Doctor Phillips sat in his library, thinking. His palms were crushed into his eye sockets, trying to burst the incessant headache that seemed to dwell there more and more these days. He smoothed out the wrinkles next to his eyes, and let them go, to have him skin immediately dissolve back an etched, worn finish that almost resembled crepe paper.

Why did the girl’s body haunt him? He hadn’t even bothered checking her file, for fear of finding out her name, and thus giving an identity to something that should have been established as an “it”. The girl’s body was an “it”, not a she. If it was a she, that would give her a personality, aspirations, hope for the future. Any of her hope for the future died with the first blow, the first stitch, the first-

No, he wouldn’t picture it. Nothing could make it into a “she” in his mind except for himself. He was doing that. But! He was stopping himself. He wasn’t even thinking about it. His mind was devoid of thought, of feeling. Of her…it. She.

He sighed and leaned back, making the leather beneath him sigh. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He was getting too old for this job; it was consuming him. He had a perfectly good, charismatic wife in the living room, yet he was sitting here thinking about her…it.

He sat up and grabbed the phone from the desk in front of him. He reached into his breast pocket and removed Detective Martin’s business card, dialing the number. He answered.

“Martin.”

“Detective Martin?”

“Yeah, who is this?”

“This is Doctor Phillips.”

There was a brief pause. “Do you want something, Doctor?”

“I was wondering if there are any developments on the…the case with the locket?”

“You mean the Philly case?”

“The what case?”

“The girl. Her name was Jennifer Philly.”

“Oh.” He tried to keep his voice even, normal, but failed. He sounded lost, like a child. He shouldn’t sound like that, with so much experience, so much…

“Doctor Phillips?”

“Yes?”

“There aren’t any developments. We can’t link the kill to any other kills we know of.”

“Should you be able to?”

“Well, we’ve had some of our guys check the body out, and this wasn’t the killer’s first time. He knew just where to strike to give that girl the most painful and slow death possible.”

“Isn’t that…nice.”

“Not really, doctor.”

“I know.”

Another pause.

“Did you want anything else, Doctor?”

“The paper, what was on it. Did you…”

“Oh yeah. It was from a song…uhh…”-a rustling of papers-“I wrote the name of it down somewhere…”

“It’s alright, Detective, I know you’re busy. If you find the song, let me know. I’d like to try and help out with this investigation.”

“And why is that, doctor?”

A girl twirled in her Daddy’s arms. Her high peals of laughter, like bells, pierced the ear and caused an involuntary impulse to return the laughter. “Don’t let me go, Daddy, don’t let me go!”

“Doctor?”

Phillips sighed. “Because I’ve never seen a case like this before. I’d like to know just what kind of a sick, twisted person would do such a thing.”

“Me too, Doctor, me too.”

The dial tone buzzed in Phillips’ ear. Perhaps it was police protocol not to give salutations at the end of a phone call.

He sunk back into his chair, and thought of something he hadn’t thought of in years.

“I won’t let you go, Jessie, I promise!”

The girl giggled, then gasped. “Daddy, look! An ice cream truck!”

The father turned, setting her down in the process. She ran towards the truck, beckoning her father to follow her. She looked back to him as she ran, waving and giggling in excitement.

The truck came from nowhere. It was two times the size of the tiny ice cream truck, and it came barreling down the street.

“Jessie! Jessie, get out of the road!”

She stopped running, giving him a questioning look. “What, Daddy?”

Then she screamed. The impact made a short, but wet sound, and yet the truck didn’t stop. People were screaming, Daddy was screaming. Yet the truck kept on tumbling the girl deep in its bowels until it spat her out and left a red and black ruin.

He tried to squeeze the headache away again, but pushed his palms instead into a river of tears, the headache shoved behind and away as he remembered.

“Hey stranger,” said a voice.

He jumped, taking his hands away from his eyes. Then he settled, seeing his wife.

“Molly.”

“So you DO know who I am. I would have thought you’d forgotten, you’ve been in here so long.

She walked silently towards him, kneeling next to his chair and putting a refreshing hand on his knee.

“I’m sorry, Molly.”

“No need to be sorry. What’s wrong?”

He opened his lips to say the typical, human, “nothing” but closed them immediately. His wife knew him. Thirty years of marriage made the response “nothing” irrelevant in any situation.

“A girl…Jennifer Philly…she got killed in the strangest way.”

His wife sighed from below him. “You know you’re not supposed to look into the files. You hate knowing their names.”

“Officer Martin told me. He didn’t know.”

She quirked a soft eyebrow. “You didn’t stop him?”

“He startled me, is all, Molly. You know I wouldn’t do that to myself, not now.”

Her hand squeezed his thigh comfortingly. “I know.”

There was a pause. She pulled up a chair from the side of his desk and lounged next to him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

Did he? Did he want to talk about it? Bring back all those evil he shoved away long ago?

“He beat her to death, Molly. Smashed her face in, exploded her eyes, scratched out her arteries.”’

Though she had a small frown on her face, his wife showed no other emotion. “But you’ve seen cases like that before.”

“He sliced her chest open and put a locket with a picture of her on the outside. He stitched the hole up and left.”

“A locket?” Molly asked. “Was there anything inside?”

“A paper,” he replied, sounded tired yet matter-of-fact. “It said, ‘There’s a hidden beauty finding it’s way out of everyone.”

Molly sat forward in her chair. “What a peculiar thing to write.”

“It’s from a song. I don’t know which one.”

Another pause. “So why is it bothering you, Frank?”

He sighed, staring straight ahead, his eyes unfocused. “Jennifer Philly bared a striking resemblance to…to Jessie.”

Molly’s face tensed around her eyes, but otherwise her expression didn’t change. “You can’t always dwell in the past, Frank.”

“But you can’t always let it go, either.”

“Jessie’s been dead 15 years.”

“But I’ve had the nightmares for two years.”

At this Molly stood. “Nightmares?”

“Sudden flashbacks in the middle of conversations.”

Molly frowned, putting a hand on his arm. “That’s not good, Frank. Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“I am a doctor.”

“You’re not a psychiatrist.”

“I almost wish I was.”

Yet another silence. Molly patted Frank’s shoulder. “Come to bed, Frank. At least we can say that tomorrow is another day. Maybe they’ll have caught the killer by then.”

Frank frowned, letting his doubt show on his face. “Maybe,” he whispered.