Shirley Stanley was the first cop on the scene, when they found the body.
Of course she’d known about the case. Everyone knew about the case. Most of the country knew about the case by that point. Being on the force, Shirley had been privy to all the efforts that had already been made, back when it was still only a missing persons problem, like all the others: Monica Dixon, Angela Hargraves, Ursula Shelton, Tyler Salazar…
Shirley hadn’t been on the force, then. These were old cases, a lifetime ago. The whole mess was over, just a scary story to tell younger generations, an endless, pointless stream of speculation about who had done it. Certainly not Bishop, not Malkovich. That’s what Shirley used to say, around the office. They were too young.
She felt too young, looking at Kate Meadows’ corpse. She’d seen dead bodies before. Came with the territory, even in a town like Berlin. You can’t be a cop otherwise. She catalogued the evidence. Privately, of course, she speculated. Someone had gone out of their way to stage this scene. But these weren’t things that resulted from swordplay.
And this hadn’t been personal. The first thing you’re supposed to assume is that a victim usually knows the perpetrator. This was too elaborate.
Shirley was too young. Suddenly she found herself reexamining every person she had ever encountered in town, everyone she’d ever heard stories about. This had to be connected, to the disappearances decades back.
So the minute she got back to the station, after logging her report, Shirley went about investigating the kidnap victims. Her supervisor caught wind. She was told to stop. Then she was given a new partner. It didn’t take much for Shirley to become suspicious. She was a cop, after all.
She became convinced she was right. But she had no way to prove it.
