Whetstone County Sheriff's Department
Case ID: W-127
Filed: November 12th, 20XX, 07:46 A.M.
Subject: Gregory Halvorsen
Status: Closed – Accidental Death
⸻
The house reeked of rot, whiskey, and long neglect.
Deputy Martin Reeds stepped over a broken bottle and looked down at the body at the foot of the stairs.
Blood pooled beneath Gregory Halvorsen's temple. His head was turned at an unnatural angle, neck twisted, one shoe missing.
The fall looked brutal. But accidental.
"Drunk bastard probably slipped," Reeds muttered, scratching the gray in his beard.
The coroner's report confirmed it: blood-alcohol content—.28, significant cranial trauma, fractured cervical vertebrae.
No defensive wounds. No sign of forced entry.
Case closed by sundown.
What no one questioned was the absence of Derik Halvorsen—his sixteen-year-old son, last seen three days prior.
⸻
Case Note (Filed Separately – W-127B)
Subject: Derik Halvorsen
Filed: November 14th, 20XX
Filed by: Whetstone County School District, triggered by unexcused absence report**
"Student did not attend school for three days prior to father's confirmed death.
No signs of struggle found in bedroom.
Laptop destroyed.
Phone missing.
Several documents and personal items appear purposefully removed.
No note left behind.
No relatives contacted.
Filed as Runaway – Passive Notice Only."
⸻
Meanwhile: 91 Hours Before Official Discovery
Location: Halvorsen Residence – November 8th, 11:37 P.M.
Derik stood in his room, counting quietly under his breath.
"Four walls. One door. Three exits. Two loose floorboards."
He removed the hidden envelope beneath the floor. Inside were six USB drives, his real journals (typed, not handwritten), and a sealed note titled:
"CONTINGENCY: SYSTEM FAILURE"
He had planned for this for months.
Not murder.
Escape.
Derik knew that once the first domino fell—his father—he'd have only hours to vanish. The plan had to be clean, airtight.
⸻
Phase I: Identity Wipe
• Destroyed school laptop (hard drive shattered, circuitry microwaved)
• Deleted every local file, wiped browsing history, falsified digital activity logs
• Backed up essential records to encrypted drives, hidden in three geocached locations
• Burned all photographs, including baby pictures and school photos
• Left home security system running for exactly 2 days after the murder to imply he had been home, mourning
⸻
Phase II: Physical Disappearance
He didn't take clothes. He didn't need to.
He took DNA wipes, hair dye, and cash—$4,300 hidden in hollowed-out law books his father never touched.
He left behind a made bed and a copy of Crime and Punishment opened to a highlighted passage:
"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's."
⸻
Phase III: Rebirth
Derik activated his backup identity—Evan Wells, a registered birth certificate of a stillborn in Franklin County, Ohio, long forgotten.
Forged new documents, fake school ID, and enough medical record inconsistencies to go unnoticed.
By the time his father's body was found, Derik was already three states away, sleeping in the basement of a burned-out church.
He hadn't just vanished.
He had reset.
⸻
Final Scene of the Chapter
Derik, now in a dusty terminal bathroom, shaved his eyebrows and changed the angle of his jawline using makeup contour he'd practiced for weeks.
He practiced a limp. A stutter. A Texas accent.
In the mirror, someone else stared back.
Someone calm. Someone cold.
He removed a folded list from his sock. Twelve names. The top one:
Elena Fray – "Case Dismissed. Evidence Lost."
"She raped children in her clinic. They called it malpractice. I call it a mistake worth correcting."
He didn't smile.
He didn't need to.
Derik Halvorsen was gone.
The world just hadn't realized what they'd set loose yet.