My husband's prized student tortured me to death. My husband—the forensic pathologist—falsified the autopsy report.

Then the killer, Bernice Barnes, married him. My soul never found rest.

Not until a serial killer on the run across the country kidnapped Bernice.

The video spread across the internet like wildfire.

On camera, Bernice was covered in blood, her fingers gone.

In the background, a mechanical voice, cold and flat:

"The March 18 Case. The killer is permitted no plea. Sentence: death by a thousand cuts."

"Next, the accomplice, Curt Baxter. You have three hours to turn yourself in. Otherwise... you can come piece your little darling back together yourself."

The entire internet erupted.

But Curt Baxter—my husband, special appointment professor of anatomy at Seabrook University, Seabrook City's chief forensic pathologist—was still in the kitchen, oblivious.

Making dinner for Bernice, who hadn't come home yet.

……

The table was already covered with dishes.

The renowned Professor Baxter, a man who once treated his hands as more precious than his own life, was standing there with a knife, shaving tofu into paper-thin chrysanthemum petals.

"Honey, come on—is this good enough for you or not?"

His voice message to Bernice was equal parts exasperation and indulgence.

"I didn't go with you to the prenatal checkup. I'll make it up to you with my life if I have to, okay?"

"Honey, answer me. Don't give me the silent treatment."

Nine o'clock at night, and he was reheating the dishes for the third time.

I drifted behind him, counting the minutes in silence.

It was the tenth year after my death.

In three more hours, Curt Baxter would die just like me.

Today was my death anniversary. It was also his wedding anniversary with Bernice.

A sharp ring cut through the apartment.

"Curt, something's happened! Your wife's in trouble!"

The color drained from his face. He sprinted to the study.

The computer sat on the desk, as if someone had taken control of it, looping that same mechanical voice:

"Turn yourself in, or your wife and child die."

He spun around instantly, and when he reached the entryway he stumbled hard enough to nearly fall.

He ran every red light on the way.

By nine thirty, Curt was strapped into the iron chair of the interrogation room.

In the dim room, the camera the killer had hacked blinked red.

"Professor Baxter. You're late."

The familiar mechanical voice. Curt's fists clenched, and he drew a long breath.

At Captain Carter's signal, he spoke.

"I'm Curt Baxter. Whatever you want, say it."

"Yes, I led the autopsy on the March 18 Case. But I guarantee you—on everything I am—there was no falsification."

Bernice's scream cut through for an instant, then was muffled into silence.

Curt shot to his feet, and the iron chair yanked him back down.

The kidnapper sat facing the camera, the mosaic blur over his face warping and twitching.

"Professor Baxter. Millie Sullivan was your wife. She was tortured, murdered, and cut to pieces, and you went out of your way to cover for her killer."

"Have you slept a single night these past ten years?"

"Ex-wife."

Curt adjusted his glasses, eyes dismissive.

"Millie Sullivan was paranoid, delusional, and impossible. We were done long before any of this."

"We'd already filed for divorce before the March 18 Case."

"Sure, we'd had some unpleasantness over Bernice before that, but that was all in the past."

He laced his fingers together and straightened his back.

"I'm a forensic pathologist. I do my job with integrity. I always have."

"Letting personal feelings compromise an autopsy is something I would never do and could never do."

His patience was visibly fraying. He leaned forward and dropped his voice to a warning:

"What, you want to avenge her? Then go find the real killer."

"Release Bernice. Right now. Or I promise you, I won't let this go."

The kidnapper laughed.

"Is that so?"

"Professor Baxter really thinks I have no evidence?"

"Evidence doesn't save anyone."

Curt was certain he'd cleaned up after himself.

"Whether you're doing this for Millie Sullivan or someone else, nobody's going to believe a murderer's word over mine."

"Slander us all you want. Bernice and I have nothing to hide."

"Millie's the same—can't even rest quiet in death. She should've been gone without a trace a long time ago."

I stood behind him, chest twisted tight with pain.

I'd been dead a long time, but the love and the hate had never dissolved.

Day after day, night after night, watching them build their happiness while the agony of being torn apart ground through me without end.

"She must've been something special. Dead and gone, and still someone's out here crying injustice for her."

Curt let out a cold laugh, sweeping his gaze around the room.

"Millie Sullivan, if your ghost is here, listen carefully."

"You threw acid on Bernice and disfigured her. I haven't even settled that score with you yet."

"Bernice is carrying my child now. You keep pulling this from beyond the grave, and I will dig you up and desecrate every bone you have left."

I drifted in front of him.

Those eyes that once brimmed with love now held nothing but blinding resentment.

Curt, do you really believe I'd haunt you even in death?

Ten o'clock. Another scream.

Blood spattered across the camera lens, and Curt jerked back hard.

The kidnapper wiped the lens with a blood-soaked glove,

leaned in close, and laughed.

"I'm not here to watch you put on a show."

"Professor Baxter, if you won't talk about yourself, let's talk about Bernice Barnes."

"How did she convince you to forge that autopsy report? With her body?"

The words landed, and Curt's breathing went heavy.

Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes turned razor-sharp.

"How do you know about that?"

A crack in the mask, just for an instant.

He caught himself almost immediately, smoothed his expression back to calm, and signaled Captain Carter to pause.

He walked straight out of the interrogation room and knocked on the Forensics Unit's door.

"I can stall him another hour at most. The kidnapper's patience is running out."

"Bernice is still in his hands. You need to trace that IP—now. As fast as you've ever done anything."

He paused, hiding the tremor in his hands that the urgency had drawn out.

"One more thing. The kidnapper's wearing a designer shirt. Track it down. There can't be more than a handful sold in this city."

I trailed behind him as he walked out of the office.

He stopped in the corridor and burned through three cigarettes, one after another.

Then he opened his phone, scrolled deep into a hidden folder in his gallery, and found my picture. He stared at it for a long time.

"Millie Sullivan, why won't you let me go?"

"Bernice just slipped up. You're dead already—why can't you just forgive her?"

"You always were petty..."

His head tipped back.

His body slid down the wall until he crumpled to the floor, all the strength drained out of him.

There was a folder in his gallery named after me.

Tens of thousands of photos, every one taken by his own hand.

The one glowing on the screen: me holding up my wedding ring, laughing.

Ten years, and he'd opened that folder more times than he could count.

But the ring itself—the one they'd pried from what was left of my flesh—he could never bring himself to look at again.

Curt couldn't let himself remember sitting down and writing those words on the autopsy report: *no significant investigative evidence found on the remains.*

He closed his eyes, then walked back into the interrogation room.

On the other side of the wall, the Forensics Unit was rapidly narrowing down the search, closing in on the kidnapper's location.

I followed close behind Curt, watching him put on his mask of grief, and ground my teeth.

I wanted to reach out and slap him across the face, ten times over.

My hand went right through him.

The clock read ten thirty.

After several rounds of back-and-forth, Curt was visibly agitated, pacing the room.

"What the hell do you want me to say?!"

"If it saves Bernice, I'll die. I'll do whatever you want!"

The kidnapper blinked, then burst out laughing.

"Professor Baxter, you know exactly what to say."

He mimed swirling a reagent bottle.

Curt went rigid.

Of course he knew.

The reagent bottle was where it all started.

On the other side of the soundproof glass, one of the officers who had worked acid-attack cases before couldn't hold back:

"Look, there's fault on both sides here. Why keep going after Curt Baxter over this?"

"Exactly. Is the kidnapper just stalling for time? There's only an hour and a half left before he kills her!"

Inside, Curt's face had drained to something almost translucent.

Captain Carter frowned slightly and pressed his earpiece to relay a message.

"The Forensics Unit just traced the kidnapper's location. It's… Professor Baxter's residence."

"I've already dispatched the Police Task Force to rescue Miss Barnes. All you need to do is keep the kidnapper talking."

Curt exhaled hard, something in his chest finally unclenching.

But the next moment, his pupils contracted sharply.

Because the kidnapper had just produced the real decisive evidence.

On camera, a bloodstained scrap of dress fabric appeared.

Floral print. The stitching was clearly amateur but neat.

"This was left at Millie Sullivan's death scene."

"I checked. The killer left fingerprints and blood on it."

The kidnapper's voice was hoarse, interrupted by a weary, dry cough. He took a sip of water before continuing.

"Professor Baxter, you hid this in your home. Did it never occur to you that I'd find it?"

That was the first dress Curt ever made for me by hand. A gift for our wedding anniversary.

Ten years ago, I wore it to a dinner and never came home alive.

Curt said nothing. Slowly, he turned his face away.

The panic in his eyes was impossible to hide.

His hands rested on the table, all ten fingers trembling.

"Impossible."

A murmur so faint I could only hear it because I was pressed against his back.

His heartbeat slammed through the silent interrogation room.

Once. Twice. Again.

Fast and brutal, like a sledgehammer cracking against his ribs.

A flash tore through Curt's mind: a rainy night, ten years ago.

Bernice, drenched in blood, coming to find him.

Lightning illuminating her features, melted and corroded by sulfuric acid, like some helpless ghost.

"Professor Baxter, I killed someone…"

"Stop waiting for her. Your wife… she's not coming back. I didn't mean to, Professor… my face just—it hurts so much."

"Professor, I don't want to go to prison… Please."

Back then, he'd softened.

For the next half hour, Curt didn't move.

No matter how Captain Carter pressed him, he sat as if turned to stone, not saying a word.

I hovered above him, watching, a thousand thoughts flooding through me at once.

The first time we met, I was wearing a floral dress.

He was carrying a thick anatomy textbook and walked straight into me. Before I could even speak,

Curt said, perfectly deadpan: "A blunt-force collision like that can cause bruising and subcutaneous bleeding. I should take you to the clinic."

It wasn't until much later that I found out he'd planned the whole thing—spent a full week staking out the library, waiting for me, and even got a friend in the medical school to help, all to make sure there'd be a reason to see me again.

Curt was never a romantic person.

Spending his days with the dead made him quiet, hard to approach. People called him the dissection fanatic.

But only I knew.

After anatomy class, we'd sneak off to the alley behind campus for offal hot pot.

He couldn't handle spice, but he'd order the hellfire level without so much as flinching.

"Liking someone means you want to do the same things she does."

He could replicate my walk perfectly, every little habit.

He knew every bone in my body—length, width, curve—and he'd even built a little plastic skeleton figurine scaled exactly to me.

He hung it from his backpack and fiddled with it every day.

The day he proposed, I was in Westhaven State for an academic conference.

A serial killer was prowling the area—one who only targeted women traveling alone.