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In the winter of nineteen ninety-nine, a little girl named Diane Philips was found in the middle of a children’s playground, inside a large grocery store plastic bag whose handles had been tied to create the perfect little bow.
The girl was naked, mutilated, her head had been shaved, her nails plucked from her fingers, and her lips were so covered in scabs, reports stated they couldn’t find where the sores ended and her lips began.
They never did figure out what the blisters were from, but guesses span from the herpes virus to standard dehydration.
The lead investigator, Bryan Lowe, was a mid-forties cop with a good reputation for working hard, with absolutely nothing on his official records to indicate he was lazy, incompetent, or worse.
Bryan had a daughter the same age as Diane. They were both five. They were both born in June. Diane, according to her family statements and the photographs lead investigators acquired, had dark brown hair, whereas Bryan’s daughter was blonde.
That’s where their similarities end.
Diane Philips went missing from the very playground she was eventually dumped in, right from under her mother’s nose, on January eleventh, nineteen ninety-eight. Diane was a little black girl playing in a neighborhood of predominantly white folks, but when Diane’s mother raised the alarm and screamed her baby was missing, everyone mobilized, children were scooped up, search parties went out, and the hunt was on.
A night went by, and the mother was distraught.
A week, and her spirit was broken.
A month, and she was damn near comatose, unable to answer questions any longer about her missing child.
As time wore on and Diane remained missing, the neighborhood she was traumatically taken from slowly repopulated, and the park that had been an uninhabited void for months was eventually played in once more.
People forgot. Life went on. The world continued to spin for everyone except that little girl and her mother.
On the eve of the one-year anniversary of Diane’s disappearance, under the cover of dark and winter cold, she was dumped in the exact place she was last seen, and the next morning, while children went about their activities and arrived at the park to play, the bag was discovered.
It became evident that Diane had lived that entire year enduring terror and abuse, neglect and torture, until three hundred and sixty-four days later, she was dumped, after having been destroyed, violated, and, according to the medical examiner’s office, dead for approximately twelve hours.
He killed her just in time to send her home.
But the horrors didn’t end there, because while the cameras and crowds filled that park to get a look at the frozen little girl inside a plastic bag, another was taken, and the cycle repeated.
Seventeen children over seventeen years, and to this day, the perpetrator has not been found.
“Shit.” Sitting back, I scrub my hands over my face and groan at the trail of baby girls whose lives and deaths have influenced the woman who is now a medical examiner.
She is the same age Diane would be, if she were still alive. Perhaps they lived in the same area of the city. Maybe they knew each other, or maybe the media coverage was simply enough to imprint on Minka’s psyche, and the brutal reminders every single year molded her to become who she is today.
Not the vigilante, specifically. But a doctor for the dead. The chief inside her own building, in control and seeking answers, one victim at a time.
Maybe her pledge to help was only supposed to go as far as becoming the M.E. Maybe that was the extent to which she meant to involve herself. But then Preston James happened. He wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t stay locked up, and when he was free, he wouldn’t leave the innocents alone.
After him, Justin Dowel.
Justin had an entire neighborhood scared to let their daughters out alone, even in daylight, and though the law had caught up to him a dozen times, none of the charges ever stuck.
So Minka stepped in again.
Mayor Tribble wasn’t a vigilante killing, but his MO was the same. His crimes were against little girls, and in the end, he suffered the same fate as the men who crossed Minka’s path before him.
Their deaths all spurred from that first little girl.
Diane Philips was taken in January. She was dumped in January. And now a fresh new year has rolled around on us, and because these killers refuse to stop, Minka won’t either.
“Fuck.”
“Whatcha looking at?”
