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Frank Sullivan had long ago learned that the truth was stranger than fiction, which was why he’d never written his memoirs. No one would believe half the things he’d seen.

He settled into his recliner as the TV documentary droned on.

It was some typical late-night exploitative effort, what his wife would have called ‘murder rubbish’ if she was still around.

Frank used to hate these kinds of shows, but in retirement he’d found solace in them, especially the unsolved cases.

In fifty years of law enforcement, Frank had seen every torture method known to man, but no torture was worse than an unanswered question.

It was comforting to know that other detectives still had a few missing pieces of their own.

He’d transferred to Quantico right when they were starting to take the psychological stuff seriously. The old guard had scoffed at it, but Frank had seen enough to know that every killer left a piece of themselves at the scene. You just had to know where to look.

Just like on the documentary he was watching.

Frank watched the faded crime scene photos flash across his TV screen.

The documentary was covering the Riverside Strangler case from 1991 - one of those mysteries that kept armchair detectives up at night.

Three victims, all found in public parks, positioned like they were sitting on park benches.

All of the victims had a newspaper in their laps, turned to a page with an incomplete crossword.

‘They’re missing what’s right in front of them,’ Frank said to his sole audience. The tabby cat beside him offered a disinterested slow blink in response. ‘They’re looking at the crosswords. They should be looking at the vics’ clothes.’

On screen, a talking head with ‘Former FBI Profiler’ beneath his name was expounding on the killer’s probable background. Frank snorted. He’d never seen this guy at Quantico, although in fairness he had retired back to Florida twenty years ago.

‘The folds in the shirts. They’re British military. The killer re-dressed every victim.’

Frank’s cat was unconcerned with this revelation, so went back to pruning itself.

Frank was lost in the details now. He’d never heard of this case before, but he could tell a mile off that the unsub had been stationed overseas, probably during the Gulf War.

The killings were a result of PTSD. It was right there, if the detectives had looked close enough.

The TV screen darkened and a text overlay said that the case remained unsolved.

That word. Unsolved.

There was a particularly American arrogance to that prefix. Like solved was the natural state of things, and only failure could corrupt it. Like ‘unfinished’ or ‘unopened.’ Unsolved implied that the job had been abandoned halfway through while the solvers moved on to more important things.

If only the public – or these documentary filmmakers – knew just how much impact that little un had.

A pain in Frank’s knee told him it was time for his nightly meds.

He planted both hands on the armrests and pushed himself upright.

Seventy-three wasn’t ancient by modern standards, but his body kept meticulous records of every injury.

Each step towards the kitchen was a negotiation between pain and momentum.

The first few yards were always the worst, until his joints reluctantly remembered their purpose.

‘Getting old isn’t for cowards,’ Lisa used to say in those final months when cancer had whittled her down to nothing but angles.

She’d faced her deterioration with the same no-nonsense pragmatism that had drawn him to her four decades earlier.

Frank tried to channel some of that stoicism now as he navigated the twelve feet between his recliner and the kitchen counter.

The medication organizer – one of those plastic contraptions with days of the week embossed on each compartment – sat beside the sink.

Frank popped open the ‘Sunday’ slot and tipped three pills into his palm: blood pressure, cholesterol, and the anti-inflammatory that kept his knees functional enough for basic household navigation.

He filled a glass with tap water and swallowed the pills one by one. A little bourbon would have helped wash away the medicinal residue, but his doctor had warned him off mixing alcohol with these meds. His heart was already on its last legs, so the last thing it needed was a shock to its system.

Frank slowly turned and caught a warped, elongated version of himself reflected in the refrigerator door.

It twisted his features funhouse-mirror style; long shoulders, spaghetti legs, head like a loaf of bread.

The light above reflected off the chrome handle of the freezer and it painted his eyes a deathly shade of pale.

White eyes.

Not like eyes at all.

For a disorienting moment, he wasn’t in his kitchen, but standing in a dead woman’s living room in 1976.

Because Frank Sullivan had his own un. A case that refused classification and resisted the natural order of investigation-to-resolution. Unfinished. Unclosed. Unsolved.

The memory struck him with such intensity that Frank could see his fish-eye reflection in those woman’s eyes, smell the air freshener that still sprayed at automated intervals long after its owner had ceased to need such civilities.

Frank always considered himself good at boxing up the past, but one box in particular had been leaking for as long as he could remember.

A soft thud from the living room yanked Frank from the grip of memory.

His heart kicked into action – the kind of arrhythmic flutter his cardiologist had warned him about, especially with the blood thinners still dissolving in his stomach.

Frank’s hand moved instinctively to his hip, but he found only the elastic waistband of his pajama pants. Old habits died harder than old cops.

He yanked open the kitchen drawer where he kept the ‘utility’ items. Scissors, bottle opener, novelty bread knife. His fingers closed around a heavy flashlight - the old-school metal kind that could double as a blunt instrument. In his FBI days, they’d called these ‘informal interrogation aids.’

Frank edged back into the living room. His knees put up resistance, but adrenaline was a miracle drug that muted pain signals.

He flattened himself against the wall. The living room was dark except for the eerie blue glow of the television, now playing some commercial for a miracle pillow guaranteed to prevent night sweats.

Probably nothing, Frank told himself. Things happened at his age.

Things you didn’t remember doing but must have done, judging by the evidence in front of you.

Like having a tumbler of whiskey on the coffee table when you didn’t remember making one.

Or climbing into a pristine bed when you were sure you hadn’t made it that morning.

Everything in the living room looked fine.

No. One thing was off.

Even December nights were humid in Florida, but Frank could feel a cold breeze seeping in.

The patio door was open about three inches.

Frank moved closer and glanced at the lock mechanism. He always kept the door closed, but only locked it when he went to bed.

Had he left the door off the catch without realizing? He’d taken the trash out that way an hour ago, but on a night like this, he would have felt the cold air against his neck earlier than this.

Through the glass, he could see his small backyard illuminated by the security light that triggered with movement. The motion sensor hadn’t activated, which meant nothing larger than a raccoon had passed through its cone of detection.

Frank locked the door then scanned the familiar landscape of his living room. It all looked the same, yet slightly adjusted by a millimeter. It was all there: recliner, coffee table, three-seater sofa that he’d relegated to the far wall because company was rare these days.

Everything was where it should be.

But then the room suddenly erupted in sound.

It shocked Frank’s heart into another dangerous stutter.

His fingers tightened around the flashlight as his cat jumped out from the other side of the recliner – a blind spot Frank hadn’t seen – and ran past his legs like a furry missile.

The cat disappeared into the kitchen as Frank lumbered towards his recliner and found the remote discarded on the floor.

He cursed that damn cat, but the blaring noise from the TV drowned out his complaints.

‘Stupid thing,’ Frank heard himself say as he lowered the volume. He breathed a sigh of relief. That explained the sound he’d heard. The damn cat had knocked the remote off the recliner.

Frank’s pulse gradually slowed as he willed his heart back to its prescribed rhythm. Seventy-three years had taught him the difference between a real threat and a cat-induced false alarm. Still, the blood pressure meds were fighting a losing battle tonight.

But it didn’t explain the patio door.

The thought had barely formed when movement caught his peripheral vision.

A shadow by the three-seater detached itself from deeper shadows.

Frank’s brain, still wired with thirty years of threat assessment, registered the details in snapshots: Dark clothing. Combat stance. Gloved hands wrapped around the grip of what looked like a .45.

No time to dive. No time to reach for the flashlight. No time to wonder how the motion sensors had failed or how the figure had remained so perfectly still as to become one with the darkness.

Frank’s muscles tensed, preparing for an evasive maneuver his body could no longer execute. His mind calculated angles, distances, probabilities.

But seventy-three-year-old reflexes were no match for a bullet.