Negligence

   As soon as the water touched her skin, the stains of dirt and blood began to fall to the shower floor and they would disappear down the drain. She was trembling a bit still, shocked by what had happened earlier. She tried to clean herself with soap, distracting her from what she had in mind, but she just couldn’t stop thinking about it. She made the flow of water to run faster, for more water to fall on her. Her unconscious wanted to drown her, feeling that would be the only way they could keep on living. But of course, she didn’t drown in her shower. She just stayed there for several minutes, as if she needed to clean more from her body that only the dirt and the blood. When she finally closed the water, she stayed there against the wall, incapable of crying, incapable of feeling anything.

 The rest of that day she spent it home. She had no need or wanted to parade herself around town, not after what had happened. The images of what had happened invaded her mind every few seconds, and she wondered if she would ever feel safe and sane again. She lay in her bed hours and hours, without eating or drinking anything. Her phone rang several times as well as her cellphone, but she just didn’t answer. She knew it was office related and she hated to be disturbed by anything related to it on weekends, even in better days for her. Or maybe it was her parents that had the tradition of calling her every Sunday afternoon because they knew it was the slowest and most boring day for her in the week.

 When the phone rang again, she was tempted to grab it but finally decided against it. Talking may have resulted in awkward reactions, maybe then she would be able to cry or scream and it just wouldn’t be appropriate, as too many things would have to be explained. Instead, she decided to head to the kitchen and have some water. She felt dry and a bit dizzy but knew that she couldn’t hold any food. She went to the bathroom and tried to vomit but that was a failure. She just returned to bed and lay there for the rest of the day, in silence, without a single person to help her understand what was going to happen to her. Because the truth was that she was scared for her life, as she felt the every single thing had changed.

 She hated to admit it, but she did feel different. Later that day, she went to the bathroom and spent several minutes looking at her reflection in the mirror. She moved, looking at her every feature. And as much as she thought that the change had been physical too, she had no way to prove that. She looked exactly the same, maybe a little but paler but no other difference besides that. The poor woman passed her hands over her face several times, as if trying to wake up fro ma bad dream, but she didn’t wake up. Instead, she decided to go back asleep, something that scared her immensely as she had no wish of having nightmares.

 The following day, she woke up an hour early, with big bags under her eyes. She showered, put on her work clothes and then had a big breakfast with toast, scrambled eggs, a sausage and some orange juice. She was starving from the day before. It was then that she realized that wanting to be dead didn’t help anyone at all, less of all her. She had to keep on going and just live like any other person. What she had done had been definitive, but s many had done it before her and the world was not going to end because of it. As she had breakfast, she watched the news on her TV but nothing interesting had happened the day before or that morning, at least as far as the televisions news world was concerned. When finished, she just grabbed her coat and left.

 Some forty-five minutes later, she was arriving at her desk, leaving her coat on a hanger on one of the sides of her cubicle. The morning was cold and everyone had decided to put on their coats back on, even going as far as putting on scarves or gloves. The morning went on without a single accident or incident. There was always someone complaining about the low amount of paper in the copy machine or someone else commenting on the weather, but that day everyone seemed to be too cold to even speak as much as they normally did. When she decided to grab a cup of coffee, as she always did, she realized that something was happening on the ground floor. She could see people gathering from the twenty-second floor, where she was standing.

 Then, a couple of police patrols arrived and finally an ambulance. Maybe someone had fainted or had been… Yes, one of the paramedics rushed out of the ambulance as soon as his vehicle had stopped. The police were putting the yellow ribbon around the place to stop the people from coming in. In the coffee room, other people had arrived and were looking exactly at what she was looking at. One of them finally said “Oh my god, it’s a body!” and she realized that was it. There was a person down there, probably dead. Maybe he or she had jumped from one of the many floors of the tower or maybe something else had happened. Any way, their supervisor came and asked them all to go back to their desks.

 At lunch, everyone wanted to know what had happened and the most skilled people with gossip knew everything about it within a couple of minutes of being down there talking to other people that loved to gossip. Apparently, the one who had jumped had been a woman, by the name of Marcela Jones. Marcela worked in the twentieth floor, in a company that had something to do with electronics. The point was, she had just run for the window and fell to her death. So it was a suicide and as our woman heard this, she felt sick to her stomach and had to run to the toiled. For the rest of the workday, she felt very sick.

 She felt better once the day was over and she was on a bus home. But maybe the word wasn’t better, but less likely to do the same thing that Marcela had done. It was crazy but she had seen that woman’s face once that week and it hadn’t been at work. It had been in another place, one that she was trying to forget but that kept coming back to her mind. Worried by these visions, she remained in her room all night, again without eating. She was thinking about what had happened today and what had happened over the weekend. The two had to be related, especially after she had seen the news and realized the state of Marcela’s body. She felt like shit, thinking and thinking without really achieving anything. She felt guilty and sick to her stomach.

 But by the following morning, she knew what she had to do and it was maybe the toughest decision she had ever taken. Instead of leaving for her work, she decided to go to the nearest police station. There, she asked for someone to listen to her testimony, as she wanted to confess a crime she had committed. She felt awful, waiting for an agent to come to talk to her. She gone to the police station by her work, as they knew more about Marcela’s death that anyone else. Finally, a detective asked her to follow him to an interrogation room and then he asked if she could state her name and profession for the record.

 Her name was Linda Bloom and she worked as business consultant in the biggest firm in the city. She wanted to confess that on the night of the previous Saturday, she had assassinated a man, whom she blamed for the suicide of Marcela Jones. The detective was surprised but the first thing that he asked was about the relation between her actions and Marcela. Linda explained that Stuart Carter, the man she had killed, had brutally assaulted several women for the last few months in the city. She knew this because she had managed to escape and, after killing him with a hammer, she had seen some pictures in his house, from where she recognized Marcela’s face. The officer asked her for the address of the house where she had killed Carter and left her there.

 Hours later he came back, and she was officially arrested. They had found the body where she had told them that they would find it and also the albums of pictures the man took of the women he had apparently assaulted. They had no proof of this just then, but with time they would find out that the man was a monster and that the only person that ever stood in his way was Linda. She had been able to grab the hammer after she escaped his “studio” and just hit him in the head with it several times. She did it until he stopped moving and then just ran out, covered in blood and filth from the place they were in.

 Linda had to wait for a trial until all the evidence was gathered and, by the time they decided to convict her, at least six months had already passed. Although it was revealed that she was going to be the man’s last victim, she had failed to report the murder sooner and had neglected to tell the police about the pictures she had seen, which could have prevented Marcela’s death. Linda was condemned to five years in prison and that time was enough to make her loose all her will to live. She died behind bars only a year after entering the penitentiary.

Anna's diet

   The smell of chocolate filled the air, liquid chocolate being heated in large tanks. Some of them also had the smell of oranges, others smelled of strawberries. In the factory, they also created various candy and even flavored soft drinks. Temco was one of the largest companies in the country and it only dedicated itself to sugar-based goods. The amount of it that they used in a year, was worth a good contract and that’s why Anna was there, touring the facilities. She wasn’t especially fond of sweets. To be honest, she was one of those people that avoided eating many of the most delicious things. Some called it taking care of herself; others thought it was self-deprivation.

In any case, Anna represented a sugar company that had the capacity to provide several more tons of the precious good in order for Temco to produce more and even new products. Anna was a great saleswoman and the idea of growth always attracted people and companies that wanted to grow more and more. They signed the contract that same afternoon; after a nice lunch where they praised each other often and had no sugar at all. Anna liked to celebrate her contracts with champagne, which was the only time she allowed herself to step out of her strict diet. But maybe this time she shouldn’t have done. Somehow, the following morning when the maid entered the room to clean the bed, she found Anna still in the bathtub but dead.

 It was all over the news and many concluded, even before she got to the morgue, that she had fallen asleep and drowned in her own warm water and bubbles. But when the body was thoroughly examined, they found no traces of water in her lungs. Oddly enough, her hair was dry and she had only ingested the equivalent of one cup of champagne. They did a toxicology exam on the contents of her stomach and found out Anna had been poisoned. The police then took the case, as it had happened on one of the most prestigious hotels and soon Temco was also dragged into the storm by various reporters that had found out about everything before anyone else had.

 Detective Preston was in charge of the investigation and the first thing he did was talk to the CEO of Temco. After all, he had had dinner with Anna the same day she had died and maybe he could say something about her demeanor during that time. But the man did not remember anything strange, nothing that would be notable. He only said that he found strange she didn’t really ate much. She had ordered a salad with tuna and many vegetables but barely touched any of it. Preston visited the restaurant and talked to the young waiter who had served them. He also remembered the almost full plate of salad at the end of the dinner.

 Preston decided then to talk to the family. Surprisingly enough, Anna’s mother was not at all shocked or visibly sad by the death or her daughter. The father had died several years ago from a heart attack and the mother seemed to be focused on other things such as exercising, tanning her skin and also dieting. She told Preston that Anna’s diet was one much more strict than the one she was on. She was very adamant about respecting it and they had quarreled several times over it because the mother thought her ways were better. Besides that, she didn’t really provide anything new or insightful. It was obvious she didn’t really know her daughter besides those silly details. Maybe that’s why she looked absolutely oblivious to the whole thing, as if it had nothing to do with her.

 The detective then visited Anna’s house and checked every corner of the apartment. She had no alcohol and no drugs. The medicines she had were harmless and there was barely enough good food to feed an adult human being. The place was tastefully decorated and it was obvious Anna’s job was a very good one. Her clothes and shoes were pretty expensive and they filled a large room she had between the main bedroom and the bathroom. But nothing there could lead anywhere, neither to an accidental death nor to a reason to kill her. She did deal with multi-million contracts but she never handled actual money so why would anyone kill her? Maybe blackmail was the reason.

 Preston’s next stop was Anna’s office and it was the first time he met someone that apparently cared about the death of the woman. Her secretary sobbed and cried a bit as she opened the office were her boss had worked for almost three years now. She told Preston that Anna was not really a people person but that she wasn’t and ogre or anything. She saw herself as Anna’s friend and her only one as they had shared a couple of laughs and nice times, mainly attached to work. Preston realized that Linda, the secretary, was absolutely honest so he decided to ask her if Anna was dating someone. Linda only looked at Preston, which was enough of an answer for him.

 There was nothing interesting in the office. Many papers relating to contracts she had made with several countries around the country and the world. She was clearly very prolific and documented everything in detail. Linda gave him access to Anna’s personal agenda but there was nothing he didn’t know in there. He couldn’t discard the idea that maybe she did have a lover that no one knew about and that it had been him or her that had killed her. Maybe because of the money she had. Preston had seen her two bank accounts and it could be said that her mother was going to have a very nice old age with all that dough. It was amazing for Preston, who struggled every month, how much others made in a single month.

 It was better for the detective to head back home and just check every piece of the puzzle at the same time. He had checked with the hotel and they hadn’t found anything curious in her room besides her clothes and the bottle of champagne she had never finished. Besides, they confirmed that no one had entered Anna’s room besides her and the maid that discovered the body and there were cameras everywhere in the building so the theory of the lover had to be ruled out. Nevertheless, Preston still thought that people always have at least one private thing, something that they hide to others because it’s embarrassing or simply because they don’t want anyone to know everything about them.

 He went through Anna’s school records, as well as her college ones but nothing was found there either. She had been a great student, having failed no courses and always a teacher favorite. Someone might have not like that but it wasn’t enough to poison her. Anyway, Preston checked the hotel once more and everyone who had made any kind of contact with the bottle. But, as it turns out, the poison was in Anna’s stomach but not in the bottle of champagne. She had been poisoned earlier that day and died slowly at night in the bathtub. So Preston headed to Temco and talked to everyone who saw her and realized she had not accepted a single glass of water and they did offer Preston one at lest ten times. Anna was just a strange woman and it was becoming more and more difficult to understand her.

 Finally, Preston designed a theory were someone from a competitor company, also selling sugar, killed Anna to get to the contract first. Maybe this was all about the possibility of making tons of money. But as he looked for the other companies, no other was large enough to cover the amount of sugar that they had signed for in the contract. Temco was very big and at the moment, only Anna’s company was big enough to supply them what they needed. So competition was scarce, close to null. So Preston decided to check everything once more and then he realized he had forgotten about a key aspect of the night of the death: the dinner at a prestigious restaurant. He had interviewed the waiter but nothing more.

 He went there and asked for the tapes of the cameras that covered the area where Anna had dinner. He also asked them for the menu and everything they had to eat that night. He checked every ingredient in his computer, at home, until he realized about something: Anna’s salad had a very curious ingredient, a mushroom that grew wild in the vicinity and that people had started consuming only in the recent years. He looked it up and discovered that the mushroom was potentially dangerous if consumed with alcohol. And Anna had it with wine and then drank champagne in her hotel room. The forensic team agreed that, with her very poor diet, Anna’s stomach wasn’t able to process the mushrooms as most people could. They were only toxic if the gastric juiced were just weak enough, which was her case.

 So Anna had, in a strange way, killer herself. Preston was relieved to solve the case but just sad for someone who had taken such steps to be healthier and had ended up killing herself.

Strange Antarctica

   Someone had killed Doctor Pong. And however it was, had not cared about cleaning afterwards. The blood coming from the good doctor’s body had already frozen, formed a pretty disturbing picture for anyone who went into the storage room. He was lying there, eyes open, against the wall opposite to the door. It was windowless room and the killer had known that. It was obvious he had known where to look for the doctor, who was probably hiding, as the storage room was fool of brooms and buckets, not really what he used in his experiments.

 The strangest part of it all was the method the killer had used: an arrow. He had pointed it right between the eyebrows and had nailed just that spot. Of course, the distance was quite short so the shot may have not been that difficult to do but it looked scary all the same. The arrow was long and had pierced the skull all the way to the back, touching the wall behind the head with the metal tip. The body still had the expression of fear the doctor had experienced in his last moments and the weather helped it to get preserved for a long time, which made the job of checking the scene, much more ominous than usual.

 The crime had occurred in what it’s known as Queen Maud Land. Although Antarctica is in the practice a free land, Norway claims this portion of the continent. The mountains look like razor blades and the snow appears to be whiter than in any other part of this land. And there, in Troll station, Mr. Georg Pong had died from an arrow to the head. The media, of course, had a feast with the whole “murder on Antartica” story. And to be frank, it did seem ridiculous than someone had been so skilled to kill someone and then escape without a lot of means to do it. And they hadn’t been able to catch him or her.

 Norway’s government took almost a week to send two detectives: Nora Fröm and Erik Stavanger. They were both specialized in strange crime scenes but this one was by far the strangest one. On the boat from South Africa, both agents discussed how they were going to approach the investigation. They had seen several pictures taken by the scientist that had found Dr. Pong and they all pointed out to a chase inside and outside the complex. They were only a few buildings in the small compound so it wasn’t going to take very long.

 At arrival, they had to join a group of scientists that greeted them on to some snowmobiles. The journey to the facility was long and cold, during which the scientists discussed the real utility of being there. The man was already dead and the attackers had to be really far by now, if not dead. The government had wanted to show action but what the two detectives could actually do about the case wasn’t much. They had agreed that their prime concern would be to know everything about how it happened more than trying to actually catch someone. That was very difficult and, anyway, if they tracked the killer’s first steps, maybe they could investigate where he or she came from.

 The station was a small group of red containers overlooking the continental ice sheet. It was very small and not many people lived there during the year. The normal number was around nine but Dr. Pong had been alone the day he died. Ellie Warren, a friend and fellow scientist, was waiting there for them. She gave them a tour of the facility and led them to the storage room where the doctor’s body was still laying. She told them that no one had spent a night since the day of the events, in order to avoid contaminating the scene. Only the group that found him had touched some things but they had been kind enough to point everything out in a report.

 When entering the storage room, both Nora and Erik trembled. The man’s was looking at them, there on the frame of the door. It was strange how an empty body could seem so alive. They then started taking pictures with a special camera and asked Ellie to tell everyone they were going to comb the scene so they needed the station to be closed to any visitors. She nodded and disappeared, talking to a walkie-talkie. The duo took pictures of every single centimeter of the body. They didn’t dare to move it, afraid that the action would break the stream of frozen blood coming out of his forehead.

 It was an eerie sight, to see such brutality but at the same time, realizing how careful the killer actually was. They found no hairs around the body, nor the killer’s weapon. Only the arrow was still inside the doctor’s skull and they decided it was best to remove it only when they had finished doing everything else. The corpse was wearing the jacket normally used for the outside, so that indicated the doctor was outside when he was attacked or that he went out during a persecution. That wasn’t clear but he must have been outside at some point that day.

 When they checked the records of the day, doctor Pong had noted several things on his log. He had apparently been working on some ice sheet tubes they had extracted earlier that month from a field not very far from the station. The detectives, of course, had no idea what it all meant, but they realized he had worked on that during the day. The last thing he noted though was far more interesting than everything else: he had written, “The heating system seems to be malfunctioning. It’s freezing inside. I have to go out and check the heater”.

 The detectives put on their jackets and asked Ellie about the heather and she joined them to it. It was located in a shed outside, about ten meters from the main entrance. There, they found that the door to the shed was open but nothing else pointed to the murder. Ellie checked the heater and told them everything was ok, which they already knew because the temperature inside the station was very pleasant. When back inside, Ellie told them she had to leave because she was needed in another station but that she would be back in a few hours. She reminded the detectives that it was summer in Antarctica, so eternal daylight was the norm. She showed them a couple of bed they could sleep if they needed to. She said goodbye and left in her snowmobile.

 The duo continued the investigations but, as expected, they weren’t going anywhere with all of it. They had found hairs in the lab and other rooms but that was probably Ellie’s or some other scientist that had been there before. She explained the doctor was alone when he was killed because all the other scientists had been called to another base as a great discovery had been made and the transmission from a Russian base could only be received in the other station. He decided to stay behind for a day and just wait for them to return and tell them the news.

 After checking every single part of the base, which was the size a of a single person’s apartment, they decided to eat something. The food looked like the ones they gave to astronauts and it taste just as they expected it to taste, so they continued their work rather fast. As Nora checked the doctor’s computer, Erik checked the storage room and the body once more.

 Some hours had pass when Nora called Erik, saying she had found something. Many of the other cases they had solved were all about love and envy and how to combine that with the thirst for revenge and so on. She builds up on that and decided to look for secret folders or hidden archives in the doctor’s computer and Norma had found just that. It was an invisible folder and had only five pictures. When the couple saw them, they couldn’t help feeling surprised at them.

 Each and every one of those pictures showed a younger Ellie Warren, with longer hair and a certain glow to her, fully naked on five different poses. It was obvious she was aware of the photographer but the pictures were certainly not new as the women in the pictures looked in her twenties, or even younger, and doctor Warren was at least fifty years old. Why would Pong have those pictures in his laptop? Had he known her before she became a scientist? Was he the photographer? Both Nora and Erik were baffled at the pictures but couldn’t make sense of them. Where them even meaningful to they investigation?

 Then, an explosion was heard outside the station. Nora and Erik ran out to see the heater shed had burst into flames and some of the pieces were burning on the snow, others already freezing. Why had that happened? And then Nora grabbed Erik’s arm. She knew exactly what had happened. It was Ellie. She had been the only one of them to actually enter the shed. It had been working fine with them but it had failed when Pong had been killed. And now it had exploded.

 Their conclusion was that Ellie had done the same thing that day. They decided to check with the nearest station, where the scientists had gone to check on the news. The radio wasn’t working very well but it was confirmed Ellie had not been there with them. According to the person in charge, she had stayed behind with Pong. So there.... It had to be her. She was the killer. But why? And where was she now. The man said she wasn’t there today either.

 Nora was looking at the screen and then noticed Erik wasn’t talking. And he actually wasn’t breathing anymore. He fell to the floor, with an arrow on his head. Nora had no time to be scared as she saw Ellie holding a crossbow.

- Couldn’t leave you here with the evidence. Sorry.

The Graves

  A crossbow had been left behind and there were four arrows on the victim’s body, which had being killed by a chilly stream that had defrosted overnight. The body had been found far from any settlement and, although chief Jones and her officers scouted the area for several days, they didn’t find anything else referring to the murderer. Somehow, he had dropped the murder weapon but nothing else. The people in the lab found nothing on the handle of the crossbow either, which was a recent design, almost custom made. That would maybe be useful to find the manufacturer and, from there, the buyer.

 Jennifer jones had been the chief of police for only two years and this was her first big job. Working on an almost desolate county, most of her days she spent her time dealing with disputes over land and maybe a drunk driver. She had been in the force for fifty years and she had always thought the future might hold something brighter for her but that wasn’t the case. She lived only with her teenage son as her husband had been killed in the war a few years ago. Jennifer thought she had been promoted because of whom her husband had been but that didn’t matter anymore. The people of the county liked her and she knew them all.

 She supervised the work of Doctor Pike, the medical examiner who had to be very careful not to damage the victim’s body when extracting the arrows from his body. The dead man was kind of young, but something felt off about him. Maybe he was older… The doctor removed the arrows successfully and put them on a small tray on one side to check them later. Then, he asked Jennifer to help him. She often did as he had no assistants and it was a work that had to be done as a team. So the chief of police help him undress the body. It was then that she realized what was wrong with the body. On her shirt, some stains let her know that the body was wearing makeup.

 Then, Doctor Pike removed the clothes, both the shirt and the pants, and confirmed that the body appeared to be the one of a female. But Jennifer, seeing how he washed the body, thought the girl’s breasts were really small and then she had an idea. She left Doctor Pike for a moment, leaving for her office to call the medical center. It wasn’t a big hospital but it was the biggest one of the county. Then, she called every single hospital near town, even if outside her jurisdiction and went back to Pike’s morgue by night.

 The doctor confirmed what she already knew: the body was from a transgender person. She had been a female but had undergone treatment to change into a male. The breasts and muscular development were proof of that. Jennifer had called every single hospital to ask if someone had gone hormone treatment recently or if they had any sex change surgery scheduled for the coming months. And they did, all of that, but it was a list of at least twenty names, which had surprised her.

 This was a very remote part of the country and people were not very welcome of differences. Maybe that had been the reason for the assassination of this young girl. Or boy… She was con fused because this had never happened before and she had never known anyone like this victim. She left the doctor to finish his job and decided to go back home. On her way there, she stared from the patrol, looking at everyone’s face, just wondering if she had ever known someone else like the girl in the morgue. She couldn’t stop thinking of how hard it must have been for her and what hardships she must have undergone to end up where she now was.

 When Jennifer entered her house, her son Thomas was cooking dinner. For a sixteen-year-old boy, he was very resourceful and always started making dinner, especially when he noticed Jennifer was going to be late. Tonight, he had made pasta with meatballs and a very rich sauce. Jennifer kissed her son on his forehead and hugged him. They were very close and always tried to spent time together but that was hard because of her job. He had learned to cope with it and never condemned her for it but always supported her, even making small lunches for her to take to work.

 She had already discussed with him that she would do the impossible for him. The woman knew her son loved to cook so she had already started saving to put him in the best cooking school she could afford. Jennifer had gone online often to gather a lot of information about schools, costs, what he would learn and so on and would then email it to him to see what he thought of it. He was very eager to do all of it but he been very clear he would be miserable leaving her alone.

As she waited for dinner at the table, she remembered the young woman at the morgue and wondered if she also had a family to worry about her. Was she alone when she had been killed or was someone with her and then escaped the assailant? Nothing pointed to another person ever being there but it was comforting to think someone would have been there. Thinking of death was now common for Jennifer but she found the concept of dying alone much more frightening than anything else.

 Thomas came with two plates and she served some orange juice they had left. She realized she had to go to the supermarket, probably the next weekend before there was nothing left to eat. She forgot all about her case and asked her son for his day in school. He answered there had been nothing special as everyone was to busy talking about the person they had found by the stream, in the forest.

-       How do you know about that?

-       It’s true, then?

  Jennifer hated speaking about work on the house but, for the sake of trust, she decided to tell her son everything, including the fact that the victim was a transgender person. Thomas, surprisingly, knew a lot about the subject and corrected his mother when referring to the victim as a girl. He told her transgender people prefer to be called the gender that they feel they are and not the one that they have been born into. So he said she should start talking about him and not her. But Jennifer was confused and responded that in order to know who he was, she had to ask for a girl. Thomas conceded in that aspect and told her that he had read a lot about it online.

 The chief of police was very curious about why her son was reading about the subject but decided not to ask further questions and preferred to praise him on dinner, which always made him very proud. After dinner, they went to bed and realized she was still thinking about the girl, who she now had to think of as a boy, which lay dead in the morgue. What did he do to deserve two arrows to the heart and one of each leg? Was he escaping from someone or did he do something wrong to the wrong person?

 The next day, surprisingly, it all became quite clearer. Doctor Pike had confirmed the crossbow had been custom made as the arrows and the structure of it were made to properly kill wild animals, so whoever used it to kill the boy had also used it for hunting. They checked the places that would make that kind of weaponry and there was only one for the next two hundred miles. She visited the store and the clerk, an old silent man, showed her the books and the name of his client: Robert Graves.

 Somehow, Jennifer Jones knew that name or at least felt she did. It wasn’t the name of anyone in her county, she was sure of that. That man didn’t leave nearby but somehow she was sure she had seen or read the name recently and they she realized where that had been. She went back to her office and checked the list she had made with all the hospitals, of all the hormone treatment patients they had. Right enough, there was a Graves in the list, under the name Pamela.

 Chief Jones went to the hospital personally and asked for the file on Pamela Graves. Apparently she was seventeen years old and had come to the hospital accompanied by her mother. She had begun treatment six months ago and had been scheduled for another appointment the day she had been killed. And it all pointed to her father being the killer. The next stop for Jennifer was the police of the county where the Graves family lived. She joined them to raid the house and found the man dead, with a bullet in his head. He was there, sitting on the sofa as if he was still alive but he wasn’t.

Then, checking the house, Jennifer realized there was heavy breathing coming from the bathroom of the main room. She opened it by force and discovered who must have been Pamela’s mother and Robert’s wife. She was covered in blood and her eyes were almost out of their sockets. She kept mumbling “my daughter” and staring at her blood-covered hands.

 That night, Jennifer returned to Thomas and told him how much she loved him and how she wanted nothing more but happiness for him. He thought it was a bit strange but accepted her words and hugs.