It was the cloying, insidious stench that woke Special Agent Beatrix Fletcher from the dregs of a troubled unconsciousness. The sickly perfume hung in the air all around her, floating overwhelmingly into her nostrils staining her skull with its essence. The FBI agent gagged, her eyes watering from the odor, and opened her eyes to find herself laying in the backseat of a car that she had never seen before. The inside of the car had been savaged by some unknown malady, almost as if wild dogs had used it to nest. The upholstery was torn and rotting, the seats’ yellowed stuffing spilling from the vicious tears like pus stained froth. The rusted metal shell of the roof stretched over her head like a giant scab and she shuddered at the thought. Beatrix realized that her upper body felt numb and, shivering unconsciously, she looked down to examine her attire, finding that she wore only a dark tank-top and a pair of black slacks. The wind picked up suddenly, whistled shrilly through the cars cracked glass, and bit bitterly into the Agent’s exposed flesh.

Groaning softly, Beatrix sat up and began rubbing her arms vigorously, trying to summon warmth into her icy limbs. She didn’t know how long she had been inside the stinking, freezing automobile’s corpse. The last thing she had remembered was falling asleep in a cheap motel’s bed after pouring through her assigned case file for what must have been the fiftieth time. She’d been working the case for almost three months now, following dead end leads and conflicting witness statements at the behest of her superiors, and ultimately the only she had accomplished was a mounting sense of frustration. She had been working with the Homicide Division, tracking the exploits of a murder that was growing progressively more deranged and elusive. Every corpse, every gore splattered room, every set of bloodied power tools that they had uncovered had left them almost no clues. It had become clear to Beatrix that the only way to find this killer was to abandon the FBI’s routine methods and approach this like the killer did, mimicking their mindset and behaviors. She had been one week into this new method and had been continuing to make surprising headway. That is, until she had awoken inside the stinking remains of a long dead vehicle.

The agent took shallow breaths as she reminisced and gathered her wits, her hands perpetually rubbing heat into her chilled arms. Eventually warmth crept back into her flesh and she began rolling down the closest window, not trusting the rusted lock to work on this desiccated vehicle. As soon as the window was down the Agent dove through the opening, rolling to her feet as soon as she hit the ground, head snapping from side to side, hunting for danger. Her right hand strayed to her hip, grasping for a gun that was never there. A bright spark of panic burst through her, sending her heart into frantic, triplet beats. Beatrix took a gulp of rot colored air, trying to steady her nerves. She would never have left her gun behind, not if she had traveled here under her own power.

It was in that sudden breath, the abrupt knowledge that the stench coming from the car was not mold or the fragrance of decaying upholstery but was in fact something far worse. The smell permeating the air was that of rotting, putrid flesh. Fletcher knew the scent well. She was trained to recognize it and had gotten very familiar with it during a short training stint at Chicago U’s body farm. The realization cut through her panic, reasserting her year of combined training from the Academy, focusing her mind on the familiar ideas of death and murder. The Special Agent took a moment to scan her surroundings once more, taking in the empty field the car sat in and the squat, concrete complex which sat a few hundred feet away. Assured that she was alone, Beatrix began hunting for the corpse, using her nose to guide her search.

The rot-infused currents of air eventually led her to the trunk of the car’s gutted husk, the smell issuing from several patches of metal which had long since rusted through. A savage kick shattered the trunks weakened lock and with a sound like the snap of brown bones and creak of tortured joints the lid lurched up. Beatrix swayed on her feet, her mind refusing to accept what lay before her. A hand came to her mouth and she gagged again at the sight of the corpse’s bloated features and rictus smile. The horrid thing for Beatrix wasn’t the disgusting, half-pulped state of the body’s frame, but instead it was the realization of who the corpse was. Staring sightlessly from the car’s tomb-like trunk was the face of Detective Robert DeFrantz, her contact for the local police, a man that Beatrix had personally met with the day before. Not even twenty four hours ago she had been discussing the case with Robert, ignoring his subtle come-ons, and now she was staring at his already-half-decomposed-corpse. The world began to spin around the Agent and she started to wonder exactly how long ago she had fallen asleep in room 18 of the Cozzzy Inn with the case file. A rough bark snapped Beatrix back into reality, and she spun to face the disheveled form of a brown mutt, its deep brown eyes fixing shamelessly onto the Agent’s gaze. The dog stared at her, directly in the eye, and suddenly broke into a large, doggy grin, its lips peeling back from chipped and yellowed fangs. Moments ticked past and the dog’s eyes never wavered, never blinked, not even as Fletcher called to the mutt and tried to coax it closer. Old sores on the dogs back wept fluid into its coat, but the doggy grin never left.

Beatrix felt for her gun again, its distinct absence reminding her that the only weapon she still had left was her body. It would have to be enough, the Agent thought, steeling her mind in preparation for when the rabid dog charged. It never did, though. Instead the mutt turned around and began trotting towards the squat compound, occasionally glancing over its shoulder at her, its maw still split in that infuriating grin. Fletcher froze, her options flickering through her mind’s eye when she realized that there had to be some reason, some purpose for her being here. Whatever was going on involved her, involved this case, and she wasn’t going to give up a chance of stopping the sick fuck that was behind this all. Three years ago Special Agent Beatrix Fletcher had made a pledge to protect her fellow citizens from harm, a pledge she always kept in mind, and many years before that she had sworn a pledge to become a predator in her own right, a predator that hunted the most dangerous game imaginable: habitual killers. These thoughts flashed through her mind once before she ran after the dog, fists tightly clenched.

The complex loomed over the Agent, a brooding dark shape that blotted out the horizon. The dog never slowed its pace, leading her inexorably towards the sinister structure. It was only when the dog neared a splintered door leading inside the building that it deviated from its path, suddenly breaking into a sprint out over the empty grasslands all around them. The door tilted on its hinges, swinging further open, inviting Beatrix inside. The hallway beyond was dim, lit with a faint electric glow from a source unseen. The walls were covered with a fine layer of grit, the floors were scattered with twisted debris and the air hung like stale smoke in the hallway. Beatrix’s shoes made no sound as searched through the passageway, ducking into rooms and rummaging through the debris, eyes peeled for scraps of evidence or a glimpse of a human figure. It was in the building’s basement where the Fletcher found her only clue.

Sitting forlornly on a battered writing desk, right next to the archaic vestige of an antique typewriter, sat a bloodied pair of driving gloves. Beatrix grinned as she saw the stained leather pieces and immediately began searching for something to carry the gloves in. The DNA evidence held in the gloves could be the last piece of the puzzle that they needed to find the killer, the case’s Rosetta stone. The agent almost passed over the paper wedged into the typewriter’s platen, her eyes catching the cryptic words at the top of the page. “THE REPORT,” the page read, the letters imprinted into the page with fresh ink, still glistening in the light. Special Agent Beatrix Fletcher dropped the gloves onto the dust covered floor, the leather falling from her nerveless, plastic covered fingers while she read each word. She felt faint as she read the last sentences, the slap of leather on concrete ringing in her ears.
...

Beatrix never forgot that incident, and still couldn't believe the hand fate had dealt her. The DNA trapped within the glove held the secret of the killers identity and after the forensic labs had gotten a hold of it the mystery behind the killer evaporated like mist in the morning sun. If it wasn't for this fact, Beatrix knew she would have been fired, if not given a more severe reprimand. But once the murder was IDed, and the Agent in charge of the investigation was brought in for questioning, the truth became clear. The evidence that she had uncovered would be the eternal badge in her cap, she knew, but it didn't bring her any joy. Her mind never strayed from the burnt pages or the blinding blue flash as flame washed over the last section of "THE REPORT".