Chapter 3

I was woken the next day by the phone. Half-asleep, I answered it; it was the police. They wanted me to come down to the station to assist with an investigation.

Lucas was dead.

Just last night, on the way back from dropping me off, his car had stopped under an overpass less than two kilometers from my home. The scene was gruesome.

The police showed me the photos. My stomach churned, and I nearly vomited on the spot. The car door had been ripped off by sheer force, like tearing a piece of cardboard. Lucas was still in the driver's seat, but he was mangled beyond recognition. His entire chest cavity had been torn open, ribs splayed outward. Organs were scattered across the ground. It didn't look like a car accident, nor did it look like the work of a human. It looked more like an attack by some large beast.

"We checked the surveillance, but that area is a blind spot." The young detective stared at me. "But after dropping you off, he did stay there for about ten minutes."

"Why did he stop?" I asked.

"We don't know. Maybe to smoke, maybe he saw something."

The detective closed the file. "Where were you last night between 11:00 and 11:30?"

"At home."

"can anyone verify that?"

"My girlfriend."

Walking out of the police station, the midday sun scorched the top of my head, yet I felt cold all over.

Lucas was dead.

The state of his body was as if he had been shredded by a wild animal.

I remembered that inexplicable sentence Sophia had said last night.

"There is the smell of a stranger."

And that other line—

"I can't always control myself."

An idea, absurd to the extreme, grew wildly in my mind. I shook my head, trying to fling it away. Sophia was so frail she couldn't even twist open a jar of jam. How could she tear a car door off with her bare hands?

But that unease took root in my heart like weeds.