From Deputy Fiction Addiction:

Steve Dark shuts off the television and slams the remote on the desk, scattering four tarot cards.  The news coverage of the Tarot Killer’s, or as Dark called him, T.K.’s, latest victim put Dark’s nerves on edge.  T.K. would always leave a tarot card that the next victim would later get in the mail.  This connection was only made with the discovery of the fourth and latest victim though it was still unclear as to what the tarot cards symbolized.  Dark stared at the photo of an Eight of Wands card taken from victim number four ‘s crime scene and shifted his eyes towards the Eight of Wands tarot card that he received earlier that day and was now resting in his chair.  He picked it up knowing he once again had been targeted by a serial killer, but wondered why he also got copies of the cards that were left with the first three victims.

Dark had been researching the meaning of tarot cards since the first victim was discovered and Dark realized these cards reflected aspects of the killer’s life, personality, habits, or job and could lead him straight to T.K.   Victim number one was the owner of a popular local art gallery and not surprisingly received The Moon tarot card before his untimely death because Dark’s research showed The Moon tarot card to represent the creative arts.

Victim number three’s card was the Five of Coins which was defined as representing someone in need of help and if you ignore them the problem will only get worse.  Clearly T.K. was crying out for help and Dark was determined to decipher the puzzle before he became the next victim!

1) The Moon: Despair and a desperate need for help.

It was a pitiful sight. The stench overwhelmed the two police officers beside him, but not Dark. He’d grown used to the scent of death. Then a sudden flashback of Sibby crossed his mind, causing him to shudder slightly. He squatted next to the hacked up body of the homeless man and examined the diagram of a full moon drawn in the poor man's blood. He could almost smell the despair wrapped around the twisted body. Mirroring the bloody image were the man's eyes -- solid, milky white orbs floating in a black sky of blood pooled in his sockets.

As usual there was little to be learned from the scene. He knew who was responsible but not the motive. What did it mean and where was it going? Where was this leading him?
Dark stood, sighing over yet another case full of dead bodies. He wondered what the meaning was with the bloody images, but couldn't get past the feeling of a noose tightening around his neck as time wore thin. As he studied each scene, he felt dark, beady eyes hidden behind a mask, haunting him, taunting him, and he wasn't surprised to find there was no physical evidence of the murderer.

Later that night, the sound of a ringing phone woke Dark with a start. The flashes of the gruesome murders left dream wisps as he struggled for consciousness. He felt a deep sense he wasn’t tying together all the pieces, and it was eating away at him. What was the link, what connected all these victims? Slowly, he slid out of the bed he once shared with Sibby. He grabbed his cell phone and walked down the dark hallway. As he passed the nursery, he was nearly driven to his knees by abrupt images of the brutality cutting through his city. He struggled to make his way into his baby’s room, fearful of finding yet another unknown symbol decorating her unrecognizable body.

4) The High Priestess: Something remains yet to be revealed, but patience must be observed.

Flipping open his noisy cell, Dark glanced at the image – and froze. He couldn't piece together the photo laying so innocently in his palm, nor the text written below it in a spidery hand. She was once a beautiful woman, but now sat propped up in a high-backed chair. Her gown was drenched in her blood, pouring from savage slashes to her face and neck. Under the picture it read: “Patience is a virtue and change must come from within.” Suddenly, a picture he had once seen surfaced in his mind and he rushed back to the crime scene photos on his kitchen table. Holding the cell picture against the rest, he finally saw the connection; each killing bore an eerie resemblance to a tarot card reading he had done at Sibby’s insistence.

5) Death: Abrupt and complete change of circumstances, way of life and patterns of behavior due to past events and actions.

He remembered the last card tarot reading: Death. The reader said the meaning wasn't as dire as Dark thought, but even so, he apprehension ran down his spine. Dark focused on the image again and frowned at the familiar phone number -- his. He now saw some sort of reflection in the image, a dark individual standing in front of a mirror positioned behind the girl. "Oh no..." Dark muttered, then ran downstairs to his den. He burst through the door, then gasped, slamming himself against the wall nearby as shock took over. There, positioned almost exactly like the photo on his phone sat an ominous black suit, dripping with dark red fluid, pulsating in the red and blue lights flashing outside his window.

Steve Dark gingerly stepped over what looked like medieval artifacts, careful not to disturb the crime scene. The owner was in the middle of the store, but the ancient looking sword stabbing him from behind proved he would be of little use to Dark. Next to the hunched over body of the owner was a tarot card with a single drop of blood on it. The other investigators had passed this over, thinking it was nothing, just something else the owner had in his antique shop, but Dark suspected differently. The card was out of place amongst the other merchandise, and the only clue that Dark had to finding the owner’s mystical killer. Assuming the knight had to be the one who would rescue the next victim he rushed to the British Museum’s touring exhibit on the Knights Templar, the most skilled fighters of all the knights of the crusades.

From Deputy Big Yellow Hero:

Dark’s cell phone buzzed to life in his pocket. He answered, “Hello?” there was a high pitched yapping dog on the other end of the line for a few seconds and then the line went dead. “Strange,” he thought as he placed the phone back in his pocket. Seconds later a text message came through with the words “Cow Hoof Rock - Find Me,” the sender unknown. “This can’t be good,” he thought, as he called Constance Brielle to look up Cow Hoof Rock.

Twenty minutes later Dark and Constance were on their way to Great Falls National Park and discussing the strange phone call that Dark had received moments before the text came through. “It was a dog barking, a small yappy dog, that’s all I could tell,” Dark said and Constance looked over at him from the passenger seat, “Are we going to rescue a dog?” Constance asked. “No idea,” said Dark “I guess that’s what we’re going to find out.”

They arrived at Great Falls National Park and made their way up the River Trail to Cow Hoof Rock. As they approached they heard the high pitched yapping of a dog. It was a small white dog that looked to be well taken care of. It had been leashed to a tree.  Dark reached out to look at it’s collar and found something else attached there.

Dark pulled a small tube from the collar, looked at Constance, and opened it. From inside he unrolled a Tarot card. It was The Fool. Dark looked at the card, the dog looked almost identical to the one on the card, and he wondered, was there a man somewhere around here who belonged with the dog, or am I the fool? Finally he turned the card over. Written on the back were these words “Dark - We are going on a journey, you and I - Find Me.” Dark looked at Constance and said “Call the office, we need to search the area for a body.” Meanwhile he looked again at the collar of the dog. “Bear, huh?” he gave a confused laugh and petted the dog softly behind the ear. “Well Bear,” he said “I guess you’re coming with me.”

Two days later Dark was in the office going through evidence photos of the Great Falls crime scene when he received another text message on his phone. It said “Let go, accept what is. Our journey continues. - Find Me.” Dark picked up his phone to call Constance “I got another text, but no real lead” he said. “What did the message say,” asked Constance. “Let go, accept what is” said Dark. Constance breathed a heavy sigh, “The Hanged Man,” she said “but where?”

Dark was flipping slowly through a deck of Tarot cards, his desk was filled with  evidence photos from the Great Falls crime scene. Constance walked in, “Do you think we missed something? A clue to where our hanged man is?” she asked. Before he could respond his phone rang, it was the producer of the local TV station. In a shaky voice she described a video she had received “It showed a man and a woman, dead I think, naked, chained together at the neck, and there was a voice saying ‘ignorance’ over and over again.” Dark knew the card without even having to look it up, The Devil card. He headed straight over to the station to pick up the video to see what other evidence might be included with the package.

Dark arrived back at Quantico just as Constance was beginning a briefing. “All right ladies and gentleman, this is what we’ve got,” Constance said as she looked around the room.

Then she pulled up an evidence photo on the large screen.

The image showed a male, Bear's owner, laying on his stomach at the bottom of a cliff at the Potomac River after having fallen to his death.

She clicked to the next photo.

This one was a still from the video received from the television station, the couple had been identified, by IDs in their pockets, as Susan and Harold Montgomery and police were on their way to gather further evidence from the crime scene.

“What do these cases have in common? One, she clicked back to the image of Bear's owner, was committed in Virginia, at a National Park; the other, back to the video still, in Maryland. From what we gather so far the victims do not appear to have known each other. We found a tarot card, the Fool, at the Potomac River crime scene with the dog, and The Devil card was with the video evidence sent to the TV station.  So it looks like we’re working with a Tarot card theory, and we’re looking for ideas, as well as fresh eyes to see if we've missed something.”

Steve Dark picked up the remote for the projector and flashed back to the first crime scene photo. “That’s Maryland right there next to his body right?” he said. Constance replied “Technically, yes, Maryland claims the Potomac there I believe. So the body was on Virginia soil, but the water next to him is Maryland...why what are you thinking,” she asked. “We never found our hanged man, what if he is there? What if we missed something?”

They headed over to a large map on the wall and began to look at it. “Here is the area where we found the first body, Cow Hoof Rock at Mather Gorge right across from,” she stopped  and looked up at him. He said “We did miss something, it’s right across from Bear Island. I knew that name was weird for that little dog.”  Constance said “It’s in Montgomery County no less, the last name of our second victims.”

Bear Island is a large island, but it didn’t take long to figure out exactly where they needed to go. The fire tower on the island seemed to have smoke pouring out of it like a beacon. When they arrived at the tower they found their hanged man, and something else quite bizarre.

The man was hanging upside down by his foot, he seemed to have been dead at least a day. About 30 feet north of the tower there was an odd sight.  What appeared to be  a cage of eight large sticks in the ground surrounding a black bear. The bear was dead, though the cause of death was not apparent. As there were no obvious wounds it would appear that the sticks had not been used to harm the bear. As Dark approached the stick formation he noticed an envelope blowing in the breeze, attached to the end of the stick closest to him.  Grabbing the envelope in his gloved hand, he opened it and unfolded the letter inside, then read it.
   
“The tower has lead you to your answer, yet you have not found the missing piece of this puzzle. Though the bear was mighty and strong, it was full of jealousy, hatred and ugliness. The bear was blinded to the truth. The darkness inside of it acted like a sanguisuge, sucking the life blood and joy from the every day moments of quiet beauty. The bear stood within the circle of sticks and insisted they were poking and prodding him, but the sticks stood still and watched. The bear fought and fought until he collapsed full of his jealousy, hatred and ugliness. The bear died, and the world was full of peace once again.  - Find Me.”

       
Written by Rachee and BYH