“I’m sorry, but I cannot help you,” said the policeman, watching the girl as she approached his desk. “Not unless it’s been twenty-four hours.”

“My sister is the only person I have left in this world, and you have taken her away from me,” the girl replied.

The policeman looked at her sharply. The girl was maybe sixteen, with a messy ponytail of straight brown hair and green-flecked eyes hiding behind a dirt-caked face. She was just a teenager, like all the ones that had come before her.

Like all the others, she was fighting to the last breath.
“I remember when my daughter was your age,” said the policeman. “She told me that the most important thing about living in this world is how you leave it.”

The girl did not respond.

“I suppose you don’t know what I’m talking about. Let me enlighten you.” The policeman took long sip of his coffee and smiled. “You smear your face with dirt and grime, but I see right through you. You are the grand finale. You are the last words your people will ever get."

“I know who you are, Issiah,” the girl said. She looked across the office, at the picture on the wall—a picnic table covered in streamers and balloons, and a happy gathering around a pink-frosted cake. “You may not remember, but I know exactly who you are. I know exactly who you should’ve been.”

The policeman put down his coffee. “I am sorry about your sister,” he said. “But you must wait until twenty-four hours are up to start an investigation.”

As the girl walked out the door, she turned. “Always remember what your daughter said. Always.”

Alone in his office, the policeman picked up his phone and dialed. The chase had been a good one—even when the numbers dwindled from fifty to one—but all good things must come to an end. He heard the phone connect on the other line and he cleared his throat, readying his voice for the words that would signal a great finish to a very good chase.

“We’ve finally found her—the very last one.”

A pause.

“How much does she know?”

“Enough,” the policeman replied.

“You know what you have to do.”

The policeman hung up. Through the window, he could see the girl walking away from the station, kicking up a trail of sand behind her. Her boots reminded him a little of the boots his daughter used to wear—brown, with lots of little buttons.
The girl wiped the grime from her face and continued walking. She knew what would happen next. It happened to her mother a several years back, and her father a few years later. They’d got her cousin just months ago, and her sister—for her sister it had been only hours.

The girl was the only one left now—the one loose end. She’d embrace her fate with grace, knowing that she could be with her family once more.

The policeman’s eyes locked onto her head and he raised his pistol.

The gun exploded.

After the shot, the air smelled of blood and smoke. The policeman put down his gun and ran to the scene with a body bag. He was about to ease her into it when he caught sight of her face—her clean, unmarked face.

The girl and her sister playing in the grass. His wife’s hand on his shoulder as he fastened the last streamer onto the picnic table, the balloons waving in the wind.

What had he done?