As I walk back inside, Daisy presses her small paws against my chest, asking to be put down. I lower her to the floor, and she trots into the living room, curling up in her plush pink bed beside the green sofa.
I follow her, but before reaching the living room, I move to the balcony and grab my glass of wine, leaving the door open behind me. I sink onto the sofa, lean back, pull my legs up, rest the file on my lap, and open it.
The papers are old. Torn at the edges. Some have small holes, either from age or from rodents. Entire sections of text are blacked out. Some parts are missing; some were hidden.
Then a Polaroid photograph slips free and falls into my lap.
March 1981.
My breath catches.
The image stares back at me.
Zayne Mercer.
My hand flies to my mouth as I gasp.
“This is not possible.”
We don’t live in a world where people don’t age. Everyone has an expiration date.
Which means this has to be a joke.
Or something much worse.
I slam the file shut without reading the rest and storm into the hallway.
My bag hangs from one of the hooks near the entrance. I am the kind of person who keeps their phone close because work follows me everywhere, but today I ignored it. No one was calling me anyway.
That thought barely finishes forming when I check the screen.
Ten missed calls.
From the detective.
Perfect.
I press the screen hard, anger guiding my thumb. It doesn’t even ring once before he answers, and the second he does, everything I have been holding back spills out.
“Is this a joke to you? Do you think I am stupid? That man...”
“That man,” he interrupts, “is the Ozark Butcher from the eighties.”
I swallow hard.
“He died in 1981,” he continues. “I am waiting on DNA results from the lab, but there has to be a match. They look identical, Dr. Beckett.”
My heart begins to race faster, pounding against my ribs with a pressure that makes it hard to breathe.
“Are you saying it’s his son, or?” I ask, my voice speeding up with my pulse.
A loud knock hits the door out of nowhere.
I gasp, my shoulders jerking upward before falling again as my breath stutters out of me.
“There’s more,” he says.
I stare at the door, my eyes widening.
