Elias
Sleep and I weren't on fucking speaking terms anymore.
We had a decent relationship once. Eight uninterrupted hours.
Dreams that didn't involve crime scenes, waking up without immediately wondering whether someone had died while I'd been unconscious or anything in the fucking past. Those were good years.
Now?
Now sleep showed up when it felt like it, stayed for an hour and if I was lucky two hours, after that it left me staring at the ceiling while my brain replayed every missing person's file I'd ever touched. Every interview, mother's faces, promises I'd made that I hadn't been able to keep.
Truly, it was a fucked-up relationship. The alarm on my bedside table hadn't even gone off before my eyes opened.
5:42 a.m.
I stared at the glowing numbers for a long moment before rubbing both hands over my face.
"For fuck’s sake."
No point trying again. Once my head decided it was awake, there wasn't enough medication, whisky or divine intervention to convince it otherwise.
The old floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I wandered toward the kitchen, Max following close enough that every third step nearly sent me sprawling over sixty pounds of an enthusiastic German shepherd.
"One day," I muttered, looking down at him, "you're going to be the reason I die."
His tail wagged harder. Traitor.
The kettle clicked on while I leaned both palms against the kitchen counter, staring absentmindedly through the window above the sink.
The town was only just beginning to wake.
The sky hadn't committed to morning yet.
It sat somewhere between charcoal and blue; the mountains wrapped in low mist that drifted lazily through the trees like smoke.
A few lights glowed in distant houses. Somewhere down the road, a truck growled to life before disappearing into the silence again.
It was quiet, maybe too quiet for me. I'd worked in cities most of my career. Cities never shut up. Sirens. Traffic. Arguments. Someone was always fucking yelling at someone else. Here… The silence had a pulse of its own. The kind of silence that made you feel like the town was holding its breath. Steam curled from my coffee as I lifted the mug with one hand and took a slow sip. Strong, black and enough caffeine to restart a small engine. Exactly how I liked it. Fuck that’s good coffee.
Max had already stationed himself beside the back door, staring at me with the unwavering confidence of someone who believed breakfast was an internationally protected human right.
"You ate nine hours ago."
His ears perked.
"I'm aware that's practically starvation in dog time."
Tail. Thump. Tail. Thump. I sighed dramatically.
"You know, I spent four years studying criminal psychology."
He blinked.
"I've interviewed murderers."
Another blink.
"I've talked a man into surrendering after an eight-hour hostage negotiation."
Tail. Thump.
"And somehow..."
I reached for the bag of kibble.
"...you're still the best interrogator I've ever met."
The bowl hadn't even touched the floor before he buried his face in it with enough enthusiasm to convince anyone he'd never been fed a day in his life.
I watched him for a second and couldn't help the small smile that escaped.
While he inhaled breakfast, my eyes wandered back toward the window.
Across the narrow stretch of road separating our properties…
A warm light glowed softly inside the cottage next door.
I frowned. Already? It was barely after six.
Who the fuck was awake at 6:02 in the morning?
Most people wouldn't have a light on this early.
Either she was an early riser, or she hadn't slept at all.
Maybe she was one of those irritating morning people.
The thought alone was enough to make me dislike her slightly.
Only slightly.
Yesterday's encounter replayed itself without permission.
Garden gloves, mud on her jeans, talking to ceramic gnomes like they were members of parliament, apologising to flowers after pruning them and smiling at Max like she'd known him his entire life.
She had a strange way of staring. I noticed it yesterday.
Those honey eyes lingering on me long after I'd turned away.
Weird. Objectively...Very fucking weird.
I took another sip of coffee. On the other hand…
I'd met far stranger people. Most of them had ended up wearing handcuffs but she wasn't strange in that way.
She was… I searched for the word and came up empty.
Different. Comfortably different. Like someone who genuinely didn't care if the rest of the world thought she was odd.
There was something strangely refreshing about that.
Max wandered over and nudged my hand with his nose.
"Don't start."
He nudged harder.
"You already had breakfast."
Another nudge I looked down at him as he looked up at me and after I looked back toward the softly lit cottage.
"Don't you even think about trying to make friends with the neighbour just because she’ll probably spoil you."
His tail answered before he could. I had a feeling I was going to lose that battle.
The station smelled the same as it had yesterday. Burnt coffee, old paper, dust and someone's microwaved breakfast that should've been classified as biological warfare. Nothing ever changed. The missing people board, however, changed every single day.
Every time I walked through those doors, I'd convince myself that today's adjustment would be the one. One photograph moved, one date rewritten, one overlooked statement and one tiny thread I'd somehow missed.
It never was.
My office sat at the far end of the corridor, the fluorescent light above my desk flickering with the same lazy determination it had shown since I'd transferred here three days ago. Maintenance had promised to replace it.
They fucking lied.
I dropped my satchel beside the desk, shrugged off my jacket and immediately crossed the room without even looking at the paperwork waiting for me. The wall, it always started with the fucking wall.
It wasn't one of those dramatic investigation boards people loved putting in crime shows, where photographs were connected with bright red string like some conspiracy theorist had decorated for Christmas. Real investigations weren't nearly that theatrical. They were messier. Crueller.
The entire wall had disappeared beneath maps of the county, aerial photographs, missing persons reports, timelines, handwritten notes, forensic reports, phone records, vehicle registrations and dozens of photographs held together by coloured pins and strips of masking tape.
Every inch represented hundreds of hours of work.
Somehow… It still wasn't enough. Eight women, names, smiles frozen forever inside photographs taken before they ever knew they'd become evidence.
I folded my arms and stared at them.
"What the fuck am I missing?"
I stared at the wall as I stepped closer.
Emily, Rachel, Samantha, Rebecca, Amanda, Claire, Desmary and Kyla.
Different ages, jobs, routines and personalities.
One was engaged, the other one had two children, and another had just graduated.
They shopped at different stores, worked different hours, had different friends, families and lives. Nothing overlapped. Fucking nothing.
I picked up a black marker from my desk and uncapped it, tapping the plastic lightly against my palm while my eyes drifted across the timelines I'd painstakingly built over the last week.
The dates weren't random. Neither were the locations.
There was a pattern. I knew there was. Patterns didn't appear out of nowhere. People did. Killers especially.
Nobody woke up one morning, abducted eight women without making a single mistake and vanished into thin air.
Everyone slipped eventually. Everyone. The trick…
Was figuring out which mistake they'd made before they realized they'd made it.
I reached up and peeled Emily's photograph from the wall before moving it three inches to the left, then Rachel's, Rebecca's followed.
I stepped back and tilted my head, maybe.
"No."
I sighed and put them back exactly where they'd been.
"Fuck."
The coffee on my desk had already gone cold again so I took a sip anyway.
It tasted like fucking shit. The clock on the wall ticked steadily behind me.
08:23. I'd been standing here for almost forty minutes.
Forty minutes of moving photographs, rewriting timelines, convincing myself that if I stared hard enough, the wall would suddenly confess everything.
Instead, it just stared back. I rubbed the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes for a second.
Somewhere out there, someone knew exactly where every single one of them was and that thought…
That was the part that kept me awake, not the blood, the crime scenes or even the possibility that whoever had done this might still be walking these streets.
It was knowing that every morning, somewhere, eight families woke up hoping today would be the day the phone finally rang.
Every morning… I failed them again. A knock sounded softly against the open office door. I didn't turn around.
"Come in."
The door creaked open just enough for the Sheriff to lean against the frame, a steaming mug balanced effortlessly in one hand.
"Thought I'd find you in here."
I glanced over my shoulder.
"You usually do."