and stretched. Selena was still drawing, Marcus furrowing his brow over the brain scan. Sam wanted to ask what he found so interesting in the brain scan, but a glance down at his planner distracted him.

He had a quiz in classic myths the next day.

Groaning, he pulled up the PowerPoint slides for the class, taking his folder out of his notebook. He opened it and glanced at the syllabus to find the material to review. Marcus had laughed at him for printing out the syllabus, but Sam found it more convenient than trying to open it on his computer every time he needed it.

"Hey, Sam," Raj said in a low voice. "You said that the Grim Reaper had planted evidence for Elias Gates, right?"

"Yeah," Sam said, glancing over at his roommate. He had mentioned it sometime during the night. "What about it?"

"Turns out Elias Gates was found dead on Halloween," Raj said grimly. "I don't think that's a coincidence."

Sam frowned. Both Gates and Slit-Gag connected to Halloween. And the Grim Reaper seems pretty damn determined to have caught both before the deadline. He planted evidence for one and recruited me for the other. What's up with this?

He thought of Cate and the Grim Reaper's quiet conversation about a mysterious "she," and about Cate saying Gates had called his victims a gift. What is going on here?

Sam glanced down at the folder on his lap, his eyes catching on the About the Professor section which Sinclair had included. His eyes widened.

No way.

Tossing aside the syllabus, Sam opened the PowerPoint slides for last Friday's lecture and scrolled through until he found the image he was looking for. Excitement and disbelief warring inside him, he rummaged around in his backpack until he found Selena's pad of paper he had taken from Caffeinated after her arrest.

Her drawing of a dagger matched up perfectly with the dagger on Sinclair's slide.

"Guys," Sam said in a low voice. All the pieces which had been floating around since this all started slammed into place with such force and clarity he marveled he hadn't noticed any of this before. "I think I just found Slit-Gag."

Marcus' and Raj's heads snapped around to look at him, Selena still focusing on her sketchbook. It was like she was in some kind of trance. "What?"

Cate and the Grim Reaper chose that moment to appear. "Anything?" Cate asked, looking tense.

"Sam knows who Slit-Gag is," Raj told her breathlessly.

"Let's hear it!" the Grim Reaper demanded. "Now!"

Sam took a deep breath. "Okay. So, it turns out that my classic myths professor, Charles Sinclair, did his undergrad at the first university Slit-Gag struck, his masters at the second, and his PhD at the third. And now he's here, as a professor." He glanced around. "And Jake was in one of his classes. Besides that, Selena drew this picture of a dagger after I asked her to try and remember any details about Jake's death. Sinclair showed us a bunch of ancient Greek weapons and he had a modern version of that very same dagger." Sam tossed the pad toward the Grim Reaper. "I don't think that's a coincidence." Something else struck him. "And I just remembered why Richardson looked so familiar. He's also in my class – Sinclair told him to come to office hours. Jake was supposed to go to office hours!"