3am

Chapter 2

We head out in Liam's car to the scene. It is a secluded area, set back off of a winding dirt road. As we jostle our way down the road, I ask Liam for the details of the case.

"Young male, age roughly estimated at around 25-30 years of age. COD appears to be strangulation, but the medical examiner will tell us for sure. A local dog owner, who apparently likes to take his dog out there to run free for a while, found the body. No signs of a struggle in the immediate vicinity, so looks like it was probably a body dump. He is dressed in a powder blue suit, but no ID or wallet found."

We reach the end of the road and climb out of the car. We start down the narrow path that leads to the open field where the body was found, and Liam and I keep an eye out for evidence. A few drag marks are all we find. They are spaced out a little, and each time we find another one, Liam makes a note of it in his notebook. "Looks like he was carried most of the way," I mutter to Liam as we approach the Police tape. "Probably only dragged when the killer couldn't handle the weight any longer."

At the scene itself, we take stock of the body, its position, and the surrounding terrain. The body is lying supine; his eyes open wide to sky. It is beginning to decay, but luckily we have had a cold snap the last week, which slowed putrefaction down considerably. Still, the face and body has bloated, and scavengers have been at the flesh. A red welt is still visible on his neck, just above the shirt collar, giving rise to the theory that he was strangled. It is thin, probably from a wire or thin piece of rope. A garrote maybe?

From what we can tell, the body is of a young man. Mid- to late-twenties, thin but athletic. He has dark brown hair and eyes, with tan skin. Hispanic maybe? I think as I take stock of everything.

We canvass the area around the body with the CSIs, but there is very little in terms of evidence to be collected. Finally, Graham Jameson, the medical examiner, arrives and takes possession of the body. Liam and I search a bit longer, but find nothing of interest or use, so we head back to headquarters to run the dead man's description through the missing persons and local prison databases.

******

The next week is a full-tilt ride of madness. Liam and I spend each day chasing down leads about our John Doe, and I spend each evening and night chasing down anything I could about my mysterious callers. And every night, at precisely 3am, those same two phone calls disrupted my sleep. One morning, toward the end of the week, after a particularly rough night, Liam asks me why I didn't just leave my phone off the hook.

"For the same reason that got me out of bed before the crack of dawn this morning," I reply. "Because Sarge could call me about a homicide at any hour of the day or night." Or Becca could finally let me see James and Lila...

It had been almost two years since my wife Rebecca packed up our children, James and Lila, and left me. We had been fighting a lot in the months previous, but I never thought she'd actually leave me. A few days later, her lawyer called me and asked me if I would move out of the house. For the kids' sake, I did. I rented a dingy apartment in the center of town. And I respected her need for space, which she had made clear the first time I tried calling. I wanted to patch things up, but she wasn't ready. After that, I promised to never call her unless it was a life or death emergency. I won't call her until she calls me first. The only silver lining to this is she hasn't filed for divorce... yet.

"You know I am working all the overtime I can. I am the primary on-call five nights a week, only because Sarge won't let me be seven nights."

"Wait, Sarge called you out to a scene this morning? He knows Lieutenant wants you and me focused solely on the John Doe case. He knows the stakes with this one! How could he even think of assigning you another case to work?!"