Chapter 2
703words
"We've confirmed the deceased is your daughter, Amy Lin." My voice rasped like sandpaper. "She'd been missing for days. Why didn't you report it?"
She finally raised her eyes. Those unnervingly calm pupils flicked to the photo, then back to me—as if examining something utterly unrelated to herself. "I killed her."
My stomach dropped.
She didn't register my shock, the corner of her mouth curling into something that wasn't quite a smile.
Ice crawled from my feet to my scalp. What the fuck did that mean?
The door banged open and my partner stuck his head in, face tight with tension. "Mike, we've got a situation. Some woman's tearing up the front desk. Says her son's missing and she'll only talk to you."
Before he finished, a woman in a designer suit with mascara-streaked cheeks burst past him. She swept in like a hurricane, trailing expensive perfume and raw panic. "Officer! My son, Jack Thompson—he's missing! You have to find him!"
Her name was Sarah Thompson.
Her wild gaze swept the room before locking onto Mei Lin. Her scream nearly shattered my eardrums: "Her! That murderer! Amy's mother! She knows where Jack is!"
I moved to escort Sarah out when Mei Lin spoke. Her voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the chaos like an ice pick. Looking directly at Sarah—as if the one-way glass didn't exist—she said in flawless English: "Your son?"
She paused, her face arranging itself into something almost resembling compassion.
"Perhaps you should try today's special filling."
Sarah's screams died mid-breath. Her eyes widened as every drop of blood drained from her face. She crumpled to the floor, releasing a sound more animal than human.
The entire precinct went dead silent.
I signaled for my partner to get Sarah to the break room, then resumed my seat across from Mei Lin. This woman was a bottomless well of black water, and I needed to know what lurked beneath. Information sent over the Thompson family background—a history straight out of a daytime soap: Mei Lin was the ex-wife of wealthy Robert Thompson. They had a daughter, Amy. Later, Mei Lin miscarried a son. Shortly after, Robert fell for young, beautiful Sarah, quickly producing a new son—Jack Thompson.
Old flame, new love, half-siblings, and a lost baby boy. The pieces twisted together, reeking of something rotten.
The phone's shrill ring shattered the silence. Tech Department.
"Mike, you might want to sit down." The voice was steel-cold. "Lab results are in from the bun shop. Except for those two fingers in the first reported plate, everything else is lamb. The meat on the cutting board? Lamb leg. Bones in the stock pot? Sheep. Even most of the blood is animal."
My eyes locked onto Mei Lin. She stared back serenely, as if she could hear every word through the receiver.
"The refrigerator body is definitely human—confirmed as Amy Lin. But it looks like only those two fingers made it into the food." A pause. "The real nightmare is that master stock pot. It's a DNA cemetery—spices, herbs, years of accumulated proteins. Finding specific markers in there is like hunting for a specific grain of sand on a beach. We're working on it, but don't hold your breath."
I hung up, feeling like a pawn in her game. Mei Lin had deliberately used those fingers to bring us to her door, but hadn't followed through completely. What the hell was her endgame?
Before I could process this, my phone rang again—CSI this time: "Detective, we found something in the bun shop's storage room. Delivery uniform, coil of steel wire, and one of those industrial wheeled garbage bins."
Delivery uniform. Steel wire. Wheeled bin. Not the tools a mother would need to kill her daughter. This had the hallmarks of a calculated abduction and execution.
I turned back to Mei Lin. She'd leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, softly humming a lullaby in a language I didn't recognize. The melody was so tender it made my skin crawl.
