“That ranger was surprisingly easy to talk to,” Hank remarked as they stepped out of the thick brush and back onto the packed earth of the main canyon trail.
Nick brushed a stray pine needle off his sleeve.
“Can you blame him?
When was the last time a homicide went down inside Forest Park?
Twenty years ago?”
Hank tilted his head, gazing up at the dense canopy of Douglas firs as he calculated.
“Roughly.
Must’ve been around 1999—I was only eight years old then.
I remember the local news channels going crazy over it.
Three female bodies found back-to-back off Saltzman Road.
My grandmother wouldn’t even let me play on the front porch for a month.”
Nick’s memory of that era was far sharper than Hank’s.
Back in 1999, he had just transmigrated into this seven-year-old body.
To hide his sudden cognitive leap and avoid raising suspicion with Aunt Marie, he had feigned selective mutism from the shock of the car accident that killed his parents, secretly practicing his English pronunciation while listening to the radio.
In those days, the Kessler household had no home computer or internet connection.
His only windows into American society were the evening broadcasts on a small tube TV and the morning edition of the The Oregonian.
He had to read the physical newspaper in secret—if an seven-year-old child who supposedly couldn’t read spent hours staring intently at crime reporting, even the most forgiving guardian would start asking questions.
That late-90s serial murder case had paralyzed Portland.
The task force labored for nearly two years before DNA profiling finally trapped the killer: Todd Reid, a repeat offender who ultimately pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, drawing three consecutive life sentences without parole.
“You know,” Hank said, his tone shifting as a sudden thought struck him, “this setup actually reminds me of a file I browsed last month.
Something similar happened down in Manson Falls.”
Nick’s interest piqued instantly.
As a former patrol officer, he hadn’t possessed clearance for inter-jurisdictional homicide reports.
“What kind of file?”
Hank scratched his crew cut, piecing the details together.
“I wasn’t assigned to it, but I caught a look at the crime scene photos during shift change.
A hiker was ripped apart on a trail outside town.
The local sheriff’s department logged it as a rogue bear attack, but they never found a single paw print, bear scat, or tuft of fur.”
“Whether it’s a rogue animal or a predator on two legs, we need to close this fast,” Nick said gravely.
He could already foresee the media circus once the press caught wind of the dismembered remains.
Environmental non-profits and volunteer organizations regularly dispatched hundreds of citizens into the woods to clear invasive English ivy, maintain the trails, and plant native flora.
The moment the local news ran headlines declaring the wilderness trails unsafe, public panic would erupt, bringing down a tidal wave of political pressure onto the bureau.
The two detectives walked toward the western parking apron when Nick suddenly froze, raising a hand.
“Hold up.
Do you hear that?”
Hank, nearly bumping into Nick’s back, stumbled to a stop.
“Hear what?”
A faint, tinny audio stream was drifting through the ferns along the trail embankment.
Nick ducked back under the yellow police tape and dropped to one knee, tracing the sound to a patch of clover.
Lying in the dirt was a hot-pink Apple iPod—the exact same shade as the Nike running shoe they had logged twenty yards back.
The first-generation iPod Mini, once an iconic symbol of portable technology, was already becoming a relic in this era, rapidly supplanted by high-capacity Nanos, Touches, and smartphones.
A track was looping at high volume through a pair of white earbuds tangled around the device.
The melody struck a chord in Nick’s memory, though he couldn’t immediately name the track; outside of a few timeless classic rock anthems, his grasp of 80s synth-pop was minimal.
“Sweet dreams are made of this…
Who am I to disagree…”
Beside him, Hank began swaying his shoulders, softly humming the iconic baseline.
“Eurythmics.
‘Sweet Dreams.’ Absolute classic.”
Nick shook his head with a faint smile.
Tone-deaf across two lifetimes, he appreciated music but lacked the vocal coordination to carry a tune—the kind of guy who got politely asked to step away from a karaoke mic.
Using a sterile pair of latex gloves, Nick carefully sealed the pink iPod into a clear plastic evidence bag before handing it off to the forensic lead.
An hour later, the duo pulled up to the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct in downtown Portland.
The near-century-old stone building had originally functioned as City Hall.
While its interior layout was somewhat outdated for modern digital policing, the architecture retained a grand, historic dignity.
Soaring arched corridors, wrought-iron chandeliers, and polished dark-walnut staircases gave the facility the solemn atmosphere of a 19th-century court building.
With the sun dipping below the West Hills, working late into the night was an absolute certainty.
As this was Nick’s maiden case as a Grade 2 Detective, he embraced the grind without complaint, volunteering to spearhead the missing-persons cross-checks and background databases.
“I’ll head down to the forensics lab and oversee the latent print recovery on that iPod,” Hank said, holding up the evidence pouch.
“Grab me some food on your way back up,” Nick replied, turning on his desktop monitor and pulling up the Oregon State Police Law Enforcement Data System (LEDS).
Though new to the Homicide desk, Nick was far from inexperienced in investigative methodology.
He had earned high marks in his criminology coursework, backed by years of obsessive independent study.
Vernon Geberth’s foundational text Practical Homicide Investigation, the FBI Behavioral Science Unit’s Crime Classification Manual, and standard forensic texts on trace evidence interpretation sat well-thumbed on his home bookshelf.
American homicide investigation had evolved into a high-tech science largely out of necessity, driven by historically elevated national violent crime rates.
While detectives in smaller, low-density cities enjoyed manageable caseloads, major metropolitan departments often struggled with closure rates.
Compounding the problem was the chronic backlog plaguing state DNA registries and forensic laboratories.
Even when a major homicide case received top-tier priority, extracting, amplifying, and matching a DNA sample through the CODIS system routinely required a week or more for definitive results.
Nick and Hank couldn’t afford to sit on their hands for seven days while a killer roamed the local trails.
They had to build their case through traditional detective work: field canvasses, victimology, physical evidence, and latent fingerprint matching.
While DNA processing remained a bottleneck in 2008, automated fingerprint identification technology (AFIS) was fast and reliable.
Just as the clock struck 8:00 PM, Hank returned to the bullpen carrying two steaming cups of instant ramen and a fresh printout from the crime lab.
“Got a hit,” Hank said, setting a hot cup on Nick’s desk and slapping a paper file beside it.
“Forensics lifted two pristine thumbprints off the click-wheel of that iPod.”
Nick looked up from his screen, taking the file.
“Who is she?”
“Sylvia Coleman,” Hank said, leaning against the edge of the desk.
“21 years old, junior at Portland State University.
Her roommate filed a missing persons report with the precinct less than three hours ago when Sylvia didn’t return from her afternoon jog through Forest Park.”
Nick opened the folder.
Staring back at him from a driver’s license photo was a bright, smiling young woman with blonde hair.
His eyes moved down to the case notes, picking out a crucial detail highlighted in yellow marker: Subject was last seen leaving her dorm wearing a bright red hoodie and pink running shoes.
Nick’s fingers paused on the paper.
The red jacket.
The torn remnants in the woods.
The missing girl.
A cold realization settled over him.
This wasn’t a random animal attack, nor was it a simple mugging gone wrong.
Someone—or something—was hunting specific targets in the woods, using the dense wilderness of Forest Park as a personal slaughterhouse.