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Damien sat at a hightop near the coffee stand in the book- store where he used to work. His seat was the same one he used the first time he met Raquel.

The table was near the window, overlooking the parking lot, but, during that first meeting, Damien couldn’t see anything beyond her intoxicating eyes.

On the two seats next to him were boxes of Sanders’ work from Mark’s murders. On top of the table was a third. The other nine were still in Damien’s car.

Ted had called Damien soon after he had finished talking with Mr. Atkins. Their old high school classmates who once revered Mark’s crimes were all dead ends.

Ron Carter was a CEO of a mid-sized construction firm and had spent the last month in a small Florida town called Safety Harbor, working on some updates to their Main Street.

Hank Modell passed away last month at Shands Hospital in Gainesville. Colon cancer. He had eight weeks between his diagnosis and death. Two months to figure out what from his short life was worth remembering and what would be left unfinished. Sixty days to make amends and find peace. It was a sobering thought.

Dustin Farrier lived in Minnesota with his wife and three children. He was a welder and hadn’t been back to Florida since he got married seven years ago.

Their innocence didn’t surprise Damien. The idea that they suddenly decided to relive Mark’s crimes was a stretch anyway, but at least they could check them off the suspect list.

Unfortunately for Darlene, they were running out of names.

Damien started his fourth cup of coffee as he flipped open another of Sanders’ notebooks.

The old detective had taken extensive notes. Every hour of his investigation was documented. Months of them. Each interview. Every hunch. Theory. Sketches. Hand drawn maps. He followed every lead personally.

Hundreds of them.

He started at the epicenter of each crime, the family. He fleshed out domestic abuse angles and incest possibilities. He moved outward to jealous boyfriends, insurance scams, stalker claims, and murders for hire. He recanvased locations near the crime scenes on his own time, talked with friends and family of the victims five, ten, and some, twenty times.

He was relentless.

Included in this box file was a thick folder of crime scene photos – the old printed ones taken on film and developed in a dark room. Hayeston wouldn’t upgrade their systems to digital until five years after the murders. In many ways, Hayeston was always behind the times.

The second murder was the new killers first. And the first murder, his second. The new killer was going back-

wards. But leading to what? There wasn’t much of a journey to move between two murders, not when the second one was in progress.

Damien could barely stomach the photos of Cathy Richie’s dead body, burnt beyond recognition. Her skin, dark, like blackened tree bark. Her hair was taken by the flames and her bald head, a bloody mess of ashen flesh burned down to her skull.

If Hayeston’s latest killer continued to mimic Mark’s crimes, then Damien was looking into Darlene’s future.

The second set of photos were from Daisy Hicks’ crime scene. The cashier was found buried under the front stairs of an abandoned building, like Mandy Templeton only a few days ago.

Damien lifted the 8 x 10 color photo of Daisy’s body and examined the scene more closely. Daisy and Mandy were placed in identical positions, down to the wisps of blonde hair escaping the dirt and her hand sticking out into the air, as if reaching for help.

It was as if this killer was there when Mark did his work ten years earlier, watched him place the body at the house and frame the picture that the police would see upon their arrival.

Damien pushed his cup of coffee away, tired of its smell, and slid the crime scene photos back into the folder.

He’d had enough death for one day.

As he sat back, enjoying the quiet of the bookstore, his thoughts drifted to Tobin. What kind of childhood had he endured with a father as callous as Sanders? How desperate for connection must he have been to find it in the files of these gruesome crimes?

Maybe he felt they held answers similar to the questions that drew Damien to the evidence lockup at the Hayeston Police Department. For Damien, he was looking for answers about a friend. Perhaps Tobin was looking for answers about his father.

Damien wondered if he’d have the same fascination if his own father had documented his time away from the family. Being a trucker, he was absent more than present. Hours and days of his life were a complete mystery to those he left at home.

If Damien had discovered a cache of journals hidden in his father’s garage, would he have taken the time to read them and uncover what he missed in those distant hours? Or would he have stacked them into one, large pile and set them ablaze, happy to erase whatever was left of his father’s memory?

Damien wasn’t sure. He wanted it to be the latter. Yet, for as horrible as the man could be, he was still his father. Perhaps such journals would have explained why he thought a fist was the best way to solve a problem.

Damien and Tobin weren’t that different. Both searching for the best in a father incapable of giving it.

Damien looked out of the store window. The afternoon sun had darkened to evening, so he tried Sanders’ cellphone one more time. Straight to voicemail.
“Dickhead, call me back,” Damien said, then hung up.

He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his neck. He’d been at this for hours and wasn’t close to understanding the depth of Sanders’ work. He also hadn’t uncovered anything that would help them find where the mayor’s daughter had been taken.

He wanted to go home and continue his work on his couch, but he knew Raquel wouldn’t be comfortable with boxes in her house full of information about the last few horrible moments of two young women. So, he took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, dipped his hand into the box and pulled out another file.

It was labelled File 2.

A compilation of some of Sanders’ earliest notes.

Damien flipped open the file and scanned through the detective’s writings. Sanders originally felt the murders were committed by more than one person. Partners who enjoyed taking the young girls’ lives.

That would make sense. Mark was a large man, both strong and fat. He could have managed on his own, but it would have been easier if he had an accomplice.

In the file were the names Ted had been investigating just hours earlier. Hank Modell. Dustin Farrier. Ron Carter.

There was one more name Damien recognized.

Matthew Plank.

“Hey,” a voice said behind him. “That’s me.”

Damien turned around to find Matthew Plank looking over his shoulder.

A chill ran up Damien’s neck.