“You live a simple life, pal.” Ben laughed to himself as his phone vibrated with a response to his earlier call to his daughter’s therapist.

Hi Ben: Let’s set up a call for you to update me on Kayla and we’ll decide where to go from there. Send me times that are good for you. Best, Rachel Hirsch.

Made sense, Ben thought, responding with his thanks.

Forty-five minutes later he was in his office reviewing the cases once again.

He was drawn to the Swedish case of the doctors and the unspeakable things they did. Then he turned to the old Canadian case.

This could be one to consider.

Sixteen

Eternity, Manitoba
2000

“Why?”

Connie Tullock’s weak, watery voice had been amplified. The sound filled the small boardroom at Eternity Police headquarters, where the primary team had gathered around the table. The faces of the RCMP and Eternity officers were taut with concentration as Jurek replayed her dying words.

“Why’re you here…?”

“Connie, we need to know who hurt you.”

“What’re you doing here?”

Connie coughed, then mechanical beeping and pinging of monitors overtook the recording before it was switched off.

“Let’s hear it again, Bill,” Louella Sloan said, making more notes.

Jurek had not yet determined whether he liked Sloan, who’d insisted at the meeting’s outset that she be called Lou and she’d call him Bill. “It’ll make it easier for us to work together,” she’d said. Jurek had learned from the scar on the back of Sloan’s hand that she’d been shot by a killer she’d arrested, and also learned that she was divorced and that her daughter was studying science at the University of Toronto. But while Sloan checked her phone’s messages occasionally, she was all business when she stared at him over her glasses waiting for him to replay the brief recording for what must’ve been the twentieth time.

Again, after it ended, officers drew the same conclusions.

“I don’t make anything of it,” one said.

“She’s too sedated,” another said.

Sloan threw a glance to Jurek to see if his response had changed but he shook his head.

“She was really foggy, Lou, barely knew why I was there,” he said.

“I don’t believe Connie Tullock was talking to you, Bill,” Sloan said.

“What?”

All of the investigators looked at Sloan.

“Sometimes,” Sloan said, “when regaining consciousness after a traumatic event, victims are thrust back to the moments prior to the event and replay them.” She glanced to her notes. “Connie Tullock was talking to whoever was in her house when she and her family arrived home early.”

Jurek and some of the others nodded at Sloan’s observation.

“Then that means she knew them, that this was not random,” he said.

“Exactly,” Sloan said. “The crime scene supports this. There are few signs of a struggle.”

“The autopsy will tell us more,” Jurek said.