“A fresh piece of history,” he argued. “A little too fresh. Give it more time, and maybe she will reconsider, but for now, I think everyone feels the same way. The Coastal Killer is not someone we are ready to welcome. That bastard shoved rings down victims' throats. I can barely think about that without getting nauseous.”

The killer’s modus operandi.

I sighed, adding another box to the pile we created.

“But people deserve to know the victims,” I pointed out.

“Do you really think tourists will want to visit an exhibit focused solely on the victims?” he asked, hesitation in his eyes.

“They’re assholes if they don’t,” I mumbled.

“I agree,” he noted. “But that’s unfortunately the depressing truth of it. Tourists are only interest in the infamous Coastal Killer. It was all the headlines were four years ago. That type of gore and tragedy is just not something any of us are ready to remember.”

“I just think the victims should have some sort of memorial,” I said.

Selfishly, it would give me an excuse to share the project I’d been working on the past few years, a way to avoid hiding from Francis’ control over everything, to continue the research without the added stress of concealing it all.

“Besides, they never caught the damn bastard. If he’s still out there, we don’t need that attention turned to us,” Barren said with a nervous laugh.

It wasn’t fair. The Coastal Killer disappeared a little over three years ago. Without a trace, he just vanished into thin air. The FBI gave up, local police gave up, and eventually, our little coastal town went back to the peace it had known before the killings started.

Every time I thought about it, my blood boiled. The killer deserved to rot in prison, and instead, he was enjoying life comfortably elsewhere.

Everyone had giving up hope.

This shouldn’t be the normal. There was still so much evidence left to look at, but no one cared.

“Imagine the podcasters and true crime junkies,” Barren pointed out, seeing the disappointment on my face. “They’d flock here if they heard we had the inside scoop on one of the most notorious killers in a decade.”

I gave him a weak smile. All I wanted was justice for the victims, and if no one could provide that, then the least I could do was preserve their memory.

One of my first weeks on the job, I had stumbled across all of the old newspaper clippings while processing records, and the idea started to form there. It became my passion project.

There was so much good we could do with our position.

“At least it’d give tourists someone other than Milo L.,” I teased, forcing myself to stop harping on the topic.

“You mean Micah L.?” Barren asked, raising a brow.

“Yeah, that guy,” I said, waving him off.