On Christmas Eve 1989, a father and son left their home in Pine Ridge, Montana to pick up a forgotten gift from the hardware store.
They never returned.
The mother waited by the window, watching snow fall on an empty driveway.
No bodies were ever found.
No ransom demanded.
No witnesses came forward.
For 34 years, their disappearance remained one of the most baffling mysteries in the Pacific Northwest until a demolition crew tore down the old hardware store and found something that should never have been there.
What happened on that frozen December night? And why did it take over three decades for the truth to begin emerging from the darkness? If you’re fascinated by true crime mysteries and unsolved disappearances, subscribe now.
You won’t want to miss what we uncover next.
The snow fell in thick, silent curtains over Pine Ridge, Montana, transforming the small mountain town into a postcard scene of holiday perfection.
Christmas lights twinkled from every storefront along Main Street.
There are colored reflections dancing across fresh powder.
Inside the hardware store, Frank Mercer stood behind the counter counting the day’s receipts while his grandson Tommy restocked shelves in the back.
The brass bell above the door had stopped ringing hours ago.
Most folks were home now, preparing for Christmas morning.
Frank glanced at the clock.
8:47 p.
m.
He should close early, get home to Helen, but he’d promised the Hartley boy he’d keep the store open until 9, just in case.
People always forgot something important on Christmas Eve.
Through the front window, he watched the snow accumulate on the sidewalk.
The street lights cast long shadows between the buildings, and the town felt emptier than usual, as if holding its breath.
Tommy emerged from the storage room, carrying a box of nails.
Grandpa, can we go soon? Mom’s making her cinnamon rolls.
Frank smiled at the boy.
Just a few more minutes, son.
I gave my word.
The bell above the door chimed, and both turned toward the sound.
A man and a young boy tooured, stamping snow from their boots.
Frank recognized them immediately.
David Chen and his son Marcus.
David worked as an accountant at the mill.
A quiet man who kept to himself since his wife passed two years prior.
Marcus, maybe 7 years old, clutched his father’s hand, his eyes wide with the magic that only Christmas Eve could conjure in a child.
Mr.
Mercer,” David said, his breath forming small clouds in the cold air.
“I’m so sorry to come this late.
I completely forgot.
I needed batteries for Marcus’s new robot, the one Santa’s bringing.
” Marcus looked up at his father with confusion, not quite understanding the adult code being spoken, Frank chuckled warmly.
“No trouble at all, David.
We’ve got plenty.
Tommy, show young Marcus where we keep the toy batteries.
As the boys wandered toward the back of the store, David approached the counter, pulling out his wallet.
I really appreciate this, Frank.
Everything’s been so scattered this year.
First Christmas without Rebecca, you know.
Frank nodded with understanding.
Helen and I have been thinking about you both.
It gets easier, but I won’t lie and say it gets easy.
David managed a thin smile, then glanced toward the back where his son laughed at something Tommy had said.
For a moment, the weight seemed to lift from his shoulders.
Tommy and Marcus returned with the batteries.
Frank rang up the purchase while the boys chatted about Christmas morning.
David paid, thanked Frank again, and father and son headed toward the door.
Marcus waved goodbye to Tommy, his small hand disappearing into his father’s larger one.
The bell chimed as they stepped out into the snow.
Frank watched through the window as David and Marcus walked toward their blue sedan parked at the curb.
The snow was falling harder now, the wind picking up.
He saw David brush snow from the windshield while Marcus climbed into the passenger seat.
The car’s headlights flicked on, cutting through the white curtain of snowfall.
“Can we go now, Grandpa?” Tommy asked.
“Yes, son.
Let’s get home.
” Frank locked the register and began turning off lights.
Through the front window, he noticed the Chen’s car was still parked at the curb.
engine running, exhaust puffing into the frozen air.
David seemed to be checking something, leaning over toward Marcus, probably helping the boy with his seat belt.
Frank gathered his coat and keys, ushered Tommy out the back door, and locked up for the night.
He never saw David and Marcus Chen drive away.
He assumed they had, like everyone would assume.
It was Christmas Eve after all.
Everyone goes home on Christmas Eve.
But David and Marcus Chen never made it home.
Their car found the next morning still parked at that same curb was empty.
The engine had run until the gas tank emptied.
Inside the battery package sat on the dashboard unopened.
Marcus’s booster seat showed no signs of struggle.
The doors were unlocked.
Snow had drifted through the open driver’s side window, covering the seats in a pristine white blanket, as if nature itself were trying to hide what had happened there.
By the time people realized they were missing, any tracks in the snow had long been buried beneath fresh powder.
David and Marcus Chen had simply vanished, swallowed by the silent Montana night, leaving behind only questions that would haunt Pine Ridge for over three decades.
Catherine Chen woke to pale winter light, filtering through the bedroom curtains, and for one blissful moment she forgot.
Then reality crashed back with the weight of 34 years pressing against her chest.
Christmas morning, 2023.
Another year of waking alone, another December 25th without them.
She remained still in bed, listening to the silence of the house that had once echoed with laughter and footsteps.
The thermostat clicked on downstairs, and the furnace rumbled to life, filling the empty rooms with warmth meant for ghosts.
Outside, fresh snow covered the same streets her husband and son had disappeared from three decades ago.
Pine Ridge never changed much.
The hardware store had closed in 1995, boarded up and forgotten.
The mill downsized.
Young people left for bigger cities, but the mountains remained, and the snow still fell every Christmas Eve like clockwork, blanketing the past in white silence.
Catherine forced herself to rise, her joints protesting after 71 years of use.
She moved through her morning routine with the mechanical precision of someone who had done this thousands of times before.
coffee, toast, the newspaper she didn’t read.
Through the kitchen window, she could see the Johnson house next door, their grandchildren already outside building a snowman.
Their squeals of delight carried across the yard, and Catherine felt the familiar ache of loss that never quite dulled, no matter how many years passed.
The phone rang at 9:00.
She knew who it would be before answering.
Mom, merry Christmas.
Sarah’s voice came through warm and concerned from Seattle.
How are you doing? I’m fine, sweetheart.
Same as every year.
I wish you’d come stay with us.
The kids would love to see you.
Catherine smiled despite herself.
I know, but I need to be here.
You understand? Sarah sighed on the other end of the line.
She did understand, even if she didn’t agree.
They talked for 20 minutes about safe things, Sarah’s job at the hospital, her husband’s promotion, the grandchildren Catherine rarely saw.
Neither mentioned David or Marcus directly, though their absence filled every pause in conversation.
After hanging up, Catherine stood in the kitchen holding her cold coffee, staring at the photograph on the refrigerator.
It had been taken the week before they vanished.
David and Marcus building a snowman in the front yard, both grinning at the camera.
Marcus had lost his first tooth that day.
David had promised to take him sledding once the tooth fairy came.
Catherine had taken the picture, laughing at something David said.
her finger slightly blurring the edge of the frame.
She didn’t know then that she was capturing one of her last moments with them.
If she had known, would she have held on tighter, memorized every detail? Told them she loved them one more time.
The doorbell interrupted her thoughts.
Catherine frowned, setting down her mug.
She wasn’t expecting anyone.
Through the frosted glass of the front door, she could make out a figure in a dark coat.
When she opened it, a woman in her mid-40s stood on the porch, snowflakes catching in her short brown hair.
“Mrs.
Chen, my name is Detective Amanda Torres.
I’m with the Montana State Police Cold Case Division.
” The woman held up her bodgege, her expression serious but kind.
I’m sorry to disturb you on Christmas morning, but something’s come up regarding your husband and son’s case.
May I come in? Catherine’s hand tightened on the door frame.
In 34 years, the police had given up active investigation after the first decade.
She’d received periodic calls from new officers reviewing old cases, but they always led nowhere.
The words cold case division felt both hopeful and devastating.
Of course, she managed, stepping aside.
Detective Torres entered, stamping snow from her boots.
She was younger than Catherine expected, with sharp eyes that seemed to take in everything at once.
They settled in the living room, Torres on the old floral sofa.
Catherine in David’s armchair that she could never bring herself to replace.
Mrs.
Chen.
3 days ago, a demolition crew began tearing down the old Mercer Hardware store building on Main Street.
They’re putting in a coffee shop.
Torres pulled out a tablet from her bag.
During the demolition, they found something in the basement.
a hidden room that wasn’t on any of the original building plans.
Catherine felt her heart begin to race.
What kind of room? Torres hesitated, choosing her words carefully.
A concealed space approximately 10 by 12 ft accessible only through a false wall in the storage area.
Mrs.
Chen, we found personal items inside that room.
items we believe belong to your husband and son.
The room seemed to tilt.
Catherine gripped the armrests, her knuckles white.
What items? A wallet containing David Chen’s driver’s license and credit cards.
A child’s winter coat matching the description of what Marcus was wearing the night they disappeared.
And Torres paused, her professional demeanor cracking slightly, and a child’s drawing signed by Marcus, dated December 24th, 1989.
Catherine couldn’t breathe.
The drawing.
Marcus had been working on a drawing that afternoon, a picture of their family in front of a Christmas tree.
He’d wanted to finish it before they left for the hardware store, but David had hurried him along.
Marcus had left it on the kitchen table, or so Catherine had thought.
How? The word came out as barely a whisper.
How did those things get there? That’s what we’re trying to determine.
Torres leaned forward, her voice gentle but urgent.
Mrs.
Chen, I need to ask you some questions about that night.
I know you’ve been through this countless times, but sometimes with fresh eyes and new evidence.
Details emerge that weren’t significant before.
Catherine nodded numbly.
She’d told the story so many times it felt like a script.
Words worn smooth from repetition.
But this time felt different.
This time there was evidence.
After three decades of nothing, there was finally something tangible.
They left around 8:30 that evening, Catherine began, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands.
David realized we’d forgotten batteries for Marcus’s Christmas present.
The hardware store stayed open late on Christmas Eve.
Frank Mercer was accommodating that way.
They were only supposed to be gone 20 minutes.
When they hadn’t returned by 9:30, I called the store, but no one answered.
I thought maybe they’d stopped for hot chocolate or to look at Christmas lights.
Marcus loved the lights.
Torres made notes on her tablet.
What time did you report them missing? Not until the next morning.
Christmas Day.
I know that sounds terrible, but I kept thinking they’d walk through the door any minute.
David was a careful driver, but the roads were icy.
I thought maybe they’d slid into a ditch and were waiting for help.
When morning came and they still weren’t home, I called the police.
They found the car within an hour and the car was locked when they found it.
Catherine shook her head.
No.
The driver’s door was open.
Engine had run until it was out of gas.
There was snow inside on the seats, but no signs of struggle, no blood, nothing.
The batteries were still on the dashboard, unopened.
It was like they just stepped out and vanished.
Torres was quiet for a moment, studying her notes.
Mrs.
Chen, did your husband know Frank Mercer well? Were they friends? Acquaintances? David bought supplies there for home projects? Frank was kind to us.
After Rebecca died, my daughter, he’d lost his own wife a few years before.
So, we understood grief.
What about Frank’s grandson, Tommy? Did Marcus know him? Catherine tried to remember.
I think they might have met once or twice.
Tommy was older, maybe 13 or 14.
I don’t think they were playmates or anything.
Torres nodded, making more notes.
Frank Mercer passed away in 2003.
Heart attack.
His grandson, Thomas Mercer, took over the property, but never reopened the store.
He moved to Billings about 15 years ago.
We’re trying to locate him now.
The implications hung in the air between them.
Catherine’s mind raced with horrible possibilities.
The hidden room, the personal belongings.
Frank Mercer had been one of the last people to see David and Marcus alive.
“Do you think Frank was involved?” Catherine asked, her voice barely audible.
Torres met her eyes directly.
“I think we need to examine every possibility.
” The room was professionally concealed, which suggests premeditation.
Someone went to great lengths to hide that space and the items inside it.
We’re conducting forensic analysis now, looking for DNA evidence, fingerprints, anything that might tell us what happened in that room.
Catherine felt tears burning her eyes, the first she’d shed in months.
After 34 years of nothing, of emptiness, of unanswered questions that had carved hollows in her soul, there was finally movement.
But with that movement came terror.
Because if they found answers, those answers might be worse than the not knowing.
Mrs.
Chen, I promise you, we’re going to find out what happened to your family.
Torres’s voice was firm, committed, but I need you to prepare yourself.
After this much time, whatever we discover might be difficult to hear.
Catherine wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
Detective, I’ve spent 34 Christmases wondering if my husband and son were alive somewhere.
If they’d been taken, if they suffered, nothing you tell me could be worse than what I’ve already imagined.
But even as she said it, Catherine wasn’t sure it was true.
Because imagination, no matter how dark, still left room for hope.
Evidence would bring truth.
and truth she was beginning to realize might finally close the door on hope forever.
Outside, children’s laughter echoed across the snow-covered yards.
Somewhere, a church bell rang, calling the faithful to Christmas service, and in a cold case evidence room 300 m away, a child’s drawing waited to reveal secrets buried for over three decades beneath the floorboards of a forgotten hardware store.
The Montana State Police Forensics Lab occupied the basement of a non-escript government building in Helena, where fluorescent lights hummed constantly and the air smelled of chemicals and old coffee.
Detective Amanda Torres stood in the observation room, watching through reinforced glass as technicians carefully processed evidence from the hidden room beneath Mercer hardware.
Laid out on stainless steel tables were the artifacts of a Christmas that never ended.
A leather wallet cracked and water stained.
A small blue winter coat with toggles shaped like trains.
And the drawing protected now in a clear plastic evidence sleeve showing a family of three beneath a Christmas tree rendered in crayon.
Dr.
Richard Yao, the chief forensic analyst, emerged from the lab, pulling off his latex gloves.
He was a slight man in his 60s with wire rimmed glasses that constantly slipped down his nose.
Detective, we’ve completed the preliminary analysis.
You’ll want to see this.
Torres followed him to a computer station where images of the evidence filled multiple screens.
Yao pulled up a detailed photograph of the wallet’s interior.
The driver’s license and credit cards confirm the wallet belonged to David Chen.
But here’s what’s interesting.
He zoomed in on the leather’s texture.
See these marks? Scratches, deep ones concentrated on the back panel.
They’re consistent with someone clawing or scraping repeatedly against a rough surface.
Torres leaned closer.
The scratches formed parallel lines, desperate and frantic, like he was dragged across concrete.
Possibly, we found trace amounts of concrete dust embedded in the leather along with something else.
Yao switched to a different image showing microscopic particles.
Wood fibers, very old, and a substance we’re still analyzing.
It appears to be some kind of adhesive, possibly from tape or binding material.
Torres felt her jaw tighten.
He was restrained.
That would be consistent with the evidence.
Yes.
Yao pushed his glasses up.
Now the child’s coat is even more revealing.
He pulled up images of the small blue jacket.
There are tears in the fabric here and here along the collar and left sleeve.
The tearing pattern suggests forceful removal.
We also found biological material.
Torres’s heart rate increased.
A blood? No.
Saliva.
We’re running DNA analysis now, but given the age of the sample and the storage conditions, I’m optimistic we’ll get a viable profile.
Yao paused, his professional demeanor softening slightly.
There’s something else.
caught in the toggle buttons.
We found several dark fibers that don’t match the coat material.
They appear to be from a burlap sack or similar rough fabric.
The picture forming made Torres feel sick, a child forcibly removed from his coat, a burlap sack.
Was he suffocated? I can’t determine that from these items alone.
But the presence of saliva on the coat collar combined with the tearing pattern suggests the child was distressed, possibly crying or struggling.
Torres closed her eyes briefly, thinking of Catherine Chen sitting in that living room, clutching 34 years of hope.
What about the drawing? Yao’s expression shifted, something like sadness crossing his features.
He pulled up highresolution images of the crayon drawing.
This is where things get particularly disturbing.
The drawing itself is unremarkable.
Typical for a 7-year-old.
Family figures, Christmas tree presents.
But look at the back.
He flipped to an image of the paper’s reverse side.
Torres had noticed writing there during her initial examination, but assumed it was just a child’s doodling.
Now under enhanced imaging, she could see it clearly.
Words written in adult handwriting, cramped and frantic.
“Forgive me,” Torres read aloud.
“God, forgive me.
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know.
” She looked up at Yao.
Is this David Chen’s handwriting? We’re comparing it to known samples, but the preliminary analysis suggests yes.
The pressure patterns indicate someone writing with extreme emotional distress.
There’s also this Yao zoomed in on one corner of the paper.
See these marks? They’re not crayon.
They’re dried blood.
Confirmed human.
We’re testing to determine whose.
Torres studied the words again.
Forgive me.
I didn’t know.
What didn’t David Chen know? And why was he asking for forgiveness? How long were they in that room, Richard? Can you tell? Yao hesitated.
Based on the condition of the materials and the environmental factors of the basement, I’d estimate the items were placed there shortly after the disappearance.
The concrete dust and wood fibers suggest they were in that room during or immediately after the store’s normal operation.
But here’s what troubles me.
He pulled up a new set of images.
We found multiple layers of dust accumulation on saw items.
The pattern suggests they were moved or disturbed at least twice over the years with significant time gaps between disturbances.
Someone came back, Torres said.
Years later, someone went back into that room multiple times.
Possibly the dust patterns don’t lie.
Someone with access to that building visited that hidden room long after 1989.
Torres thought about Frank Mercer dead for 20 years.
His grandson Thomas who’d inherited the property but never reopened the store.
Who else might have had keys? I need the complete list of everyone who had access to that building after it closed in 1995.
There’s one more thing,” Yao said quietly.
“We found this wedge between the floorboards near where the items were stored.
He held up an evidence bag containing a small tarnished brass key.
It’s old, probably original to the building.
We’re trying to determine what it opens.
” Torres took the bag, examining the key through the plastic.
It was small, ornate, the kind that might fit a desk drawer or a lock box.
Could there be other hidden spaces in that building? The demolition crew is doing a complete structural survey now.
If there are any other concealed areas, they’ll find them.
Yao removed his glasses, cleaning them with his lab coat.
Amanda, I’ve been doing this work for 37 years.
I’ve seen a lot of disturbing cases, but this one, he trailed off, shaking his head.
This one feels different.
The way those items were arranged almost ceremonially, the repeated visits over the years.
This wasn’t a simple abduction gone wrong.
Someone wanted to preserve these things.
Keep them close.
Torres thought about Catherine Chen’s face when she’d mentioned the drawing.
the way hope and horror had wared in her eyes.
How long until you have the DNA results? Saliva and blood samples should be completed within 48 hours.
I’ve marked it priority.
We’re also running the evidence through VCAP and regional databases looking for similar cases, any patterns that might connect to this.
Thank you, Richard.
Send me everything as soon as you have it.
Torres headed for the door, then paused.
The writing on the back of the drawing.
I didn’t know any theories on what that might mean.
Yao was quiet for a moment, his expression troubled.
In my experience, when someone writes something like that in what appeared to be their final moments, they’ve discovered something terrible, something that changed their understanding of their situation completely.
He met her eyes.
Whatever David Chen learned in that room, it was significant enough that he felt he needed God’s forgiveness.
Torres left the lab with those words echoing in her mind.
The drive back to Pine Ridge took 3 hours through mountain passes where snow fell steadily, covering the landscape in pristine white that hid all manner of secrets beneath its surface.
She used the time to call her partner, Detective Marcus Webb, who was coordinating the investigation from the field.
Marcus, we need to find Thomas Mercer now.
The forensics suggest someone was accessing that hidden room for years after the store closed.
I’m already on it.
Marcus’s voice came through the car speakers, tracked him to Billings like we thought, but he’s not there anymore.
Neighbors say he moved about 6 months ago.
No forwarding address.
I’ve got DMV running his plates, credit cards, employment records, everything.
6 months ago.
Right before the demolition was scheduled to begin.
Yeah, that timing bothers me, too.
I’m also pulling records on Frank Mercer, his finances, property holdings, any criminal history.
So far, he’s clean, but I’m going deeper.
Torres navigated a hairpin turn, her headlights cutting through the falling snow.
What about other employees from the hardware store? Anyone who might have had keys, working on that list now.
The store employed about eight people total.
Over the years, it was open.
Most have moved away or passed on.
I’ve got contact information for three who are still in the area.
Planning to interview them tomorrow.
Good.
I want to know everything about Frank Mercer’s life, his relationships, his habits, who visited that store regularly.
Someone knew about that room, Marcus.
Maybe more than one person.
After ending the call, Torres drove in silence, watching the landscape transform into the isolated mountain community of Pine Ridge.
The town appeared frozen in time, its main street still decorated with the same style of Christmas lights that had hung there in 1989.
The hardware store building stood at the corner of Maine and Pine, now partially demolished.
The demolition crew had stopped work for the holiday.
leaving the structure exposed like a wound, its interior walls visible to the street.
Torres parked across from the site and sat studying the building in the fading afternoon light.
The hidden room had been in the basement, accessible only through a false wall in the storage area.
How long had it been there? Had Frank Mercer built it, or had it existed before he owned the property? and most importantly what had happened in that room on Christmas Eve 1989.
She thought about the timeline.
David and Marcus had arrived at the store around 8:45 p.
m.
Frank and his grandson Tommy were there preparing to close.
The purchase was made, the batteries bought.
Then David and Marcus left, walking to their car parked at the curb, but they never drove away.
Somehow between the store and that car, sitting 30 ft from the front door, they vanished.
Torres got out of her vehicle and walked to where the Chen sedan would have been parked.
Snow crunched under her boots.
She stood looking back at the hardware store, trying to imagine that night.
Heavy snowfall, limited visibility, most businesses closed.
The street would have been empty, everyone home with their families.
If someone had acted quickly, quietly, there would have been no witnesses.
But why? What possible motive would Frank Mercer, a respected businessman and grandfather, have for abducting a man and child? And if he did abduct them, what happened next? The evidence suggested they’d been in that basement room, restrained, held there while David wrote desperate words on the back of his son’s drawing.
Then what? Where were their bodies? Torres walked toward the demolished building, ducking under the yellow caution tape.
The basement entrance was blocked, but she could see down into the exposed foundation.
The hidden room had been in the northwest corner behind where the storage shelves had stood.
Even now she could see the outline of the false wall that had concealed it.
The craftsmanship surprisingly professional.
Detective Torres.
She turned to find an elderly man standing at the edge of the demolition site, leaning on a cane.
He wore a heavy coat and a knit cap, his face weathered by decades of mountain winters.
Yes, I’m Detective Torres.
And you are? Henry Wilcox.
I own the bookstore down the street.
Saw you examining the hardware store and thought I might be of help.
I knew Frank Mercer for 40 years.
Good man.
This business about hidden rooms and the Chen family, it’s got the whole town talking.
Torres approached him carefully.
Did you know David and Marcus Chen? Knew of them.
Terrible thing that disappearance.
The whole town searched for weeks.
We thought maybe they’d wandered off into the woods, got lost in the snow.
Finding their car like that empty, it haunted folks for years.
Mr.
Wilcox, were you working the night they disappeared? The old man nodded slowly.
I was Christmas Eve.
I stayed open until 9:00.
My store was just down the block.
I remember seeing Frank’s lights on at the hardware store.
Remember thinking he was being generous keeping it open so late? Did you see David and Marcus that night? Did you see them leave the hardware store? Will Cox frowned, thinking back across 34 years.
I saw a car parked out front, engine running.
I assumed it was theirs, waiting while Frank closed up, but I didn’t see anyone in it.
I locked up my store around 9 and went home.
The snow was coming down hard by then.
Visibility was terrible.
Did you notice anyone else around? Any other vehicles? People on foot.
Not that I recall.
But with the snow, you couldn’t see much past your own nose.
Someone could have been right there, and you’d miss them in that weather.
Torres pulled out her phone, showing him a photo of Thomas Mercer she’d obtained from his old driver’s license.
This is Frank’s grandson, Tommy.
Do you remember him? Wilcox studied the photo.
Sure.
Tommy Mercer.
Quiet kid.
A bit strange.
used to see him around the store after school.
Frank was raising him after Tommy’s parents died in a car accident.
That was early 80s, I think.
Strange how the old man shifted his weight, leaning more heavily on his cane.
Just off, you know, didn’t interact much with other kids.
Spent a lot of time alone in that store.
After Frank died, Tommy inherited everything but never did anything with it.
Let the building sit there rotting for years.
Seemed wrong somehow.
Frank worked his whole life to build that business.
Do you know where Tommy is now? Moved away years ago.
Haven’t seen him since Frank’s funeral.
He came back for that, then disappeared himself.
Some folks say he couldn’t bear being in Pine Ridge without his grandfather.
They were very close.
Torres made notes on her phone.
Mr.
Wilcox, in all the years you knew Frank Mercer, did he ever seem capable of violence, of hurting someone? Wilcox’s expression hardened.
Frank Mercer was a good man, detective.
He helped this community through hard times, gave people jobs, extended credit when folks couldn’t pay.
If you’re suggesting he had anything to do with the Chens disappearing, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
I’m not suggesting anything.
I’m just trying to understand what happened.
What happened is a tragedy.
A father and son vanished.
But Frank Mercer wasn’t responsible.
He looked for them, too.
joined the search parties, helped organize volunteers.
He was devastated by their disappearance.
Torres thanked Wilcox and watched him shuffle back toward his bookstore through the snow.
The old man’s defense of Frank Mercer was understandable, even admirable.
But it didn’t change the facts.
David and Marcus Chen’s belongings had been hidden in Frank Mercer’s basement for 34 years.
Someone had put them there, and someone had visited that secret room multiple times over the decades.
Whether Frank had been directly responsible or merely complicit, Torres intended to find out.
As darkness fell over Pine Ridge, Torres stood before the demolished hardware store, watching shadows lengthen across the exposed foundation.
Somewhere in this building’s history lay the answer to what happened on that Christmas Eve.
And somewhere, possibly still alive, was Thomas Mercer, who might hold the final pieces of a puzzle that had remained unsolved for over three decades.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Dr.
Yao.
Preliminary DNA results in, “You need to see this.
Calling you now.
” Torres answered on the first ring.
What did you find, Richard? The saliva on the coat.
We got a solid DNA profile.
Yao’s voice was tense.
Amanda, it’s not just Marcus Chen’s DNA.
There’s a second profile mixed with his.
An adult male.
We ran it through Cotus and got a hit.
Torres felt her pulse quicken.
Who? Thomas Mercer.
He was arrested in 2018 for a DUI in Billings.
They took a DNA sample as part of the booking process.
Amanda Thomas Mercer’s DNA is all over that child’s coat.
Torres closed her eyes.
The pieces beginning to fall into place.
Not Frank Mercer, his grandson.
Tommy, who’d been 13 years old on the night David and Marcus vanished.
Tommy, who’d inherited the property and kept it sealed for decades.
“Tommy, who disappeared 6 months before demolition, was scheduled to begin.
” “Find him,” Torres said into the phone.
“I don’t care what it takes.
Find Thomas Mercer now.
” The winter sun rose late over Pine Ridge, casting long shadows across the snow-covered town.
Detective Amanda Torres had spent the night in a motel room that smelled of pine cleaner and old carpet, reviewing case files until her eyes burned.
Now at 7 in the morning, she sat across from Catherine Chen in the same living room where they’d spoken on Christmas Day, but this time the conversation would be harder.
Catherine looked diminished somehow, as if the hope that had sustained her for three decades was finally draining away.
She clutched a mug of tea that had long gone cold, her eyes fixed on the photograph Torres had placed on the coffee table between them.
It showed Thomas Mercer at age 13, a school photo from 1989.
His face was thin and pale, his dark eyes staring at the camera with an unsettling intensity.
“You certain?” Catherine’s voice was barely audible.
His DNA was on Marcus’s coat.
Yes, ma’am.
We found his saliva mixed with Marcus’, suggesting close physical contact.
Combined with the fact that he had exclusive access to the building for years and his disappearance just before demolition was scheduled, we’re treating him as our primary suspect.
Catherine set down her mug with trembling hands, but he was just a child himself, 13 years old.
How could a 13-year-old? We’re still piecing together exactly what happened that night.
But children can be involved in serious crimes, especially when influenced by adults.
We’re investigating the relationship between Thomas and his grandfather now, looking for any indication that Frank might have been involved as well.
Frank Mercer seemed like such a kind man.
David trusted him.
Catherine’s voice cracked.
I trusted him.
He looked me in the eye at the searches, the vigils.
He told me not to give up hope.
And all that time, Torres leaned forward.
Mrs.
Chen, I need to ask you something important.
In the days and weeks before the disappearance, did Marcus ever mentioned Tommy Mercer? Did he ever say anything about the hardware store, about spending time there? Catherine thought back across the years, trying to pierce the fog of grief and time.
Marcus went to the store with David a few times.
David was building a bookshelf for Sarah’s room that fall.
He needed supplies, but Marcus never mentioned the Mercer boy.
They weren’t friends.
Did David ever mention anything unusual about the store? About Frank or Tommy’s behavior? No.
Nothing.
Catherine stood abruptly, moving to the window where she’d stood countless nights, waiting for headlights that never came.
After they vanished, I went over every conversation, every moment from those last weeks.
I tortured myself looking for signs I’d missed.
There was nothing, detective.
It was just a normal December.
Christmas shopping, school programs, David working late on tax season preparations.
There was nothing unusual until they didn’t come home.
Torres made notes, though she’d heard similar statements dozens of times in her career.
The nature of sudden violence was that it often came without warning, erupting from normaly like a sinkhole swallowing a road.
Mrs.
Chen, I know this is difficult, but I need to show you something else.
She pulled out her tablet, bringing up the enhanced image of David’s handwriting on the back of Marcus’s drawing.
Your husband wrote these words, “Forgive me.
God, forgive me.
I didn’t know.
” Do those words mean anything to you? Is there anything from that time that your husband might not have told you? something he might have discovered.
Catherine stared at the words, tears forming in her eyes.
David told me everything.
We didn’t keep secrets.
If he discovered something wrong, something dangerous, he would have said something.
What if he discovered it too late? What if he learned something only after they were already in danger? The implications hung in the air between them.
Catherine returned to her chair, her face pale.
You think someone lured them there? That it wasn’t just about batteries.
I think it’s possible.
The batteries were still in the car, unopened.
Your husband and son never made it back to the vehicle.
Something happened between the store and the car, and it happened quickly.
Someone had to have been ready, prepared.
Catherine covered her face with her hands.
Marcus was so excited about Christmas that year.
It was his first without Rebecca.
But he was trying to be brave, trying to make David smile.
He wanted everything to be perfect.
She lowered her hands, her eyes hollow.
Do you think he suffered, detective? My little boy, do you think he was afraid? Torres had been asked this question by grieving families more times than she could count.
and she’d learned there was no good answer.
The truth was often terrible and lies provided no real comfort.
I don’t know, Mrs.
Chen, but I promise you, we’re going to find out what happened, and we’re going to find Thomas Mercer.
After leaving the Chen house, Torres drove to the Pineriidge Sheriff’s Department, a small brick building at the edge of town.
Sheriff Robert Garrett met her in the conference room.
a stocky man in his 50s with gray at his temples and the weathered look of someone who’d spent decades dealing with mountain weather and small town problems.
Spread across the table were files from the original 1989 investigation.
I pulled everything we had, Garrett said, gesturing to the yellowed papers and faded photographs.
It’s not much.
We weren’t equipped for a case like this back then.
Hell, we’re barely equipped now.
Torres sat down, examining the files.
There were witness statements from the initial search, maps showing the areas that had been covered, photographs of the abandoned car with snow piled on its seats.
The investigation had been thorough for a small town department, but it had been hampered by the weather, the holiday, and the complete absence of physical evidence.
Tell me about the initial response, Torres said.
Catherine Chen reported them missing on Christmas morning.
What happened next? Garrett pulled out a timeline handwritten by the original investigating officer.
We found the car within an hour, still parked on Main Street.
The door was open, engine had run until empty.
We immediately organized search parties, brought in dogs from Billings, searched the surrounding woods, checked every building on Main Street, interviewed everyone who’d been in town that night.
Did you search the hardware store? Of course.
Frank Mercer gave us full access.
We went through the whole building, basement included.
Found nothing suspicious.
Torres looked up sharply.
You searched the basement in 1989.
Yeah.
Why? Did you find any evidence of a hidden room? Any false walls? Garrett frowned, thinking back.
No.
The basement was full of inventory, shelves, boxes.
It was cluttered, but straightforward.
Are you saying there was a hidden room, and we missed it? There was a professionally concealed space behind a false wall in the storage area.
That’s where we found David and Marcus’ belongings.
If your officers searched the basement and didn’t find it, whoever built that room did it after the initial investigation.
The sheriff’s face pald.
Jesus.
You mean someone hid evidence right under our noses while we were actively searching? It’s possible.
Or the room existed but was so well concealed your officers didn’t detect it.
Either way, someone had intimate knowledge of that building’s layout and enough time to hide evidence without being detected.
Torres pulled out a photograph of Thomas Mercer.
What can you tell me about this kid? Garrett studied the image.
Tommy Mercer, quiet kid, bit of a loner.
His parents died when he was eight or nine, and Frank raised him.
The grandfather was devoted to that boy, probably overprotective.
After Frank died in 2003, Tommy inherited everything, but never did much with it.
Last I heard, he’d moved to Billings.
Did Tommy have any behavioral problems as a kid? Any run-ins with law enforcement? Not that I recall.
Like I said, quiet, kept to himself mostly.
Torres made notes.
I need to see the original interview with Frank Mercer.
What did he say happened that night? Garrett shuffled through the files, pulling out a typed statement here.
Frank said David and Marcus came in around 8:45, bought batteries, left around 8:50.
He and his grandson closed the store shortly after, and went home.
He didn’t see anything unusual, didn’t hear anything.
The next morning when he heard about the disappearance, he came forward immediately to tell us about the visit to his store.
And the grandson, was he interviewed separately? Yeah.
Tommy gave a statement, too.
Said he was in the back room stocking shelves, didn’t interact with David or Marcus directly.
Confirmed the timeline his grandfather gave.
Both their statements matched perfectly.
too perfectly, Torres thought.
Rehearsed stories often matched better than genuine recollections, which tended to contain small discrepancies, as different people noticed different details.
Did anyone think it was strange that they were the last people to see the Chens alive? Of course, we looked at them closely, but Frank Mercer was a pillar of this community, been running that store for 30 years.
No criminal record, no complaints, nothing.
And the kid was 13.
We had no evidence of foul play, no bodies, no ransom demands.
It looked like they’d left the car and wandered off for some reason.
Maybe David became disoriented in the snow, got hypothermia, made bad decisions.
We focused on the woods, the ravines, anywhere they might have fallen or gotten lost.
Torres understood.
In 1989, with no bodies and no evidence of violence, the most logical explanation had seemed to be an accident.
The idea that a respected businessman and his teenage grandson had abducted and possibly murdered a father and son would have seemed absurd.
But absurd things happened every day, hidden behind respectable facades.
Sheriff, I need access to Frank Mercer’s property records, financial documents, anything that might show connections to other people or properties where victims could have been taken.
Frank’s been dead 20 years.
Most of his records would have gone to Tommy.
Then we need to find Tommy and get a warrant for whatever records still exist.
I also need the complete demolition survey of the hardware store.
If there was one hidden room, there might be others.
Garrett nodded grimly.
I’ll get you everything we have.
You really think Tommy Mercer killed them? A 13-year-old kid.
I think Thomas Mercer knows what happened to them.
Whether he acted alone, with his grandfather’s help, or under someone else’s direction, I don’t know yet.
But his DNA on that coat isn’t coincidence.
And his disappearance right before we found the evidence isn’t coincidence either.
Torres spent the rest of the morning reviewing the original case files, building a timeline of David and Marcus Chen’s final hours.
At 8:30 p.
m.
on Christmas Eve, they’d left home.
At 8:45 p.
m.
, they’d entered Mercer Hardware.
At 8:50 p.
m.
, according to Frank and Tommy’s statements, they’d left the store.
Sometime between 8:50 p.
m.
and 900 p.
m.
, they vanished.
10 minutes.
That’s all it had taken for two people to disappear completely.
Her phone rang.
Marcus Webb, her partner.
Amanda, I’ve got something.
Thomas Mercer’s credit card pinged at a gas station outside of Missoula 2 days ago.
He bought gas and food.
I’m pulling security footage now.
Two days ago, he’s still in Montana.
Looks like it.
And there’s more.
I tracked down one of the other employees from the hardware store, a woman named Dorothy Klene.
She worked there in the late8s.
She’s willing to talk to us.
Lives about 20 minutes from Pine Ridge.
Torres felt the investigation tightening.
Pieces beginning to connect.
I’ll meet you there.
Send me the address.
Dorothy Klene lived in a small ranch house surrounded by pine trees, smoke curling from her chimney into the gray winter sky.
She was in her 70s now, but her eyes were sharp when she opened the door to Torres and Web.
She led them into a living room cluttered with knitting projects and photographs of grandchildren.
I wondered when someone would come asking about the hardware store, Dorothy said, settling into an armchair.
Saw on the news about what they found in the ichi basement.
Terrible business.
Mrs.
Klene, you worked at Mercer Hardware from 1985 to 1992.
Is that correct? Torres asked.
Yes, I was the bookkeeper.
Handled the accounts and ordering.
Frank was good to work for, paid fair, treated people right.
What can you tell us about his grandson, Tommy? Dorothy’s expression shifted, something uncomfortable crossing her face.
Strange boy, not in a dangerous way, just off.
He spent a lot of time at the store helping his grandfather.
Frank doted on him, probably because Tommy’ lost his parents so young.
But the boy was odd.
Intense.
Intense how? He’d stare at people, customers, employees, just watch them with those dark eyes like he was studying them.
Made folks uncomfortable.
And he had this way of appearing suddenly like he’d been hiding and waiting.
Gave me the creeps more than once.
Webb leaned forward.
Did you ever see him interact with children? specifically.
Did you ever see him with Marcus Chen? Dorothy was quiet for a moment, her fingers twisting the yarn in her lap.
Marcus came to the store a few times with his father that fall.
Sweet little boy, always asking questions about the tools and hardware.
I remember Tommy watching him, following him with his eyes.
Whenever Marcus moved around the store, Torres felt her pulse quicken.
following him.
How? Like he was interested or like something else.
I couldn’t say exactly.
It just struck me as unusual.
Most teenagers ignore little kids or find them annoying, but Tommy seemed fixated.
I mentioned it to Frank once.
Asked if Tommy was all right, if maybe he was lonely and wanted a younger sibling or something.
Frank got defensive.
Said Tommy was fine.
said I was imagining things.
Did you work Christmas Eve that year? No.
Frank gave me the day off to be with my family.
I wasn’t there when the Chens disappeared.
Dorothy paused, her expression troubled.
But the next week, when I came back after the holiday, something was different.
Different how? The basement.
Frank had reorganized the entire storage area, moved all the shelves around, rearranged the inventory, said he wanted to start the new year with better organization.
But it seemed strange doing all that work right after Christmas when we just had a tragedy in town.
Everyone was out searching for David and Marcus and Frank was down in his basement moving furniture.
Torres and Webb exchanged glances.
Did you go down to the basement after it was reorganized? Yes.
The layout was completely different.
Where there used to be open floor space, there were now tall shelving units against the walls.
The whole area felt more cramped, closed in.
Mrs.
Klene, did Frank seem different after the chens disappeared? Did his behavior change? Dorothy considered this carefully.
He seemed sad, troubled, but that was natural given what happened.
The whole town was in shock.
Frank participated in the searches, donated money for the reward fund.
He seemed genuinely affected.
She paused.
But looking back now, knowing what they found in that basement, I wonder if I missed something.
If there were signs I should have seen.
You couldn’t have known, Torres said gently.
But I need you to think carefully.
In the weeks and months after the disappearance, did you notice anything else unusual? Any changes in Frank’s routine, his finances, his relationship with Tommy? Frank and Tommy became even closer, if that’s possible.
The boy was always at the store, always by his grandfather’s side, and Frank became more protective.
He’d get angry if anyone spoke critically of Tommy, if anyone suggested the boy was strange or troubled.
It was like losing the chens made Frank cling even tighter to his grandson.
Or like they were bound together by a secret, Torres thought, by something they’d done together that could never be undone.
After leaving Dorothy Klein’s house, Torres and Web sat in their vehicle reviewing what they’d learned.
The picture emerging was disturbing.
A lonely, strange teenager fixated on a young boy.
A grandfather who might have enabled or participated in whatever happened, a hastily reorganized basement that had concealed evidence for 34 years.
The gas station footage from Missoula, Torres said.
Did you get it? Webb pulled out his tablet, bringing up grainy security camera images.
They showed a thin man in his late 40s, dark hair graying at the temples, wearing a heavy coat and sunglasses despite the winter weather.
He pumped gas into an old pickup truck, then went inside the station.
That’s definitely Thomas Mercer, Webb said.
older, but the facial recognition software confirms it.
He paid cash, didn’t speak to the cashier beyond what was necessary.
Left, heading east.
East toward where? What’s in that direction? Webb pulled up a map.
Smaller towns, rural areas.
Eventually, you hit the Dakota border.
If he’s running, he could be anywhere by now.
Torres stared at the image of Thomas Mercer frozen on the screen.
He looked tired, haunted even.
Was it guilt, fear of being caught, or something else? Put out a bolo to all jurisdictions in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
I want every law enforcement agency looking for this man.
And get me a warrant for his financial records, phone records, anything that might tell us where he’s going.
You think he’s running back to something or just running? I think he’s had 34 years to plan for this moment.
He knew eventually that building would come down.
Knew the evidence would be found.
He might have a destination in mind.
Somewhere he feels safe.
Torres turned to her partner.
Marcus, what happened to victims when there are no bodies found? When someone vanishes completely? Web’s expression darkened.
usually means they’re buried somewhere remote or destroyed in a way that makes identification impossible.
Fire, water, dismemberment.
David and Marcus Chen disappeared in winter.
Snow on the ground, frozen earth.
Burying them would have been difficult.
So where are they? There are abandoned mines in these mountains, caves, ravines that have never been fully explored.
If someone wanted to hide bodies in this terrain, they’d have plenty of options.
Torres looked out at the mountains surrounding Pine Ridge, their peaks white against the gray sky.
Somewhere in that vast wilderness might be the answer to what happened on Christmas Eve 1989.
And somewhere running through that same wilderness was the man who knew the truth.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Dr.
Yao.
Blood on the drawing analyzed.
It’s David Chenz.
Also found something else in the evidence.
Call me.
Torres dialed immediately.
Richard, what did you find? We examined the hidden room more thoroughly.
There’s writing on the walls.
Amanda scratched into the concrete, names and dates going back decades.
David and Marcus Chen weren’t the first people in that room.
Torres felt ice spread through her veins.
How many names? Seven.
All with dates from the 1970s and 1980s.
We’re cross-referencing with missing person’s databases now.
Amanda, I think Frank Mercer was killing people for years, and I think his grandson helped him.
The names scratched into the concrete walls of the hidden room told a story that stretched back long before David and Marcus Chen ever entered Mercer Hardware.
Detective Torres stood in the demolished building’s basement, portable lights illuminating the exposed chamber that had held its secrets for decades.
Forensic technicians photographed every inch of the space while Dr.
Yao pointed out the etched writing with a gloved finger.
Here, he said, indicating marks near the floor in the northwest corner.
Sarah Mitchell, 1974.
Below that, James Cordderero, 1976.
Then Michelle Hang 1979.
He moved along the wall.
The writing gets progressively higher, suggesting different people carve these names at different times, possibly while restrained in different positions.
Torres crouched beside him, studying the desperate scratches.
Some were barely legible, carved with fingernails or small objects.
Others were deeper, gouged with more substantial tools.
All of them represented human beings who had spent their final moments in this concrete tomb, leaving behind the only evidence of their existence that would survive them.
“Have we identified all seven victims?” she asked.
“We’re working on it.
Three match missing persons cases from Montana in the 70s and 80s.
Sarah Mitchell disappeared from Callispel in 1974, age 16.
James Cordderero vanished from Great Falls in 1976, age 22.
Michelle Hang was last seen in but in 1979, age 19.
The other four names are harder to trace, possibly because they were never officially reported missing or the cases are in different jurisdictions.
Torres stood looking at the small room with new horror.
It was perhaps 10 ft by 12 ft.
the concrete walls bare except for the scratched names.
There were metal rings bolted into the floor and walls oxidized with age.
A drain in the center of the floor showed signs of repeated use.
This wasn’t a hastily constructed hiding place.
This was a purpose-built chamber designed for imprisonment and ultimately death.
How long has this room been here? She asked.
Based on the concrete composition and construction techniques, we estimate it was built in the early 1970s, possibly when the building was first renovated.
The hardware store occupied this location, starting in 1972 when Frank Mercer purchased the property.
So, he built this room when he first bought the building.
This was planned from the beginning.
Oh, it appears so.
Yes.
And there’s something else.
Yao led her to the far wall where a section of concrete had been partially removed during the demolition.
Behind this wall, we found a small cavity.
Inside were personal items, jewelry, identification cards, photographs, trophies from the victims.
Torres felt sick.
Show me.
In the forensics tent set up outside the building, Yao spread the recovered items across a table.
There were seven small piles, each labeled with one of the names from the wall.
Sarah Mitchell’s driver’s license, cracked and faded.
A high school class ring belonging to James Cordderero.
Michelle Hangs student ID from the University of Montana.
Each pile contained intimate items, things that had been on the victim’s bodies when they were taken.
But it was the photographs that disturbed Torres most.
They showed the victims while they were still in the room, alive but terrified.
Sarah Mitchell chained to the wall, her young face stre with tears.
James Cordderero slumped in the corner, his eyes vacant with shock.
The images were clinical, documentary, taken by someone who viewed human suffering with detached curiosity rather than empathy.
The photographs were taken with a Polaroid camera.
Yao explained.
Common in the 70s and 80s.
The deterioration pattern suggests they’ve been stored in that cavity since shortly after they were taken.
Whoever did this kept them as momentos.
Torres studied the images, forcing herself to look at each victim, to see them as people rather than evidence.
These were someone’s children, siblings, friends.
They’d had lives, futures, dreams.
and Frank Mercer had stolen all of it, reduced them to scratches on a wall and photographs in a hidden cavity.
What about David and Marcus Chen? Are there photographs of them? No.
Either they weren’t photographed or those images are stored elsewhere, possibly with Thomas Mercer.
Torres’s phone rang.
It was Sheriff Garrett.
Detective, we’ve got a hit on Thomas Mercer.
Ah, highway patrol spotted his truck at a rest stop outside of Glendive.
They’re in pursuit now.
Tell them not to engage directly.
This man is dangerous and possibly armed.
I want him contained, not confronted.
We’re on route.
The drive to Glendive took 4 hours through mountain passes and high plains.
The landscape opening up as they descended from the Rockies.
Chorus and Web drove in tense silence, monitoring the radio traffic as multiple law enforcement agencies coordinated the pursuit.
Thomas Mercer had fled the rest stop when he spotted the highway patrol, leading them on a chase that ended when his truck ran out of gas on a remote county road.
By the time Torres arrived, the scene was already secured.
Mercer’s pickup sat on the shoulder of an empty highway, surrounded by police vehicles.
The man himself sat in the back of a patrol car, his hands cuffed, his face expressionless.
Torres approached the vehicle, studying him through the window before the deputies brought him out.
Thomas Mercer looked older than his 47 years.
His hair was more gray than dark now, his face deeply lined.
But his eyes were the same as in his teenage photographs, dark and intense, watching everything with unsettling focus.
When the deputies opened the car door and helped him out, he looked directly at Torres without flinching.
Thomas Mercer, I’m Detective Amanda Torres with the Montana State Police.
You’re under arrest for obstruction of justice and suspicion of involvement in the disappearance of David and Marcus Chen.
You have the right to remain silent.
I know my rights,” Mercer interrupted, his voice quiet and surprisingly calm.
“And I’m willing to talk, but not here.
Take me somewhere private, and I’ll tell you everything.
” Torres studied him, trying to read whether this was genuine or manipulation.
Everything about what? About my grandfather, about what he did, about what I did.
Mercer’s eyes never left hers.
About all of them.
They transported Mercer to the nearest state police facility, a small outpost in Miles City.
Torres insisted on conducting the interview immediately.
Despite the late hour and her exhaustion, this man had evaded justice for 34 years.
She wasn’t going to give him time to construct a story or demand a lawyer who might silence him.
The interview room was standard, gray walls, metal table, recording equipment mounted in the corners.
Mercer sat across from Torres and Web, his cuffed hands resting on the table.
He’d declined a lawyer, signed the waiver without hesitation, and now sat waiting with eerie patience.
Torres started the recording, stated the date and time and persons present, then fixed Mercer with a hard stare.
You said you wanted to tell us everything.
Start talking.
Mercer took a slow breath, organizing his thoughts.
When he spoke, his voice was steady, almost clinical.
My grandfather was a monster.
I didn’t understand that when I was young.
I thought he was strong, powerful, special.
He told me we were different from other people, that we saw the world more clearly, that we weren’t bound by the same rules.
What rules? Moral rules.
Social rules.
the rules that say you can’t take what you want, that you can’t hurt people who are weaker than you.
Mercer’s expression didn’t change.
He started teaching me when I was 10 years old, small things at first, hurting animals, watching them die.
He said it was important to understand death, to not fear it or sentimentalize it.
Death was natural, he said, and we were natural predators.
Torres felt her stomach turn but kept her expression neutral.
When did he start killing people before I was born? The room in the basement was already there when I came to live with him after my parents died.
He showed it to me on my 11th birthday.
Said I was old enough to know the truth about our family, about what we really were.
There were already three names on the wall by then.
Sarah Mitchell, James Cordio, and Michelle Huang.
Mercer nodded.
He told me about each of them, how he’d found them, lured them, what he’d done to them.
He spoke about it like it was art, like he was a craftsman, proud of his work, and I wanted to please him.
He was all I had.
So, I listened and I learned, and eventually, I helped.
How did you help? at first just watching, being present while he worked, then disposing of evidence, cleaning the room.
By the time I was 13, I was participating directly.
Mercer’s eyes grew distant, remembering.
David and Marcus Chen were my first.
Torres felt Web tense beside her.
Tell us what happened that night.
Grandfather had been watching Marcus for months.
The boy came to the store with his father sometimes and grandfather said there was something special about him.
Innocent, pure.
He wanted to preserve that innocence.
He said to keep it.
Mercer’s voice remained flat, reciting facts without emotion.
We planned it for weeks.
Christmas Eve was perfect because the town would be empty.
Everyone home with their families.
We knew David would come for the batteries because grandfather had suggested it earlier.
Told David he should pick them up before the store closed for the holiday.
So it was premeditated.
You lured them there.
Yes.
When they arrived, grandfather served them drugged hot chocolate while I pretended to get the batteries from the back.
The drugs worked quickly, faster than expected.
David started to lose coordination right there in the store.
Marcus was smaller, lighter.
He went down first.
We carried them to the basement through the back entrance while the drugs took full effect.
Torres forced herself to remain professional, to not react to the casual way Mercer described kidnapping a child.
What happened in the basement? We put them in the room.
When David woke up, he was chained to the wall.
Marcus was in the corner, still unconscious.
Grandfather explained to David what was going to happen, that Marcus would be kept, preserved, that David would have to watch first to understand what his son was becoming.
That’s when David started begging, promising anything if we’d let Marcus go.
Is that when he wrote on the back of the drawing? Mercer looked surprised.
You found that? Yes, grandfather gave him the paper and crayon, told him to write his confession, his acknowledgment of failure as a father.
David wrote those words, asking God for forgiveness.
Grandfather liked that, the religious element.
He collected the drawing, said it was important to document the moment when someone truly understood their powerlessness.
Torres leaned forward.
Where are they, Thomas? Where are David and Marcus Chen? For the first time, Mercer’s expression shifted.
Something that might have been pain crossing his features.
That’s the thing, detective.
That’s why I ran.
Why I couldn’t let you find me before I was ready.
Because I don’t know where Marcus is.
What do you mean you don’t know? David died in that room.
My grandfather strangled him while Marcus watched.
That was the plan, to make the boy understand that his old life was over, that we were his family now.
But something went wrong.
Marcus wasn’t supposed to fight back.
He was 7 years old, small, drugged.
But when he saw his father die, something broke in him.
He became wild, feral.
He grabbed a tool from the floor.
something grandfather had left there by mistake and he fought.
Mercer paused, his hands trembling slightly in their cuffs.
He stabbed grandfather in the leg, drew blood, then he ran, got out of the room, somehow made it up the basement stairs before we could stop him.
It was dark, snowing, the middle of the night.
We chased him, but he was fast.
Terrified.
He ran toward the woods behind the hardware store.
We followed his tracks for hours, but we lost him in the snow.
By morning, there was no trace.
It was like he’d vanished.
Torres felt her heart pounding.
You’re saying Marcus Chen escaped? That he’s been alive all these years? I’m saying he ran into the woods and we never found him.
Whether he survived out there in the snow in December with no coat, no shoes, traumatized and drugged, I don’t know.
Grandfather searched for weeks, terrified Marcus would be found and tell what happened.
But no body was ever discovered.
No child matching his description turned up anywhere.
He just disappeared into the wilderness.
Webb spoke for the first time.
What did you do with David Chen’s body? There’s an abandoned mine shaft about 10 mi north of Pine Ridge.
We took him there 2 days after Christmas.
Once the searches had moved to other areas, dropped him down the shaft.
It’s hundreds of feet deep.
No one will ever find him.
Torres sat back trying to process this.
If Mercer was telling the truth, David Chen had been murdered in that basement room.
But Marcus, 7-year-old Marcus, had somehow escaped into a winter night and vanished.
The odds of a child surviving in those conditions were astronomical.
But if no body had been found in 34 years of searches, why are you telling us this now? She asked.
Why confess? After all these years, because my grandfather is dead, and I’m tired.
Tired of running.
Tired of remembering? tired of carrying this alone.
And because Katherine Chen deserves to know what happened to her family, even if the truth is terrible, Mercer met her eyes.
I was 13 years old when this started.
Young enough that I can claim I was manipulated, controlled by an adult, but old enough that I knew what we were doing was wrong.
I made choices, detective, and now I’m choosing to face the consequences.
Torres stood, her mind racing with the implications.
You’re going to tell us everything, every victim, every detail, every location, and you’re going to help us find David Chen’s remains.
Do you understand? Yes.
I’ll tell you everything, but there’s something else you need to know.
Mercer’s voice dropped lower.
The seven names on the wall, the victims in the room, those weren’t all of them.
My grandfather had other places, other properties.
The hardware store was just the beginning.
There are more bodies, detective.
Many more.
And I can help you find them all.
Torres looked at Web, seeing her own horror reflected in his eyes.
They’d uncovered a serial killer’s hunting ground, discovered evidence of murders spanning decades, but instead of bringing closure, they’d opened a door to something far worse.
the possibility that Frank Mercer’s crimes were even more extensive than they had imagined and that somewhere in the Montana wilderness, a 7-year-old boy had either died alone and terrified or somehow survived to become something else entirely.
The interview continued through the night.
Torres and Web extracting every detail from Thomas Mercer’s confession.
He spoke without emotion, describing horrors with the detachment of someone reciting a grocery list.
But occasionally, when he mentioned Marcus Chen, something flickered in his eyes.
Regret, fear.
Torres couldn’t tell.
But she knew one thing with certainty.
This case was far from over.
They had answers.
But those answers had spawned new questions that would haunt her for years to come.
As dawn broke over Miles City, Torres stepped outside the police station into cold morning air.
She called Catherine Chen, knowing the conversation would destroy what little hope the woman had left.
But Catherine deserved the truth, no matter how terrible.
And somewhere in the vast wilderness of Montana, there might still be answers waiting to be found.
Catherine Chen’s scream echoed through the phone line.
A sound of anguish so raw that Torres had to pull the device away from her ear.
When the keening finally subsided into broken sobs, Torres waited, giving the woman time to absorb what she’d just been told.
David was dead, murdered in a basement room while his son watched.
Marcus had escaped but likely perished in the frozen woods.
34 years of hope reduced to ash in a single phone call.
Mrs.
Chen, I know this is devastating, but I need you to listen carefully.
Torres kept her voice gentle but firm.
Thomas Mercer claims Marcus ran into the woods and they lost him.
But no body was ever found.
That means there’s a possibility, however small, that your son survived.
Catherine’s voice came through choked and desperate.
He was 7 years old.
It was December.
How could he have survived? I don’t know.
But stranger things have happened.
People have survived impossible situations.
And if Marcus did survive, if someone found him, took him in, he could be alive right now for 34 years without coming home, without remembering his family.
The hope in Catherine’s voice was painful to hear, fragile as glass.
Torres had wrestled with this same question all night.
a seven-year-old who’d witnessed his father’s murder, who’d been drugged and traumatized, who’d escaped into a winter wilderness.
What would that do to a child’s mind? Trauma can cause memory loss, especially in children.
If Marcus was found by someone who didn’t know who he was, if he couldn’t remember his own identity, then he could be anywhere.
He could be anyone.
Catherine was quiet for a long moment.
You have to find him, detective.
Dead or alive, I need to know.
I need to bring my son home.
After ending the call, Torres returned to the interview room where Thomas Mercer sat exactly as she’d left him, staring at the wall with those dark, unreadable eyes.
Webb had brought in coffee and sandwiches that sat untouched on the table.
Mercer looked up when Torres entered, his expression expectant.
“You said your grandfather had other properties.
” Torres began without preamble.
“Tell me about them.
” Mercer straightened slightly, as if relieved to move on from discussing the chance.
“Grandfather owned several parcels of land around Montana.
Most were purchased in the 70s and early before property values increased.
” He told people he was investing that he planned to develop them someday, but that wasn’t why he bought them.
He used them as burial sites.
Some of them, yes.
The abandoned mine where we put David Chen was on property grandfather owned 20 m north of Pine Ridge.
There’s also a cabin near Flathead Lake where he took some of the earlier victims and a storage facility outside of Missoula where he kept equipment, tools, documentation.
Torres pulled out a map of Montana, spreading it on the table.
Show me.
Mark every location you know about.
For the next hour, Mercer marked locations, providing GPS coordinates when he remembered them, general areas when he didn’t.
The map became covered with red circles, each representing a potential crime scene or burial site.
Torres counted 15 locations scattered across western Montana like a constellation of death.
The cabin near Flathead Lake, Mercer said, tapping a spot on the map.
That’s where most of the earlier victims are buried.
Grandfather would take them there, keep them for days or weeks, then bury them on the property when he was finished.
There should be at least six bodies there.
Should be.
You’re not certain.
I only helped with the later ones.
The victims from before I came to live with him.
I only heard about.
Grandfather kept journals, detailed records of everything he did, dates, names, methods.
Those journals are in the storage facility in Missoula.
Torres felt her pulse quicken.
Physical evidence, documentation that could corroborate Mercer’s confession and potentially identify unknown victims.
This storage facility, does anyone else have access to it? No.
Grandfather rented it under a false name in 1987s.
As far as I know, it’s still there, untouched.
He had a specific unit, number 47, climate control, to preserve the contents.
Webb leaned forward.
What else is in that unit besides journals? Mercer’s expression grew distant.
Photographs, hundreds of them, videos, too.
Once he got a camcorder in the mid80s, personal items from victims, and tools, the equipment he used, everything carefully organized, cataloged.
Grandfather was meticulous.
He viewed his work as important, worthy of documentation.
His work, Torres said, unable to keep the disgust from her voice.
You mean his murders? He never called them that.
He said he was preserving beauty, capturing moments of absolute truth when people stripped away all pretense and faced what they really were.
He said most people lived their entire lives in denial.
hiding from the fundamental truth that we’re all just animals, predators, and prey.
His victims, he said, achieved clarity in their final moments, and he was there to witness it, to document it.
Torres had interviewed many killers over her career, heard countless justifications for inexcusable acts, but there was something particularly chilling about Mercer’s flat recitation of his grandfather’s philosophy.
The way he repeated these words without seeming to recognize their monstrosity.
And you believed this.
You thought this justified what you did.
For the first time, Mercer’s mask cracked slightly.
I was a child, a lonely, damaged child who’d lost his parents and desperately wanted his grandfather’s approval.
He was charismatic, intelligent, convincing.
By the time I was old enough to question him, I was already complicit, already a killer myself.
There was no going back.
There’s always a choice, Webb said harshly.
You could have stopped at any time.
You could have gone to the police and said, “What? That I’d helped my grandfather murder people? That I’d buried bodies and cleaned crime scenes? I would have been arrested, tried, sent to prison.
Grandfather made sure I was involved enough that I couldn’t expose him without destroying myself.
That was intentional.
He bound us together through shared guilt.
Torres stood, needing to move to do something with the rage building inside her.
How many, Thomas? How many people did your grandfather kill? I don’t know exactly.
at least 20, if possibly more.
Some he never told me about.
Victims from before I was born.
The journals will have the complete count.
20 victims.
20 families destroyed.
20 lives ended in terror and pain.
And this man sitting across from her, had helped, had participated, was had carried these secrets for decades while living a normal life.
Torres wanted to scream, to overturn the table, to make Mercer feel even a fraction of the suffering he’d caused.
Instead, she forced herself to remain professional, focused on the investigation.
We’re going to verify everything you’ve told us, every location, every claim.
And if you’ve lied about anything, if this is some game you’re playing, I will make sure you never see daylight again.
Do you understand? Mercer nodded slowly.
I understand and I’m not playing games, detective.
I want this to end as much as you do.
Maybe more.
Torres arranged for Mercer to be transported to the state prison in Deer Lodge for holding while they verified his claims.
Then she and Webb drove to Missoula, arriving at the storage facility in the early afternoon.
The place was a sprawling complex of metal buildings, hundreds of identical units secured with padlocks and rolling doors.
Unit 47 was in the back corner, isolated from the main office.
They’d obtained a warrant within hours.
The judge expediting the process given the nature of the investigation.
Torres approached the unit with a bolt cutter, but found it unnecessary.
The padlock was already open, hanging loose from the latch.
Someone had been here recently.
Webb drew his weapon, positioning himself to one side while Torres pulled up the rolling door.
It opened with a screech of metal on metal, revealing the interior of the unit.
What they found made Torres’s blood run cold.
The space was empty.
Completely, totally empty.
No journals, no photographs, no equipment, just bare concrete floor and metal walls echoing and hollow.
Someone had cleaned out the unit, removing every piece of the evidence Thomas Mercer had promised would be there.
“Son of a bitch,” Webb muttered, holstering his weapon.
“He played us.
This was all a diversion.
” But Torres wasn’t so sure.
She stepped into the unit, examining the floor.
There were drag marks in the dust.
Rectangular impressions where boxes had recently sat and near the back wall.
She found something, a single Polaroid photograph missed in the cleanup, lying face down in a corner.
She picked it up carefully, turning it over.
The image showed a young man, maybe 19 or 20, chained to a concrete wall.
His face was bruised, his eyes wide with terror.
On the back of the photograph, written in neat handwriting, was a name and date.
Michael Preston, August 1982.
Torres showed the photograph to Web.
Someone emptied this unit, but they didn’t get everything.
And they did it recently, probably after Mercer was arrested, which means someone else knew about this place.
Someone else had access.
Who? Mercer said his grandfather died 20 years ago.
Who else would know about Frank Mercer’s storage unit? Torres thought back through the interviews, the evidence, the timeline.
Then it hit her.
Thomas Mercer moved to Billings 15 years ago, but he came back to Pine Ridge occasionally to check on the hardware store property.
What if he wasn’t alone? What if he had a partner? someone who helped him maintain his grandfather’s secrets.
Webb pulled out his phone, calling the forensics team.
We need to dust this place for Prince, check the security footage from the facility, interview the office staff.
Someone was here within the last few days.
Maybe we can identify them.
While Web coordinated with forensics, Torres stood in the empty unit holding the photograph of Michael Preston.
Here was another victim, another family who’d never gotten answers.
She wondered how many more were out there.
How many names were written in journals that had just been spirited away by an unknown accomplice.
Her phone rang.
It was Dr.
Yao.
Amanda, we’ve completed the analysis of the basement room.
The DNA evidence confirms at least 12 different individuals were held there over the years.
We’re running the profiles through national databases now trying to identify them.
Richard, we’ve got a problem.
The storage unit Mercer told us about has been cleaned out.
Someone removed all the evidence before we could secure it.
Yao was quiet for a moment.
That suggests fornowledge.
Someone knew Mercer was going to confess and reveal the location.
No, they had time to get there first and remove anything incriminating.
Which means either Mercer warned someone before he was arrested or someone’s been monitoring the investigation closely enough to anticipate our moves.
There’s something else, Yao continued.
We found a partial fingerprint on one of the photographs from the wall cavity.
It doesn’t match Thomas Mercer or Frank Mercer.
It belongs to someone else entirely.
Torres felt the case shifting again, expanding into something even more complex than she’d imagined.
Can you identify the print? We’re running it through office now.
I’ll let you know as soon as we get a hit.
After hanging up, Torres stood in the empty storage unit trying to piece together what was happening.
Thomas Mercer had confessed, provided details that only someone involved in the crimes could know.
But his confession had triggered a response from someone else, someone who’d rushed to hide evidence before it could be discovered.
Who was this person? Another victim of Frank Mercer’s manipulation, groomed and controlled like Thomas, or something worse, a willing partner who’d continued the work.
After Frank died, Webb returned, his expression grim.
Security footage shows a man in his 30s entering this unit 2 days ago.
He was here for 6 hours, made multiple trips to a truck to remove boxes and equipment, but he wore a mask and kept his face turned away from cameras.
The facility manager says the unit was paid up through 2025, always in cash, sent through the mail.
No one here ever met the person who rented it.
Did we get a license plate from the truck, stolen, reported missing from Callispel 3 days ago.
Found abandoned in Great Falls this morning.
Wiped clean.
No evidence inside.
Torres kicked the metal wall in frustration.
the sound echoing through the empty space.
They’d been so close to finding proof, to documenting the full extent of Frank Mercer’s crimes.
Now that evidence was gone, in the hands of someone who knew how to avoid detection, her phone buzzed with a text from Yao.
Fingerprint identified.
You need to see this.
Torres called him immediately.
Who is it, Richard? The partial print from the photograph belongs to Dorothy Klene, the bookkeeper from Mercer Hardware.
Torres felt the ground shift beneath her feet.
Dorothy Klene, the elderly woman who’d seemed so helpful, so concerned about the case.
The woman who’d worked at the hardware store during the critical years, who’d noticed Tommy’s strange behavior, who’d been there when Frank reorganized the basement.
She’d been right under their noses the entire time.
Get units to her house now, Torres said, already running toward her vehicle and pull everything we can find on her.
Background, financials, family connections.
I want to know who Dorothy Klene really is.
The drive back to Pine Ridge took 2 hours.
Torres pushing the speed limit on mountain roads while Webb coordinated the response.
By the time they arrived at Dorothy Klein’s ranch house, it was surrounded by police vehicles.
Sheriff Garrett met them at the perimeter, his face pale.
“She’s gone,” he said.
“House is empty.
Looks like she packed up and left in a hurry.
But you need to see what’s inside.
” Torres and Web followed him through the front door, now propped open by crime scene technicians.
The living room that had been cluttered with knitting projects and family photographs was transformed.
The photographs were gone, revealing walls covered in maps.
The same maps Torres had seen marking locations across Montana.
But these maps had additional notations, coordinates, dates, and on the coffee table laid out like a museum display were items Torres recognized from the forensics photographs.
a high school class ring, a student ID card, a woman’s bracelet, trophies from Frank Mercer’s victims.
But it was what they found in the basement that made Torres’s hands shake.
The space had been converted into a replica of the room beneath the hardware store.
concrete walls, metal rings bolted to the floor, a drain in the center, and on the walls scratched in the same desperate style, were names.
Not the same names from the original room, but new ones, recent ones.
The dates ranged from 2005 to 2023.
She continued his work, Webb said, his voice.
After Frank died, after Thomas left town, Dorothy Klein kept killing.
Torres counted the names on the wall.
11 of them spanning 18 years.
11 people who disappeared, probably dismissed as runaways or accidents, while Dorothy Klene maintained her facade as a harmless elderly bookkeeper with grandchildren and knitting projects.
Sheriff Garrett pointed to the newest name, the date just 3 months old.
Jenny Martinez, she was a waitress at the diner on Rout 2, disappeared after her shift in September.
We thought she’d run off with her boyfriend, headed to California like she always talked about doing.
We never even investigated.
Torres pulled out her phone, calling state police headquarters.
I need an APB issued immediately for Dorothy Klene, white female, approximately 75 years old.
Consider her armed and extremely dangerous.
And I need missing person’s reports for every name on these walls.
We need to identify these victims and notify their families.
As forensic teams documented the horror in Dorothy Klein’s basement, Torres stood in the yard, breathing cold mountain air and trying to clear her head.
The investigation had fractured into multiple directions.
Thomas Mercer in custody, confessing to crimes spanning decades, Dorothy Klene in the wind having killed at least 11 people since Frank Mercer’s death.
And somewhere in the wilderness, the question of Marcus Chen’s fate still unanswered.
Her phone rang.
It was Catherine Chen, her voice fragile with hope.
Detective, I’ve been thinking about what you said.
About Marcus possibly surviving.
If someone found him in the woods, if he was hurt and couldn’t remember who he was, where would they have taken him? Torres thought about this carefully.
A child found in the wilderness in December, hypothermic, traumatized, possibly injured.
A hospital most likely.
Or if whoever found him was remote, maybe they kept him themselves, raised him without knowing his real identity.
Then we need to check hospital records from December 1989.
Any reports of found children? Any boy matching Marcus’ description admitted anywhere in Montana or the surrounding states? Mrs.
Chen, it’s been 34 years.
Those records, I don’t care how long it’s been.
My son could be alive.
You said it yourself.
And if there’s even the smallest chance, I have to pursue it.
We have to pursue it.
Torres closed her eyes, knowing Catherine was right.
They’d uncovered terrible truths about what happened to David Chen.
But until they found Marcus, dead or alive, this case would never truly be closed.
Okay, I’ll start pulling hospital records from late December 1989.
every facility within a 200-mile radius of Pine Ridge.
If there’s any record of a boy matching Marcus’s description, we’ll find it.
After ending the call, Torres looked back at Dorothy Klein’s house, now swarming with investigators, documenting evidence of horrors that had gone undetected for decades.
Three serial killers operating from the same small Montana town.
Frank Mercer, his grandson Thomas, and the bookkeeper who’d continued their legacy.
The scope of it was staggering, the body count still unknown.
But beneath all the horror, one question burned brightest in Torres’s mind.
Where was Marcus Chen? Had he died alone in those winter woods 34 years ago? Or had he somehow survived, living all these years without knowing his real name, his real family? The truth of what happened to him on that Christmas Eve.
The sun was setting over Pine Ridge, casting long shadows across the snow-covered town.
Somewhere in the darkness, Dorothy Klene was running.
and somewhere, possibly still alive, was the key to finally bringing the Chen family’s nightmare to an end.
Torres pulled out her phone and began making calls, hospital records, social services, adoption agencies.
If Marcus Chen had survived, someone had found him.
Someone had records.
and Torres would search through every file, every database, every archive document until she found the truth.
The state police had commandeered a conference room to in the Helena headquarters, transforming it into a command center for what was now being called the Mercer investigation.
Three walls were covered with maps, photographs, and timelines.
The fourth wall held a growing list of victims, names recovered from the scratched walls and Dorothy Klein’s basement.
23 confirmed dead, another eight missing and presumed victims.
The scope of the killing spree was unprecedented in Montana history.
Torres stood before a map of the state.
Colored pins marking locations connected to the Mercers and Dorothy Klene.
Red pins for confirmed burial sites, yellow for properties owned by Frank Mercer, blue for places where victims were last seen.
The pins formed a web across western Montana, a geography of death that had gone unnoticed for over 40 years.
Dr.
Yao entered carrying a thick folder.
He looked exhausted, his eyes bloodshot from days of continuous work.
We’ve identified six more victims from the DNA in the basement room.
All missing persons from the 70s and 80s.
Cases that went cold decades ago.
Families are being notified.
Torres took the folder, scanning the names and photographs.
Young faces frozen in time, smiling at cameras before their lives were stolen.
Any progress on locating Dorothy Klene? Nothing.
It’s like she vanished.
We’ve checked airports, bus stations, train depots.
Her credit cards haven’t been used.
Her cell phone is off.
Either she planned this escape well in advance or someone’s helping her.
What about the evidence she removed from the storage unit? We’re still trying to determine what was taken.
Based on the impressions in the dust and the number of trips made to the truck, we estimate at least 20 boxes of materials, journals, photographs, videos, essentially Frank Mercer’s complete documentation of his crimes.
Torres slammed the folder down on the table.
So, we have confessions from Thomas Mercer, physical evidence from the crime scenes, but we’ve lost the most comprehensive record of what actually happened.
Dorothy knew exactly what to take.
There’s something else, Yao said quietly.
We found traces of blood in Klein’s basement.
Multiple sources, all relatively recent.
We’re running DNA analysis now, but preliminary results suggest at least three different individuals.
If those belong to her victims from the last few years, we might be able to identify them and locate burial sites.
How long for the full analysis? Another 24 hours for complete profiles.
But Amanda, there’s something about the blood patterns that’s unusual.
Some of it is pulled consistent with someone bleeding out in that space, but there are also transfer patterns.
Smears that suggest someone bleeding was moved through the room multiple times over an extended period.
Torres felt sick.
She kept them alive like Frank did in the hardware store basement.
It appears so.
Yes.
The room in her house was an almost exact replica of the original, down to the placement of the restraint rings and the drainage system.
She wasn’t just continuing Frank’s work.
She was recreating it precisely.
The door opened and Webb entered with Sheriff Garrett.
Both men looked grim.
We’ve completed the search of Dorothy Klein’s property.
Webb said a root seller we’d missed initially.
There are three bodies buried there, all in advanced stages of decomposition.
We’re exuming them now for identification, Garrett added.
And we’ve been interviewing her neighbors, people who knew her.
Everyone says the same thing.
Nice lady, quiet, kept to herself, knitted blankets for the church, volunteered at the library.
No one suspected anything.
Torres had heard this before.
The disconnect between a killer’s public persona and their private horrors.
The friendly neighbor who tortured people in their basement.
The helpful coworker who buried bodies in their backyard.
Evil didn’t always announce itself with obvious signs.
Sometimes it wore a grandmother’s face and knitted blankets while plotting murder.
What about her connection to Frank Mercer? Torres asked.
Have we established how deep that relationship went? Webb pulled out his tablet, bringing up employment records.
Dorothy Klein started working at Mercer Hardware in 1985, 4 years before David and Marcus Chen disappeared.
But here’s what’s interesting.
She was born Dorothy Mercer, Frank’s younger sister.
The room went silent.
Torres stared at the screen, pieces falling into place with horrible clarity.
Frank Mercer’s sister, not just an employee.
Family gets worse, Webb continued.
I dug into her background.
Dorothy married a man named Robert Klene in 1968, moved to California.
The marriage was troubled.
Police called multiple times for domestic disturbances.
Robert Klein disappeared in 1972.
Officially ruled a voluntary missing person, never found.
Dorothy moved back to Montana in 1984, started working for her brother the following year.
She killed her husband, Torres said.
Then came back here, and Frank brought her into his operation.
This wasn’t just a killer and his assistant.
This was a family business.
Yao’s phone buzzed.
He read the message, his face paling.
We’ve got the DNA results from Klein’s basement.
One of the profiles matches a missing person from 2023.
Jenny Martinez, the waitress Sheriff Garrett mentioned, but there’s a second profile that’s even more concerning.
It matches a woman named Sarah Chen, reported missing from Seattle 3 weeks ago.
Torres felt ice form in her stomach.
Chen as in she was researching her family history according to the missing person report filed by her employer trying to trace relatives who disappeared.
The report mentions she was planning a trip to Montana to investigate her grandfather and uncle who vanished in 1989.
Torres pulled out her phone, hands shaking as she dialed Catherine Chen.
The woman answered on the first ring.
Detective.
Mrs.
Chen.
Your daughter Sarah.
When was the last time you spoke with her? Sarah? She called me 2 weeks ago.
Said she was taking some time off work to visit me, but she never arrived.
I’ve been calling her cell phone, but it just goes to voicemail.
I thought maybe she’d changed her plans.
Torres closed her eyes.
the full horror of the situation becoming clear.
Mrs.
Chen, I need you to send me a recent photograph of Sarah immediately, and I need you to tell me everything she said about coming to Montana.
Every detail.
Oh god.
Oh god.
What happened to Sarah? We don’t know yet, but we’re going to find out.
Please send me that photograph now.
Two minutes later, Torres’s phone received the image.
Sarah Chen, smiling at the camera, 42 years old, with kind eyes and her father’s smile.
Torres showed the photograph to the team.
Dorothy Klene has been following this family for 34 years.
She watched Catherine Chen grieve, participated in search efforts, pretended to be sympathetic, and when Sarah Chen started asking questions, started getting too close to the truth, Klene took her.
But why now? Web asked.
Why wait three decades and then target Sarah? Because we found the evidence, Torres realized.
The demolition of the hardware store, the discovery of the hidden room.
It triggered something.
Klein knew the investigation would eventually lead back to her.
So, she made a move.
Grabbed Sarah Chen before we could protect her.
Sheriff Garrett was already on his phone organizing search parties.
If Klein took Sarah 3 weeks ago and the blood in her basement is that recent, there’s a chance Sarah’s still alive.
We need to find Klein’s other properties, any place she might be holding a victim.
Torres turned back to the map, studying the network of locations.
Thomas Mercer gave us 15 sites connected to his grandfather, but those were just the places he knew about.
Frank and Dorothy were siblings, active together for decades.
There could be other properties, places only the two of them knew about.
We need to talk to Thomas again, Webb said.
Push him harder about Dorothy, about places his grandfather might have shared with her.
The drive to Deer Lodge State Prison took 3 hours.
Thomas Mercer was being held in isolation, protected from other inmates who might take issue with a child killer in their midst.
Guards brought him to an interview room.
His prison jumpsuit hanging loose on his thin frame.
He looked even more haggarded than during their last conversation.
Shadows under his eyes suggesting he wasn’t sleeping.
Torres sat across from him.
Web standing against the wall.
We need to talk about Dorothy Klene.
Mercer’s expression shifted.
Something like fear crossing his features.
What about her? You knew she was Frank’s sister.
You knew she was involved in his crimes.
And you didn’t mention her once during your confession.
I thought she was dead, Mercer said, his voice barely audible.
I hadn’t seen her in over 20 years.
After grandfather died, she disappeared.
I assumed she’d moved away.
Baby died herself.
She was old even then.
She’s alive and she’s been killing people, continuing your grandfather’s work.
She also kidnapped Sarah Chen three weeks ago.
Catherine Chen’s daughter, Marcus’s sister, the woman who started asking too many questions about what happened to her family.
Mercer’s hands began to tremble.
Sabra Chen, I remember her.
She was 15 when her father and brother disappeared.
Grandfather talked about taking her too, said it would complete the set, but the attention after David and Marcus vanished made it too risky.
Torres leaned forward.
Where would Dorothy take her? What properties did she and your grandfather use together? I don’t know.
Like I told you, Dorothy was involved before I came to live with grandfather.
By the time I was old enough to participate, she’d step back, took on more of a supervisory role.
She’d visit occasionally, help dispose of evidence, but she wasn’t there for the actual killings anymore.
At least not that I saw.
Think, Thomas.
There must have been places your grandfather mentioned, locations where he and Dorothy worked together, family properties, remote areas where they could operate without detection.
Mercer was quiet for a long moment, his eyes distant with memory.
There was a place grandfather mentioned once, a cabin that belonged to his parents, Dorothy’s parents, too, somewhere near the Canadian border, very remote.
He said it was special to them, that it was where they first understood what they really were.
Where near the Canadian border? Give me something specific.
I don’t know exactly.
He just said it was in the Swan Range near a lake.
They inherited it when their parents died in the 50s.
But I never went there.
Never saw photographs.
It was their place somewhere from before I was part of their world.
Torres pulled out a map showing Mercer the swan range.
Can you narrow it down at all? East or west? Near any specific landmarks.
Mercer studied the map, his finger hovering over various locations.
West, I think, near Hungry Horse Reservoir.
Grandfather mentioned the cabin was accessible only by a logging road that washed out years ago.
You’d have to hike in or use a four-wheel drive.
Torres was already on her phone calling the state police.
I need satellite imagery of the Swan Range near Hungry Horse Reservoir.
Looking for structures, cabins, any buildings that might be accessible via old logging roads, and I need a tactical team ready to deploy immediately.
Webb added.
Also, check property records for Frank and Dorothy Mercer’s parents.
See if they owned land in that area.
While the team worked on locating the cabin, Torres sat back down across from Mercer.
Why didn’t you tell us about Dorothy from the beginning? You’ve confessed to everything else.
Because I was afraid, Mercer admitted.
Afraid of her.
Grandfather was terrible.
But Dorothy was worse in some ways.
Grandfather killed for philosophy, for his twisted belief was about human nature.
Dorothy killed because she enjoyed it.
She took pleasure in suffering in control.
When I was young, she terrified me more than grandfather ever did.
And yet you said nothing when you confessed.
You let her remain free while we focused on your grandfather’s crimes.
I told you.
I thought she was dead or gone.
It’s been 20 years since I last saw her.
How was I supposed to know? She’d been continuing on her own.
Torres’s phone rang.
It was the property records division.
Detective, we found it.
Frank and Dorothy Mercer’s parents owned 40 acres near Swan Lake, purchased in 1947.
There’s a cabin registered on the property, though it hasn’t had utilities connected in decades.
Sending you coordinates now.
Torres stood motioning to web.
We’re going get the tactical team mobilized and meet us there.
Before leaving, she turned back to Mercer.
If Sarah Chen is dead because you didn’t tell us about Dorothy, if we arrive at that cabin and find we’re too late, I will make sure you’re charged as an accessory.
Do you understand? Mercer met her eyes, and for the first time, she saw genuine emotion there.
Fear mixed with something that might have been regret.
Bring her home, detective.
Let’s don’t let Dorothy have another chin.
The drive to Swan Lake took four hours through increasingly remote terrain.
Torres and Webb led a convoy of state police vehicles and tactical units sirens off to avoid alerting their target.
The coordinates led them to a narrow, barely visible turnoff from Highway 83, marked only by an ancient wooden post nearly rotted through.
The logging road was exactly as Mercer had described, washed out, overgrown, impassible to normal vehicles.
They parked at the turnoff and continued on foot.
A team of 12 officers moving through the forest in tactical formation.
Fresh snow had fallen overnight, and Torres noticed with growing concern that there were no tire tracks, no footprints, no signs of recent activity.
After 2 mi of hiking through dense forest, they emerged into a small clearing.
The cabin stood at its center, a structure that had once been substantial, but now sagged with age and neglect.
Windows were boarded over, the porch had partially collapsed, and the whole building leaned slightly to one side, as if exhausted by decades of mountain winters.
But there was smoke rising from the chimney and parked behind the cabin, partially hidden by trees, was a pickup truck.
Someone was here.
The tactical team surrounded the cabin, establishing a perimeter while Torres and Web approached the front door with weapons drawn.
Torres could hear sounds from inside, movement, possibly voices.
She nodded to the team leader, who raised his hand in a countdown.
3 2 1 The door crashed inward and officers flooded the cabin, shouting commands.
Torres followed them in, her flashlight cutting through the dim interior.
The cabin’s main room was furnished with old furniture covered in dust sheets.
A fire burned in the stone fireplace, providing the only light and heat.
And sitting in a chair before the fire, as if she’d been expecting them, was Dorothy Klene.
She looked different from the kindly grandmother who’d served them tea in her living room.
Her expression was cold, calculating, her eyes sharp as she watched the officers secure the cabin.
She made no move to resist, keeping her hands visible as they approached.
“Detective Torres,” she said calmly.
I was wondering when you’d find this place.
Took you longer than I expected.
Where is Sarah Chen? Dorothy smiled, the expression chilling, resting.
She’s been through quite an ordeal.
Officers were already searching the cabin.
From somewhere below, Torres heard a shout.
Basement.
We’ve got someone down here.
Torres ran toward the sound, finding a trap door in the kitchen floor leading to a root cellar.
She descended the narrow stairs, her flashlight revealing a small underground room.
And there, chained to the wall, just as her father and brother had been 34 years ago, was Sarah Chen.
She was alive, conscious, her eyes widening with hope and terror as Torres approached, bruised, dehydrated, but alive.
Torres holstered her weapon and immediately began working on the chains.
Sarah, I’m Detective Torres.
Your mother sent me.
You’re safe now.
We’re getting you out of here.
Sarah’s voice was hoarse.
Barely a whisper.
She told me things about my father, about Marcus.
Terrible things.
I know.
I know what happened, but you’re safe now.
We’re taking you home.
As paramedics arrived to treat Sarah, Torres climbed back upstairs where Dorothy Klene was being handcuffed.
The old woman looked at Torres with something like amusement.
Did she tell you? Did Sarah tell you what I explained to her? I don’t want to hear anything from you.
But you should, Dorothy insisted, her voice taking on an eager quality.
because I told her the truth about Marcus, about what really happened in those woods on Christmas Eve 1989.
Torres froze.
What are you talking about? Dorothy’s smile widened.
Thomas told you Marcus escaped, ran into the wilderness, and was never found.
That’s partly true.
But he didn’t tell you who found him, who brought him back from the edge of death and gave him a new purpose.
Where is Marcus Chen? Closer than you think, detective.
Closer than you’ve ever imagined.
Frank and I raised him, you see.
Molded him into something better than that weak crying child who watched his father die.
We gave him strength, purpose, truth.
And when Frank died, when Thomas ran away like the coward he was, Marcus stayed with me, my faithful son, continuing the work.
Torres felt the world tilt.
You’re lying.
This is another manipulation.
Am I? Then explain the fingerprints you found that didn’t match Frank or Thomas.
Explain the evidence that was removed from the storage unit before you could secure it.
Explain who helped me all these years.
Who learned everything Frank and I could teach him.
No.
Huh? Marcus Chen was 7 years old.
He couldn’t.
He was seven when we found him half frozen in the woods.
But he’s 41 now, and he’s been such a good student, better than Thomas ever was, more dedicated, more thorough, the perfect heir to Frank’s legacy.
Torres pulled out her phone, hands shaking as she called for backup.
I need an APB issued immediately for Marcus Chen, white male, age 41.
Last known appearance unknown.
Consider him armed and extremely dangerous.
Dorothy laughed, the sound echoing through the old cabin.
You won’t find him by looking for Marcus Chen.
That name died in the woods on Christmas Eve 1989.
Frank gave him a new one, a new identity, a new life.
He’s been right under your noses for decades, detective.
working, living, preparing, and by the time you figure out who he is, it will be far too late.
The interrogation room in Helena felt smaller than usual, the walls seeming to press in as Detective Torres sat across from Dorothy Klene.
The old woman appeared almost serene despite the handcuffs securing her to the table, her gray hair neatly combed, her expression calm.
Sarah Chen had been transported to the hospital, traumatized but alive.
Now Torres needed answers about the claim that had turned this investigation on its head.
“You’re telling me Marcus Chen has been alive for 34 years, raised by you and Frank Mercer, and is currently working as your accomplice,” Torres said, keeping her voice level despite the fury churning inside her.
I need proof.
Dorothy smiled, the expression grotesque on her grandmother’s face.
Proof? Look at your own evidence, detective.
The DNA you found that didn’t match Frank or Thomas.
The person who emptied the storage unit before you could secure it.
The methodology of my recent kills, which followed Frank’s techniques so precisely.
I’m 75 years old.
Do you really think I could have subdued and transported those victims alone? Webb stood against the wall, arms crossed.
Give us a name.
If Marcus Chen has a new identity, tell us what it is.
Why would I do that? You’ll find him eventually, and when you do, the look on your faces will be worth far more than whatever plea deal you might offer.
Dorothy leaned back in her chair.
But I’ll tell you this much.
Frank chose the name carefully.
Something that would honor our family while hiding Marcus’ true origins.
And we gave him a complete background, documents, a history that would stand up to any investigation.
He’s been living openly for decades.
Detective, you’ve probably driven past him dozens of times.
Torres pulled out her tablet, bringing up photographs.
Sarah Chen said you told her things about her father and brother.
What exactly did you tell her? The truth that David Chen died begging for his son’s life.
That Marcus watched his father’s murder and broke in that moment became something new.
Frank always said trauma could either destroy a person or transform them.
Marcus was transformed.
He was a traumatized child who needed help.
not monsters who turned him into one of you.
Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Dorothy said, her eyes glittering.
Marcus wasn’t destroyed by what happened.
He was liberated.
Frank saw it immediately when we found him in the woods that night.
The boy had fought back, drawn blood, run into the wilderness to survive.
Most children would have simply submitted, died.
But Marcus had something special inside him.
A darkness that matched our own.
Torres wanted to reach across the table and throttle this woman, but forced herself to remain professional.
Where did you find him? How long was he in the woods before you tracked him down? 3 days.
We searched constantly, terrified he’d be found by someone else, that he’d reveal what happened.
Frank was nearly mad with worry.
Then on the third night, we found him in a ravine about 5 miles from the hardware store.
He’d fallen, broken his ankle, couldn’t walk.
He was hypothermic, delirious, barely conscious, but still alive, still fighting.
And you didn’t take him to a hospital.
You didn’t call the police.
Frank took him to the cabin, the one you just raided.
We nursed him back to health, treated his injuries, and while we did, we talked to him, explained how the world really worked, what his father had been too weak to understand.
And gradually, Marcus began to see the truth.
He was 7 years old, Webb said harshly.
You brainwashed a traumatized child.
We educated him, gave him purpose.
By the time he was 10, he understood what we were building.
By 15, he was participating actively.
And by the time Frank died 20 years ago, Marcus was ready to step into his role to continue the work.
Torres studied Dorothy’s face, looking for any sign of deception.
But the old woman seemed genuinely proud, discussing the corruption of a child with the same tone someone might use describing a successful business venture.
If Marcus has been working with you for years, where has he been during this investigation? Why hasn’t he tried to help you? Oh, but he has.
Who do you think warned me when the demolition crew started work on the hardware store? who helped me empty the storage unit before you could secure it.
Marcus has been monitoring this investigation from the beginning, feeding me information, helping me stay ahead of you.
This revelation sent ice through Torres’s veins.
He has access to law enforcement channels.
He’s been tracking our investigation from the inside.
Dorothy’s smile widened.
Now you’re beginning to understand.
Marcus isn’t some fugitive hiding in the wilderness.
He’s integrated, respected, trusted, and he’s been watching you, Detective Torres.
Watching very closely.
Torres immediately pulled out her phone, calling the state police headquarters.
I need a full security review of everyone with access to the Mercer investigation files.
Check every officer, every analyst, every support staff member.
Someone’s been leaking information, and I want to know who.
After ending the call, she returned her attention to Dorothy.
You realize what you’re facing.
Multiple counts of firstdegree murder, kidnapping, conspiracy.
You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison, probably die there.
But if you tell us Marcus’ new identity, if you help us find him before he hurts anyone else, it could make a difference.
A difference to whom? Not to me.
I’m 75 years old, detective.
I’ve lived a full life, done everything I wanted to do.
Prison doesn’t frighten me.
Death doesn’t frighten me.
The only thing that would disappoint me now would be seeing Frank’s work end.
And as long as Marcus is free, that won’t happen.
The interrogation continued for hours.
Torres and Web taking turns trying different approaches.
Appeals to conscience, threats of consequences, logical arguments about the futility of protecting Marcus.
Nothing worked.
Dorothy Klene remained steadfast, providing tantalizing hints, but no concrete information about Marcus Chen’s current identity or whereabouts.
Finally, exhausted and frustrated, Torres called for guards to return Dorothy to her cell.
As they led her out, the old woman paused at the door.
You should check on Catherine Chen, detective.
Make sure she’s safe.
Marcus always said he’d like to meet his mother someday.
And given how close you’re getting, he might decide now is the time.
Torres felt her blood run cold.
She immediately called Catherine Chen’s number.
It rang four times, then went to voicemail.
She tried again.
Same result.
Get units to Catherine Chen’s address immediately.
Possible imminent threat.
The drive to Pine Ridge took 3 hours.
That felt like 30.
Torres pushed her vehicle to dangerous speeds on snow slick roads while Webb coordinated with local law enforcement.
Sheriff Garrett met them at Catherine’s house, his face grim.
No sign of forced entry.
Neighbors say they saw her this morning working in her yard, but she’s not answering her door and her cars in the driveway.
Torres drew her weapon and approached the house.
Mrs.
Chen, it’s Detective Torres.
We need to speak with you.
No response.
Torres nodded to the officers who breached the front door.
The house was quiet, unchanged from when Torres had visited days earlier, but Catherine Chen wasn’t there.
Her purse sat on the kitchen counter.
Her coat hung by the door.
Everything suggested she’d been home recently, but now the house was empty.
“Check every room,” Torres ordered.
“Basement, attic, closets.
She has to be here somewhere.
” Officers spread throughout the house while Torres stood in the kitchen trying to think like Marcus Chen.
He’d been raised by the Mercers, taught their methods, molded into a killer.
But this was his mother, the woman who’d searched for him for 34 years, who’d never given up hope.
Would he harm her? Or was this something else? Detective, an officer called from upstairs.
You need to see this.
Torres took the stairs two at a time, following the voice to Catherine’s bedroom.
The officer stood at the window, pointing down to the backyard.
There, visible in the fresh snow, was a message written in footprints.
Found you.
Torres felt her phone buzz.
Unknown number.
She answered, already knowing who it would be.
Hello, Detective Torres.
The voice was male, calm, educated.
I apologize for the dramatic gesture, but I wanted your attention.
Where is Catherine Chen? safe for now, resting comfortably in a place where we won’t be disturbed.
I wanted to meet her, you see, to finally speak with the woman who gave birth to Marcus Chen, even though Marcus Chen no longer exists.
What do you want to talk? To explain things that Dorothy wouldn’t, things Thomas couldn’t.
You’ve been chasing shadows, detective, trying to understand what happened to a family that was broken long before that Christmas Eve.
I can give you the complete picture.
Torres gestured frantically at Web, who was already working to trace the call.
If you want to talk, turn yourself in.
Release Catherine and we can have that conversation at the station.
I don’t think so.
Too many people.
Too many distractions.
I want to meet you somewhere private.
Just you, detective.
Come alone.
Uh, and I’ll answer all your questions.
Bring backup.
And Catherine Chen disappears forever, just like her husband and son did.
How do I know she’s still alive? There was a pause.
Then Torres heard Catherine’s voice, weak and frightened.
Don’t come, detective.
Don’t give him what he wants.
The man’s voice returned, “Satisfied? Now, here’s what you’re going to do.
Drive to the old Mercer cabin at Swan Lake, the one where you found Dorothy.
Come alone, come unarmed, and come before midnight.
If you’re late, if you bring anyone with you, if I see any sign of law enforcement, Catherine dies.
Do you understand?” I understand, but I need more time.
Swan Lake is hours away.
Then you’d better leave now, detective.
The clock is ticking.
The line went dead.
Torres stood frozen, weighing her options.
Every instinct screamed that this was a trap, that walking into that cabin alone would be suicide.
But if she didn’t go, Katherine Chen would die.
And after 34 years of suffering, the woman deserved better than to be murdered by the son she’d spent her life searching for.
Webb approached, shaking his head.
Call was routed through multiple relays.
We couldn’t trace it.
He wants me to meet him at the Swan Lake cabin alone before midnight.
That’s not happening.
We’ll set up a perimeter, tactical teams, and he’ll know.
He’s been monitoring our investigation web.
He probably has access to our communications.
If we mobilize a tactical response, he’ll see it coming and Catherine dies.
So what? You just walk in there alone? Let him kill you both.
Torres thought about Catherine Chen, about Sarah recovering in the hospital, about David Chen’s body lying in a mine shaft, and Marcus Chen twisted into something unrecognizable by monsters who’d stolen his childhood.
I have to try.
Catherine deserves that much.
Sheriff Garrett entered the rooms, his expression troubled.
Detective, we’ve got something.
Security footage from a gas station on the edge of town shows Katherine Chen’s car being driven by a man matching the general description we have for Marcus Chen.
Time stamp is from 2 hours ago.
He had a passenger, a woman matching Catherine’s description.
Appears to be restrained.
What direction were they heading? North toward Swan Lake.
Torres made her decision.
I’m going, but I need you to do something for me.
Give me a 2-hour head start.
Then position teams around the cabin’s perimeter.
Far enough back that he won’t detect them immediately, but close enough to respond if things go wrong.
And I need a wire.
Something small he won’t find in a patown.
Webb started to protest, but Torres cut him off.
This is happening, Marcus.
Either help me do it safely or watch me do it alone.
Your choice.
An hour later, Torres was driving north towards Swan Lake, a microtransmitter sewn into the lining of her jacket and a backup weapon strapped to her ankle beneath her jeans.
She’d left her service pistol and badge behind as instructed, but she wasn’t going in completely defenseless.
The winter night was clear and cold, stars brilliant overhead, the road empty except for her vehicle.
She thought about Marcus Chen, trying to imagine what the Mercers had done to transform a 7-year-old boy into someone who could kidnap his own mother.
The psychological damage must be immense.
Layers of trauma and manipulation built over decades.
Was there anything left of the original Marcus? Or had Frank and Dorothy succeeded in completely erasing the child and creating something new? The turnoff to the cabin appeared in her headlights.
Torres parked her vehicle and continued on foot, following the same path she’d taken earlier that day when they’d rescued Sarah.
The forest was silent except for wind through the pines and the crunch of snow beneath her boots.
She checked her watch.
11:47 p.
m.
13 minutes to spare.
The cabin came into view, dark except for fire light flickering in the windows.
Torres approached slowly, hands visible, making no threatening moves.
The front door opened before she reached it, revealing a man’s silhouette against the fire light.
Detective Torres, thank you for coming.
Please step inside.
Torres entered the cabin, her eyes adjusting to the dim light.
The man closed the door behind her and moved into the fire light.
He was tall, lean, in his early 40s, with dark hair graying at the temples.
His face was unremarkable, the kind that would blend into any crowd.
But his eyes were what caught Torres’s attention, dark, intense, watching her with the same unsettling focus she’d seen in Thomas Mercer’s teenage photographs.
“Where is Catherine Chen?” Torres demanded.
The man gestured toward a doorway leading to the back of the cabin.
resting unharmed as promised.
But before you see her, we need to talk.
Have a seat, detective.
Torres remained standing.
I didn’t come here to chat.
Let Catherine go and we can have this conversation at the station.
I don’t think so.
You see, this conversation needs to happen here in this cabin where Frank Mercer saved my life 34 years ago, where he gave me truth and purpose, where he made me understand what I really am.
The man settled into a chair by the fire, completely relaxed.
My name is Michael Brennan.
At least that’s what my driver’s license says.
I’m a social worker for the state of Montana specializing in missing children cases.
Ironic, isn’t it? Torres felt the pieces clicking together.
A social worker with access to law enforcement databases to missing person’s files, to information about investigations, someone who could monitor the Mercer case without raising suspicion.
Someone trusted by the system he’d been subverting for years.
You’ve been working for the state for how long? 15 years.
Before that, I was in graduate school studying psychology and social services.
Frank paid for my education, taught me how to navigate the world, how to appear normal, and I’ve been very successful.
Detective, helped reunite dozens of families, found missing children, built a reputation as someone who cares deeply about protecting the vulnerable.
No one has ever suspected what I really am.
And what are you? Michael Brennan’s expression shifted.
Something cold and predatory entering his eyes.
I’m what Frank and Dorothy made me.
The culmination of their work.
A perfect predator who can move through society undetected.
Who understands human behavior well enough to manipulate it.
Who knows how to find prey that won’t be missed.
I’ve killed 17 people since Frank died.
Detective.
17 victims carefully selected and disposed of so expertly that most weren’t even reported missing.
Homeless individuals, runaways, people on the margins.
I learned from Frank’s mistakes.
He was brilliant, but sometimes careless.
I’m more careful.
Torres felt sick, but kept her voice steady.
Where are the bodies? scattered across Montana and neighboring states.
Some in mine shafts like my father, others in the wilderness where they’ll never be found.
I am very good at making people disappear, detective.
It’s what I was trained to do.
Brennan leaned forward.
But I didn’t bring you here to confess.
I brought you here because I want you to understand something important.
Marcus Chen died in those woods.
On Christmas Eve 1989, the boy who loved his father, who played with toys, who believed in Santa Claus, that child froze to death.
What Frank and Dorothy found was a shell, and they filled it with something new, something stronger.
They filled it with poison, with sickness.
Marcus Chen deserved to be rescued, to be returned to his mother to heal.
Heal? Brennan laughed.
Heal into what? Another weak, deliluded person stumbling through life, believing in fairness and justice.
Frank showed me the truth.
That the world is predators and prey, and the only choice that matters is which one you become.
I chose to be a predator.
You didn’t choose anything.
You were a traumatized child, manipulated by serial killers.
I was a child who watched his father die because David Chen was too weak to protect us, too trusting, too naive, and I learned from that lesson.
I became strong where he was weak, careful where he was careless.
I survived.
Torres heard movement from the back room.
Catherine still alive.
She needed to keep Brennan talking.
Give the tactical teams time to get into position.
Why bring Catherine here? Why not just disappear? Because Dorothy was right about one thing.
I wanted to meet my mother.
To see the woman who created Marcus Chen, to understand what made him so weak, and I wanted her to see what I became.
To understand that her son is gone forever.
Brennan stood, moving toward the back room.
Come, let me introduce you.
Torres followed him through the doorway into a small bedroom.
Catherine Chen sat in a chair, her hands bound, her mouth gag.
Her eyes widened when she saw Torres, hope and terror warring in her expression.
Brennan removed the gag gently, almost tenderly.
“Hello, mother,” he said softly.
“Do you recognize me?” Catherine stared at him, tears streaming down her face.
Marcus, is it really you? Marcus is dead.
I’m what replaced him.
But I have his memories, his face.
Look closely.
Can you see your son underneath what Frank created? Catherine’s sobs were heartbreaking.
My baby.
What did they do to you? They saved me.
Made me strong.
Taught me the truth about the world.
Brennan knelt before her, studying her face with clinical detachment.
You spent 34 years searching for someone who no longer exists.
Was it worth it? All that suffering, all that grief, for nothing, you’re still my son.
Whatever they did to you, whoever you think you are, you’re still my Marcus, and I never stopped loving you.
For the first time, something flickered in Brennan’s expression.
Confusion, maybe even pain.
Love.
That’s what David Chen thought would protect us.
That’s what made him weak.
Love is a delusion mother, a chemical reaction in the brain that clouds judgment and makes people vulnerable.
No, Catherine said firmly, love is what makes us human, what separates us from monsters.
And somewhere inside you, my son is still there, still human, still capable of choosing a different path.
Torres watched this exchange, seeing the cracks forming in Brennan’s facade.
Beneath the cold predator persona was the traumatized child still carrying wounds that had never healed.
She’s right, Michael or Marcus, whatever you want to be called.
You’re not what Frank and Dorothy created.
You’re a victim who became a perpetrator.
But you can still choose to stop.
Brennan stood abruptly.
The moment of vulnerability passing.
Enough.
I didn’t bring you here for therapy or redemption.
I brought you here to witness what I’m going to do next.
To understand the full scope of Frank’s legacy.
He pulled a knife from his jacket, the blade glinting in the fire light.
Torres’s hand moved instinctively toward her ankle holster, but Brennan was faster.
In one fluid motion, he had the knife at Catherine’s throat.
Don’t move, detective.
I know you’re armed.
I know you have backup positioning around this cabin, and I know you have maybe 30 seconds before I open Catherine’s throat and disappear into the wilderness where you’ll never find me.
Torres froze, her hand inches from her weapon.
What do you want? I want you to make a choice.
You can try to save Catherine, try to stop me, and we’ll both probably die in the process.
Or you can let me walk out of here.
Give me a head start and I’ll release Catherine unharmed once I’m clear.
What’s it worth to you, detective? One old woman’s life versus catching the killer.
Torres looked at Catherine, saw the woman silently pleading with her eyes, not for her own life, but for Torres not to let Marcus escape.
34 years of searching, and Catherine Chen was willing to die if it meant her son faced justice.
But Torres couldn’t make that trade.
Couldn’t sacrifice Catherine even to catch a serial killer.
Let her go.
You can have your head start.
Brennan smiled.
Smart choice.
Here’s what’s going to happen.
The window exploded inward as tactical teams breached the cabin simultaneously from multiple entry points.
Brennan reacted instantly, pulling Catherine from the chair and using her as a shield while pressing the knife against her throat.
Blood welled where the blade dimmed her skin.
I told you to come alone, Brennan shouted at Torres.
I told you what would happen.
I’m here alone, Torres said, raising her hands.
The teams made their own decisions.
Please, Michael, don’t hurt her.
This doesn’t have to end with more death.
For a moment, Brennan seemed to waver, the knife trembling slightly.
Then, Catherine did something unexpected.
She drove her elbow backward into Brennan’s ribs, using the distraction to wrench herself away from the blade.
Brennan stumbled and Torres drew her backup weapon, but he was already moving, crashing through the back window and disappearing into the darkness beyond.
Officers poured through the broken window after him while others secured Catherine.
Torres ran outside, following the sounds of pursuit through the forest.
Snow made tracking easy.
Brennan’s footprints clear in the moonlight, but he had a head start and knew this terrain intimately.
The chase led deeper into the wilderness, away from the cabin and any roads.
Torres could hear officers spreading out around her, trying to cut off escape roads.
But Brennan was faster, more desperate.
The distance between them grew.
Then suddenly the footprints stopped at the edge of a ravine.
Torres approached carefully, her weapon raised and looked down.
The drop was perhaps 40 ft onto rocks and ice.
No one could survive that fall, but there was no body below.
No sign of Brennan.
He went over, an officer said, arriving beside Torres had to.
There’s nowhere else he could have gone.
But Torres wasn’t convinced.
She studied the ravine’s edge, looking for any other possibility.
And there, partially hidden by an overhanging rock, she saw it.
A narrow ledge running along the ravine’s wall, barely wide enough for a person to traverse.
“He went that way,” Torres said, pointing.
“Get lights.
We need to follow that ledge.
” The pursuit continued along the treacherous path.
officers moving carefully on the ice slllicked rock.
Torres led the way, her flashlight cutting through the darkness.
The ledge eventually led to a small cave opening barely large enough to crawl through.
Torres hesitated at the entrance, knowing this could be a fatal funnel.
But she’d come too far, sacrificed too much to stop now.
She crawled into the cave, her flashlight revealing a larger chamber beyond the narrow opening.
Michael Brennan sat against the far wall, blood soaking through his jacket from where he’d been cut by the window glass during his escape.
He held the knife loosely in one hand, his expression resigned.
“It’s over, Michael,” Torres said gently.
Put down the knife.
Let me get you medical attention.
Over, Brennan repeated, laughing bitterly.
It was over 34 years ago when Frank Mercer found a broken child in the woods and decided to make him into a monster.
Everything since then has just been aftermath.
You can still choose differently.
You can tell us where your victims are buried.
Help their families find closure.
You can face justice for what you’ve done.
Justice? Brennan looked down at the knife in his hand.
There’s no justice for someone like me.
No redemption.
Frank was right about that much.
Some transformations can’t be undone.
He looked up at Torres and for just a moment she saw Marcus Chen in his eyes.
The frightened 7-year-old who’d watched his father die.
Tell Catherine I’m sorry.
Tell her that Marcus loved her, even if Michael Brennan couldn’t remember how.
Before Torres could respond, Brennan drove the knife into his own throat.
Blood sprayed across the cave wall as he slumped sideways, his eyes already glazing.
Torres rushed forward, trying to apply pressure to the wound, but it was too late.
Michael Brennan died in that cave in the wilderness where Marcus Chen had been reborn, carrying his secrets to whatever awaited beyond death.
Spring came to Pine Ridge like a benediction, melting snow, revealing the earth beneath.
Wild flowers bloomed in meadows where search parties had once combed through frozen wilderness, looking for David and Marcus Chen.
The old Mercer Hardware building was gone now, replaced by a community garden where town’s people planted vegetables and flowers, transforming a sight of horror into something that sustained life.
Catherine Chen stood at the garden’s edge, her hands deep in soil, planting forget me knots in memory of her family.
She’d aged in the month since December, her hair now completely white, her movements slower.
But there was peace in her expression that hadn’t been there before.
The terrible wondering had finally ended.
Detective Amanda Torres approached across the grass carrying a folder.
Catherine looked up, brushing dirt from her hands.
They’d spoken many times over the past months.
Torres providing updates as the investigation uncovered more victims, more burial sites, more families finally receiving answers.
Mrs.
Chen, Torres said gently.
I wanted to update you in person.
We found David.
Catherine’s breath caught.
They’d been searching the mineshaft Michael Brennan described using specialized equipment to explore the deep shaft.
Can I Can I see him? The medical examiner will release his remains to you next week.
There’s enough for a proper burial for you to finally bring him home.
” Catherine nodded, tears streaming down her face.
After 34 years, David Chen would rest beside his parents in Pine Ridge Cemetery.
The headstone was already prepared.
David’s name alongside Marcus’, though Marcus’ body would never be found.
Michael Brennan had taken those secrets to his grave.
“What about the others?” Catherine asked.
“The other victims?” “We’ve identified 21 people killed by Frank Mercer, Dorothy Klene, Thomas Mercer, and Michael Brennan.
There are probably more we’ll never find, but we’ve been able to notify families, provide some closure.
Dorothy and Thomas are both facing multiple murder charges.
They’ll spend the rest of their lives in prison.
And my Sarah Torres smiled.
She’s doing better.
The therapist says she’s making good progress.
She asked me to give you this.
Torres handed Catherine a card.
Inside Sarah had written, “Mom, I’m coming home next month.
Uh, let’s plant that garden together.
Love Sarah.
” Catherine clutched the card, fresh tears falling.
She’d lost so much.
Her husband to her son, 34 years of her life, consumed by grief and searching.
But she still had Sarah, still had memories of David and Marcus before that Christmas Eve.
Still had the capacity to plant flowers and watch them grow.
Detective Catherine said, “Do you think any part of Marcus was still there?” In Michael Brennan, at the end, Torres thought about Brennan’s final words, the apology he’d asked her to convey.
I think the trauma was too deep, the damage too complete.
Frank and Dorothy destroyed the child Marcus was and built something else.
But at the very end, I think he remembered.
I think part of Marcus was still there, and that part was sorry for what Michael Brennan had become.
It wasn’t much comfort, but it was something.
Catherine returned to her planting, pressing forget me not seeds into the earth.
Torres watched for a moment, then walked back toward her car.
The investigation was winding down.
Evidence processed, reports filed, justice served as well as it could be.
But Torres knew she’d carry this case forever, would see Michael Brennan’s face in her dreams, would wonder about the children who’d been stolen and transformed.
Would think about all the families still searching for loved ones, who disappeared into the darkness.
and never returned.
Her phone rang.
It was Web.
Amanda, we’ve got something.
Another hidden room.
This time in a property Frank Mercer owned near Callispel.
Looks like there might be more victims.
Torres closed her eyes briefly, feeling the weight of it.
The Mercer case would never truly be closed.
There would always be more bodies to find, more families to notify, more horror buried beneath Montana’s beautiful wilderness.
“I’m on my way,” she said.
As she drove north out of Pine Ridge, Torres looked in her rear view mirror at the town receding behind her.
The mountains stood eternal, keeping their secrets, while below people lived and died, loved and lost, searched and sometimes found.
The world kept turning, seasons changing, flowers blooming and dying and blooming again.
And somewhere in the wilderness, in caves and mine shafts and shallow graves scattered across a thousand miles of forest, the victims of the Mercer family waited to be found.
waited to go home, waited for someone to remember their names and tell their stories.
Torres would keep searching, keep digging, keep trying to bring them all home.
It was the only justice she could offer.
And in a world that had seen so much injustice, so much cruelty, it would have to be
