The Bodies Of Missing Girls Have Been Showing Up In Our Small Town, And The Locals Are Starting To Fear A ‘Time Traveling Serial Killer’

However, that fateful call about Miss August from our local sport fishing pro Pop Hayden started a stream of unbelievable discoveries and circumstances that may not have been quite as grisly as anything I saw in Chicago, but were every bit as torturous and a million times more mystifying. Just a few days into it, I wished I was back to examining the messes of gang shootings.

I let out a deep exhale when I looked at my office phone and saw the coroner’s office number flashing in the pale green light of the screen.

“Sheriff Green.”

“Hi, it’s Beverly from the coroner’s office. We have more details about Miss August we would like to share with you, sir.”

Beverly was the opposite of a person who professionally works with dead people cliché when it came to looks. She was under 30 with a well-manicured mane of blonde hair with looked like she had stolen it off of a giant Barbie doll, had a cherubic face with a dimpled smile and perfect teeth. Socially, she was your stereotypical coroner – awkward as hell, perpetually straining to get even the most mundane sentences out of her mouth. She probably would have been diagnosed with Asperger’s or something growing up if she wasn’t the hottest girl in whatever schools she went to.

“Yes, Beverly.”

“We put Miss August’s information into a DNA database that we have and it pulled up a flag for a missing person’s report from 1961?”

“What?”

“Yes. It looks like she was filed as a missing person in Valley, California in 1961 and according to the database, she was never found.”

“Well fuck me.”

Beverly responded with a nervous laugh.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “The body looked fresh?”

“I know. I have been running tests the past couple of days though and it does seem she passed away back in 1961.”

“Holy… sorry.”

“You might want to just come down,” Beverly suggested the last thing I wanted to hear at the moment.

I hated the coroner’s office. Well, I hate almost any kind of doctor’s office. The sterile environment, the prickliness of the women behind the front desks, the prick of needles, something about it all always made me feel as if my spine had turned into a limp noodle as soon as I walked through the door.

It is sad to admit, but the beauty of Beverly at least made the visit feel a little bit better. I am pathetic, but at least her freckled cheeks gave me a slight distraction from the vivisected woman from the 60s sprawled across the steel examination table and the smell of the world’s worst chemicals which floated in the air.

“I discovered something very strange about Miss August’s body this morning,” Beverly started in as soon as I walked in the room almost as if she was just staring at the door, waiting for me to walk in.

Beverly led me over to the body and I fought to keep my stomach when I looked down upon Miss August’s body again and put on some gloves.

Beverly grabbed hold of Miss August’s arm without any hesitation as if she was just some kind of toy doll or stuffed animal. She held up the limp arm in my direction nodded at me in a manner that suggested I touch the arm.

“Go ahead,” Beverly said. “I at first thought the condition was from the cold of the river or frost of the morning, but it didn’t go away in that manner.”

I touched the arm with one index finger there and left it there with my eyes locked on Beverly, not the body.

“It feels as if her body was frozen for an extended period of time,” Beverly explained. “Not just like a few weeks in a freezer either. Like years.”

“Since like 1961?” I asked.