*Ring ring, Ring ring, Ring ring*
     “Hello,” spoke detective Mickey Reese into her phone as she awoke early on that Sunday morning. A phone call this early on a weekend could only mean one thing, a body had been found. Mickey listened to the man on the other end of the phone as she got out of bed.
     "Just hurry up and get out here detective Reese" said the man on phone, Captain Oswald.
     Mickey quickly got ready and headed out to the crime scene. As she walked up to the playground at the park, images of a year ago flashed through her mind. “It’s just a coincidence,” she whispered to herself. The closer she got the more she noticed the similarities. A young brunette girl in running clothes with her hands ziptied behind her in an all too familiar way. She sat there propped up against the little yellow slide on the far east end of the playground in a way that made her skin look flawless in the sunlight. She looked just like the others. There had been 31 girls killed in a single month, the first of which had been found exactly a year ago today on that crisp autumn morning. Mickey joined the force in June of 1995, just over a year before the killings started. That first year on the job had been slow in the town of Shadowgate, Oregon. Murders here were rare, that was until September 1st 1996.
     It was a crisp but sunny autumn morning when she got the call. A body had been found in the park playground on the lower east side of town, the same playground as today. The girl had been a 16 year old out on a morning run. She was found propped against the slide facing the sunrise. Her hands had been ziptied behind her head. Her brunette hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. It was the same as today, down to every detail. Even the details that were never released to the media were exactly the same.

          To Mickey this was no coincident, no copycat killer.

     As Mickey got to the edge of the playground, the cause of death became visible and her worst thoughts were proven right. The shoelaces of the girls running shoes were gone and on her throat was a thin red line. It really was identical to a year ago. Mickey felt her heartbeat in her ears, her thoughts pounding through her head. “The Shoestring Killer is back. But how? He’s supposed to be in prison. We caught that SOB last year. Or maybe we didn’t.”
     Mickey was snapped from her thoughts when Detective Fisher walked up and passed her a cup of coffee. “The media is gonna have a field day with this one aren’t they,” said Fisher in a more serious tone than he usually had.
     “The media? Who cares about the media, what about the jury? Baker’s trail is supposed to be over in a week, but with this, there’s no way we are gonna get a conviction. I mean, even I’m worried that we got the wrong guy. I mean just look. It’s identical to the others. . .” Mickey said and they both became silent. As they stood there drinking their coffee in awkward quiet stillness of the morning, the M.E. called them over.
     “I think you guys already know what I’m about to say,” spoke the M.E. as they walked over. “She appears to have been strangled with her own shoelaces. These red marks on her neck matches those of the other victims to a tee. The entire staging is the same, shes the same, with the exception of two small details. This time there is no cigarette, and there appears to be skin under her nails, most likely from her assailant. I’ve already pulled a sample and sent it for DNA testing. I hope we can find a match.” As Mickey heard this the slight doubt she had about this being the Shoestring Killer left her mind. The cigarette butt had been the only non-circumstantial evidence against Baker. Baker had continuously claimed that the butts had been taken from the ashtray in front of his work and placed at the crime scene. No DNA evidence had ever been found. Mickey now knew that the real Shoestring Killer was either slipping up, or wanted to be caught. When Detective Fisher asked his next question Mickey had to bite her lip to keep herself from speaking her mind. Fisher had been the one who convinced Captain Oswald that Baker was the killer. Mickey had questioned it from the beginning and now realized that she had made the right choice to be skeptical.
     “Does it look like this could be a copycat?” asked Detective Fisher.
     “Do you want to hear what I really think?” he asked. Mickey saw Fisher swallow hard as he nodded his head. “I think that there is no way someone could match this crime down to this much detail. I hate to say this but I think we may have the wrong at trial.”
     As the detectives waited for the results of the DNA from under the fingernails, the media was in the midst of having a field day. Headings were reading “Makenna Stone: Victim of the Real Shoestring Killer?” Mickey was relieved that Baker and the victims’ families would get the justice they so rightfully deserved, but Fisher began to worry. The judge postponed Lucas Baker’s trail under the concern that the media was corrupting the jurors. What the judge didn’t say was his real opinion, that he saw the new killing as too much of a coincident.
     Mickey was sitting at her desk in her living room, it was Wednesday evening now. That’s when her phone rang.
“We have the guy. DNA is a match. And we can connect him to all the other victims. Baker is innocent. As much as I hate to say it, you were right.” Fisher said over the phone to Mickey.
     Mickey wasn’t able to sleep that night knowing that because of her inability to speak up, an innocent man had spent the last year in prison. The next morning when she got herself around to turning on the T.V. what she saw filled her with both remorse and relief. As the news broadcast cut from the reporter to the front of the courthouse, she saw Lucas Baker engulf his family into a hug, for the first time in almost a year. As Mickey sat there Lucas was reunited with his family and James Moore was being put in his prison cell. Lucas and the family of the now 32 victims were finally able to achieve justice against the brutality that is James Moore. Mickey took the day off work, deciding to go visit her father in prison. Maybe if the quiet detective had spoken up 20 years ago her father would have gotten the justice he deserved as well.