Chapter 3

Fawn POV

The fluorescent lights of the briefing room hummed, a stark contrast to the dawn's muted light in the marsh. Erasmo, his face grim, stood at the head of the table. Deborah, still in her scrubs, sat beside him, her posture rigid. They listened intently as Detective Ramirez presented the initial findings.

"The victim, currently Jane Doe, appears to be in her early twenties. Cause of death, as Dr. Bishop noted, blunt force trauma and multiple stab wounds. The mutilation was extensive, making facial recognition impossible without advanced forensic techniques." Ramirez clicked to the next slide, showing a digitally enhanced image of my face, a blurred, distorted ghost of what I once was.

Erasmo gritted his teeth. "Any ID possible through dental records or other unique markers?"

"We're working on it, Detective. But it's a slow process given the state of the remains."

"And the dump site?" Deborah interjected, her voice sharp. "Was it the primary crime scene?"

"Negative, Dr. Bishop. The forensics team found no evidence of a struggle or significant blood spatter at the marsh. The body was transported there. We believe the primary crime scene is elsewhere."

Erasmo slammed his fist on the table, a sudden, jarring sound. "Damn it! This makes it harder. We're looking for a needle in a haystack now. Sweep the entire marshland again. Every inch. I want divers in there, dragging the bottom. And expand our search radius for any potential primary crime scenes. Abandoned warehouses, isolated cabins, rundown motels – anything that fits a profile for this kind of brutality."

He turned to Deborah. "Deb, I need that full autopsy report yesterday. Blood work, toxicology, DNA. Everything. We need to identify this victim, and we need to find who did this."

Deborah nodded, her expression unreadable. She stood abruptly. "I'll be in the lab. I'll personally oversee the process." She walked out, her back stiff, leaving Erasmo to his frantic planning.

Oh, now you care, I thought, a bitter sigh escaping my ethereal lips. Now that I'm a case, a puzzle for your brilliant minds, I'm worth your attention. Not when I was calling, desperate for help.

I remembered a similar scene years ago. Hope, barely a teenager, had been caught shoplifting a designer scarf. Deborah had been furious, not at the act itself, but at the potential stain on the family's reputation. "Hope, darling," she'd said, her voice strained, "your actions reflect on us. You're meant for so much more. You're a Bishop, for heaven's sake."

Hope had wept dramatically, her slender shoulders shaking. "I'm so sorry, Mother. I just wanted to be beautiful for my audition."

I had watched, unseen, from the hallway. Hope had winked at me, a quick, triumphant flash in her tear-filled eyes, before resuming her performance. I knew she just wanted to get a rise out of me. Later, I found the scarf tucked away, unworn, in her closet.

"Fawn, on the other hand," Deborah had said to Erasmo later that night, "she wouldn't care. She'd probably brag about it. No sense of decorum, no understanding of image."

My thoughts drifted back to the morgue. Deborah was there, standing over my cold, lifeless form. She ran a gloved hand over my back, almost tracing the outline of my spine, before stopping at a long, jagged scar that stretched across my flank.

"Poor girl," Deborah murmured, her voice uncharacteristically soft. "This scar... looks old. Appendectomy, perhaps? Or something more serious."

My entire spectral being tensed. The scar. The one thing that should have screamed my identity. Five years ago, I'd had a nephrectomy. I'd donated a kidney to Hope. It had been a whirlwind of doctor's appointments, tests, and then the surgery. Deborah, as Chief ME, had overseen every step, ensuring the best possible care for Hope. My recovery had been an afterthought, a minor inconvenience. I remembered her telling me, impatiently, to "bear the pain, it's for your sister."

I had never worn a bikini again, not because of the scar, but because of the shame I felt for not being enough, even after giving a part of myself. Deborah had hated my tattoos, my piercings, my wild hair. She hated anything that wasn't "clean" or "proper." I wondered if she' d hate this scar, too, now that it was on someone she deemed "street trash."

Please, Mom, I begged silently. Look deeper. It's me. It's your Fawn.

But Deborah just shrugged, her clinical detachment returning. "Doesn't look like anything significant to the cause of death. Probably just a medical history detail."

Just then, a junior forensic tech, a young woman with wide, nervous eyes, rushed into the room. "Dr. Bishop! Detective Hood! We found something in the victim's stomach."

Deborah' s head snapped up. "What is it?"

"A capsule, Dr. Bishop. Waterproof. It looks like... a note inside."

Erasmo, who had just returned to the morgue, strode over, his face etched with a fresh wave of intensity. "A note? What does it say?"

The tech carefully extracted the tiny capsule. Erasmo took it, his gloved fingers trembling slightly as he twisted it open. The small, waterlogged piece of paper inside was carefully unfurled.

The phone on Deborah's hip began to vibrate, a shrill, insistent buzz that cut through the silence.