Chapter 4 - "The Copy's Cut"

Another hand carves the hour, but her seconds don't follow the same rhythm.

Mason stood in the doorway of Amelia Anderson's home, her eyes tracing the shape of the room without moving a muscle. Something about it was...too quiet. Not the kind of quiet that came from death, but the kind that came before understanding.

The body was seated upright in a high-backed chair, rigid, composed. Amelia's hands were folded neatly in her lap, and her eyes closed, as if she'd simply nodded off mid-thought. But Mason knew better. Everything in this room had been arranged.

The chair faced the old grandfather clock as if it were a god.

Tick.

Tock.

She walked in slowly, her boots silent against the thick rug. Her partner, Detective Vega, was crouched to the side near the hearth, reviewing the initial forensics notes.

"No sign of forced entry. No bruising, no blood. Carvings on the wrist, right one this time. Time reads two-fifteen," Vega murmured without looking up.

Mason stopped beside the chair. The rug beneath the victim was indented, two shallow arcs where the chair legs had been moved. She glanced back toward the clock.

"Was she moved to face it?" she asked.

"Looks that way," Vega replied, " Chair was originally angled toward the window. Neighbors said she always sat there to knit in the afternoons."

Mason nodded slowly. "He wanted her to see the clock. Even in death."

Vega glanced up, eyes narrowed. "You think he's getting bolder?"

Mason didn't answer right away. Instead, she crouched beside the body, her gaze falling to the wrist. The carving was the same careful precision she'd seen before, obsessively symmetrical, etched deep but clean.

But there was something else. Just above the twelve on the carved clock face, a faint curve. A nick in the skin, almost like...

"A second hand," Mason whispered. "This one has a second hand."

Vega stood, brow furrowed. "First time we've seen that."

He's refining it. Making them more...exact." Mason stood and walked to the grandfather clock. It was still running. The hands pointed to 4:09.

The carved time, 2:15, didn't match.

Just like the others.

She stared at the swinging pendulum, the rhythmic tick of the old clock echoing in her chest. Her pulse matched it, unwillingly.

"He's not carving time of death," she said aloud. "He's carving...moments."

"Moments?" Vega asked, crossing his arms.

"Points in time. Specific to each victim. Personal." Mason turned toward the mantle, where a dozen porcelain figurines sat, all lined up perfectly. She didn't know what she was looking for, but she felt it. A pattern. A trail.

Then she saw it. A framed photo, tucked behind the others, Amelia, younger, maybe thirty years ago, standing beside a tall man in front of a clock shop. Handwritten along the bottom: "2:15p.m.- our last goodbye."

Mason's breath caught. Her skin prickled.

She turned back to Vega. "We need to pull personal histories. All of them. Times of trauma, last words, anniversaries. He's not just killing them. He's immortalizing something."

Vega tilted his head. "Like...moments frozen in time."

Mason looked back at Amelia, sitting there so still, so curated.

"No," she said softly. "Like regrets."

Reviews

[emmajoygreen]

Clever pointers from both man and woman, perhaps helping the reader to get more and more involved, to lure the reviewer into remaining to see out the ending. However, no recognition of thanks for calling in to follow the plot is a little off-putting. ?