The Bones of the Old Case

room got. Nia laid out the tower dates they had copied and placed the unsent cassette on the desk, thumb rubbing over the edge of the case. “Nobody touch it yet,” she said. “We don’t know if it’ll spit something else out.” “It already did,” Jessa said, fanning out a stack of old local papers. “And not just once.” She slid the microfilm printout toward them. The front page of the Bluestone Bay Messenger for June 15, 1998 carried only a tiny story: tower fire, minor injuries near the lake, investigation underway. But beneath it, buried in a narrow sidebar, was a line nobody had bothered to save. Anonymous tip claims illegal modifications at the tower. One teen seen leaving the site before the fire. Identity unconfirmed.