Mona Qassimi's brain works in rather strange ways, making the queerest connections, seeing clues where another would not, finding answers in the unlikeliest of places. Of course, to her and the likes of her, none of it is quite unlikely, on the contrary. If most think of Mona's talents in deduction a prouesse , I love using French if you haven't noticed, to Mona it is nothing special, just her regular self being her regular self.

It is heavily raining outside on this fine Saturday morning. The odd twins are at the Tachfini Library, discussing matters of the utmost importance .The thing with serial killing is that you never really know who might be next.

- 'Professor Bennani.'

- 'Detective Qassimi.'

They both nodded and shook hands before sitting themselves around a table, it was exam season but because of the rain the library was quite remote.

- 'Alright, at first I tried to approach the problem a pedibus usque ad caput, from feet to head. I mean from the last victim to the first one, I found, however, a very important information comparing Habib and Little Aya. So the first murder was in the early 2000s and made a victim out of a ten-year-old girl. The last one and I pray it is the last one, was only recently and took the life of a forty-year-old professor.' Mona began.

- 'That already limits the list of suspects, it couldn't have been someone from Lachelier's , it's someone older, but not too old either.'

- 'I feel like it she's in her thirties, if she was as old as Habib she would have been fifteen or twenty at the time of the first fake suicide. It wouldn't make sense.'

- 'You think it's someone who went to school with Aya?

- 'Yes, maybe, but let's get back to Habib. If it's not someone from our school, then who in the world could it be?' Mona was biting her nails.

- 'Mona, I was meaning to tell you.' Said got closer and whispered. 'I feel kind of ... watched these days. The other day I was having dinner and I heard some leaves rustling in the backyard, it wasn't even windy.'

- 'It could have been Tux, or Oumayma for that matter.'

- 'No, I don't think so. It was in our side of the yard and I heard some heavy footsteps, you know it really freaked me out. What if someone's onto us?'

- 'Okay, let's take a few steps back here and not get too ahead of ourselves. So, what you're saying is that the killer knows we're not buying it and are gathering proof against them?'

- 'Yes.'

- 'Well, I don't know what to make of that.'

- 'It puzzles me, how no traces, no DNA was ever found on any of the crime scenes, it's like they actually managed to trick those people into killing themselves. Habib and the drugs, Aya who jumped from the school roof. Doghmi who was found hung in his apartment and Mahdi who drowned himself in the Oum Rabii River. No suspicious phone records or chats, no sudden change in behaviour , no questionable transaction . And most importantly, how did they get the victims to cooperate, without even retaliating, I mean I could understand for Habib, but Aya? What could a little girl be blackmailed about? I could understand if it was an adult but if we follow your reasoning and consider the killer to be a child at the time, then it makes things incredibly difficult, if not absurd. You sure you're not wrong in your calculations?'

- 'Said, I get a whole lot of things wrong but this, this is my field of expertise. I trained myself for over ten years in order to master the fine art of deduction. Like I said, it makes more sense for Aya to have been tricked by a peer rather than by an adult or a teenager.'

- 'I see.' Said's eyes were shifting from right to left, he was thinking. 'Again as you said, let's take it slow or we might miss on some crucial detail. We should work on building a profile and figuring out the M.O. Then we'll look at the patterns.'

- 'Exactly. So let me tell you a bit more about my approach, and how I figured it could only be a woman, and what it means for the mobile of the crime. Look at the victims list and tell me if you notice anything.' She handed him a notebook with a list of names and ages and other characteristics about the victims.

- 'Well, that makes a lot, I mean to kill once and then deeply regret it and live in guilt is one thing, but to do it again and again, that's something.' He said with a furrowed brow.

- 'Yes, that is an excellent point, we'll get back to it shortly after, but that's not what I wanted to show you. If you focus on the ages of each victim you can deduce the gender of the culprit. Aya was ten, so were they, they were children then. There are a lot of reasons why she might have don't that—jealousy, bullying, pure hatred, you name it. Now onto Mahdi, he was thirteen. Doghmi was twenty and Habib was middle-aged. My guess is that she killed Aya out of rage, she was very upset about something and desired to take revenge on her. Mahdi might have been her friend or crush or a boy who bullied her although the last act sounds more like Habib, and then Doghmi. You might wonder why he's on the list since he died in Casablanca, but I have strong reasons to believe that he's tied to all of this.'

Said listened carefully and with interest, more confused than ever but still willing to hear the rest.

- 'What about him, then?'

- 'Perhaps a boyfriend, when I saw the article about him, it reminded me of those threads about relationships problems , you know how couples kind of start to plan their future together and get "engaged" to each other over text...'

- 'And once they get intimate he dumps her and, weirdly, she still manages to get shocked, as if no one could have seen that coming.'

- 'She gets completely out of her wits ...'

- 'And get her revenge, same way as she did with the others.'

- 'Still, what puzzles me is how she convinced them to kill themselves, like how much leverage can you have on someone to drive them to that point?'

- 'Why do you assume that they did something wrong? Maybe they threatened to hurt their family or pets.' Declared Said.

- 'That is also a possibility, the thing is I don't really know that much about self-harm and suicide to speculate on the matter.'

- 'We're literally in a library' Said spread his arms 'I'm pretty sure I saw a psychiatry section over there.' He pointed to a corner.

- 'We have books, but we don't have perspective, experience. We need a professional.' She looked at Said intently.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his temples before putting them back on.

- 'So, you want to just knock on Amine's door and ask him a bunch of questions about auto mutilation, and you expect him to answer without any suspicions and to think that these queries are just for the fun of learning?'

- 'Yes...' Replied Mona, hesitatingly.

- 'Yeah I think it'd work.'

- 'Okay, then. Let's pack up, or we'll be late for lunch.'

- 'Oh, no. I have, like, three missed calls from my dad, we should hurry.'

- 'Can we stop by the bakery? The one on the roundabout, next to the café.'

- 'Ficelle d'argent?'

- 'That one. They're cooking rabbit for lunch, today. The one we had as a pet for the past ten days, I've been talking to it, giving it nicknames, petting it, how do they just expect me to eat it?'

- 'You're eating Snowball?' Said said, with a sad frown.

- 'No, they're eating Snowball, I'm having a turkey sandwich. Do you want anything?' Moa said, as they parked in front of the bakery.

- 'No, just be back in two.'

- 'Okay, okay. Y'a pas le feu.'