Elias
The secondary evidence room smelled like burnt coffee, dry-erase markers, old paper, and failure. It wasn't a smell most people would recognize, but I'd spent enough years chasing dead ends to know exactly what failure smelled like.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed loud enough to make my teeth ache.
Someone had been meaning to replace the tubes for months.
Nobody had. There were always more important things than lights that hummed.
Like murder. Like twelve women who had disappeared so completely it was as if the earth itself had opened beneath them.
I rubbed both hands over my face before forcing my eyes back toward the evidence board. Forty-eight hours. That was how long none of us had slept.
Derek looked like he'd aged ten years overnight. Mason hadn't touched the coffee sitting beside him in nearly an hour, which told me more about his state of mind than his expression ever could. Mason didn't ignore coffee unless something had gone catastrophically wrong.
Something had.
The whiteboard stretched almost the entire length of the wall now.
It had started as one victim. One body. One question.
Now it looked like someone had emptied an entire filing cabinet onto it.
Photographs. Maps. Autopsy reports. Traffic routes.
Phone records. Forensic summaries. Red thread crisscrossed between photographs until the whole thing resembled a spider's web built by someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Or me.
I stepped closer. The first section was simple enough.
Drew Lian.
Respected citizen. Found inside an abandoned kiln shack his mouth had his dick in it opened so violently the coroner had struggled to determine where the first cut actually began. Bound. Displayed. Waiting to be found.
The second photograph sat beside his. An unidentified woman.
No... Not unidentified anymore. She had a name now.
A family. People who finally knew why she wasn't coming home.
The method matched almost perfectly. The same staging but differently.
The same careful positioning but differently. The same message.
You're Welcome.
Two words. Two impossible words. I'd seen killers leave signatures before. Initials carved into skin. Symbols. Religious verses. Sometimes flowers. Sometimes coins. But gratitude? That was new.
Who the hell murdered someone... and then thanked us?
I moved my attention lower. The next two victims looked less like people and more like warnings.
One male and one female. Neither had names.
Faces destroyed beyond recognition. Fingerprints intentionally removed.
Teeth extracted with clinical precision.
No dental records. No usable DNA. Nothing.
That wasn't rage or panic. It was a planned murder.
Whoever had done this hadn't wanted to slow investigators down. They'd wanted to erase them completely. Even then...They'd still left the note.
You're Welcome.
I fucking hated those two words. The longer I looked at them, the more they felt like someone smiling across the room while sharpening a knife. Behind me I heard Derek shift his weight.
"They didn't miss anything."
"No," I answered quietly.
"They removed everything."
Silence settled over the room again. My eyes drifted to the final section. The missing women. Ten turned to Twelve two days ago. Twelve photographs. Twelve different smiles. Twelve different homes. Twelve different lives. None of them knew each other.
Different jobs, routines, ages, counties and social circles. Nothing connected them except the day they disappeared and somehow...not a single witness or one usable tire impression, no fingerprints, fibres, CCTV, ransom demands and no bodies.
Nothing.
It was as if someone had learned exactly how we investigated crimes...and built an operation specifically designed to avoid every single step.
"They vanish inside ninety seconds," Mason said behind me.
I didn't answer. He continued anyway.
"Ninety seconds between the last confirmed sighting and complete disappearance."
I stared at the map. Different places, roads. Different killers wouldn't stay this disciplined. This wasn't improvisation. This was choreography.
I finally spoke.
"They rehearse."
Mason looked at me.
I pointed toward the board.
"Every extraction."
I hated calling them extractions when I knew they were kidnappings. Lives. People but the word fit too well.
"They already know who's grabbing her, who's driving, where every hand goes."
I shook my head.
"They aren't reacting. They’re executing."
Derek folded his arms across his chest.
"So?"
"So," I replied, "that means somebody planned every one of these before the van ever stopped."
Derek leaned against the wall.
"I still think it's trafficking."
"Why?" Mason asked.
"Because this isn't personal."
He gestured toward the board.
"Look at the logistics, twelve women, six months, multiple counties and no mistakes. You don't build that unless people are making money."
Mason wasn't convinced.
"If it's trafficking..."
He tapped the photograph of Drew Lian.
"...then why dump him?"
His finger moved toward the woman.
"Why dump her, why leave bodies, leave messages?"
Mason stated.
"A trafficking operation survives by staying invisible, they don't start mailing invitations to homicide detectives."
The room fell quiet again. I kept staring at the board.
Neither theory fits. Traffickers didn't leave theatrical displays.
Serial killers didn't usually kidnap twelve women without taking credit.
This was both and neither. It felt like trying to complete a puzzle where somebody had quietly swapped half the pieces from another box.
I rubbed the back of my neck.
"Somebody wants us looking over here."
I pointed toward the bodies.
"While something else is happening over there."
Nobody fucking answered because nobody had a better explanation and that was the part I hated most.
Ping
The sound was almost laughably small.
One soft electronic chime drifted across the evidence room, disappearing beneath the constant hum of fluorescent lights and the quiet shuffle of paperwork.
Normally none of us would've looked up. Department computers made noise all day long: dispatch updates, missing persons reports, warrants waiting for signatures, endless administrative emails that somehow always found us at the worst possible moments.
After forty-eight hours without sleep, another notification should have meant absolutely nothing, but something made me look, maybe instinct or exhaustion. Maybe the simple fact that I'd stopped believing in coincidence somewhere around my tenth homicide.
The desktop monitor glowed faintly in the corner of the room. A single unread email had forced itself to the very top of my inbox. It hadn't come through the department server. It hadn't been forwarded from dispatch. It hadn't been routed through any of the systems we normally used.
There was no sender. At least... not one that meant anything.
A string of encrypted letters and numbers sat where a name should've been, long enough to make my eyes narrow automatically. No recognizable domain. No agency. No traceable server. Whoever had sent it knew exactly how to hide behind layers of digital smoke.
My pulse slowed. It always did. People assume fear makes your heart race. Mine had learned a different trick years ago. Right before something went catastrophically wrong... everything inside me became unnervingly still.
The subject line sat there like it had been waiting patiently for me.
You're Welcome.
The room around me seemed to shrink. I didn't realize I'd stopped breathing until my lungs started burning.
"What?"
Mason's voice pulled me halfway back into the room. He hadn't seen the screen yet. He'd seen me. Years of working together had taught him that I didn't freeze without a reason.I didn't answer him. Fucking couldn't.
My fingers settled around the mouse, squeezing harder than I intended until the plastic groaned beneath my grip.
The cursor hovered over the email for several long seconds before I finally clicked.
Nothing appeared. No greeting, threats, no manifesto explaining twisted philosophies or righteous vengeance, no demand for money or attempt to negotiate.
The body of the email was completely blank.
One attachment sat in the middle of the screen like a carefully wrapped gift.
VIDEO_01.mp4
Behind me I heard Derek's chair scrape violently across the concrete floor; neither of us had asked him to come closer. He simply did.
By the time my cursor hovered over the attachment, Derek was standing over my right shoulder, his tattooed forearms folded tightly across his chest. Mason moved to my left without saying a word.
The three of us stared at the monitor, none of us speaking, none of us willing to be the first man to admit that something about this already felt horribly wrong.
I clicked play.
For three endless seconds the screen did nothing but spit grey static.
Tiny white flecks danced across the monitor while the speakers hissed softly, and for one irrational moment I wondered whether this was someone's idea of a fucking joke.
Then the interference disappeared, the image sharpened.
My stomach dropped so hard it physically hurt.
Route Nine.
I knew the intersection before the timestamp even appeared.
The old utility pole, the abandoned service station, the faded white line running across the edge of the gravel shoulder. We stood there ourselves. Twice, maybe three times.
The timestamp blinked quietly into existence.
23:14:02
My mouth went dry.
"Jesus..." Derek whispered.
It wasn't just any camera; it was the municipal traffic camera covering the exact intersection where Clara Jenkins had disappeared two months earlier. Twenty-two years old, college student, worked evenings at Murphy's Diner, loved hiking but never made it home.