Episode five-The Red File
997 Words
The station hadn’t changed either.
Same flickering lights in the hallway. Same coffee that smelled like burnt rubber. Same bulletin board covered in outdated flyers and faded BOLOs no one had looked at in months. Hollow Creek PD was small, underfunded, and badly lit — the kind of place that felt like it was constantly two steps behind the world outside.
Elias Creed stood in the narrow lobby, staring at the photograph taped to the wall behind the receptionist’s desk.
It was old — maybe ten years. A group shot of officers standing in front of the precinct, smiling. Uniforms crisp. Badges polished. Ava was there, in the back row, arms folded, expression unreadable even then.
He studied it for a moment, then turned when he heard footsteps behind him.
“You gonna stare at that wall all day?” Doyle’s voice cut through the air like a dull blade. “Or do I finally get to say I told you so?”
Elias didn’t answer.
The captain approached slowly, arms folded across his chest, cigarette dangling from his lips. He was a little heavier now, grayer too, but the eyes hadn’t changed — sharp, weary, watchful.
“You look like hell,” Doyle said. “Worse than usual.”
“I feel fine,” Elias replied, stepping past him. “What room are you holding the evidence in?”
Doyle sighed. “No hello, no ‘good to see you’? You’ve been gone five years, Creed.”
“Not long enough.”
Doyle led him down the hallway without another word. Ava joined them halfway there, handing Elias a file folder.
“Autopsy’s scheduled for 10 a.m. tomorrow,” she said. “Prelim report’s in there. No signs of s****l assault. Ligature marks suggest she was held for at least 24 hours before death. She had a name this time, by the way.”
Elias opened the folder.
NAME: LANA EVERETT
AGE: 29
Occupation: Freelance photographer
Last seen: Two days ago, leaving a coffee shop in Fairmont.
“Everett,” Elias repeated. “She wasn’t local.”
“No. She lived in Fairmont, about an hour and a half east. No family nearby, no criminal record. Just… gone. Until now.”
“Why Hollow Creek?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
They stepped into the evidence room. It smelled like dust and bleach. Metal shelves lined the walls, labeled boxes stacked by case number. Doyle reached for a locked cabinet in the back corner and punched in a code.
“You kept the original files?” Elias asked.
Doyle grunted. “What, you thought I’d throw ‘em out?”
He opened the drawer and pulled out a red folder. Thick. Worn. Paper clipped with tags and old notes. Elias knew it instantly — the real case file. Not the sanitized version. Not what the Bureau filed away and buried.
He reached for it.
Doyle didn’t let go right away. “You sure you want this?”
Elias met his eyes. “I never wanted any of this.”
The folder passed between them.
He flipped it open and scanned the first few pages. Amelia’s last day. Her final text message. The photos from the forest. God, those photos. Then the witness statement from the hiker who’d found her. The inconsistencies. The time gap.
“You kept Mercer’s name redacted,” Elias said.
Doyle shrugged. “I had to. Official orders. You remember how many roadblocks we hit back then.”
“Yeah. I remember.”
He turned to the last page. A scrawled note in the corner, written in red ink.
“Symbol at scene? Possible origin: Fort Weller experiments.”
He froze.
Ava stepped forward. “What is that?”
Elias didn’t answer right away. His fingers tightened on the page. That name — Fort Weller — it hadn’t come up in years. He had buried it with the rest of his childhood. He had to.
But here it was, bleeding back through the years like an old wound that never closed.
“It was a military-run psychiatric facility,” he said finally. “It shut down in the nineties. My mother worked there. Part-time nurse. She used to take me with her.”
Ava blinked. “Wait, you were a child in a facility like that?”
“Unofficially. I wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“What were they doing there?”
Elias looked at Doyle, who didn’t meet his gaze.
“Behavioral conditioning,” he said. “Memory suppression. Psychological testing. They wanted to see if trauma could be engineered — and if genius could be triggered through stress.”
Ava’s face tightened. “You think this has something to do with your past?”
“I don’t know what I think,” Elias replied. “But Amelia was researching Fort Weller before she died. She thought it was connected to a string of disappearances across the state. All unsolved. All strange. No one believed her.”
“And now?” Doyle asked.
Elias turned another page. There, tucked into the folder, was a small black-and-white photo. A stone wall. A carved symbol above a door — circular, split down the center with jagged lines crossing through it.
He pointed to it.
“That was painted on a tree at the latest scene.”
Ava looked at him, brows furrowed. “We didn’t see anything like that.”
“You wouldn’t,” Elias said. “It was drawn in pine soot. Old habit from Weller protocols. Temporary markings, not visible unless you know what you’re looking for.”
Doyle exhaled slowly. “You think whoever did this… was part of those experiments?”
“I think someone’s telling me they were,” Elias said. “And if that’s true…”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
Ava stepped closer. “If it’s true, then what?”
He looked up at her.
“Then Amelia wasn’t just killed. She was silenced.”
- Writer
