The Perfect Witness: Preview

By Logan Snare

In 1989, a missing woman is found dead. Investigators go to her apartment and find nothing. They are left without a clue. Twenty years later, children discover the body of a murder victim. Somehow, these deaths are related, and detectives soon get a break with the help of an old cold case.

In the midst of all this horror, a wandering husband is brought back to his wife. A traffic accident brings unexpected love to a man in need of a change. However, the killer is still out there and soon has an encounter with the happy new couple.

A major historic event is on the way, and a killer needs to be caught. Will the victims ever be laid to rest, or will a murderer continue to walk free?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532090882

Logan Snare

Logan Snare is a brand label, which is a business title for production. My name is Abigail L. Stanwood. I am a documentary photographer. My most recent show was the first ever full exhibition theft in the history of the Downtown Honolulu Arts District. I was voted among the top celebrated one hundred artists of the past 100 years in Boston, MA. My interest in IT Security + developed amid the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. “Her writing [in the depiction of the villain] is delusional.” – Community Health Centers of America “She [her approach] is judged to be of above average intelligence.” – APA of America

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 Logan Snare.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used

or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or

by any information storage retrieval system without the

written permission of the author except in the case of brief

quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents,

organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products

of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

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Because of the dynamic nature of the internet, any web

addresses or links contained in this book may have changed

since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do

not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the

publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided

by Getty Images are models, and such images are

being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images ©

Video Blocks © Story Blocks

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9089-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9088-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020907566

iUniverse rev. date:   06/02/2020

T he

online articles were ridiculous.

Breaking News: Buy 1 Get 1 Free Offer. On the computer an episode of a show that got recorded was stored. That show got recorded to the DVR. And then footage of that DVR recording was shot with a smart phone. Through an application one is able to view data that is on their phone through a TV.

The world had come to a stop.

This Week in Review: Sanctions Gone Under New Department; Blames Susceptibility On Weakness.

An additional headline appeared that was followed by another article.

You Are Going to Buy Into This Idea.

That was fake news.

Wake Up, the next headline read in a pop-up link. They’re Trying to Kill You with This New Brand.

A person turned off the computer. They did not save the documents to the hard drive. There was a television in the background that continued to play. So the woman unfolded a newspaper and looked at the TV and reached for the remote.

This was a real show.

She sat at the corner of the room, remote in hand. The magazines on the table lined the edge of the desktop. She was eager to play the video: a talk show that she recorded from the internet to her phone. But at the moment, she faced away from the computer. Her thumb pressed the power button to turn on the TV, and the video appeared on the screen.

The video was paused. She pressed the play button.

A man on the screen nodded and said, You know your science—and you’re bringing that back, on that station channel? Regular TV. What can we look forward to?

Yeah, the other man facing him replied, well, you know, fans of the original will know, more or less.

The audio was broken by a sharp static noise. The telephone rang.

More or less, what to look forward to, the man on the screen completed his sentence.

The image on the screen froze in place and then became pixelated for a moment. She paused the video. When she answered the phone, there was no sound on the other end. It was an empty line. She pressed play and the video continued.

If you’ve never seen the original, the man offered.

A lot of them are dead, another man interjected.

She pressed the rewind button as the two men in the video began to laugh. Then she pressed the fast-forward button. Her hand hit the play button. The video continued.

I think you, as I do, believe that, the man mentioned, you can’t really reconcile science and religion. It’s hard. It’s really, kind of, one or the other isn’t it?

It’s hard, the other man replied. The problem is that, you know, if I tell you, ‘Hey, there’s a monster living under my bed,’ you would say, ‘Oh, you know, that sounds ridiculous.’

The screen froze in place. She pressed the pause button. And then she pressed play. The picture began to move and the audio resumed.

You would say, ‘Oh, you know, that sounds ridiculous, give me proof,’ and, he continued, you’ll just have to take it on faith that what I’m telling you is true. Otherwise you’d call me crazy.

She folded one page of the newspaper and pressed the fast-forward button.

He popularized, the man on the television continued. The audio started back up again. Popularized, the other man said, finishing his sentence in a clear voice, and added, the science of our time.

I think you, as I do, believe that, he mentioned, you can’t really reconcile science and religion, it’s hard, it’s really, kind of, one or the other isn’t it?

The screen slowed and the frame froze in place, then became pixelated. She sighed and turned off the TV and looked outside. The morning light broke through the window.

*    *    *

In the city nearby there was a man rowing his boat. It glided across the top of the water. Joggers and people riding their bikes moved along the pavement. Birds flew by overhead. The river spread out in a mass expanse along the city and then drew into other industrial and more suburban regions in the rural countryside of the state. The sun shone brightly against the green forest as clouds began to draw inward, darkening the air, against the sprawling landscape.

There were days that folded into nights and time that went by with each day, becoming one day, and then another, that merged into the next.

The midday rain was now falling harder and pummeled the roof as droplets trickled down over the window ledge outside. This woman read through the first section of the newspaper with a demeanor of fatigue and then turned one of the sections facedown. In the entertainment section of the paper, there was an article about a musician who was going to be performing in concert at a venue that was a few hours away from where she lived. She read the article and found the information to order the tickets.

Her name was Carla. She purchased one ticket.

Despite concerns voiced by her family, this woman attended the event.

The storm system moved through the area.

There was a significant amount of traffic leading into town the day of the concert. It was warmer in that area as opposed to where she lived, which was in the more rural region of the state. In the summertime, the farther inland one traveled in these parts, because of the trees, the heat, and the weather, the hotter and more humid the air became. The trees were lush and green. The river that ran directly through the middle of the state intersected at one point below where the concert would be held, in a plain open-air style amphitheater.

The concert was perhaps one of the most well-attended events in the area.

The technicians had run a sound check earlier that day.

Yeah, one of the workers had said. I heard him warm up earlier today. He’s really good.

The sun was bright.

The audience arrived, and everyone took their seats in the partially enclosed theater.

Inside the amphitheater, the air was unmoving. The concert began with a musical overture.

The moment the woman sat down, the music began, and a wave of heat flushed through her chest. She could not breathe. It felt like the onset of a migraine. She had changed her clothes before the performance because of how hot it had been getting. She was wearing a polyester fiber jacket. It was black and retained body heat. She felt light-headed, so she went to get some help.

The