Mike Omer - In the Darkness

They had assumed they were looking at a live video the entire time, just like with Nicole Medina. But they weren’t.

“It’s a train,” he said numbly. “There’s a train running above her. She’s buried near the tracks.”

“But there’s no train here.”

“There was one when the video was taken.” Tatum’s heart throbbed. “Back when she was kidnapped. You have the wrong K-9 handler here, Detective. We need a cadaver dog.”

He leaned back in his chair, smiling, the first article about him open on the browser. Already questions about his identity were rising in the text: Who was Schrodinger? What was this “experiment”? The article maintained a hopeful tone. A police source was quoted saying they were fairly certain they knew where the girl was.

Perhaps, the article suggested, the girl in the video could supply Schrodinger’s real identity.

The girl in the video would not be able to supply them with anything. Had anyone figured that out yet?

Maybe Zoe Bentley had.

He switched tabs, rereading the article that described how she’d caught the Strangling Undertaker. She was, according to the article, experienced, brilliant, and thorough.

And they’d sent her to look for him. He felt a thrill of excitement. They already knew he was someone exceptional.

He opened a few more of the local papers and refreshed their pages, waiting for a new article to show up. Soon he had more than twenty open tabs on his browser. One of the tabs began playing an annoying jingle, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out which one it was. He ended up muting the volume.

Another article popped up in a different paper. Parts of it were obviously an unabashed copy-paste job from the first article. Shoddy work. He despised amateurs more than anything else.

What about Nicole Medina? Had anyone in the press figured out the connection yet? Nothing in the articles. Maybe one of the readers would. It was an age of crowdsourced information. He browsed the comments, almost instantly regretting it. One commenter claimed the entire thing was made up by the media to distract the general public from what was going on in the Middle East. More comments postulated this was “terrifying” or “horrible” and “the work of a monster.” No one mentioned Nicole Medina. Though someone did ask if there was an “experiment number one.”

He sighed. He’d have to wait patiently for an enterprising reporter to make the connection. It would happen soon—he was almost certain of it. Maybe a police source would leak it, or maybe one of the reporters would just do thorough research.

By tomorrow they’d all know there was a serial killer in San Angelo.

He went over the websites again, clicking refresh, waiting, eyes skimming the screen impatiently. Nothing. Soon he’d have to leave for work.

He’d have to be patient.

Switching to the Instagram tab, he scrolled down his feed, a column of girls presenting themselves for his attention. Every now and then he’d pause, examine a girl in the image, hesitating. Would she be the next one?

And then she caught his eye, smiling at the camera while lying on the bed, the blanket covering her body. It was Juliet Beach. One of his favorites.

Last morning being eighteen , she’d written. He switched to her Facebook profile and checked her birthday. September 10. That was tomorrow.

Would she be partying tomorrow night? Of course she would. Experiment number three.

Officer Victor Finkelstein parked his SUV on the side of the road and opened the back door for Shelley, his four-legged partner. She leaped from the vehicle, wagging her tail, her jaw open in a wide canine grin, tongue lolling, panting hard.

He grabbed her water bowl from the vehicle, put it in front of her, and rummaged in the small cooler for the ice-cold bottle of water he’d put there earlier.

“Glad to see you here, Finkelstein,” someone said behind him. The man mispronounced his name, making it sound like Fankelstein , which Victor was used to by now. It was a sort of well-known joke in the San Angelo Police Department. He could see the humor in his name’s similarity to the fictional nineteenth-century scientist, especially considering what he did for a living. In fact, that was why he called his dog Shelley, a sort of “wink, wink, do you get it,” which no one ever did.

He glanced over his shoulder. Detective Foster walked over, another man by his side. Both of them seemed sweaty, cranky, and somewhat tired.

“Hey, Detective,” Victor said.

“We need you by the railroad,” Foster said.

“A few minutes, Detective. Shelley needs a drink.”

Foster nodded irritably, as if he were obliging an unreasonable demand. People who didn’t work with dogs didn’t understand how it worked. Shelley was not Victor’s pet, and she wasn’t his damn slave. She was his partner . And Victor always took care to treat her that way: as his equal. Would Foster have looked as impatient if Victor had said that he needed a drink of water? Not likely.

He found the bottle, bits of ice still floating in the water inside. He poured half the bottle into Shelley’s bowl, and she lapped at it with gusto. Victor took a swig from the bottle himself, capped it, and put it back in the cooler. Then he closed the back of the van and leaned on it, folding his arms. Shelley still lapped at the water.

Foster glanced at his phone and cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind—”

“In a minute, Detective,” Victor said steadily. “There’s no rush. Not if you called us here.”

The detective exchanged glances with the man by his side.

“I’m Officer Finkelstein.” Victor extended his hand.

“Agent Gray.” The man took a step forward and shook his hand. He had a firm handshake and a nice polite smile.

“A fed, huh?”

Shelley raised her head from the bowl and glanced at Victor. She gave her tail a small wag.

“Okay, Detective, lead the way.”

The two men led him through a sandy patch of land. To his surprise, Victor saw Jones there. The two handlers rarely worked together. Jones and Buster were called to help the living .

If Victor had a small fault, it was that he often felt his and Shelley’s work wasn’t as appreciated as the rest of the unit’s. Take Jones, for example. The man had been interviewed by local papers half a dozen times at least. People loved those stories: “Man’s best friend saves two hikers lost in a canyon” or “Cop and his dog locate missing girl.” Pictures with the survivors, flowers, chocolates, Christmas cards every year. Then there were the detection dogs and their yearly moment of glory, photographed by the shipment of cocaine they’d managed to sniff out.

But no articles or pictures in the papers for Victor and Shelley. No “Man’s best friend finds decomposing corpse.” No handshakes with the chief of police or the mayor.

Ah, well. He knew the value of his job. How many parents had received closure thanks to Victor and Shelley? How many murderers had been taken off the streets thanks to evidence the two partners, six legs and a tail between them, had found?

Buster barked once as they got closer. Shelley wagged her tail. She wasn’t much of a barker, really. Silent and peaceful, like Victor.

“So we think there’s a body buried somewhere here?” Victor asked.

“Agent Gray certainly thinks so,” Foster said guardedly.

“We think the girl’s buried somewhere near the railroad,” the agent said. “We don’t know exactly how long ago.”

Victor nodded. “Hear that, Shelley? Let’s find her.”

Shelley glanced at him, her ears perking up, one leg in the air. Then she sniffed the ground tentatively.