Chapter 3

I had barely parked my car in front of the precinct when Detective Davis hurried down the steps to meet me.

"Martha! Thank God you're here!"

Davis grabbed my arm and lowered his voice, his tone thick with unconcealed excitement.

"We have a major breakthrough in the case! We've locked onto a prime suspect!"

I froze, my heart skipping a beat.

"Who is it?" I stared intently into Davis's eyes.

"Take a look at this first."

Davis pulled me into the Major Crimes office. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he pulled up a video on his monitor.

The footage was dark, grainy from the heavy rain. But I could still clearly recognize the alley entrance in that abandoned industrial district from the night of the murder.

The timestamp in the bottom right corner read 2:15 AM.

A figure wearing an oversized black raincoat and a hood limped out of the alley.

"Dashcam footage. Someone sent it anonymously to the precinct via the dark web this morning."

Davis hit pause, his brow furrowed, his voice laced with deep suspicion.

"But I just can't figure out why the sender sat on this crucial piece of footage for three whole months."

"What were they waiting for? Or rather, what were they afraid of?"

"Based on this one blurry figure?" I turned to look at him.

"It's the only lead we have right now."

Davis took a deep breath and pointed to a whiteboard nearby.

"Plus, we followed the trail and found this guy's place. Look at what we found there."

Following his finger, I looked at the massive whiteboard.

One glance was all it took for a suffocating wave of dread to wash over me.

The board was densely covered with hundreds, maybe thousands of photos.

All of Stella.

Her profile while sipping coffee at a cafe.

Her back as she walked through the park, heavily pregnant.

Even silhouettes of her standing before her own bedroom window.

"Who the hell is this raincoat guy?" I stared at the photos, my voice trembling uncontrollably.

"A drifter. Everyone calls him 'Tom'."

Davis flipped open a file on his desk and handed it to me.

"The community patrol officers know him. He's an oddball. Word is, he lost half his face in a fire years ago. His vocal cords were destroyed, and he has a crippled leg."

"He usually scavenges at the junkyard on the edge of town."

My head whipped around; my forensic instincts immediately caught the glaring inconsistency.

"A drifter with a crippled leg and likely burn injuries on his hands?"

"Davis, do you remember the incision on Stella's abdomen? That was extremely precise, professional surgical scalpel work!"

"A single clean slice through the rectus abdominis, perfectly avoiding major blood vessels... How could a homeless man who survives by picking through trash make such a precise cut?"

"I know how unbelievable it sounds, Martha,"

Davis sighed, pointing to an evidence bag on the desk.

"But we found a bloody scalpel under the bed in his abandoned RV. The expedited DNA results just came back—the blood is your daughter's!"

"He's our only breakthrough right now."

Just then, a young officer burst through the office door, shouting his report:

"Detective! Our guys staking out the junkyard just called in—Tom showed up!"

"They've already got him pinned down and are bringing him in now!"

"Good work!" Davis's spirits instantly lifted.

"Listen to me, Davis," I grabbed the detective's arm, my expression dead serious.

"Until we confirm this Tom is actually the killer, or until we clear up all these inconsistencies, you absolutely cannot tell Oliver about this."

"His mental state has been on the verge of collapse lately. If he finds out..."

"Uh, Martha..."

Davis looked troubled, awkwardly pointing toward the open office door.

"I'm afraid it's too late for that."

I followed his gaze.

Oliver stormed in like a hurricane. Obviously, word had already reached him at the precinct.

His eyes locked onto the stalker photos on the whiteboard, his chest heaving violently.

Suddenly, he let out a feral roar and slammed his fist brutally into the whiteboard.

"That animal! Where is he? Where is that pervert?!"

Oliver bellowed frantically, his eyes bloodshot, spinning around to charge out the door.

Two burly officers immediately tackled him, holding him back with all their might.

"Dr. Oliver, calm down! You can't go out there!"

"Let me kill him! He stalked my wife! He sliced her stomach open! I'm going to tear him to pieces!"

Oliver struggled desperately, the veins bulging on his forehead.

"Davis," I said, stepping up to the detective, my voice as cold as ice.

"I want to see him. I want to interrogate this Tom myself."

"Martha, that's against protocol. You're a family member of the victim..."

"I am also a medical examiner who has worked for the Seattle Police Department for thirty years!"

I cut him off sharply.

"I need to see for myself exactly what this drifter—who can make a perfectly flawless abdominal incision—looks like."