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Then there’s Jane Doe herself.

The crime scene and autopsy pictures are not beautiful. They’re clinical. Measuring Jane Doe’s distance from the counter, the knife, the nylon rope. On the autopsy table, rulers are laid across her sawed-open throat, the wound in her leg, circles drawn onto the file marking breaks in her ankle. Her bloodshot eyes are matte, her tongue swollen and dry between cracked lips.

It’s been years since I took the time to study these photos. I forgot how strikingly pale her hair was, the closest to bleach blond I’ve ever seen without the use of chemicals. I forgot how the photographers were working as the sun set, light coming in through the towering penthouse windows, and one of the close-ups is at the height of golden hour, turning the horrific scene into a work of art.

I ask Felicity for another glass of water from the café. They get up to fetch it. Accessible hours—sensory-friendly hours, whatever—ends, and the lights come on, and the music kicks back in. My stomachache has begun to metastasize into a headache.

Daniel texts again. And again. I almost growl out loud.

Daniel

Do you need something to help take your mind off it? There’s actually a really great club in Dupont, not that far from my place. Have you been clubbing before? I’d be happy to show you

Just got my Tesla back from the shop too. Go down and blow off some steam, that kind of thing. I know a guy, we could get in easy, he’d be excited to meet you

Actually we’d have a TON to talk about

Consider this part of our deal?

The deal? Goddammit. No. No, I do not want to go out, I most certainly do not want to meet the kind of person who would be excited to meet me, and I don’t want to think about this now.

I put my phone on silent and jam it in my pocket.

Felicity comes back with the water. I drain half of it in one go. Their phone continues to record. I imagine them in their room, surrounded by true crime merchandise and hunched over their computer, dictating descriptions of these photos into a cheap microphone. Paraphrasing my words if I’ve followed their rules; splicing the direct audio into the file if I haven’t.

“Any luck?” Felicity says, still whispering even though we don’t have to anymore.

“No,” I say. “Shush.”

I’m not sure I want to remember more about that day, but I try. I sort through the sensory details, which Dr. Lý told me were always more closely related to memory than the intellectual ones—the texture of the carpet, the weight of the knife, the smell of her blood. The heat of her skin. The speckles of froth at the corners of her mouth. Each attempt at replaying is a corrupting influence.

This feels like the Saw trap Felicity was talking about: putting my hand in the vat of acid, grasping for the key, hoping to stave off the infinitely worse fate of being ripped in half. My head is already cloudy from my meltdown, I don’t want to look at these anymore, I shouldn’t have taken them—

In one of the pictures. On the living room floor, lying on the laminate.

A Metro SmarTrip card.

It’s one of the annual keepsake cards for the Cherry Blossom Festival. It isn’t my favorite design—my favorite is the 2018 edition with the view of the Jefferson Memorial—but I’d still recognize it anywhere.

It hit the floor with a quiet click when it fell out of Jane Doe’s wallet.

My brain grabs that click. Repeats it.

Click. Hitting the laminate. Click.

Felicity leans across the table. “What?” they say. “What is it?”

“Dad shouldn’t have had time to dispose of her wallet.” I flip through the other photos, skimming the background of each one. Felicity’s eyes get wide. “Usually, he’d have me cut up the driver’s license, any debit cards, college IDs, whatever, and flush the pieces.” I was paranoid, so I’d carry the shards in my pockets for days—putting pieces in the toilet at home, at school, the public restroom at a department store. “But he didn’t have time with her.”

I can feel the long-ago ache of my tiny hands struggling with scissors too big for me, forcing the blades through reinforced plastic, watching Dad force-feed whatever girl he had that month so she didn’t starve herself to death. Click. Can see Dad tossing Jane Doe’s wallet onto the counter, the Metro card hitting the ground while he was catching his breath and hyped up from the hunt. Click.

“What did he do with it?” Felicity asks.

I admit, slowly, “I don’t know.”

There’s always a chance he broke the cards in half and flushed them after all, or he jammed the whole mess down the garbage chute in the hall before the cops arrived. There’s a chance this lead is useless.

I say, “But I can ask him, though.”