Saul sat on the edge of the lake with the rough sand sifting between his toes as he dug his feet into the beach. The lake was cold and deep, and the sand was rough instead of fine. It was rough, almost like rocks instead of sand, and it hurt the feet to walk across it. He looked out across the foggy surface and watched a loon come in to land on the surface. It landed gracefully and came to a stop, sitting on the water and looking about for small fish under the surface. He watched the loon for a few minutes before turning to leave, but was caught by something else in the water.

The waves lapping against the shore had brought up something which stuck on the rocky sand. He walked over to see what it was, and was unprepared to discover a body rising and falling as it lay partially in the water. It was the body of a woman, naked and apparently the victim of some violence, with long, matted brown hair which lay in the water. Saul dragged her up onto the shore and covered her with his cloak before he returned to the village to get help to investigate the mysterious death.

The office of the detective was near the middle of town and he entered to give as accurate an account as he could. Saul was a member of the security force for the town and knew the information to give to Detective John Sontag. “The body was washed ashore neat the jetty,” he said, “she had brown hair and was somewhere near five and a half feet tall. Hard to tell with the conditions I found her, but she could be in her thirties.”

“Better take me to the scene,” Sontag said, “and we might be able to discern more when we look further into it.” They mounted horses outside and rode toward the jetty, where the body had been left.

Saul navigated the fog on memory and brought them to the place where the body had been stored. When they arrived, Saul stopped and dismounted to uncover the body for Sontag to examine, but it was not there. “I don’t understand,” Saul said, “it was here underneath my cloak.”

He began to investigate the area as Sontag got down from his horse and aided him. The pair searched the area for clues, finding little in the way of evidence, but located carriage tracks nearby which led back toward the town. Saul started following them on foot and Sontag followed behind on horseback, leading Saul’s mount behind him. The tracks led all the way to the edge of town, where they abruptly ended as the men found the carriage in question, with Saul’s discarded cloak inside. The section of the town where they stopped was home to little else than a blacksmith shop and a tavern, so they started with the tavern.

Nobody inside seemed interested in talking to the police, but they gleaned a little information from the people before returning to the office. There, they stabled their horses and parted ways after jotting some notes down about what little evidence they had. Saul wended his way through the narrow streets, thinking the while about the body as it lay bobbing in the lappping water. The victim was not familiar to him, which meant she was a very recent newcomer or that she was traveling through. He guessed she was a traveler and met her demise at the hands of someone with a penchant for people who would not be missed. It certainly allowed for people to overlook the death or to rule it accidental, but the evidence of maleficence was too overwhelming to ignore in this case. They searched around the tavern separately before splitting up to search other areas and hopefully expedite their investigation. Saul headed toward a nearby warehouse just as a scream rose from somewhere which could have curdled fresh milk.

“Aaaahh,” Saul heard Sontag scream from a short distance and ran toward where the noise originated. There he found only a pool of bright red arterial blood which had sprayed across the ground before trickling off in one direction. He drew the cudgel from his jacket and followed the trail, certain that his friend was dead.

It led him a short distance away and seemed to terminate in the middle of a road, but he was in an area where only a couple locations would be suitable for storing a body, let alone multiple bodies. He stood at the end of the trail of blood, heedless to the din of people now emerging to go about their daily business, and closed his eyes to sharpen his hearing. He tried to tune out the static of the morning bustle and focus on the out-of-place noises.

A gate creaked just to the south and he turned and sprinted that direction, dodging pedestrians as he barreled through the street. The gate banged shut as he reached it and he flung it open to continue to give chase. Sounds of scraping came to his ears and he quickly caught up to the one dragging Sontag’s body out of the streets.

He tackled the person, grappling with them as they fell and rolled on the ground. He gained the upper hand and restrained the man before flipping him over and looking on his face. The one who looked up at him with bruised features was Sontag himself. Saul leveled his cudgel at him as a threat and turned to examine the body he had been dragging.

The corpse was another nameless person, although she looked startlingly alike to the woman from the lake, and matched the descriptions of several other missing women who had never been recovered. Saul looked at Sontag with disgust and adjusted his weapon in his hands, getting a better grip on its handle. This had to end here. He took a step toward the killer he had once respected, confident in his intent.