Victim
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Every crime scene is different, even though they all look the same after a while. They even smell the same, when you walk past the uniformed cop on the door and smell the iron in the blood, and maybe a trace of feces from the fear or a pierced gut.

You look for the differences from the moment you enter, before you even see the body. There will be signs of a struggle, and there were none in that living room. I could see that I was headed to the bedroom. It often is where you will find the body, even if it is not always the place where the homicide was perpetrated.

There was no sign of a struggle there either, except maybe on the bed itself. That was where the body lay. A mature woman. She was naked. She was largish, for a woman – about my size and weight. It is a skill to assess these things even from a body lying down, to give a description of what she might look like alive. Her shoulder length honey blonde hair was across the pillow, as it would be in a struggle. Her dead eyes staring at the ceiling were green, like mine. It had the look of surprise that many do in the moment of death. Even after a fight, the moment of death seemed unexpected.

I always keep my opinion to myself until I get the medical examiner’s report, but I could see that some of the multiple wounds in the belly that had shed no blood, indicating post-mortem strikes after the heart had stopped pumping – a murderous rage. The weapon was not lying nearby.

Beside her head was a heavy object – an empty glass vase. I had seen that sort of thing used as a weapon before, but it was clean. Her face was untouched, so she had not been bludgeoned to death, although from the proximity of the vase she could have been. It seemed that not even a lock of her hair had been pushed aside. Perhaps he had intended to smash her dead face, but the rage had subsided and he had not gone through with that.

I could see why. She had a strong face, but it was strikingly beautiful. It seemed unnaturally smooth – like polished alabaster. She might be somebody who spent time in spas or salons for skin treatments. Her body too was devoid of even fine hair, except the smallest tuft on the pubis, above her vulva.

There was fluid there too. Traces of semen, perhaps. The very best of evidence. But there was also the smell of bleach, which meant an attempt to destroy DNA evidence. I decided to act quickly. I always carry a specimen kit, and I moved to collect it. There would still be something for the medical examiner, but I could get ahead of it and start getting DNA testing under way.

I ruled out strangulation. I know the signs all too well. People talk about ligature marks or hyoid bone damage, but the best clue is to look for petechial hemorrhages - tiny red or purple spots that appear in the eyelids. There was no sign of those. She was killed in another way, as yet unknown.

I left the photographer to get about his task and I went to the handbag on the dressing table. I was careful when opening her purse – if it was empty a thief might have left prints. But there was cash enough to steal inside so it was no surprise that there was a deeper motive. Anger, not greed.

There was a driving licence with her photograph on it – I held it by the edges as I looked at her to make sure. I had an address, which was where I stood – murdered in her own home. It had her name and date of birth, and the wallet provided bank and credit card information. The cards might give me last transactions which could be close enough to the time of death (still to be determined) to build a timeline of her final hours.

The bedside table is often a good place to find the most personal things. When I slid it carefully open avoiding the handle I could see what looked like a diary, and opening it briefly with my pen I confirmed that. This can tell so much about the victim but I would need to wait for it to be fully dusted and entered into evidence. I made a note to have this delivered to my desk when that was done.

The next stop is usually the bathroom cabinet or an eyelevel cupboard in the kitchen where I might find any regular medication, the name of her doctor and any condition she might have been taking treatment for. I always look for psychiatric drugs which might indicate a poor mental state and possibly an inclination towards self-harm, although that was clearly not what brought about her death. There was nothing except what appeared to be anti-menopause drugs, although I would have estimated her as being far too young.

I looked in her bedroom for memories. Older people display their memories as they are more important than the life ahead, but for younger people there should be some in the bedroom – in bedside drawers or in a box on the top shelf of the wardrobe. There was nothing, which puzzled me a little. She had left her past behind. She had started in the city with a blank slate.

I went to the kitchen. It seemed surprisingly well equipped and everything seemed used. Here was a woman who cooked regularly, and made interesting dishes requiring a good amount of special ingredients. I checked the cupboard under the sink and there was a bottle of bleach there that would need to be examined for fingerprints. But there was a box of latex gloves as well, as if inviting a killer to use a pair.

I sat down in what would have been her spot on the sofa. I could see that from many things: :the depression in the seat, the shape of the cushions, the place where a hot beverage might have sat. She enjoyed a home life, but it seemed like a solitary one.

I had enough before the CSI team did their work so I decided to take my sample to Jason Younger at the lab. I knew that he would work quickly. I would not say that we were friends but in many ways we were similar – committed to our work

He just nodded and pointed to a place to leave the sample.

I went back to the station and to my office, but there was not much that I could do but to clear my desk for this case. That meant filing closing memos on two other cases and arranging to forward another two ongoing but moribund cases onto a more junior detective.

I was not expecting to hear from Jason that night so I was a little surprised when I answered his call.

“I have just run a preliminary test to see how many people’s DNA was present,” he said. “I have checked widely but I can only find one person’s DNA in the bag, so I assume that is the victim. There is inorganic lubricant in there, and bleach that will probably cause a problem, and there is no semen, just sweat. But no fecal matter – did you collect the sample from his anus?”

I was confused for a moment, but I am a detective by vocation and by my nature, so I could see the evidence was consistent with the victim being a post-operative transwoman, which would explain the estradiol in the medicine cabinet.

I thanked Jason and hung up. I felt a little foolish, but as I revisited the image of her in my mind, I excused myself. She was a very attractive post-operative transwoman. I started to consider whether this did not reveal a scenario that was highly likely. This trans-person brings a man home to her apartment after a night out and discloses to him that she is actually a man – he is enraged by her leading him on and he kills her. Such scenarios are not unheard of.

As I was leaning back, building a map of things to look at that could prove or disprove this proposition, Captain Richards put his head around my door and asked: “Any preliminary thoughts on that murdered woman?”

“Murdered transwoman, as I understand it,” I said. “Probably an impulse killing but it seems like the perp may have moved quickly to conceal evidence, so we could be dealing with an experienced offender.”

“I don’t want you turning this into a potential serial killer like the Halverson case,” he said, using a case file reference he knew would sting. “But you are my best investigator.”

I knew what he was talking about. It is often said that in order to find a murderer in those difficult cases, you need to understand him, to get into his mind, to think like he thinks, to become him. In the Halverson case, I had taken it all a bit too far. My own people accused me of becoming threatening, even from just a glance. In the end, the killer confessed. There was an uncomplicated answer for all the weird stuff at the murder scene. I was put on leave, although my only real problem was the embarrassment of it all.

But Captain Richards knew that I was a person driven to find the culprit, and somebody who would devote their total being to the task. I was given my own modest office and allowed to work alone, delving through cold cases until something current emerged and I was allowed to show off my special skills. Because of those, I was called in for this case.

So with no clues as to a murderer, where do you go? You look to get inside the mind of the victim to discover what she was doing and who she was with on her last day of life.

I had her diary, and I had access to the crime scene where she lived. Once all the evidence had been bagged and analyzed I could start to do what I could do. But I had learned from the Halverson case that it is best to wait to see whether the obvious might emerge.

It was the following day that I received the Medical Examiner’s report. It confirmed that the victim was a chromosomal male living as a female with “amputated private parts and a constructed vagina” and that the cause of death was a single stab wound to the back by what appeared to be a stiletto blade. Lying on her back had concealed the killing blow which had probably been delivered standing up, most likely in the kitchen where all traces of blood had been cleaned up. The other injuries had been delivered postmortem and the body had been carried and placed on the bed. There were traces of alcohol and female hormones in the blood, but no narcotics.

I could guess at the weapon. I knew of one in the evidence locker, from a street gang murder. Easy to carry in a pocket and deploy with one hand. For some reason I imagined the blow being delivered in an embrace, rather than the victim being approached from behind.

The only item from the locker that I needed was the diary. It was the perfect way to understand her and to look at the world through her eyes. I signed it out of the locker and I started from the beginning.

I was looking for references to friends or sexual partners, and I first found a number of references to “Richard”. It took me a while and then a passage saying - “Richard’s batteries went flat at a crucial point!” to realize that this was her dildo, that I had seen in the drawer beside the diary. She seemed to keep a record of all her dilation exercises. It was clear that the victim had been living as a woman for a long time. There was no reference to the surgery so it must have been years before.

She talked about going to work but there were no clues as to where that was or what she did. There were first names only and all of them seemed to be common given names. There were no descriptions and not even names of coffee bars, lunch places or restaurants that I could visit. Running her name through the system produced no hints about this person.

Then I spotted a name appearing only in the last few weeks before her death. She first called him “Earnest” rather than “Ernest” so it seemed more a descriptor than a name, but later she referred to him as just “Ernie”. It was unclear how they met but it appeared that he was having problems at his work. The Victim was clearly an empathetic person, and very concerned for this man.

At a more recent stage in the diary there was a passage discussing the necessity to reveal her transgender status to Ernie. It said – “I should not have left it to get so far. I set myself a rule to disclose my past to anybody even before we start dating, but for him it was not like dating. It was more about offering him support and understanding. Is it really necessary to discuss my genitals to do that? I did not want him to run away while he was still in a moment of crisis.”

There were some strange things going on here, but it seemed to me that the earnest man was the most likely suspect. How would he react to the news that this good person, who perhaps he was increasingly reliant on, had been withholding an unpleasant but important fact?

Before I knew it I had reached the entry on the day of her murder and there was nothing in it. Nothing there and no DNA at the crime scene. The use of bleach can be very effective because at a molecular level the chemical destroys the chromosomal strands – they call it oxidative damage . The murderer knew enough to do that. There were no prints on the diary but hers, so that had not been tampered with.

I decided that I would go back to the crime scene the next day, and start to retrace the possible actions of the day. I advised Captain Richards that I would be out all the following day, developing a lead.

I got to the apartment early in the morning and moved the crime scene tape to enter. I locked the door behind me and went to the bedroom. The blood-stained sheets had been removed so I lay down on the bed as she might before she awoke. It did not feel right so I took off my clothes to my underwear and I laid back down. I closed my eyes and I tried to put myself into the mind of the victim, having learned a good amount about her from her diary.

I am not sure whether I might have dropped off to sleep, but if I did it was only for a moment. I awoke and checked the time. I let the person I knew tell me what to do next.

It was still a crime scene, so I probably should not have used the shower and the towels she had in the cabinet, and I most certainly should not have used the razor, but I felt that I was getting somewhere. I almost felt that when I walked out of the front door in the right headspace that I would walk to her place of work, even though there was as yet, no way to know where that was. I had to become her, so when my legs were shaved I started to look around for something that she might wear.

The red dress was actually there in the closet. It had been checked and released, but still carried an evidence tag. But that was evening wear, something for later perhaps, so I chose something more suitable. Still, it needed to have shape underneath. I then remembered the box on the closet shelf, where people store their past. I pulled it down and emptied it onto the bed.

It made sense. Of course there were no photographs, but just odd items of clothing that I now realized were from her past. There was padded underwear and a strap thing for concealing a bulge in the crotch, and there was a wig – a simple long bob with bangs.

I dressed myself as I imagined she might, and then I sat down at the dressing table to look at her face. I was not her, but perhaps I could be? What man hasn’t seen a woman apply basic makeup? There needs to be a concealing foundation, color added and blended, eyeliner, mascara and finally lipstick. Somehow, I seemed to channel the victim, as if her invisible hands were guiding mine. She knew what to do, and it all came together.

I put together a bag to take. Her purse was in evidence, but she had a dozen handbags to choose from, and there was a wallet and cellphone in my pants on the bed. I just added a few feminine things, but something was missing, and I knew what it was. I went to the medicine cabinet and pulled out the Estradiol. Before putting it in my handbag I swallowed down a couple of tablets.

It just seemed like a natural thing to do. The instructions were on the bottle. She would need to do it every day for the rest of her life. I paused for a minute and tried to understand why I had done this, and then I started to feel as if the drug had just kicked in. There was a rush of warmth in my body, as if the miracle of hormones had feminized me in only seconds. I smiled at myself in the mirror.

“You go girl,” I said to myself in the mirror. “Remember that you are a woman – a beautiful woman in control of her destiny.” It must have been something in the diary.

I slipped into her shoes that were a tight but tolerable fit, and I walked out the door.

It was like letting her lead the way, and she seemed to know. I turned right, and then left, three blocks and then left again. I walked up to a building, and then into it. Would I know this place? I decided to go into the elevator and push a button. I chose seven. But then as somebody else stepped in, I put my hand out to stop the door and I stepped out. This was getting too strange.

I looked down the directory to the seventh floor and one particular name seemed to make sense. It was a company called “Diversity Placements”. I googled it – a recruitment agency for minorities including “gender diverse” persons. Would that be her? If it was, could I really turn up wearing her clothes, and a wig she might once have worn?

I decided to call when I got back to the station. For the time being I did not want to break the spell. It seemed to me that I had been strangely successful in getting into the mind of the victim. Where would she lead me next.? I checked the time and saw that it was late morning because I had spent so much time at the apartment building myself. I wondered where the victim might go for lunch. Had she gone for lunch on the day she was murdered?

I must have walked around the block for hours, going into one café after another, and making myself visible. I ordered at least a coffee in each, and a few times something light to eat. I was searching for a place that might be right for her, or at best somebody who might recognize the dress or the fact that I was possibly a transperson and say something that might link the victim to that place. It made me think that I should have brought the diary – would she write in it sitting at a corner table? I always found a place to sit where she might. In the absence of a diary I did make some notes in my notebook. Nobody approached me.

In making my orders and in getting past people I found myself naturally using a higher toned voice. I remembered that there were notes in her diary about practicing a feminine voice, and I had followed those tips with increasing confidence.

It was well into the afternoon and some lunch places had already closed when I found a place that drew me in. It seemed strangely familiar to me. A man entered the place where I was and found a seat nearby, and he seemed familiar too. As there was nobody else nearby and because I was concerned the day might result in little progress, I decided to speak with him.

“Excuse me, sir, I don’t like to intrude but I am looking for a friend of mine,” I began. “She visits here sometimes, I think. She is the same size as me I suppose, tall and strongly built, shoulder length honey blonde hair, and well … she is like me in other ways too.”

The man smiled and nodded. I was not hiding that I had not always been a woman, and perhaps she didn’t either.

“I think I know the lady,” he said. “She doesn’t come here often, but she likes to have a cocktail at the Harrop Hotel private bar on Fridays, so you might see her there tonight.”

I knew the hotel. The bar was supposed to be for guests only – mainly travelling businessmen. It was a good hotel, and relatively expensive. It would not be a place for hookers, but a businesswoman might go there for a quiet drink. And he was right – it was Friday. I imagined her in that red dress a couple of weeks before – that would be the perfect outfit.

“Thank you,” I said. “I will try to find her there later.”

But the victim was dead. Would the killer go back to the same place? It sounded unlikely. I now had information that might lead me to identify her place of work, so there was no need to push things. But I felt that there was a real opportunity. I was on a roll with this inhabiting-the-victim’s-body thing. Sundown was not too far away, and I would need time to get back to her apartment to change my look.

For a moment I wondered whether it was time to go back to the man I was – perhaps visit the bar as a detective, but that seemed wrong. I had achieved something by what I was doing, and besides – I was in her mind and almost in her character, whoever she was.

Everything was there as I left it. I am good at tidying up after myself. I pulled the tag off the red dress and laid it out on the bed. I shed the female shaping garments and took a shower. For some reason I decided that I would color my hair. I would be wearing that wig again, but that honey blonde hair color that I had seen laying across the pillow was in a bottle under the basin. It seemed irresistible, despite any odd consequences that might follow.

I have a good amount of hair that is largely unkempt, but it seemed that I could do something with it to make it appear feminine even under the wig. Somehow that look made me feel even more like her. I was increasingly finding my inner woman, and with it there seemed to be that intuition that so many have spoken about – that special gift that only women are supposed to have.

Would I find the killer? I felt confident that I would. That confidence swelled when I saw myself with my shape restored and in that dress, with evening makeup drawn from an online video.

I took a cab to the Harrop Hotel and found the private bar. It was small and intimate, and the barman appeared friendly. I took a seat at the bar and made my legs visible. I ordered a club soda, and he did not seem surprised.

“I can keep that coming all night if you like,” he said. “Just have him buy you vodka tonics.”

Did he think I was a prostitute? Was I supposed to be a prostitute? Was the victim a prostitute? As a rule such people never use their own homes for business. There was nothing in her apartment that pointed to prostitution. This bar did not look like that kind of bar. There were another two women sharing a cubicle at the back – professional looking women, like me. Both large women, maybe even transgender women, like me?

It struck me that this might be a bar not for prostitutes but for transwomen of a certain age and background. Maybe you might term us as “trans-cougars” – women or wannabe women, looking for some male company in a place where there would not be misunderstandings. Had the victim been here? The obvious thing was to ask the barkeep, but I decided to let things play out.

I did not have to wait long. A man appeared at the bar and even before the barman came over, he smiled at me and said – “Good evening. I am finished for the day and feeling good, so could I buy a lady a drink?”

“Thank you,” I whispered, feigning a sore throat. “Vodka tonic.”

Could this be the killer? Could I be that lucky? He drew a little closer and remarked about how attractive and well-dressed I was.

“Thank you, but I think I have been stood up,” I said, to explain why I was there alone. And then to find out his whereabouts at the time of the offending I asked – “Did I see you here last week?”

“I am afraid not,” he said. “I am sure I would have remembered you if you were here. No, I am just visiting, and staying here at the hotel, flying home tomorrow. I do visit the city regularly but I was last here over a month ago, more like two.”

I was relieved. Explaining apprehending a murderer in my present state could be complicated. But if he was not the killer, he was the killer’s type. Why was he here? What was going on in this place?

“I hope you won’t consider this rude, but how did you come to hear about this place?” I asked. “I have only recently come to know about it, so I am totally in the dark on how it all works. I know that there are subtleties, but I would just like to understand.”

“Oh, well then, I will help where I can,” he said. “I suppose that I am one of those men who has a particular interest in a particular type of woman. A woman who truly relishes being a woman. A woman who takes care of herself and how she presents. A woman who is perhaps … less restrained in her desires. A woman … like you, perhaps.”

“I am not a prostitute,” I said. It could have been a question, but it came across as a clear statement.

“Wonderful lady, I would not be interested if you were,” he said. “I am only interested in a woman who wants it as much as I do. I think that sex without desire is an awful thing. It is based on a lie. If I can’t have love, then at least give me desire.”

“Excuse me for asking, but do you have love in your home relationship?” I found myself asking. It seemed so intrusive that I added – “you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“Yes, I have a loving wife and a family,” he said, musing over his glass of scotch. “But I have an interest in another kind of woman – the woman she can never be. That is the kind of woman that you are, I think – the one who has chosen to sacrifice what I have to live the feminine life. To me, that makes you a special kind of woman – the kind of woman I dream about making love to.”

“You are without doubt, the most charming man I have ever met,” I said. “Did you say that you have a room upstairs?”

With obvious haste he paid the tab and we headed for the elevator in what seemed like a tornado of passion. Why had I even agreed to this, let alone suggested it? It was as if the victim who had come to inhabit my body had taken over, as if in some kind of self-destructive rampage.

I had never kissed a man before, and very few women when it comes down to it, but I kissed him, or he kissed me, in the elevator and the hall and in his room when the door was closed.

“Oh, I thought that you would be post-op,” he said, when he had me on the bed. “I usually only have sex with ladies who have had the surgery … but I am so hot for you.”

“Let me blow you then!” The words had come out of my mouth like vomit, and my hands were feverishly undoing his belt as I was on my knees in front of him. Who or what had I become? I had lost all control, as if I was in the grip of something stronger than my own mind, the mind that was the tool of my profession and that made me who I was. But with him in my mouth my head was as empty as a ping pong ball. All I could do was look up as his face brightened and then he gasped … and fed me.

I thought that people would kill to feel as good as I did in that moment. I harbored dreams too, just like my new partner in sex. I might have denied it before that moment, but it seemed so wrong to do it from that point.

It was only then that I realized the true horror of what I had done.

But what was the motive? Which of the seven sins was it? It was envy. I envied her life. Even as I was in his position I envied what she had. It was a moment of madness, but the fact is that I had a weapon – the murder weapon that would never be found as it was back in the evidence locker. Nobody would look for a murder weapon that was in police custody from a crime years before. I had planned this, and executed with precision. This was no crime of passion - I was a killer.

Envy makes you feel like the victim, so she simply did not matter. All that mattered was that she had everything I wanted, and so she did not deserve to live.

When I had first seen her I understood that I could have been her, but I did not have the courage. It takes more courage to change a life than to take one. We spoke and she told me nothing of her past. She didn’t need to - she was that convincing as a woman. She had real empathy. She could see that I was troubled - the earnest man. We arranged to meet again, with me going directly to her apartment. That gave me the opportunity to access a weapon that would never be found, because of my unique position. But to the crime scene investigator it would look like a simple case of a man so shocked to discover his date had once been a man that he killed her in a fit of rage.

It was nothing like that. I was a cold-blooded killer. Blood so cold that I could examine the scene of the crime without any emotion or even any recollection of what I had done.

So what was I to do now that I truly understood the monster I was? I had all the evidence I needed. I had the murderer, the location of the weapon and the motive. A law enforcement professional can do only one thing – present the evidence and let the prosecution take over.

But the man whose cock hung before me had his hands in my hair. The wig had been cast onto the bed but he was looking down at me with a wonderful light in his eyes.

“I love your hair,” he said. “Promise me that you will grow it out. Clearly, you are just starting out on your transition journey, but you are going to make a truly beautiful woman. I would love to meet you again … perhaps even pop that cherry when you get it.”

I swallowed before answering, although I can’t remember what I said.

I can only say that not all crimes can be fully resolved. Sometimes the victim stays a victim without justice being served.

The End
5313

© Maryanne Peters 2026

Author's Note:
Thanks to Eric for editing this story and for making some very valid statements about inconsistencies in the main character's narrative. The story starts with him coldly analyzing a scene he was never witnessed and later we learn that he has been there. This is an explanation for this beyond his mental state, and I wonder if readers might know what it is?