Chapter 2

The female officer shot the low-ranking officer a look before sitting across from me. "I suspect that you haven't been entirely truthful."

I clenched my fists. "What do you mean?"

She stared intently at me, turned off the surveillance cameras, and lowered her voice. "Don't you recognize me, Renee? It's me, Hayley Brown."

A chill ran through me. Honestly, I didn't recognize her at first glance. She was my high school classmate, a woman who had had a crush on Steve for the longest time.

She never got along with me and had pursued him for quite some time. After he rejected her, I never saw her again. To my surprise, she had ended up becoming a police officer.

"The DNA test on the body hasn't returned yet. We can't confirm if the deceased is Steve Manson. For now, we have reasons to believe this is an actor you hired to impersonate him."

Hayley glanced at Steve sitting off to the side, her voice softening slightly. "Steve, do you remember me?"

He looked at her for a second, then quickly lowered his head. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I saw a flicker of pain in her eyes.

I quickly chimed in. "His brain is damaged now. He can't answer anything except simple yes-or-no questions."

Hayley tapped her pen against the paper, lost in thought. "Let me ask you, then. Why did Steve get into that car accident in the first place?"

I froze for a moment, pulled back into that painful memory. Back then, I found out Steve was cheating on me. He had started lying very well about a year ago.

At first, it was lipstick left on the passenger seat. Then it was a strand of unfamiliar long hair tangled around a button. Then came the frequent excuses of working overtime and nights when he simply didn't come home.

All signs pointed to his infidelity.

He removed the dashcam and wiped every trace of footage from his phone. I couldn't find a single piece of solid evidence, so I broke down, confronting him like a madwoman.

In return, all I got was his impatient roar. "Enough! Do you realize how paranoid and crazy you look right now? You wanna check my phone? Here, go ahead! You'd better get on your knees and apologize to me if you can't find anything!"

By the time I completely gave up on Steve and prepared to file for divorce, the accident happened. He had been driving while exhausted, and his car collided with a truck halfway up the mountain road.

I sighed deeply. "Should I say karma exists? He was on his way to see his mistress when he got into the crash. He got hit so badly that he turned into an idiot. The case is already on file. You can check it."

Hayley nodded and sent a message on her phone. A reply came back quickly. After reading it, her expression grew heavier. "What you just said is true, but that still isn't enough to prove this man is Steve."

I was done holding back. "Are you nuts? Can't you tell this is clearly Steve? Remember the hundreds of portraits you drew of him when you were studying offender prof—"

She cut me off. "I suspect you killed Steve, Renee."

I laughed in disbelief. "Say another word like that again, and I'll file a complaint against you. And how exactly can you identify a badly decomposed body as Steve? With an ID card?"

"Not just that," Hayley said calmly. "The height and weight of the body matched Steve's medical records… And there's also a tattoo. Though the face is gone, the tattoo on his hand is unique."

She paused, then closed her eyes. "I tattooed it on him myself."

The interrogation room fell into an eerie silence.

Steve hadn't uttered a word so far until the tattoo was mentioned. His fingers moved slightly. The next second, I grabbed his hand and rolled up his sleeve, exposing a small, ugly dog tattoo on the inside of his wrist.

Seeing that, Hayley looked flustered.

"Are you going to tell me you tattooed this on another person as well?" I questioned her harshly.

"And here I'd been wondering for years why he had such a peculiar tattoo. Turns out you did it. What now, Officer Brown? Still have any other reasons to believe I killed Steve? What motive would I even have?"

Her brows tightened. "Tattoos can be replicated—"

I cut her off. "Replicated? And then what? I would've needed to find someone who looks exactly like him, down to every single detail. Would that even make sense?

"Ever since the accident, he has basically turned half-senile. He only recognizes me now. As long as I keep taking care of him like I never left, his parents will remain grateful to me. I can spend all his money however I want.

"But if he's dead, his parents will fight over the assets with me. What would I possibly gain from killing him?"