Chapter 2

“Whose blood is it?” Blake demanded.

I smiled calmly.

“An animal’s.”

Blake’s face turned terrifyingly grim, his eyes unreadable.

“Take him back to the station,” Blake said, waving to the other two officers as they escorted me out of the house.

It was clearly winter, but the moment I stepped outside, I actually felt my body warm up a little.

“It’s you! It has to be you! Give me back my son!” Karen screamed as she lunged at me like a madwoman.

Ever since Logan disappeared, Karen had been camping outside my house every day without sleeping or resting.

Blake stopped Karen.

“Ma’am, please calm down. If there’s something you need to say, say it properly.”

Karen was hysterical and spat at me.

“Ethan Carter! You bitch! You did this on purpose! You’re getting revenge on me! You want to ruin my son! Give me back my son!”

“Revenge for what?” Blake asked sharply.

Karen stopped cursing, the fury in her eyes dimming instantly, and she swallowed the words she had almost blurted out.

With a thud, she dropped to her knees in front of Blake.

“Please, Officer, I’m begging you. You can’t let him go. He’s a demon! The missing kids in town must have been taken by him!”

“We’re still investigating the disappearances,” Blake said, holding Karen by the arm and helping her up.

I narrowed my eyes and provoked her.

“Karen, the police haven’t found any evidence yet. Keep talking, and I’ll sue you for slander.”

“Evidence? Those huge freezers in your house are evidence!”

“What normal person keeps that many huge freezers at home? Ethan Carter! You’re a psycho killer! You cut bodies up and hide them in freezers! That’s how it always goes in novels!” Karen’s voice was sharp, each sentence louder than the last.

After saying that, she gasped for breath.

Blake looked back at me.

“Ethan Carter, you have freezers at home?”

I said lazily, “Yeah. You didn’t find them?”

Blake’s expression turned serious, and after a pause, he said, “Take me there.”

When we reached the kitchen, Blake’s face darkened as he pointed at the freezer.

“This is the huge freezer you bought?”

Looking at the freezer that took up about twenty square feet, I nodded.

Karen jumped out.

“No! This isn’t the kind he bought last month!”

Blake had the two officers watch me, then began a thorough search again.

About half an hour later, Blake walked out with anger written across his face.

“Ethan Carter, come see for yourself.”

When I saw the opened floor in the storage room, my heart tightened, then loosened.

I didn’t expect it to be discovered so soon.

What a shame.

As soon as I went in, a stench of blood mixed with some unknown odor rushed at my face, making me feel a little nauseous.

Karen stood frozen at the doorway, her hands shaking nonstop.

I let out a soft laugh, and Blake grabbed me by the collar.

“How are you going to explain this?”

“Detective Blake, is buying freezers to store meat illegal now too?”

Blake shouted angrily, “Ethan Carter, lives are at stake here. Don’t joke around with me.”

As he spoke, Blake quickly opened the doors of all three large freezers.

Inside were bags of bloody meat, packed one by one.

Karen screamed and slid down the doorframe onto the floor.

“Notify the medical examiner,” Blake said in a low voice.

The forensic examination showed that all three freezers were filled with pork, and the bloody smell had been left behind after the pigs were butchered.

Right.

I forgot.

What I put in the freezers was clearly pork.

Look at my memory.

Blake examined everything carefully, pacing back and forth between the three large freezers, afraid he had missed another detail.

Following his flashlight, Blake leaned over one of the freezers as if he had found something.

I narrowed my eyes, calm and composed.

Blake pried open the freezer’s inner layer with force, and a corpse wrapped tightly in plastic wrap appeared stiffly before our eyes.