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This is the part he will never understand.

Casket Case was never supposed to move quickly. That was practically the point. The audience found us because we let investigations unfold at the speed of actual investigations, which is to say slowly, inconveniently, and without any regard for whether we had something interesting to upload on Tuesday.

For a long time, that worked.

Then the audience got bigger. Advertisers showed up. Eventually, so did an offer: funding, travel expenses, legal support, access to resources that would let me pursue cases the podcast couldn't afford on its own.

I could have paid for all of it myself. Being born into a family that treats money like oxygen has its advantages. But I’d spent years sprinting away from that safety net, determined to build something without a handout, a leg up, or the suffocating guidance attached to a family check.

Outside funding felt different.

Turns out money is remarkably consistent about coming with strings.

I sold the show thinking I was gaining access to better investigations. What I actually bought was a calendar full of deadlines, oversight from people who know nothing about journalism, and the recurring experience of being asked what the story arc looks like while I’m still in the phase of looking for facts.

And Cebastian Price calling me at the ass crack of dawn because a seventeen-year-old cold case isn't developing quickly enough for his liking.

I can hear his patience thinning. “You have all this information you’ve supposedly been collecting for years. Use it.”

I could strangle him.

I wouldn’t, obviously.

But I could.

There’s enough wilderness around here to hide a body indefinitely. Forest. Mountains. Rivers. Places where a man like him could disappear without so much as a forwarding address.

Then I could do a story on that.

Cebastian Price disappeared on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday morning. His last known communication was a phone call placed at an hour universally recognized as too fucking early to discuss content strategy.

Episode one practically writes itself.

Simon could make a map. We’d interview everyone who saw Cebastian last, add ominous music beneath a painstaking reconstruction of his final twenty-four hours, and spend twenty minutes pretending the location of his morning coffee represented a significant investigative breakthrough.

By episode two, Reddit would have diagrams. TikTok would have theories. An influencer with a ring light would confidently misinterpret his entire childhood based on a photograph from seventh grade. Due to our explosive growth, someone would inevitably decide Simon and I were secretly in love and produce a forty-seven-part thread proving it through body language.

I’ve always wanted to be shipped. Preferably with a respectable amount of fanfiction and minimal discussion of who tops.

The engagement would be incredible.

“We need the full picture that ties all of this together, evidence that the bones even belong to the missing persons case.” My gaze drifts to the window. My fucking patience is thinning. “The information is nothing if the remains aren’t Casey’s.”

Casey’s disappearance got under my skin long before anyone else decided it was worth revisiting.

I remember the first article I saw about it years ago, buried halfway down a regional news site between a zoning dispute and a story about a missing dog. Just a few paragraphs. A name, a date, a grainy photo, and the quiet implication that she had simply… vanished. No dramatic suspects. No tidy timeline. Just the kind of mention that usually means everyone decided it was easier to stop asking questions.

That’s the type of thing that sticks with me. Cases that don’t resolve themselves politely. Cases where the official explanation feels less like an answer and more like a collective shrug.

I’ve followed it ever since—old coverage, interviews, message boards full of half-baked theories and people who swear they remember something differently.

Every time it resurfaced, it carried the same frustrating weight: pieces that almost fit but never quite lock together. And now that I’m here, now that it’s finally moving again, I’m not about to let someone turn it into entertainment before we even know what actually happened.

I’ve spent too long circling the edges of this story to be the person who ruins it. I want the truth. Even if it takes longer than anyone with a production calendar is comfortable with.

I check the time on the microwave. 7:17. “You’ll get something when there’s something worth saying.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “Don’t make me regret this partnership.”