6. Kennedy
Kennedy
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The words were tumbling out of my mouth so fast I couldn’t catch them, let alone make them make sense.
“Th-there was an envelope on… on my car. Ears, there were ears . Human ears. I don’t know who—”
The officer behind the precinct front desk was staring at me like I was a wild animal about to bolt. “Ma’am,” he said, holding up a hand. “You need to slow down so I can understand you.”
I tried. I really did. But the pounding in my ears was so loud I couldn’t tell if I was breathing or hyperventilating. I could still smell that awful, metallic scent that clung to the foil in the envelope.
I closed my eyes and drew in a long, deep breath. Then, with trembling hands, I set the envelope on the desk and tried again. “Someone… they sent me human ears,” I croaked. “And this letter. I’m sorry, I got my fingerprints all over it. I-I know I’m not supposed to—”
“Kennedy Campbell?”
I turned toward the deep voice.
The man who’d spoken was tall and clean-cut with the posture of someone who’d worn a badge for years. Early thirties, maybe, and strikingly handsome, with dark hair and a square jaw.
“I-I’m sorry,” I said, still half in a daze. “Do I know you?”
He gave me a quick, apologetic smile and shook his head. “Not exactly. I recognized you from your podcast website. I’m Detective Malachi Sieger. I emailed you yesterday about coming in to talk.”
I stared at him, barely registering his words. At a time like this, I really shouldn’t have been thinking about how unbelievably attractive he was, but suddenly it was the only thing on my mind. A coping mechanism conjured up by my brain to distract from the earlier horrors, presumably.
“But… judging by the look on your face,” Detective Sieger continued, “you’re not here about that, are you?”
Before I could answer, the officer behind the desk cut in, gingerly holding up the envelope of horror. “Sir, she received a disturbing letter. With what appears to be a pair of human ears.”
The detective’s face changed instantly. Gone was the easy charm, replaced by grim, focused tension. “Take her to Interview Room Three,” he said to the officer. “And get her some water.”
I stood frozen until his hand rested gently on my shoulder; warm, soft, and grounding. I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to feel such a small gesture of reassurance.
“We’re going to handle this, Ms. Campbell,” he said quietly. “We just need to log everything into evidence first. Then I’ll be right there with you. Okay?”
I nodded numbly.
The interview room was cold in the way only government buildings could be, with gray walls, metal chairs, and a table too clean to feel comforting.
I sat for what felt like hours with my hands wrapped around a bottle of water someone had pressed into them, though I hadn’t managed to open it yet. My fingertips were still tingling from the envelope.
The door finally creaked open, and Detective Sieger stepped inside.
He closed the door behind him and crossed the room with a measured, unhurried stride. Something about the way he moved made me think of a wolf—controlled and confident, but dangerous when necessary.
“Ms. Campbell,” he said gently, sliding into the chair across from me. “How are you holding up?”
“I feel like I’m going to puke. And also like I already did. Emotionally, if that makes any sense. And I just realized it doesn’t at all.”
He nodded, like it totally did make sense. Then he leaned forward. “As I said before, I’m Detective Sieger. I’m here to take your statement and walk you through what’s going to happen next.”
“Okay,” I said in a small voice. “You can just call me Kennedy, by the way.”
“All right.” He dipped his chin in another brief nod before going on.
“So, the ears have been sent to the lab. They’re running tests to see if they’re real.
Sometimes people pull nasty pranks, and unfortunately, you can order some pretty realistic stuff off the internet. Props, prosthetics, even fake organs.”
I nodded slowly.
“If the ears are real,” he continued, “they’ll extract DNA and compare it to profiles from open missing persons cases. Most families of missing individuals provide voluntary samples. If nothing matches locally, we’ll expand the search outward to statewide and national databases.”
As I listened, my gaze snagged on his handsome face for a beat too long. I’d just realized there was something strangely familiar about him, and it wasn’t only because I knew his name from my inbox yesterday.
I couldn’t quite place it. The cadence of his voice, maybe, or the way his green eyes lingered a second longer than they needed to when they met mine.
A second later, realization dawned on me. It wasn’t him . It was the setting.
After my dad was taken by the Carver, throwing my life into total chaos, I’d spent hours upon hours in interview rooms just like this, sitting across from detectives who looked at me with the same mix of curiosity and intensity that Detective Sieger had on his face right now.
That was the thing getting under my skin. Not him. Just ghosts from my past.
“Does this happen a lot?” I asked in a tentative tone. “That someone sends body parts to someone else?”
Sieger’s square jaw tensed for a moment. “No. This is a first for me.”
“So what happens now?”
He clicked his pen. “Well, firstly, I’d like you to run me through what happened today.”
Slowly, haltingly, I described the events leading up to my discovery of the envelope. How I assumed it was the comically rude neighbor at first. How I was going to read it out loud to Freya as a joke.
God. Poor Freya. Someone would have to call her back and tell her what happened to me, because in that harrowing moment after seeing the ears, I couldn’t even remember what I’d done. Had I screamed incoherently into the phone? Or hung up without a word and bolted to my car?
Sieger listened quietly, jotting notes as I went. He nodded now and then, not rushing me or interrupting. When I finally trailed off, he looked up. “Leading up to all of this, did you notice anything strange?” he asked. “Any sign that someone’s been following you, for instance?”
“Not really,” I said. “Someone hacked my laptop recently, but my stepbrother told me it’s a very common scam, and nothing really came of it in the end.”
He made a note. “Anything else?”
“Sometimes I get a weird feeling that I’m being watched,” I admitted. “But, um… I have an anxiety disorder. So I think it’s probably just that.”
“Any signs of someone being inside your home? Items moved? Anything out of place?”
I considered the question for a moment. “No. The letter made it sound like someone was inside looking at me whenever I did my makeup, but my vanity table is right near a window. So they could’ve just been standing outside.”
“That’s certainly a possibility. Are you the only person with access to your home?”
“My mom and stepdad have my spare key, door code, and alarm code in case of emergency. But they’re down in Florida visiting friends right now.”
Sieger glanced up again. “You have a home security system?”
“Yes. My stepdad bought it for me as a gift,” I said. “It’s really good. Motion-activated cameras at every entrance, door and window sensors, and surveillance cameras in every room and hall. That’s why I’m certain no one’s actually been inside.”
“I see. Does anyone else apart from your mother and stepfather have access to this system? Another family member, perhaps?”
I shook my head. “My sister is away at college, so there’s no need for her to have access to it. And my stepbrother only just moved back to Corwin Bay like I mentioned earlier, so he doesn’t have access either.”
“All right.” Sieger made a few more notes before sitting up a little straighter. “The person who wrote the letter signed it as ‘K’. Any idea what that could mean?”
I shrugged. “No clue.”
“Do you know anyone whose name begins with that letter?”
“A couple of people. There’s my friend Kelly Wulf, but she moved to England two years ago, so I seriously doubt she’s behind this,” I said, raising a brow.
“There’s also Kaylee Anderson. That’s my stepbrother’s ex-wife.
But she lives all the way over in Texas, and I barely know her, so there’s no reason to think she did any of this either. ”
“How about surnames?”
“Well, my stepdad’s last name is Kilkenny. Same with my stepbrother, Declan.”
“Kilkenny… that’s Irish, right?” Sieger asked, tilting his head slightly.
“I think so,” I replied. “They both used to joke around about how ridiculous it would be if I ever took their last name.”
His mouth lifted slightly at the corner. “Kennedy Kilkenny. That’s a bit of a mouthful.”
“Sure is.”
“You said your stepfather is away right now. But how about your stepbrother? Declan, was it?”
“Yeah, or Dec for short.”
Sieger’s brows furrowed. “You said you spent most of the day helping him unpack before you found the letter on your car,” he said. “How was his behavior today? Anything odd jump out at you?”
I looked down at the table, gnawing on the inside of my cheek.
“Honestly… he was a little bit off,” I said as the phone incident leapt into the forefront of my mind.
Guilt instantly churned my guts, and I blurted out my next sentence as fast as I could.
“I really don’t think that’s surprising, though, because he’s going through a divorce right now. He’s a bit messed up over it.”
“Ah, I see,” he said, nodding slowly. “Relationship breakdowns can be really tough on people.”
As his lips formed the word ‘relationship’, my gaze flicked to his left hand. No ring. No tan line.
I mentally smacked myself a second later. What the hell was I doing? Yes, the detective was handsome—it was impossible not to notice that—but now really wasn’t the time to be checking out whether he was married or not.
“Anyone else you can think of?” he asked, forehead creasing.