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“All I know is that I’m in an airport, and my flight doesn’t leave for another three hours. So I decided to use that time to learn boxing. Before you ask me which airport, I have absolutely no idea. I can’t read the signs, remember?”

I laughed. “You travel for a living, but you still don’t know where you are?”

“Don’t judge me. I’m tired.” She started talking about the airport coffee and the uncomfortable chairs, and I listened while walking through the rain. Our conversations had always been like this, easy and silly, the kind that could make me forget everything for a few minutes.

Leigh and I had known each other for years before either of us had any idea what adulthood would look like. We’d grown up moving between homes and orphanages, learning to adapt to new houses, new rules, and new people who promised that things would be different this time. Most of those people eventually disappeared from my life, but Leigh never did.

Eventually her attention shifted to the one subject she always approached carefully.

“So how’s Buried Saints doing?”

“It’s doing well.”

“How well?”

She already knew the answer. The podcast had been growing steadily for months. The latest episode had brought in more listeners than anything I’d released before. People were sending me cases from all over the country, along with old newspaper clippings, documents, photographs, and stories about relatives whose deaths had never been properly investigated. I loved the work. Leigh worried about it.

She knew how easily I became consumed by a case once I believed something had been overlooked. What started as research could turn into nights surrounded by newspaper archives, court records, police reports, and handwritten notes covering every available surface of my apartment.

“You’ve been digging again, haven’t you?” she asked.

“I’m always digging.”

“You know what I mean.”

I did. For seconds, I said nothing. The rain continued falling around me as I walked. I watched headlights blur across the wet road.

“I’ve been looking at some cases,” I admitted. “Fifteen-year-old cases.”

Leigh went quiet. She knew what I meant. The fire had always been the one case I refused to touch. I’d investigated murders, disappearances, and organized crime cases for Buried Saints, but I’d never spoken about my own family. I’d never mentioned that the reason I cared so much about forgotten victims was because I knew what it felt like to have your entire life reduced to a few paragraphs in an old newspaper. Leigh had watched me struggle with that for years.

“Don’t do this to yourself again,” she said quietly.

“I’m not doing anything.” I sighed. “Maybe.”

She reminded me that I’d spent years trying to build a life that wasn’t defined by what happened to me. She didn’t want to see me tear that up because I’d found another unanswered question. I told her I was fine. She didn’t believe me. Neither did I.

We eventually changed the subject. I listened while she complained about the airport and told me about a passenger who’d spent an entire flight arguing with a flight attendant over a seat he’d never booked. I laughed, but part of my mind remained somewhere else.

It remained in a burning house fifteen years ago. It remained with my mother. It remained with my father. It remained with the questions that had never been answered. When I finally reached my building, Leigh was still talking. I said goodbye and slipped my phone into my pocket before stepping onto the terrace.

For a moment, I simply stood there and watched the rain fall across the street. I’d spent fifteen years telling myself that some questions were better left alone, but I was beginning to realize that I no longer believed that. The investigation was going to happen.

I just wasn’t ready to tell Leigh. By the time I got into my apartment, the rain had soaked through my clothes. All I wanted to do was take a hot shower and sleep for a few hours. Instead, I changed into some dry clothes, tied my hair back, and started getting ready for another long night of work.

I’d made a little recording space in one corner of the living room with two microphones, a camera, and some soundproofing panels. I put my notes next to the microphone and opened up all the research I’d done over the past few weeks.

Tonight’s episode of Buried Saints was about Daniel Mercer, a guy who’d worked on the docks in Boston and disappeared in 2003 after getting mixed up with some people who were suspected of laundering money. The official story had never made sense to me.

Daniel Mercer was supposed to have disappeared on his own after work one evening. Someone emptied his bank account a few days later and some of his stuff was taken from his apartment. Also, two people who were witnesses changed what they said after they talked to the investigators. When I looked at the police reports, some old newspaper articles, and financial records, I saw a lot of things that didn’t add up. I got my microphone ready, put on my headphones, and started recording.

“Daniel Mercer disappeared on October seventeenth, 2003, after he finished work at the Boston docks. The official investigation said there was no sign of anything suspicious happening to him, but the records tell a different story.”

I went through the timeline, explaining what the investigators knew, what they ignored, and how Daniel Mercer’s disappearance was connected to some suspicious money transactions. Some companies that were involved in these transactions seemed okay on paper, but their records showed that they were being used to move money around between businesses that didn’t seem to have any connection to each other.

The more I learned about the case, the stranger it got. I talked about the witnesses who changed their statements, the money that was taken out of Daniel Mercer’s account without explanation, and the decision by the police to stop investigating some leads even though they should have been looked into more. I didn’t want to make any claims that I couldn’t back up, because Buried Saints wasn’t about gossip or making entertainment out of real tragedies.

The people who were hurt mattered more than the people who’d hurt them. That was why I kept doing this podcast. When I finished recording, two hours had passed. I took off my headphones and listened to the episode, making notes about what needed to be clarified or improved. When I finally stopped re-recording, my apartment was really quiet.