NOT EDITED

Chapter Eight

Monday: January 6, 2020

8:00 AM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, LAB

Bo had not slept well over the course of the weekend. There was so little he could do in Clinstone. He hadn’t worked strictly forensics in… years. Since he was interning in Los Angeles. He had spent so many years going with a detective to interviews and interrogations that he had truly almost forgotten what it was like to simply be locked up in the lab, looking at photographs and filing them away, labeling bags of evidence and filing them away, writing up a crime scene report and… filing it away.

He had spent the weekend working out dozens of different angles for their killer, for the motive. Now he just had to work up the courage to show it to one of the detectives. Or maybe the chief. She knew his old boss, and although he didn’t think they were exactly friends, she was likely the most prepared for how much of an investigation he was used to being involved in, for how much extra work he was willing to do for the same amount of pay.

The clearing of a throat pulled Bo’s attention to the short brunette standing in the doorway. He tucked his unclicked pen into the pages of his notebook and folded it shut. The way she stared at him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but he tried not to make it obvious that it bothered him any. Instead, like the quiet mouse he was trying to conform back to, he rose to his feet and held out his hand. “Bo Austen.”

She closed the distance between them to shake his hand, but that look was still there in her brown eyes. “Gwen Tanner, medical examiner.” She dropped his hand and wiped her own on her jeans. Bo’s brow furrowed. Again, he tried to cover it up as quickly as he could. “Did Misty come by and clean?” she asked.

Bo bit back a snort. He had assumed they must’ve both liked the tornado war zone aesthetic of the lab’s shelves and drawers, that there was no way one would ever assume the other had tidied up the place. “No, that was me.”

“Oh.” She said it slowly, as though she didn’t know what else she could possible say to him.

Bo’s teeth sunk into the inside of his bottom lip, catching on the oh so familiar scar given to him by five-year-old Bo falling off his bike. Hard.

“Why?” Gwen asked.

Bo blinked, eyes shifting back to the woman’s face. “Why… did I clean?”

“Mmhmm.”

“I… I work better in an organized environment.”

“Mm.”

He didn’t understand the one-worded answers or what he must’ve done to upset her. He’d only known the woman for two minutes. What the hell could he have possibly done? Still, he wanted to blend in, to fade back into the background of the police department. He just wanted to finish this case and get out, go somewhere further from California next time. “I’m sorry?” Bo offered.

Her gaze snapped to his face. “For what?”

“Cleaning?”

Her eyes narrowed briefly. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You wanna show me the shit you moved around, dude? Or am I expected to find everything in my workplace that you fucked with on my own?”

“N-no, I-I can show you.” Bo barely managed to rake a nervous hand through his hair before he caught sight of Jacob Mason standing in the doorway.

“Hey… Gwen?” Jacob asked.

Rather than turning around, her gaze shifted to the ceiling. “Yeah?”

“How about you go upstairs and take a break, huh? Chill out for a few?”

“I’m fine, Jake,” Gwen said through her teeth, eyes still on the ceiling.

“He’s not an idiot. Or some kind of intern. Or some sort of burden here in the department. He cleaned the room. That’s it. You don’t gotta be a dick about it,” Jacob said as he walked further into the room.

I don’t need your help! Bo wanted to scream. He had learned at far too young of an age that asking the big guy for help was never the solution. It only ever made things even worse once the big guy turned his back again.

Gwen turned to face Jacob, jabbing a finger into his chest. “Get the fuck out of my lab.”

Jacob pushed her hand away. “I’m not intimated by this, Gwen. I’m just asking you to chill out. We’ve known each other long enough that you can trust me on this, right?” His voice came out much quieter than before as he added, “He’s just a lab geek, Gwen. Just a lab geek.”

Gwen glared at him in silence for what felt like an eternity before she shoved past him, pushing his shoulder with her own. The lab door slammed shut behind her.

After a moment, Jacob cleared his throat. “Sorry about that.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

Jacob lifted his shoulders. “Still.” A pause. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Bo forced a laugh. “I can handle a bit of push and shove from a colleague. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”

“I’m sure it’s not. But that doesn’t mean every place you go from here on out should be hostile.” Jacob nodded toward the door. “It’s not you, you know? Gwen’s just… working through some stuff. She picks a fight with just about everyone right now. Today it was you, tomorrow it’ll be me. I wouldn’t take it to heart.” He lifted a hand and pushed it into his hair. Bo took a small step back, a nervous little tic he usually had complete control over. “I already know the answer, but… you wanna grab breakfast with me and Lemon?”

Breakfast would be a good time to go over the profile he had worked on over the weekend, but he knew he wasn’t ready for that. Convincing himself to talk to one detective about it was bad enough. Showing his work to two of the detectives was even worse. So he shook his head. “I’m all right. I appreciate the offer, Detective.”

“Okay. Well, uh, if you change your mind?” Jacob jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “We’ll be upstairs for another five minutes or so. You know where my desk is, yeah?”

“I do. But I’m okay. Thank you.”

“Okay.” Jacob looked as though he wanted to say more, but instead, he turned and walked out of the room, closing the door with a soft click behind him.

Bo tilted his head back and closed his eyes, drawing in a long, deep breath. Jupiter, what he wouldn’t give to be back in California, back before Dallas ever met Kathy, back before the detective changed departments to be with her, back before… all of it. What he wouldn’t give to go back to life before he knew his best friend was one of the most prolific serial killers in the United States. What he wouldn’t give to go back to life before he knew he had lived under the same roof as that serial killer, that he’d ridden to crime scenes with that serial killer, that he had shared breakfasts and coffees and beers with that serial killer.

Jesus, what he wouldn’t give.

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NOT EDITED

Chapter Seven

Sunday: January 5, 2020

7:15 AM; MINNESOTA, THE SURGEON’S HOUSE, BASEMENT

In her little basement prison cell, Cleo sat on a footstool positioned near the end of the bed. The older man, the one who had been her kidnapper, sat behind her on the edge of the mattress, running a brush through her hair. She forced herself not to fight him or try to stop him. From what Natalie had told her, fighting would get her killed, and she didn’t want to die. She wasn’t ready to die.

In the cell beside hers, the young green-eyed man simply observed as Natalie brushed her own hair. He stood with his back to the cell door, arms crossed over his chest, that same detached look in his eyes.

The older man combed his fingers through Cleo’s hair. Satisfied it was knot-free, he set the brush on the bed and rose to his feet. Cleo watched with bated breath as he opened up the cell door. “Come here, darling,” he said softly, a hand extended to her.

Oh, God. Cleo rose to her feet, her legs unsteady beneath her. I’m not ready to die. I’m not ready. She forced herself to cross the small bedroom, forced herself to grab his hand. It was soft and warm as he threaded his fingers through hers, such a deep contrast to the ice-cold evil she expected to feel every time he got close to her.

He led her out of the cell and up the basement stairs. Down a hall, he opened a door and gently pulled her into the room. “Here you go, darling. Clean towels here,” he said, laying a hand on the folded towels on the counter. “There’s a washcloth in the tub. Shampoo, conditioner, soap. Everything you need.” He brushed a thumb over her cheek, and she did everything in her control not to flinch away from his touch.

“Take as long as you need. Enjoy the hot water on your shoulders. I’ll be in the hall when you’re done.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He met her gaze, his smile soft. After a moment, he walked out of the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

Cleo’s eyes scanned the bathroom. No cameras. No obvious death traps. He was simply… letting her take an honest to God shower. She turned around, catching her reflection’s eyes. Jesus. Her face was tired and unbelievably fearful. Still, she was amazed at how well she was holding herself together. There wasn’t exactly a gold standard on how a kidnapping victim should act or how they should hold themself, but… but she was doing okay. She could keep that up.

She and Natalie were going to survive this. They were strong. They were fighters.

They were survivors.

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Chapter Six

Saturday: January 4, 2020

6:30 AM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, MORGUE

    “Oh, geez, I’m sorry. I didn’t think anyone would actually be in here this morning,” a rather pregnant blonde said.

    “That’s all right.” Bo tucked his pen between the pages of his notebook and closed it. Setting the notebook down beside him, he pushed himself off the floor. He crossed the room and stuck out a hand. “Bo Austen.”

    “Ah, you’re my replacement.” She shook his hand. “Misty Archer.” After dropping Bo’s had, hers moved back to her stomach. “We probably wouldn’t be meeting if my little guy here stuck to the plan. I’m two days ovedue.”

    “Stubborn, huh?”

    She snorted. “Yeah, I guess he’s just not reayd for the world yet.”

    Bo forced a chuckle, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck. Truthfully, he couldn’t blame the kid. He wasn’t ready for the world, either.

    He glanced down at her left hand. Wedding band. Married. Archer was likely her married name. “Is there anything I can help you with, Mrs. Archer?”

    “I’m just looking for… something,” she said, eyes scanning the room.”

    “I tidied up a little. So… what can I help you find?”

    “Well, umm, it’s a black binder. There’s a name on the cover. Sanders.”

    “Stan Sanders,” Bo murmured with a ond. “It’s in the lab.” He walked past Misty and pulled open the door, holding it open until she had walked into the lab. She didn’t thank him, something that bothered him just a little. It generally didn’t bother him much, though he’d always been taught that a simple ‘thank you’ was polite and normal, but with the way most people in the criminal justice system had treated him in his time in the field, it felt like a personal attack. He hated that.

    He crossed the room, forcing himself to keep his pace as nomal as he was pretending to be. Truly, he just wanted to get Misty Archer out of the lab before she had a chance to tornado up the place again. He pulled open a cabinet door and grabbed the binder in question. He turned and held it out to her. “Here you go.”

    She took it without a thank you. Bo tried not to let it get to his head. For Misty, this was likely nothing more than a simple conversation, a simple interaction, a simple transaction. Focusing on every little thing she did or said probably wasn’t on her mind. What stuck in Bo’s head as some sort of attack or dig wasn’t her problem.

    “Nice job on the lab. It looks… nice,” Misty said.

    The words pulled Bo back to the present. Nice? “It’s just easier for me if things are organized,” he said quietly.

    “Mm.” She looked around the lab again. “You have OCD or something?”

    “Obsessive-compulsive disorder isn’t about cleaning or organizing, Mrs. Archer.  It’s about obsessions and compulsions, not the level of one’s tidiness.” Bo cleared his throat, tucking his hands behind his back. He bit down on the inside of his lower lip, fighting off the longer explanation he wanted to give. He’d learned long ago that long explanations often led to arguments. ‘You have an answer for everything, don’t you?’ ‘You don’t have to be an ass about it.’ ‘You don’t have to mansplain it to me.’ ‘Wow, you just know everything, don’t you?’ He wasn’t here to fight. He was here to work, solve the case, and go somewhere else, somewhere further away.

    “No, I don’t have OCD,” he finally whispered.

    Misty’s brow furrowed for the briefest of moments. Bo couldn’t help but be thankful for the dark-haired, green-eyed man that came into the lab before Misty had a chance to respond. The little girl at his side—maybe five or six years old—looked a lot like Misty, though her brown hair was closer in color to the man’s. The overdue baby would be her second child.

    The man held out his hand. “John Archer.”

    Bo shook it. In 2010, Chevrolet UK commissioned a university professor to come up with an equation for the perfect handshake. The professor had done it, though it was admittedly quite a ridiculous thing to look at.

    √ (e^2 + ve^2)(d^2) + (cg + dr)^2 + π{(4^2)(4^2)}^2 + (vi + t + te)^2 + {(4^2 )(4^2)}^2

    Each letter stood for a specific part of the handshake, a part that would make said handshake perfect if executed correctly. John had failed eye contact, but he had gotten a verbal greeting up to par, as far as Bo was concerned. The smile on his face was false—which the equation factored in as ‘non-Duchenne’—so he’d failed that section too. An incomplete grip and a sweaty palm wer low scores on John’s end as well. It had been a strong shake, though. That counted for something.

    The position of John’s hand had been all right, and the vigor had been okay, but his hands were cold and rough. Contrl and duration had been much better than the previous factors, but the negatives outdid the positives.

    John had scored a whopping twenty points out of the posible forty-five the eqation alloed for. Forty-four pecent. Failure. Bo would have given him an A for effort, bt effort ddn’t begin wih the letter A. So instead, he mentally marked him down with an F for failure.

    Even before Bo had learned about the existence of such a crazed equation, he had only ever known one person who gave the perfect handshake, and that was Dallas Silver. Dallas had done quite a lot of things perfectly. He’d secured a detective job, married the detective working the Hangman case, befriended cops and lab geeks alike. He’d played nice with just about everyone, secured a cushy, perfect little life inside of a perfect little family to perfectly hide who he truly. And boy, had he wildly succeeded at hiding. He’d hidden it from Bo for almost a decade before he made himself a fugitive.

    Bo kept these things to himself, of course—the handshae equation and evaluation, the murderous people he had once trusted with his life. Instead, he offered a smile to John and said, “Bo Austen.”

    “John’s my husband,” Misty said. “And that’s our dauhter, Karen.” The little girl lifted a hand and waved. Bo repeated the action befor averting his gaze. By Jupiter, he wanted this to be over. The only children he’d ever really been around had been Dallas’s kids, and he didn’t need reminders of them. Not now. Not today.

    Not ever.

    “Well, it was good meeting yo, Bo. I’ll see you again when I get back from maternity leave.”

    Bo nodded. “Of course, Mrs. Archer. It was good meeting you, as wll. And congratulation.”

    Misty smiled. “Thank you. And thanks for the binder.” She held it up for a moment before grabbing her daughter’s hand. Finally, the Archer family walked out of the lab.

    Bo let out a deep sigh, shoulders sinking as the door swung shut. With his headspace for work entirely shattered by thoughts of Dallas Silver and the people he had carved up and hanged in between working and hanging out with Bo, he rolled up the sleeves of his blue and white checkered flannel shirt. If he couldn’t work, he could clean. Again. Anything was better than the deafening silence of the lab and the shattering loudness of his mind.

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NOT EDITED

Chapter Four

1:15 PM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, LAB

The knock on the open door of the lab pulled Bo’s attention from the array of photos spread out on the table. He lifted his head, eyes landing on Jacob. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

“You can just call me Jake. ‘Detective’ is, like, my dad,” Jacob said, a faint smile on his face. “Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to grab lunch with Lemon and me.”

“I’m okay. I do appreciate the offer, though.”

Jacob nodded. “Okay. Can I bring you back anything instead? I know you’re probably not too familiar with Clinstone yet, but our diner’s got the best fries in the world.”

Bo offered a smile. “No, thank you. Enjoy your break, Detective.”

Jacob nodded again, slapping a hand against the door frame as he turned to walk away. He made it a whole step and a half down the hall before backing up into the doorway again. “Whatcha workin’ on?”

Bo let out a breath. He’d been afraid he’d ask that. “I’m just looking over the crime scene photos.”

“Think we missed something?”

“Not necessarily.” ‘Think’ insinuated that Bo hadn’t done his job properly the first time, that he had done it so quickly and sloppily that he believed he’d left a dozen clues behind. ‘Think’ wasn’t the case. But it still never hurt to look over it again. “I believe we found all there was to find, but it’s never a bad thing to go back and make sure.”

“You’re thorough. My fiancee was that way too.”

Bo searched Jacob’s face for a moment. “Was?”

“Sorry, not like that. She’s very much alive.” Jacob lifted his shoulders. “Used to be a cop too. Now she does the even more difficult job of taking care of the kids.” He circled a hand in Bo’s direction. “She’d like your photo collage there. That was, like, the Alice staple of crime-solving.”

Unfortunately, Bo didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want anyone in his personal circle, and that meant not letting himself be in anyone else’s circle. Talking with the detective about his fiancee and her old work habits certainly seemed like a bit too much… circling.

Jacob cleared his throat. “Hey, umm… I know Baker and that Silver guy were your friends. I’m sorry about everything that happened in Los Angeles. I’ve been friends with cops that turned out to be pieces of shit, but none of them were serial killers. Or married to one.”

Bo managed to muster up a nod. Nothing else felt appropriate. The nod barely did.

“Well, I’ll get outta your hair. Let me know if anything turns up in those photos, yeah?”

“Of course, Detective.”

“Jake,” he reminded before walking out of the lab. This time, he didn’t immediately return.

Bo let out a sigh, dropping his elbows to the table and his head to his hands. Why the hell did change have to be so difficult? And why did Clinstone have to have the only cops he’d ever met that weren’t assholes to him? He wasn’t in Clinstone to make friends. He hadn’t packed up and moved to Minnesota to pal around with anyone else in the station.

He wanted to wake up, go to work, go home, go to sleep, and do the same damn thing day after day after day. No parties. No drinks at the bar. No lunches at the diner. No friendships or crushes or family or any of it. And he wasn’t going to let Jacob’s friendliness or attempts at conversation change his mind.

6:00 PM; MINNESOTA, THE SURGEON’S HOUSE, BASEMENT

“Good evening, Brooke, darling,” the man said, nodding at both women in greeting. “Darling, I’ve made your favorite for supper,” he said softly, his gaze landing on Cleo. He squatted down and slid a plate through the small opening at the bottom of the cell-like door. “Lamb chops. It’s been such a long time since we’ve had them.”

His eyes, unfairly calm and caring for a kidnapper and murderer, practically begged Cleo for acceptance. Standing before her, the man looked just as unimposing as he had when he’d come up to her in the bar. It seemed unfair that monsters were allowed to be charismatic, that they were allowed to walk around without any outward indication of the darkness brewing inside them.

“Thank you,” Cleo finally whispered.

He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “You’re welcome, darling.” He slid a second plate under Natalie’s cell door. “And for you, Brooke.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, princess.” He pushed himself to his feet, clapping his hands together. “I’ll be back for your plates soon. In the meantime, bon appetit.”

7:47 PM; CLINSTONE; BO AUSTEN’S HOUSE, LIVING ROOM

For the first time since he’d been in Clinstone, Bo sat down on the couch in his new… place of residence. ‘Home’ certainly wasn’t the right word. ‘House’ probably worked fine. Maybe even ‘hotel’ fit a little better. He wasn’t sure how long he’d stay in Clinstone, and the small, sparsely furnished house served as proof of that. He’d brought little more with him than his flannel shirts and his cat’s things. He’d brought along more of her furniture than his own. There was still a very real chance he’d pack up again in a few months and move somewhere else, somewhere even further away. Halfway across the country hadn’t been far enough. Maybe if he found a state Kathy had never been to.

Though he’d probably have to switch countries entirely to be successful in that particular endeavor. One that didn’t speak English at all or watch any news about America. that would offer the highest chance of success if he truly wanted to escape the hell Kathy Baker’s cross-country avoidance of consequences had unleashed on his life.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame it al on Kathy, but it was easier to. Dallas had been Bo’s closest friend for years before Kathy ever came into the picture, and he’d hardly consider Kathy a friend. The woman herself would probably laugh at the idea. Friend. As if he were worthy of her ‘friendship’. Bo had simply been polite, professional, and friendly to her over the years, as she was his friend’s partner, and then his friend’s girlfriend. And then-fiancee and wife. Being an ass to Kathy would’ve lost him Dallas, and Bo had assumed he wouldn’t have been able to live through that loss.

Though hindsight was twenty-twenty, and now Bo knew things would have been easier if he and Dallas had stopped being friends, if Bo had been nothing more than a distant co-worker in a different police station by the time it had come out that Dallas was a murderer. If he hadn’t still been friends with Dallas by then, Jamal never would’ve made it his job to find where they had gone. He wouldn’t have been banished to the basement to hunt down a runaway murderer and his wife. He would’ve simply… kept working as normal. Kept going home as normal. Kept hanging out with his other friends as normal.

Bo looked down as his one-eyes tabby—Acamas—jumped onto the arm of the chair and rubbed her head against his arm. A smile tugged at one corner of Bo’s mouth, and he reached out to scratch between her ears. “You’re right. I shouldn’t dwell on it. Easier said than done, huh?”

She let out that little brr noise he loved so much and rammed her head into his shoulder. He crossed his left ankle over his right knee, allowing Acamas to sit in the small triangle of space his folded leg had created. She curled up and rested her head on his leg, her purr vibrating softly against his calf. Bo couldn’t help but smile as he ran a hand over the top of her head.

Unlike the majority of people he had met, Acamas didn’t judge him for who he was, and he appreciated that more than words could say. He didn’t judge her for having one eye, and she didn’t judge him for being above and beyond ‘average’. For being friends with a serial killer. For shutting down and building up walls yet again. For closing himself off. She only loved him in return for all that was… wrong with him.

Bo considered himself incredibly lucky to have her in his life. He wasn’t even sure he’d be alive most days without her.

With a short sigh, he ran his hand down Acamas’s back one more time before grabbing his notebook from the end table. He had told himself to stay away from any of the notebooks that held any information that in any way, shape, or form related to his time working with Dallas or Kathy, but he couldn’t help himself. Going through the notebooks to compare the killer’s MO with killers he had worked or researched in the past was part of working a case. It had been for years. Even if the names of the Baker-Silver cases clawed at his eyes and squeezed at his heart, he wasn’t willing to surrender this specific part of the ritual. Not yet.

Comparing the current MO to those of other killers helped rule in or out the possibility that this was a copycat, an unsolved case, or a multi-state killer. Without much else to do in Clinstone, it was a way to occupy his time until he could finally close his eyes, evade the images of Dallas Silver in his mind, and go to sleep.

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NOT EDITED

Chapter Three

11:45 AM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, MORGUE

Bo stared down at Tess Brown’s body, half a frown set deeply on his face. Unless testing revealed something that was otherwise undetectable, the autopsy had brought forth little of interest. There had been nothing strange or abnormal in the woman’s stomach. He hadn’t found signs of chloroform in her throat. He hadn’t found any obvious signs of injection, so as far as Bo could tell, she hadn’t been drugged. But he’d run more extensive tests, just to make sure.

The potential for drugging aside, there were a few things he was absolutely certain of. She hadn’t eaten anything in at least the last six to eight hours leading up to her death. There were no signs of physical or sexual abuse. Really, she hadn’t even been harmed, if one didn’t count the large laceration of her throat. That hadn’t been done to harm her; it had been done to kill her. In most situations, Bo tallied the two in distinctly different categories.

Shaking his head, Bo finished moving Tess Brown’s body from the autopsy table to a drawer in the morgue. He pulled off his gloves and slid a tag with BROWN, TESSA written on it into the nameplate on the face of the drawer. With a fresh pair of gloves on, he set to work on cleaning the autopsy table.

Watching the woman’s blood swirl down the drain in the table, he couldn’t help but think how disturbed the detectives upstairs would be if they knew how little this all affected him. How he could cut these people open, weigh their organs, check for signs of assault or poisoning, and stitch them back up without feeling much of anything at all. There had been a time where he had felt connected to the victims he worked on, a time where he’d felt connected to their stories.

But that seemed like a lifetime ago. Every wall he had torn down over the years had been built up again the moment it had come out that his best friend was a serial killer. The walls had gotten taller and thicker the longer Dallas Silver had been gone, the longer Bo had been forced to sit in the basement of the LAPD and search every database he could in an attempt to find Dallas and Kathy. The walls had protected him the best they could, and he had no intention of ever bringing them down again.

He tossed his gloves and washed his hands. He grabbed his notebook and tape recorder from the metal tool tray and sat down in the corner of the morgue, on the floor. If he stood up and walked three feet to his right, he could open a door and step straight into the lab, where there was a large table perfect for note-taking. But he had always taken notes in the lab when he had worked with Dallas and Kathy, and things needed to change. Change was the best way to avoid memories, and avoiding was what had to be done if he had any hope of surviving.

He pulled back the red cover of his notebook. He’d pulled it fresh out of the package that morning before he’d left the hotel. Brand new, free of any notes about cases in Los Angeles, cases he’d worked with Dallas, cases he’d worked with Kathy. It was a blank slate.

Leaving the header blank, he skipped the first line and wrote Tess Brown’s name on the second line. He underlined her name and went about making notes of the crime scene. She had been found in a dumpster outside of the emergency room in Clinstone. The laceration had been six inches in length. It appeared to have started on her left, the blade pulled to the right.

He moved onto the autopsy. The lack of stomach contents. The lack of anything suspicious. No notes or signatures tucked away in her throat or in her clothes. The weight of her organs. The health of them. For the most part, the slit throat had been one of the few indications she’d been dead at all.

Bo closed the notebook, tucking his blue pen neatly into the spiral that bound the pages together. He set the book on the floor at his right and picked up a blue notebook from the pile on his left. He pulled back the cover and, with a fresh black pen, wrote Jacob Mason’s name on the header of the page.

Jacob Mason

He flipped the page, wrote Carter Lehmann’s name in the header.

Carter Lehmann

A new page.

Myra Cooper

Bo glanced up at the ceiling before closing the notebook. He hadn’t been present when the detectives had gone inside and interviewed the person who had found Tess Brown’s body. As far as he could remember, he had no other names he needed to write down.

When it came to this particular method of madness, there was a reason for it. Keeping tabs on every single person he met in Clinstone, Minnesota would keep him from ever making the same kind of mistakes he had made in Los Angeles. He would never let anyone into his personal circle ever again. He would never befriend a serial killer again.

12:23 PM; CLINSTONE POLICE DEPARTMENT, DETECTIVE JACOB MASON’S DESK

Jacob looked up as Bo stopped in front of his desk. He closed the folder in front of him and waved a hand toward one of the chairs between Bo and the desk. The other was occupied by Carter. “Austen, hey. Sit.”

Bo forced a smile. “I’m all right with standing, sir. If that’s all right with you.” He handed a folder to Jacob before passing the other to Carter. Clearing his throat, he retreated to a safer distance, about a foot and a half in front of the desk and a good chair and a half away from Carter.

“Jesus Christ, Lemon, the dude’s got even nicer handwriting than you do. Never thought I’d see the day,” Jacob said. Carter only snorted.

Bo tucked his hands behind his back, making a mental note to add ‘nice handwriting’ to Carter’s list once he returned to the morgue. Bo’s handwriting had always been… neat, borderline mechanical. In school, his teachers had compared it to the text on a computer. It took time and a bit of finger cramping, but it was worth the pleasant readability.

“That’s everything I know about Tess Brown,” Bo said with a slight nod toward the folder in Jacob’s hands. “She was killed December thirty-first around eleven PM. Before she was killed, she was chloroformed. Aside from the chloroform, I found no other drugs or foreign substances within her system, though I am still running further tests on her blood just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. She also hadn’t eaten anything in at least six to eight hours before she was killed. You can determine how important you consider that factor.”

Bo cleared his throat before continuing, “Tess Brown was reported missing on December twenty-third by her boyfriend, and said boyfriend died on the twenty-seventh. Because her boyfriend is dead, Tess Brown has no other family you need to contact. He was all she had left.”

Jacob and Carter shared a quick glance before looking back at Bo. “It’s… impressive you found all that in a couple of hours,” Jacob said after a moment. “Not to mention that you had time to write it down for us. That’s appreciated.”

“It’s… what I do,” Bo said slowly. He swallowed, ticking off yet another thing he had already screwed up in Clinstone. He should have taken less time, presented them with less information, done less work. Something. Anything other than what he had done. “It’s my job.”

Jacob set the folder on his desk and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He raised a brow. “Tell me, kid, you sure that’s all you know about the girl?”

Bo found it a little odd that Jacob called him ‘kid’. He knew the detective was only about four years older than him. More specifically, three years and three months older. He assumed one of two things made Jacob feel older than he was: a new baby in the family—presumably the ‘Charlotte’ he had talked about on the phone, or the ‘Allie’ he had talked to was older than he was.

“About the girl?” Bo asked. “As in, the victim? Tess Brown. Yes, I’m sure that’s all I know. But I have profiled a few likely things about your killer.”

“Profiled?” Jacob echoed.

“You guys… don’t typically profile?” Jacob asked.

“Not in-house.”

“Oh,” Bo whispered. One more thing that makes you stick out like a sore thumb, Austen. Three for three. Are you sure you were aiming for NORMAL in this town? Bo shifted his weight between his feet. “I… I suppose I have a surprise for you, then. More than likely, Tess Brown is not the first person this killer has killed. There are no hesitation marks on the throat laceration. There are no practice marks anywhere else on the body.

“Despite this, it would seem that the killer doesn’t want their victims to feel any pain. They took chloroform to Tess Brown, and once she was unconscious, they slit her throat. She bled out incredibly quickly, as the killer made sure to hit her carotid artery, which is… essentially an off switch built into your throat. The killer knows what they’re doing, and they know how to do it well.”

“But the dude doesn’t want the victim to feel pain,” Jacob said. “Why? What’s the point of killing people if you don’t get some sort of joy out of it?”

“Anything I could say on that matter would simply be an assumption.”

“Is there a problem with that?” Jacob asked.

In the long run, there wasn’t really a problem with assumptions, but it was one of the few Kathy-isms that Bo had allowed himself to keep. She had believed assumptions got in the way of solving a case. Which, in hindsight, was borderline hilarious, as most things a detective did were hunches or assumptions until it was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the killer really was the killer. But it was still something she always said, especially if it meant shutting someone up before they could inject an idea she couldn’t take credit for.

Maybe it wasn’t the best Kathy-ism to keep, but he unfortunately didn’t get to choose what stuck and what didn’t.

“I don’t enjoy injecting my own assumptions into a detective’s work,” Bo said.

“What if I give you permission to?” Jacob asked.

“No, thank you.”

Jacob snorted, but he nodded. “Fair enough.” He gestured to the folder. “Thank you for all the info on Tess.”

“My pleasure.” Bo waited a moment longer to confirm neither detective had anything more to say—to his face, at least—before turning around and starting back toward the lab. He still had a few things he wanted to check out in regards to the crime scene. He was absolutely certain Tess Brown hadn’t been killed there, but a closer inspection of the photos and collected evidence would help guarantee he didn’t pass over anything that could be used to determine where she had been killed.

The case in Clinstone was the first time in quite some time that he didn’t go with a detective to question witnesses or suspects. He’d done it with Dallas from the first day the man had joined the LAPD. He’d attended questionings and interviews before and after Dallas, as well. But… Clinstone was a fresh start. No one expected him to do much more than look at bodies and photograph crime scenes.

A labor-intensive task like a deep dive into the crime scene photographs was just what he needed to distract him from going back to simply being a lab geek, tucked away in the basement.

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NOT EDITED

Chapter Two

8:32 AM; CLINSTONE EMERGENCY ROOM, ALLEYWAY

Admittedly, Bo found himself shocked at the crime scene alleyway. He’d ducked under the yellow tape at an uncountable number of Los Angeles back alley homicides, and there was always an unmistakable feel to them. In Los Angeles, even before you saw the body or the blood, you knew this was the perfect kind of alley to kill someone in. They were poorly lit, even when the sun was out. They came to a dead end to make escape impossible for the soon-to-be victim.

But the alley behind Clinstone’s ER was… different. The back door to the ER was well-labeled, and a motion-activated light sat above it. No camera, of course—it was never that easy—but the place didn’t exactly feel like a death trap. It felt almost… safe.

However, given that there was a woman dead in the dumpster with a slit throat, safe was certainly an incorrect assumption.

Camera in hand, Bo stepped up on the bottom lip of the dumpster and leaned over the top. The lid had most likely been open ever since the body had been found. It allowed him a good look inside, but it wasn’t a great angle for pictures. He lowered his camera. The left side of the dumpster was still closed. Surely he could get up there without too much trouble.

He swung a leg over the dumpster and climbed onto the lid, his camera pinned to his shoulder.

Jacob raised an eyebrow as Bo leaned down to snap a picture of the victim. “You are far agiler than Misty.”

Bo snorted. It had far more to do with balance than agility of any kind. It was more about figuring out how far apart his knees had to be so he could lean forward without falling into the dumpster and onto the body. But that knowledge could stay inside his head. He knew more than most how much others hated genuine explanations about ‘complex’ abstracts and ideas.

So he settled for a simple, “Thank you.”

“What’re you seeing in there?” Jacob asked.

Bo preferred keeping assumptions and guesses to himself, only giving the detectives absolute facts once he had completed an autopsy and thoroughly examined the crime scene. But unless fate or god or whatever the hell there was struck down the detectives with a freak lightning storm, he’d always be expected to list things off as he saw them, to make educated guesses based on those same sights. Though he didn’t enjoy it, he was used to it.

“Our victim was most likely killed by a throat laceration. There’s a substantial amount of bruising and blood around the cut, so it happened before her death rather than after. She was alive when it happened, just not for long afterward.” Bo held out his camera. “Detective Mason? Can you take this?”

Jacob walked up to the dumpster, but he made no move to grab it. “I don’t know much, but I know I’ve never been allowed to touch Misty or Gwen’s cameras. You sure you want me to do that?”

Bo offered a smile. “I have faith that you can handle it.”

“Well, if I drop it, it’s totally on you.”

“That’s fine. I have no intention of suing you over a broken camera.” Bo gave the body of said expensive camera a light shake. “So?”

Jacob grabbed it and quickly lifted the strap over his head. “This is fucking heavy, man. How the hell are you toting it around while you’re balancing on a dumpster?”

Calculations of what it took to balance with the extra weight of the camera weren’t hard for Bo to run through. He knew how much his camera weighed with the addition of the external flash and his lens. He knew the force of gravity and what kind of angle he needed to help counteract it. Most importantly, he knew the width of the base–how far apart his feet were–he needed to balance. For Bo, it was practically second nature.

“I’ve had my fair share of practice,” Bo said. He pulled his phone from his pocket and dropped to his stomach on the garbage lid. He grabbed the victim’s hand and pressed her thumb against the home button on his phone. Slowly, he rolled her thumb across it, left to right. He carefully lowered her hand to rest against her stomach and pushed himself back up. He swung both legs over the dumpster’s edge, balancing himself on the thin lip of the dumpster.

“Austen, be careful. Please.”
Bo glanced down at Jacob. “I’ll be okay, Detective, I promise.” His eyes shifted back to his phone. “This here is Tess Brown. Five-eleven, blonde hair, green eyes, turned forty-four on the fifth of November.”

Carter raised an eyebrow. “Did you just do that on your phone?”

Dammit. Bo closed his eyes for a moment. This wasn’t Los Angeles. This was Clinstone. This was his fresh start. And he’d already ruined it. “Yes,” he finally said.

“How?”

Bo held up his phone and offered a quiet, “The home button has a fingerprint sensor.” That wasn’t quite it. It did have a sensor, but only because he’d modified it to, only because he’d programmed it to send the fingerprint data to an app he’d created years prior. It took the readings and rifled through the fingerprints in the police database, working overtime to sort through those that held the same loops, scars, deltas, ridge endings, islands, and bifurcations as the one that had been scanned. It had taken years to get right, just like his portable DNA identifier and his phone’s facial recognition scanner.

But that answer was long and offered an inside look straight into his brain, and he didn’t want to do that. He’d already screwed up by using the fingerprint reader now instead of once Tess Brown’s body had arrived at the morgue. He didn’t intend to mess up his fresh start any further.

Clearing his throat, Bo jumped down from the dumpster’s edge. “There’s an app that takes the data from the fingerprint scanner and runs it against those in the system.”

Jacob cocked his head to the side. “ ‘There’s an app’ because you created it. Right?”

Bo let out a breath, shoulders falling. “Yes, sir.”

“Christ, dude. Don’t be ashamed of that shit. That’s amazing.”

“Theoretically,” Bo said after a moment. He shoved his phone into his back pocket and took his camera from Jacob. “I’d like to document the scene further while we wait for the coroner to arrive. Then we can get her back to the morgue, and I can see what I can get from there. It’ll be easier to get an idea of what happened once she’s… not in a dumpster.”

Jacob watched him for a moment, but he didn’t ask any further questions as Bo had feared he would. Instead, he nodded. “Okay. Lemon and I will head to the barricades and let you work in peace.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the end of the alleyway. “If you need anything, holler. Sound good?”

For the first time in what felt like years, Bo’s shoulders relaxed. “Sounds perfect.”

Once Carter and Jacob had relocated to the other end of the alley, Bo felt at peace, in his element. What felt like a lifetime ago, he had worked almost exclusively surrounded by people. A detective, a beat cop, the chief, another analyst. It had always felt like someone was looking over his shoulder, waiting for him to mess up, waiting for their chance to prove he didn’t belong there. But here, even though he’d screwed up and used his fingerprint scanner out in the field in front of the detectives, they had simply… left him alone. Unsupervised. Heck, they were so far away that Bo could only just barely make out what Jacob was saying about lunchtime. Maybe Clinstone, Minnesota was far enough away from California to be different. Maybe it still had a chance to be the breath of fresh air he needed.

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