Free Final Cut by T.S. Worthington

search for any information that he could find for Daisy Fox in Cutler, Ohio. His search instantly turned up several pages of results. Most of them from local newspapers about the mysterious disappearance and the search party that had turned up no leads. According to several new reports Daisy was last seen hanging out at Logan’s bar with a girlfriend of hers. Daisy and her friend Cara were celebrating the fact that Cara had just been dumped by her boyfriend. It was a thing that both girls did; when they ended a relationship or they were dumped by their significant others they went out drinking to celebrate—not to drown their sorrows. Cara said it was something they had secretly been doing since high school when they would raid her mom’s liquor cabinet and take a bottle of vodka down by the river banks and just hang out.
    Cara said that she had to go home because she was opening the diner the next day, but Daisy had the day off and she had stayed behind to talk to a friend of hers that she had run into. Cara did not know this friend and no one else had really seen her talking to her.
    Bill wondered if this mystery woman was in on it somehow. Maybe there was more than one person involved here. There was no way that a woman was operating that saw and holding the camera. From what Bill had glimpsed of the hand reaching for the saw it was definitely a man’s hand. If the woman had been there then it would have been feasible that she would have been operating the camera or at least taking turns destroying this young girl’s life.
    Bill researched the stories for about an hour and most of them said the same thing and there was nothing else mentioned about Daisy. This had been five months ago and her body had never been found. Where the hell was she? Did they weigh her down and throw her in the river? If that was the case she might have been carried off downstream somewhere or she could be in the same spot, but the Ohio River was huge and you would never find a body in the thing unless you had a pretty good idea where to look and the killer could have driven her a hundred miles down the river and dumped her before anyone knew.
    Bill needed to talk to Cara and see what else she might know. He figured that she had told the police everything that she knew, but he also knew that the police had their hands tied sometimes when working on a case because of all the tiny laws that protected every citizen whether they were guilty or not. Bill was not confined to such things. If he heard something that sounded like it ought to be checked out then he was damned sure going to do it.
    Before he left he forced himself to watch the other videos. Two were blank and the other video was basically just more of the prolonged torture and agony of Daisy Fox. It was disgusting and Bill had fast forwarded through most of it so he didn’t have to actually watch or listen to it. He was just waiting to see if there was some mistake or slip up in the video that might have given him some more information.
    He was just about at the end and ready to shut the thing off so he could head out the door when he saw it. The killer had a pocket knife and he was carving little chunks out of Daisy Fox’s face. As he held up the blade during one of the last cuts on the barely alive Daisy Fox the camera staggered back a bit and Bill could glimpse for the briefest second the killer’s wrist.
    There on his wrist was an odd shaped burn scar.
    Bill thought he had seen it somewhere before. He racked his brain trying to come up with it but so far he was pulling up blanks.
    But he did know one thing.
    The killer’s hand did not belong to him.
     
     

Chapter 7
     
    “OLD FRIENDS”
     
    “I told the cops everything I knew,” Cara said to Bill as she sat a cup of coffee down in front of him. He thanked her and took a sip. It was good and strong—the perfect way coffee was supposed to taste.
    “Yea, I read the articles, but there has been a few new leads opening up in