You light a cigarette and sift through a pile of documents. You’re still in your street clothes: a shirt and unbearably uncomfortable dress pants. Since your hotel room had been aired out, you were still sitting in a warm coat.

In your hands, you held several photos of the victims. All of them were women between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, all strangled in their own homes. Officially, the crimes weren’t connected, but with all the victims’ information spread out before you in paper form, you noticed that each murder happened after a certain time interval, and that all the victims’ nails had been painted with red gel polish before death.

Snubbing your cigarette out on the table, you left the butt right there. Grabbing the morgue photos of the victims, you headed for the office your team had been assigned for the duration of the investigation. It was time to announce that a serial killer was operating in the city.

While you were driving to the office, it began to pour outside. The worst decision you could’ve made was running to the entrance in heels. The stairs leading up to the door were riddled with holes, and one of them caught your heel. You were almost at the door when, struggling to pull your shoe free, your face met the wooden surface of the entrance.

“Sorry… are you okay?” you heard a familiar voice. It was Leon, the son of your friend, who had been taken on as an assistant at your request. He’d just graduated, and no one would hire him because of his lack of experience. “Damn you, Leon,” you muttered, still wincing from the pain.

Freeing your trapped heel, you finally stepped inside the office. Leon followed, helping you take off your coat and hanging it in the staff closet. “I’m running to the store; they asked me to get donuts and coffee. Want me to grab you something?”

They were always sending him on errands. Most of his work consisted of buying donuts, coffee, and sorting documents into folders. You had taken him to the morgue once, just so he could see a real corpse, but he’d gotten so sick that you decided never to take him anywhere bodies might be involved again. You had even offered to help him get a job at a regular police precinct, but he was stubborn.

“Yes, get me coffee with two sugar cubes—no more, no less,” you specified. “Yes, ma’am!” he said with mock formality, snapping into a salute. A smile spread across his face—the only genuine smile you saw every day among the perpetually unhappy faces.

He came back with the coffee. I was sitting alone in the office; the workday was nearly over. Leon hadn’t left yet, as he was helping me pin all the victims’ photos to the board.

Talking with him, I found out he’d been looking through the crime scene photo copies. In several of them, he noticed that the bathtub in the bathroom had been filled with warm water.

That was the final straw—it was time to announce to the media that a killer was on the loose in the city. Grabbing the photo copies, I stuffed them into the bag I’d left in the office yesterday.

“Where are you going?” he asked. “Wait, wait,” he blocked my way. “Uh… how about going somewhere? There’s this café with amazing steak—my treat,” he said nervously.

It wasn’t the first time he had suggested something like a date. It all started after I’d foolishly decided to sleep with him. “I don’t need an office romance,” I said coldly, trying to push past him toward the door. “Why are you so stubborn?” Leon said sharply.