u/Tsundere17

​

Title: True Heiress On Trial: Death Comes Early

Title: I Dumped My Poor Boyfriend, Became Rich—He Said Regrets

The Sixth Kind

Chapter1

April 12, 2016. A Saturday.

My sister's twelfth birthday.

In the small town where we grew up, twelve is a big deal——it means you're not a little kid anymore. You're officially a teenager.

But my sister's life stopped cold that day.

I was in college in the city back then. I came home special for her birthday.

That day, her sixth-grade class had a field trip to Raven Ridge to see the cliff fireweed.

My mom didn't really want her to go. But my sister had been dying to see those flowers.

So we pushed her birthday dinner to the evening.

Mom packed her a sun shirt, a hat, her canteen, some snacks. She told her to come home early.

"Don't you dare eat my birthday cake without me!" my sister warned us. "Wait till I get back to light the candles!"

"Hey sis, I heard Raven Ridge has those really pretty fireweed blooms. I'll bring some back and make you a bookmark, okay?" She shot me a sideways look, a little tentative.

The night before, she'd accidentally deleted my biochem term paper while playing some stupid game on my laptop.

And that class? The one I hated most. The bane of my existence.

I was grinding away, rewriting the whole damn thing, and I snapped: "Fine. But don't you dare come back without them."

Truth is? I didn't really care about some lousy flower bookmark.

I was just pissed. I wanted to make her squirm.

What none of us knew——the cliff fireweed on Raven Ridge? Gorgeous, sure——

But it only grows on the sheerest cliffs.

"She went over the edge trying to get that fireweed for me. I didn't find out till after she was gone that those flowers only grow on the cliffs."

"For years afterward, all I could think was——if I hadn't said 'don't come back without them,' would she still be alive?"

Ten years later, I said those words to my criminal psychology PhD advisor, Edmund Stone.

Even after all that time, I broke down crying.

"When did they find your sister?" Edmund handed me a tissue.

"Three days later."

"I remember it like yesterday. Early morning. Sunlight falling on her little shriveled face. So warm."

"My mom collapsed on the spot. My dad had a heart attack."

"Just me left. Standing there with her. Quiet."

The coffee maker gave a soft gurgle in the background. Loud as hell in that quiet office.

"Look, finding a body at all when someone goes missing up in those hills? That's something." Edmund poured himself a cup, slid the warm mug toward me.

"Back then, hundreds of people searched those woods. Cops, my parents, relatives, friends, my dad's students...... even locals. Came out in droves."

"The police set up a perimeter around where she went missing. Checked every camera. Knocked on doors for ten miles in every direction."

When they found her body, my mom lunged at me, tearing at my clothes, screaming:

"You knew it was her birthday! You cursed her! What kind of monster are you?!"

My dad, a high school teacher, was shaking with rage. Got right in my face:

"I've spent my whole life teaching kids. How did I raise such a cold, selfish animal? Why couldn't it have been you?!"

Right then and there, he disowned me.

Everyone stared. Judged. I didn't run. Didn't defend myself. Just stood there and took it.

Because even I believed I'd killed my own sister.

I deserved it all. Worse, even.

I swallowed the fire in my throat and kept going:

"At first, everyone figured it was an accident——till the autopsy came back."

"Nobody could make sense of it. Not hypothermia. Not a wild animal. Not a fall."

Edmund stopped stirring his coffee.

"Then what got her?"

"Thirst."

"Dehydration in the wilderness? Happens all the time, right?" Edmund tapped his cup.

"Her canteen was full." I said it slow. One word at a time.

"You think someone took her water before she went over, then put it back after——covering their tracks?"

I shook my head. "Three people found her. My dad, one of his students, and a search and rescue volunteer. No footprints at the scene except theirs."

"What about her classmates? Teachers? Any drama at school?"

"She was a good student. Easygoing. Nobody had a beef with her. No bullying, no drama."

"The water in the canteen——clean?"

I nodded.

Edmund's face went dark.

---

Chapter2

"She had an autopsy?"

"Yeah. I was a sophomore, taking a forensic med class. I asked to observe the whole thing. Her body had all the classic signs of death by dehydration."

Edmund put a hand on my shoulder. "That couldn't have been easy."

Nobody gets what it's like to watch your own flesh and blood cut open on a table.

Every incision felt like it was on my own body.

The pain was so bad, I went numb. Couldn't even cry.

"So that's why you switched out of forensics and went into clinical med......" Edmund glanced at my file. His voice was gentle.

"Yeah. I had a breakdown. Couldn't look at another cadaver."

"Later, I studied clinical medicine. Learned everything about the body's stress responses. Dehydration mechanisms. Then I came here. Cross-disciplinary. For your PhD."

"So you came to me...... just to go back and crack that old case?"

He looked at me like he couldn't quite believe it.

Word on the street is: getting into Edmund Stone's PhD program is harder than climbing Everest.

Maybe this was the first time someone gave him that reason.

"Yes. Becoming your student meant I could meet you. And talk to you like an equal."

"You're the best criminal profiler in the country. You've cracked cold cases nobody else could touch."

"Please. Help me find the truth——was my sister's death an accident? Or murder?"

"Why did she have water right there and still die of thirst?"

"If it was an accident, I'll let her rest. But if someone killed her...... I'll spend my whole life making it right."

I was practically shouting by the end. Couldn't help it.

After my sister died, my mom withered away. My dad lost his mind. Our happy home? Gone.

Every night for ten years, I've had the same dream. I try to hold her. Ask her why she didn't drink.

Tell her——I don't care about that stupid paper anymore.

Don't care about the flower bookmark.

Just come back.

Come back, and this family comes back.

But that's never gonna happen.

Edmund was quiet for a minute. Then: "Walk me through the autopsy."

The words came out like muscle memory. I'd been over this a thousand sleepless nights. Her autopsy report was burned into my brain. The images too.

Edmund stopped stirring.

"Raven Ridge in April. At night, the bottom of that abandoned shaft? Usually under ten degrees Celsius. A twelve-year-old stuck down there three days? Should've died of hypothermia, hands down."

"That's what was so messed up."

"When someone gets severe hypothermia, their GI tract goes haywire. You get those little blackish hemorrhages in the stomach lining. Forensic pathologists call them 'Wischnewsky spots.' My sister's autopsy? Her stomach lining was pristine. No cold response at all."

Edmund's eyes went sharp. "So no hypothermia...... but signs of heat?"

I nodded. Could feel my voice start to crack.

"Yeah. The coroner's final call: She died of multi-organ failure from severe dehydration. Died of thirst."

"Here's the part that really gets you. Her organs showed severe 'dehydration fever' pathology."

"When your body runs out of water, you can't sweat. Your cooling system shuts down completely. It's like being locked in an invisible oven. Your own body heat cooks you alive."

"As for why she didn't freeze——I spent a night down there myself. That pit? Not cold at all."

I pulled a faded geological map out of my bag and spread it on the desk.

"I looked up the geological survey of Raven Ridge. That shaft's only a few dozen meters deep. But the bottom connects to an active geothermal fault."

"The heat keeps the bottom at a steady 25 degrees year-round. No wind. Like a natural incubator."

Edmund stared at his coffee. Tapped his fingers on the desk.

The office got so quiet, you could hear the clock ticking.

After a long while, he said, "Toxicology? Rule everything else out?"

"Blood and vitreous humor showed extreme sodium and blood oxygen levels. She would've gone blind at least a full day before she died."

"No poisoning. No mineral toxicity. Just minor scrapes. No external trauma."

I got it all out in one breath.

"Any signs of sexual assault?"

I shook my head. "No. But here's something I've never been able to figure out."

Edmund nodded for me to go on.

"The autopsy and the scene trace suggest she died sometime between the afternoon and night of the third day. They found her the next morning. That timing feels way too neat. Almost like......"