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Several days had passed since Harry had directed Lyger to find Dr. Jason Miles, who had recently pulled off a bloody escape from Acadia State Hospital, an escape that left several employees dead.  Dr Miles was a sleep researcher who had been looking into a cure for insomnia, a plight that after some research of his own, Lyger learned that Miles had suffered from himself. He believed that he had gotten close to finding the cure, and even went so far as developing a serum that he believed would prove to end insomnia. Unfortunately, he took the supposed cure himself before it was ready for human testing, and to say that the serum proved to not be the cure was an understatement. In fact, the cure proved to exacerbate the problem. It rendered Dr. Miles unable to sleep at all. Over the course of weeks, and then months, Dr. Miles slowly lost his grip on reality. Over that time, he began to develop a sort of god complex, in which the only things that were real were the things that he declared were so. 

With each passing day, Dr. Miles became more irrational and violent. He was prone to violent outbursts, and within the first month had maimed a nurse, disfiguring her face with a fork. After that incident, the hospital staff were under strict instructions not to interact with him alone, as they were to use the “buddy system” whenever they were to enter his cell. It was a violation of that rule that allowed Dr. Miles escape, leaving the orderly who broke protocol as well as a nurse, and several security officers dead.

Dr. Jason Miles, who now calls himself Insomnia had vanished without a trace, and despite his best efforts, Lyger was unable to come up with so much as a lead as to his whereabouts. It was almost as if he had completely vanished. The though disturbed Lyger, but not as much as the realization that Jason Miles, the man now known as Insomnia would not be found until he was ready to be found.

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Detective Jason Hart hated working nights. In most cities the night working nights was just another shift, but in Crown Ridge, there was something different about the nights. It was as if the entire goddamned city lost its mind and acted like savages. At least, that’s how it seemed sometimes. Detective Hart had seen the absolute worst that humanity had to offer. Over the course of his fifteen year career with the CRPD, he had grown cynical as he watched the people of his city seemingly invent new ways to cause pain and despair to their fellow man. He had seen men, women, and children tortured and executed in some of the most brutal ways imaginable. At first, it haunted him. He took the things he saw home with him, it had cost him his wife and their children. His wife Liz had learned to hate the man that he had become, or at the very least, not want him around to influence their kids. So after a night of drinking away the images that were burned in his mind, she upped and left, taking their kids with them to Seattle, almost as far away from him as she could geographically take them. 

But this…this was something completely different.

“What’ve we got?” asked his partner, Gwen Brady.

For the past four years, Gwen had been the best partner any cop could ask for. She always had his back, and at one point during an arrest, took a bullet for him. She was also the best detective that he knew, and in the time that they had been working together became more than just partners…they became best friends. 

“The victim’s name is Courtney Hill, 23 years old. She's a local, works at Nick's Gym as a personal trainer...and what you see is what you get.” Jared Cook, one of the CRPD’s best crime scene investigators told them.

The two detectives stood in front of the body, which had been hung by the neck and suspended against the exterior wall of Calvin’s Automotive, which had gone out of business three months prior. She had been beaten badly and stripped of nearly all of her clothes, wearing only a pair of sneakers and her jogging shorts. However, as Cook explained, neither the hanging nor the beating had been the cause of death. There was a single gunshot wound to her left temple which had been the killing blow. However, there was something odd about the body, three bloody letters had been carved into her chest, the letters H-O-H.

“What do you think that means?” Hart asked his partner.

“I’m not sure, but we’re sure as hell going to find out.”