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[EXTENDED AUDIO DISTORTION. SHOUTING INAUDIBLE.]
DISPATCH: Casey?
[APPROX. 7 SECONDS INAUDIBLE.]
DISPATCH: Casey, if you can hear me, help is being sent to your location.
Then one final notation.
[CALL DISCONNECTED BY REMOTE PARTY.]
I can barely breathe. “Why wasn't any of this made public?”
“The police interviewed everyone at the party she was supposedly at that night based on the assumption that it was the last place Casey was seen,” Baryn says, his attention still fixed on the transcript. “They built the entire investigation around a timeline evidence already proved was wrong.”
“And no one corrected it.”
“No.” He taps the edge of the page. “The call never made it into the digital case file. Neither did the dispatch record. If I hadn’t gone digging through the physical archives, we wouldn’t know it existed.”
I turn to him, my mind already reeling with the implications. “The chief. He didn’t just ignore my theories. He deliberately buried evidence in a missing-person investigation.”
I’ve suspected this town was hiding something since the day I left. Baryn is finally giving me proof.
“The fire department log says they dispatched a unit at 11:55 to the same location,” Baryn leans in, his shoulder touching mine as he points to a secondary sheet of paper. “But look at the arrival time. It’s blank. No one signed off on the scene. No one reported back. I have a theory that whoever went out there from the station didn’t go to rescue her.”
“It aligns perfectly with the skeletal analysis,” the words feel heavy as I say them out loud.
I turn away from the wall, the image of Casey’s potential remains. The way I’ve visualized them in a thousand sterile lab settings over the years flickers behind my eyelids. “The remains show a comminuted fracture of the femur and extensive pelvic fracturing. That’s consistent with a high-energy impact. She fell from a significant height, probably the cliffside. But there’s also a focal depressed fracture of the left parietal bone that doesn’t fit the rest of the trauma pattern. Despite discrepancies, it’s clear all sustained injuries are perimortem. Someone hit her in the head before or as she went over an edge. That’s consistent with a blunt-force, high-energy impact.”
The sadness hits me then, a sudden, suffocating wave. I can almost see her—the girl who spent half her summers launching herself into swift water and treating every cliff along the river like a diving platform—clinging to a rock face in the dark, terrified and calling for help.
Baryn goes quiet. He’s looking at me with an intensity that feels like a physical weight. “So, she’s already at the launch when she calls 9-1-1. She’s scared of someone who’s either there with her or coming back. Then they show up and demand whatever she has on them.”
“And sometime after that, she goes over the edge,” I say.
His eyes meet mine.
“With a head injury that says she didn’t go willingly.”
Our eyes meet. The clinical detachment I’ve relied on for so long starts to crack. It’s not just a cold case anymore. It feels solvable. My forensic analysis can tell us how Casey died. Baryn’s investigation might finally lead us to who was responsible.
For the first time, those two pieces are starting to come together.
It’s dangerous, feeling this terrifying spark of hope—but it’s there, humming between us like a live wire. Somehow, I no longer feel like I’m screaming into a void. I feel like we might actually find the person who did this.
The air in the room feels ionized by the sheer speed at which we just dismantled nearly twenty years of lies. My brain feels like it’s been through a centrifuge—spun out, separated, and reorganized.
Baryn leans back against the desk, his gray hoodie bunched at the elbows, looking far too casual for a man who just helped me set a match to my hometown’s greatest conspiracy. He checks his watch, the blue light reflecting in his eyes. “You should get some sleep before the rest of the house starts stirring."
“Yeah,” I mutter, scrambling to gather my thoughts. I clutch the legal pad he gave me—now covered in my obsessive shorthand—to my chest. My hair is definitely a bird’s nest, and I’m fairly certain I have a smudge of ink on my cheek, but I feel... electrified. I can’t remember the last time I felt this good—a pure investigative high that is unfortunately coinciding with my imminent walk of shame.
I crack the door open, checking the hallway for any sign of life.
It’s clear.
I slip out feeling like a thief in the night—or at least a very nerdy fugitive. I’ve gone three steps when the door to Tamsin’s room creaks open.
She’s standing there, wrapped in a floor-length silk robe that makes her look like a Stepford wife whose extremely wealthy husband has just died under circumstances she is devastated to report. She’s holding a mug of tea, her eyes widening as they travel from my messy hair to the door of Baryn’s room.
