bonus 1 (2 of 3)

On this beautiful sunny day, which, if the weather forecast was to be believed, might be the last one of the year, Natalie Lance stood in her office, facing a whiteboard crowded with photos and documents. She stood motionless, one arm folded, the elbow of the other resting on it. Her thumb hovered near her lips, the edge of a fingernail tucked just under an upper incisor. That pose of hers meant she was deep in thought. Lately, it seemed to be all she did.

She used the whiteboard to organize her data. Currently, it was filled with everything related to the Dismantler: reports on the killer’s victims, crime scene photos, a city map marked with locations where body parts had been found. One section held a report on the university attack, punctuated with a thick red question mark. Her instincts screamed that it was connected to the Dismantler’s case, but no one else was convinced. Not even Chad. He entertained the theory only because he was her partner.

At the center of it all stood a twenty-one-year-old student, Mioray Meindmy. His involvement had completely complicated the investigation. After he escaped from the hospital, Natalie got hold of photos of the Dismantler’s latest victim. It was the body meant for autopsy before it vanished, switched with Mioray’s. The photos showed the usual horror of dismembered limbs scattered around the city. Legs, torso, right arm, head. The face?

Identical to Mioray’s.

But Mioray wasn’t dead. Natalie had seen him alive, both at the hospital and later at his home. He didn’t have a twin, as far as anyone knew. Unless his adoptive parents had lied. But why would they? They told her and Chad that Mioray was adopted. Could he have had a twin, separated at birth?

The guy was wrapped in secrets. His parents hadn’t even known he'd lost his arm before the university attack. Afterward, he vanished for two weeks. And now? Missing again. His parents claimed he’d been taken to the II, but that didn’t check out. International Investigations had no record of Mioray Meindmy or any agent named Franz. Based on the parents’ description, Franz was the same man Natalie briefly saw in the hallway. He was carrying a tote bag with Terry Strands’s face on it. She hadn’t gotten a good look, but the parents swore he could easily be mistaken for the real Terry Strands.

This case was full of eerie lookalikes. People resembling the dead a little too much.

“Not going for lunch?” Chad’s voice cut in. He entered the room, holding two cups of coffee. “You know, you’re standing exactly where I left you. I could name five things that haven’t changed.”

“My, Chad, you’re so hilarious. You should’ve become a stand-up comedian,” Natalie replied, taking the coffee. “Thanks.”

They stood silently, eyes on the whiteboard. Natalie knew they were thinking about different things.

“Maybe the asshole actually retired,” Chad muttered, tilting his head. “It’s been over a month since the last killing. The city’s moved on. Now it’s all about that heist at the Mausolo Museum and who let the rats out.”

“I know we haven’t made progress, but I can’t shake the feeling we’re missing something obvious,” Natalie said, frustration creeping in. “It’s not just a gut feeling. The Dismantler’s last victim changed everything. His pattern’s broken. Nothing is how it’s supposed to be. Look at these photos, the scene was tampered with. The body parts aren’t aligned with the marks showing where they were found. Were they moved afterward? The officers swore they weren’t touched before being transferred to Lilies Hospital.”

“Well, mistakes happen. It’s not unheard of.”

“Five separate mistakes by different people, all at once?” Natalie frowned. “You think that’s normal? If I were crazy, I’d say there’s a conspiracy behind it.”

“Or collective negligence,” Chad said, settling at his desk and sipping his coffee. “There’s been a wave of rookies lately. You heard about last week? We got a call about destruction at some abandoned house. When our guys got there, they all passed out for a few minutes.”

“Flowery scent?” Natalie tensed.

“Nope. But the tests showed sleeping pills in their system. The thing is, none of them remembered anyone giving them anything. I don’t get how it happened.”

Natalie sighed and looked back at the whiteboard, hoping foolishly that something new would jump out. Once again, she retreated into the depths of her thoughts. Chad didn’t disturb her. He just turned to his computer and started checking the news. He was a good partner. He knew her habits. He let her be, until he didn’t.

“Do you know why days off exist, Natalie?” he asked eventually. “Because people need rest. Duh. Come on, you’ve been at the station the whole weekend. Don’t try to deny it. While you were chasing ghosts, I played padel tennis. And guess what? We’re still in the same spot. You could’ve been off doing anything else, and you’d be no closer or further from solving the case. You see what I mean?”

Natalie sipped her coffee, but it had gone cold. She set it down and stretched.

“Thanks for worrying, Chad, but I’m fine. I don’t mind working late. Or early. It’s not like I have anything else going on anyway.”

“Is it because of him?”

He didn’t say who. He didn’t have to. Natalie stayed silent, eyes fixed on the board.

“It’s been almost a year,” Chad continued. “I don’t know how long it takes to move on from something like that. Did you move on?” He groaned. “Of course you didn’t. But the point is, you haven’t even tried. Life doesn’t stop, Natalie. Not for the living. I’ll support you as long as I can, but at some point, I’ll have to tell the higher-ups about your obsession with work. It’s not healthy. When was the last time you took a proper break? Did you ever visit that psychologist I told you about?”

“Why do you care so much about my mental health?” Natalie snapped. No, she hadn’t seen any psychologist. She didn’t plan to. There just wasn’t time for that.

“I’m just worried about you, Natalie,” Chad said, carefully.

“You’ve just had a second kid, Chad. Worry about her. Not me.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not old enough to work herself to death yet,” he said, leaning back and lacing his hands behind his head. “You, on the other hand, are actively avoiding your pain, and that proves my point.”

Natalie rolled her eyes and turned to the window. There wasn’t much to see, just a parking lot filled with police cruisers and a few civilian cars, one of which was hers. Occasionally, pedestrians and passing vehicles appeared beyond the open gates. Above it all, the red outline of planet Mars loomed in the sky, a quiet but menacing reminder of dangers it concealed.

Maybe Chad is right?

Not about everything, mind her, but about her wasting her time. She’d spent far too long looking for clues that might help her make sense of the case. And yet, she was stuck. Exactly as she had been when Chad left work on Friday.

Natalie was tired. She hadn’t taken a shower since last week. Chad had guessed right, she’d spent the entire weekend at the station and hadn’t returned home in days. It was time to take a break, go to the store, buy something for lunch and dinner. Maybe grab a bottle of beer. It wasn’t like anyone was waiting for her. Not anymore.

Home was lonely. Natalie’s mom wanted to visit and stay for a few days, but Natalie always found reasons to decline. “There’s no hot water in the apartment”, or “I got sick and don’t want to infect you, Mom”, or “I have to look after the neighbor’s dog, and it doesn’t like strangers much”, or “I agreed to let some friends stay over”, or “Sorry, Mom, I have to work late for a few days”.

Working late was her most frequent excuse, which, technically, was true. Natalie felt more like herself around reports, evidence, and crime scene photos.

“It feels like we’re missing one tiny piece of the puzzle, and then it’ll all come together,” she said aloud. “It’s so irritating. I’m sure Mioray has some of the answers. At least partly.”

“Oh yeah, I don’t doubt it for a second,” Chad nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be the Dismantler himself.”

Natalie clicked her tongue and shot her partner a sharp look.

“We’ve talked about this a million times, Chad.”

“So what?” he leaned forward at his desk. “You can’t deny it’s suspicious that the killings stopped right after we found out about him. Don’t you think he’s fooling us with his appearances? We don’t even know when exactly he lost his arm. You heard his parents. They think it happened during the attack on the university. But we know that’s not true. The guy knows how to keep a secret. So I’m thinking, maybe the last victim – the one whose body conveniently disappeared from the morgue – hurt our Mioray so badly, he had to amputate his own arm. What do you say to that?”

Sometimes Natalie couldn’t tell whether Chad was mocking her or genuinely entertaining the possibility of what he said. He often said strange, provocative things, but almost always with a layer of detachment. It was his déformation professionelle. After years of interrogating suspects, he had developed a habit of speaking that way with everyone, casually applying pressure, nudging people into vulnerable states without even meaning to. Natalie was no exception. He challenged her, too, though never directly. It usually happened when she was getting too fixated on her own theories.

“Okay, let’s go with it for a second,” she played along. “Let’s assume Mioray is the Dismantler. His parents told us that when he disappeared, he had both arms intact. If he got injured during his last victim hunt, why would he go to the hospital, end up in the morgue, and let himself be found?”

“To destroy the evidence, of course,” Chad said, grabbing a tennis ball from his desk and tossing it at the ceiling. Thump. Another of his tactics. The sound grated on his suspects’ nerves. “We found him, but we didn’t find the victim’s body. Which means there was something on that body, or inside it, that would incriminate our killer. He had to get rid of it at any cost.”

“And where did he hide it? Nobody saw him, or anyone else, leaving with a body – bag or not. And there’s nothing on the surveillance footage either.”

“I’d ask him what he did with the victim’s body if I could,” Chad shrugged, catching the ball again. “But the boy loves to vanish. Maybe he’s not working alone.” He threw the ball once more, caught it, then set it down. “What if the Dismantler is a group?”

A sharp exhale escaped Natalie’s nose, a mix between a scoff and a laugh. Not because Chad’s idea was ridiculous, but because it wasn’t. She had considered the possibility herself. Until proven otherwise, anything was on the table. Still, she didn’t want to believe it. Against logic, she hoped the Dismantler was a single person.

“Doesn’t mean Mioray’s part of it,” she replied, clinging to her assumption.

“Doesn’t mean he isn’t.”

And just like that, they were at a stalemate. They could go back and forth forever about whether Mioray was the Dismantler, a part of the group, or just another puzzle piece. Until they had more evidence, it was all speculation. Natalie could argue that it was unlikely for a group of killers to act without a cause. Most known murder groups operated under a unified ideology or motive. The Dismantler’s motive was still unknown. As far as they knew, the victims had nothing in common, except missing left arms. And being dismembered, of course.

“So how does the university attack fit into all this?” Natalie asked, switching tracks.

“It doesn’t. It’s not related to the Dismantler.”

“Even though witnesses saw the attacker specifically chasing Mioray?”

“Just his dumb luck. Don’t get angry. Maybe the attacker was another victim of the Dismantler.”

“Yeah, right,” Natalie collapsed into her chair, exasperated. “And that same attacker was running around, exploding and regenerating limbs. Wild stories. Shall I remind you the crime lab managed to get a blood sample from the scene? It belonged to a man named Herman Clopton. Local boxer. He got into a street fight once and injured his left arm so badly he had to quit boxing. Weird coincidence. Even weirder is that there’s barely any data on him anymore, like someone wiped it. He’d be a perfect suspect, for both the Dismantler and the university attack. If he hadn’t died four months ago. He was thrown out from the tenth floor window by some shark loans, all of whom got arrested and put in jail.”

And not long after that, the Dismantler claimed their first victim.

“Well, my theory is that the terrorist carried around a vial of Herman’s blood to throw us off,” Chad said, glancing at his watch. It wasn’t too far past lunchtime, but he was already thinking about home and the family waiting for him. “Dead men don’t walk, Natalie. Or talk. Whatever the saying is. People saw Clopton’s body. He fell from ten stories. That kind of death is permanent. Don’t let some terrorist’s parlor tricks fool you. Exploding limbs, regenerating arms. Come on.”

“I’m not sure they were tricks,” Natalie murmured under her breath, too quiet for Chad to catch.

There was no point in saying it out loud, not yet. But the thought lingered. Maybe the dead weren’t as dead as they seemed. Mioray Meindmy. Herman Clopton. All circumstantial evidence pointed to their deaths. Yet both appeared to be alive. And if they were alive, maybe someone else was too. It sounded crazy. Natalie wanted it to be true.

Because if it was, so many things would suddenly make sense.

Her eyes drifted back to the window. A man in glasses walked past the parking lot gates. He wore a tailored metallic-blue suit, paired with a dark green tie. Had she seen him earlier? No, probably not. Just her imagination. Plenty of people walked past this time of day. Maybe he was a lawyer. They all dressed similarly, making it hard to tell them apart.

“Victims’ body parts were always found on the left bank of the Xyts River,” Natalie said, returning her focus to the case. She slid an upper incisor beneath her thumb’s fingernail – a nervous habit that slightly garbled her words, not that she noticed. She wasn’t speaking to Chad, not really. She’d already forgotten he was there. “The Dismantler kept the public in terror. He wanted attention. He was extravagant, overconfident or maybe he just didn’t care about getting caught. He never even bothered to cross to the other side of the river. His hideout must be on the left bank.”

Chad left his desk and wandered to the window. He looked outside, not focusing on anything in particular, his hands buried in the pockets of his jeans.

“That’s enough, Natalie,” he said gently. “Go home. Eat something. Take a shower. Watch a movie. We’re not getting any further today. Trust me, it’s not worth the headache. We’ve got other cases piling up. We should be focusing on those too, partner.”

He walked to the whiteboard and peeled off one of the photos. But before he could do anything with it, Natalie jumped up and grabbed his wrist. Her eyes were fixed on the photo. It was the torso of the Dismantler’s last victim. No head, no legs, no arms. The legs had been cut at the knees, the arms at the elbows. A gruesome sight, but one she had grown used to.

Still, something about it always stopped her cold. The cuts were so clean. That detail unsettled her every time. Unlike other victims, whose limbs were found fresh and bloodied, this one seemed... too preserved. And the white chalk outlines that marked where the torso had been found didn’t quite match the body’s current position. Why? Had it been moved?

Something told her the answer was in that photo.

The torso, supposedly belonging to Mioray, lay in an odd pose. It was on its right side, with the left shoulder twisted backward, pointing southeast, and the right shoulder angled north. The hips faced southwest, the left one slightly closer to due south. The neck pointed northeast.

“What?” Chad asked, puzzled. He wasn’t sure what to do about Natalie grabbing him, so he stood still, waiting for her to speak.

“Give me that,” she muttered and snatched the photo from his hand. She reattached it to the whiteboard, grouping it with the other photos from the final victim. Then she began rearranging them like assembling a jigsaw puzzle with five pieces, the sixth conspicuously missing.

She moved the photos around several times, stepping back now and then to study the arrangement. At last, she stopped. A quiet thrill sparked in her eyes. She turned to Chad.

“I’ve got it,” she said in a hushed voice. “I think I know where to look for the Dismantler.”

Chad gave a skeptical hum. He looked at the photos but saw nothing unusual.

“You’re not looking closely,” Natalie said, impatient. “Forget about the rookies screwing up the scene. Let’s assume they told the truth, that they didn’t move any of the body parts. Doesn’t this look strange, the way it’s arranged?”

Chad stepped closer to the whiteboard. He studied it carefully, and just as Natalie was about to explain, she saw his eyes widen, his face drain of color.

“No way,” he whispered. His gaze flicked between her and the photos. “You’re not saying–”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said quickly. “But it can’t be a coincidence.”

When the photos were arranged in the shape of a human body, something startling emerged: the severed ends of each part aligned. The same way the right shoulder pointed north, the dismembered right arm’s elbow pointed south. The same went for the legs and the head. They were even tilted at the correct angles to match. The left shoulder, notably, bent slightly upward as if suggesting the missing left arm was positioned above ground level, somewhere around the second or third story of an average building.

How did we miss this?

Natalie snatched a red marker from her desk and moved to the city map. She marked dots and connected them with lines, each point representing a place where one of the last victim’s parts had been found. When she was done, one dot remained unplaced. The missing left arm. Naturally, the torso’s location was central, connecting all others.

She stared at it again, then drew a straight line southeast from the torso’s point, until it reached the riverbank.

“His left arm is somewhere on this line,” she said, running her finger along it.

Chad didn’t speak. He rubbed his lips, hands on hips, visibly uneasy.

“I don’t know, Natalie…” he said, glancing around like he was worried someone might be listening. “What if it’s a setup? Why would the Dismantler want to be found?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” she replied coldly. Chad couldn’t stop her now, not when she was this close to the serial killer they’d been chasing for so long. “You said it yourself. There was something about the last victim that could expose the Dismantler. This is it. With all the other victims, their body parts stayed exactly where they were found. No pattern, no arrangement. But this time, there was a pattern. And I’m damn sure it’s not a coincidence. For some reason, these pieces were aligned after they were found. How? I don’t know. It’s possible that it was some inside job, that some police officers are involved. I pray that’s not the case. We can ask the Dismantler when we find him.”

She tapped the map, right on a building marked along the red line.

“Here. An abandoned furniture factory. Good place to hide. Quiet. No nosy neighbors,” she looked Chad in the eyes, full of resolve. “Call the captain. If the Dismantler’s the one behind the university attack, this guy could be dangerous. We need backup.”

“This is too much, Natalie.”

“Please, Chad. Trust me on this. You’re better with people than I am, you’re respected here. The captain will listen to you. If we find nothing, I’ll take the blame. But we can’t hesitate. We might already be too late. And if there’s even a chance he’s there…”

She glanced at the whiteboard – photos, the map, all of it. Had she missed something? Was there anything that could disprove her theory? It was possible she was only seeing what she wanted to see. The Dismantler had stopped killing. Now he was hiding. The abandoned furniture factory made the most sense. It was the only suitable building that matched the trajectory. Where else would someone hide seventeen severed arms?

Unlikely he had disposed of them. Maybe collecting them was his reason for killing. Soon, Natalie would know. They were going to find him, and they were going to end this.

She reached for her gun, checked the slide, the chamber, the safety. Everything was in order. She was preparing for the worst. The Dismantler wouldn’t go down without a fight.