Victor looked uneasy in the cold and metallic environment of the morgue. Cezar, Andreaa’s dog, wandered around as we examined the nail. Andreaa had measured it and taken notes, and as she slid it under the microscope Petra walked in. She looked angry, and I couldn’t blame her; I had kept her out of the loop and lied to her.
“Okay Andreaa, what do we have here?” she asked, her manner short and strict.

Andreaa looked up from the microscope. “Besides not enough time to research this nail, all I have is confirmation that this is indeed a similar nail to those we took from the dead girls, and there is indeed writing on it, but I haven’t yet seen what the text says.” She turned back and peered through the microscope, adjusting it until she finally made a confirming sound. She was able to read the text. “Somehow I wonder why this guy is making you jump through hoops … and why you two gladly jump through them,” she said, sitting back and crossing her arms over her chest.
Petra glared at her. “It’s not like we have a choice,” she replied through gritted teeth.
I looked from Andreaa to Petra. “There is always a choice. Andreaa is right, we have been playing his game, and by doing that we almost make sure he will be right. We need to change how we do this, we need to take actions.”
Petra glowered at me angrily. “You’ve already taken enough action, Tara; you agreed to keep me in the loop on this and you did not. You even lied to me. How can I trust you?” she snarled.
I felt bad about it, but she was right. “I know I did, Petra, but I am sorry. I didn’t want to waste time with police paperwork,” I told her.
She looked at me and finally gave a little smile. “But at least you could have told me.”
I sat down and turned to Andreaa. “Could you tell us what is on the nail, Andreaa? If we are going to jump through hoops we better do it prepared.”
She smiled as she looked over at Victor, who still seemed distinctly ill at ease. “Don’t worry, lion man, the people here are all fully dead. No zombies here … well, except for Doctor Giggles but he’s not here right now.”
Victor gave a shrug and looked around like a little child. It was almost adorable to see how uncomfortable he was. Petra also looked at him, as if noticing him for the first time. “And who the fuck are you, exactly?” The fury in her eyes could have set a forest ablaze.
“I am Professor Victor Linnaeus, miss,” he stuttered. “And what is the professor doing here?” she continued to question him.
“He is helping me on this case; he’s the one who helped solve the riddles. He’s with me, so if you can stop acting like a Cerberus hellhound then Andreaa can tell us what the next damn riddle is so we can get on with trying to find this girl” I snarled back at her.
She nodded and looked back to Andreaa. “Well?”
Andreaa squinted back into the microscope and read the riddle aloud. “Two bodies have I, though both joined in one. The more still I stand, the quicker I run. What am I?” “Any idea?” I asked Victor.
He rubbed his chin. “It sounds familiar, but I can’t dig it from my mind,” he replied.
Petra snorted and shook her head. “Another waste of time.” Her attitude was starting to get on my nerves. I could understand she was angry with me, but her behavior in this case wasn’t something I would accept from a police officer. She noticed how I was looking at her and threw her hands in the air. “What?” she asked.
“Well for one thing you can start acting like a goddamn cop for once and do your bloody job. I am a hired help with a civilian helping me and I have found out more than you and this entire shit-heap police force put together. There is a girl dying or dead out there and you want to waste your time and mine bitching and complaining about promises. Yes, I made a mistake by not telling you, and yes I kept stuff from you, but that is because I am working on the fucking case. We need to get on with it, because time keeps slipping through our fingers; time doesn’t stop and neither should we.” I realized I was shouting at her.
A smile crept onto Victor’s face, “That’s it!” he shouted excitedly.
Petra and I looked at him and asked together, “What is it?” Victor gestured wildly with his hands as he walked over to us, then reached in his pocket for the note and a pen. “It is quite simple, there is a common denominator in the riddles: endlessness. The first one was tomorrow, right? Well, tomorrow never comes; it becomes today, that also has a tomorrow. The second one was time. Time also doesn’t end; there is always time and it is the thing that turns tomorrow into today, and so on. The third answer was river. You see, a river also never ends; it flows over into the sea and thus is also endless. So this fourth one should also be something related to endlessness. When I was thinking about it, this might be related to the infinity symbol; it looks like number eight lying on its side.” He drew the symbol and showed it to us.
“So that’s the answer, the infinity symbol?” Petra asked Victor. He shook his head and turned the note till it showed just a regular number eight. “The infinity symbol doesn’t run faster as it stands still, but this does,” Victor said as he continued to draw something around the eight.
“That’s an hourglass,” I said as he showed us the note. He nodded, smiling widely. “That is the answer to this one: an hourglass.”
Petra shook her head. “No, that cannot be right. An hourglass will stop running when there’s no more sand in it.”
Victor smiled. “In a way, yes, it does stop running. But that which it measured did not, for time doesn’t stop to wait for someone to turn the hourglass over before it continues running,” he explained.
Petra nodded in agreement. “You got me there,” she said, “But what do we do with this information? It’s not like it helps us solve the biggest question here: who and where is the seventh girl,” I said as I sat down. We had more answers, but as far as the girl we were still on the same square we had started on. The more I thought about this case the more I thought that the murderer had been brilliant and not just insane … although the border between the two was so thin that he could actually have been both.
I felt like shouting and screaming again. Why was he doing this? He was dead and could find no pleasure in this. Or had we been right and has he had help with this? Did he have someone helping him, doing all these things, or had he been planning this all along? The more riddles I found answers to, the more questions it seemed to spawn. It was maddening. As I let my mind race over this the voices seemed to strike back at me with a hard, forceful blow to the head. I fell to the floor as their angry chatter hurt my brain and my skull. The voices were shouting, screaming; it felt like the six girls I had not been able to save were in there also, blaming me for their deaths.
I pressed my hands against my ears and tried to silence them. I needed pepper leaf badly; I wanted to hush them in clouds of smoke and drugs. The longer they kept shouting and talking the more my head felt like exploding. I couldn’t hear anything around me, and any hand that touched me I slapped away. I could not handle this anymore; they had to stop now. It had to stop.

Next Chapter: A proposal