Short Story - May 25, 2025

Summer before Junior year of college,

Kevin

There’s nothing more satisfying than smoothing out a fresh layer of concrete. Wiping the sweat off my brow, I put away my tools and surveyed my previous work, pleased that this part of the ground was complete. For a summer job, working at one of my father’s construction company sites isn’t the worst thing. The fact that we are improving the pathways and adding an entirely new rest area at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, my college, means the wait will be worth it.

 

It was hot—hot enough that the concrete seemed to sweat. I was moving bags of cement when I noticed something strange on the edge of the slab: a dried smear of reddish-brown right in the middle of a shallow impression.

 

Blood. And in it—a fingerprint.

 

I crouched, heart pounding. It was weirdly clear. I snapped a photo before calling out, “Dad!”

 

He came over, wiping his hands on his jeans. “What?”

 

I pointed. “There’s blood. And a print. Do you think—?”

 

He cut me off. “You see a lot of things on job sites. Probably an accident.”

 

“But—”

 

“I said drop it.”

 

I didn’t. Not really. I rechecked the square concrete slab the following day. It was gone.

 

Just gone.

 

Present day,

September rolled in, and the campus buzzed with energy again. I quickly headed to my second class of the day, Honors English. Before I could sit down, the professor commanded, “Don’t move! Everyone will be paired into small peer groups for the rest of the semester. But first, let me introduce myself. My name is Professor Solokov, and I will teach you through various books, mostly Russian, if I have anything to say about it. Okay, please sit by your group when I call your name.”

 

After that succinct introduction, this class could only come up from here. The professor paired me with the McCarthy twins—Stacey and Casey—and a French exchange student named Adrian Laurent, who were all Juniors like me.

 

“Hey guys, my name is Kevin Richards. I am the captain of the D1 soccer team here. My major is business, and I want to help my dad with his construction company in the future.” 

 

“Oh, that’s pretty cool”, Casey states.  I’m also a part of a group. I’m the president of my sorority, where we make it about school spirit and—”

 

I look over, and Stacey, who is crazy identical to Casey, interrupts and sighs, saying, “Ugh, enough with the cheer. It’s still too early in the day. Thank goodness it’s still syllabus week.”

 

“But… It’s already 1 pm”, Adrian says confusedly through a thick French accent. “I will go next. My name is Adrian Laurent, and I am from a small town in France. Like my father, I want to be a criminal lawyer, so yeah, no different from you, Kevin.”

 

“Ha, yeah, it seems like we both got to follow in their footsteps,” I say while shaking my head ruefully. 

 

Before I knew it, the class was over, but I was elated to have a group of people I could talk to twice a week, despite the insecurities in the back of my mind. We were all total opposites and had very few commonalities. Stacey was quiet, always reading, always observing. Metal-rimmed glasses, braids, the kind of person who saw patterns you missed. Casey was the opposite: vibrant, funny, always moving, and a sorority girl. She lit up a room. Adrian had this cool detachment—they smelled expensive and knew more about American law than most professors. And me? Just Kevin. I’m more comfortable in a field than in a seminar.

 

Still, the four of us clicked.

 

Late September

 

Professor Solokov, cold as ever, told us we’d be working on a presentation about how literature reflects life, and it would be worth a third of our grade.

 

News reporters unexpectedly began to swarm the campus one day. Until I later found out from Stacey that it’s speculated that a college student was murdered. 

Later that night in my dorm,  I watched the news on my laptop and put the gossip and rumors to rest:  

“Good evening, Wisconsin. Today, something shocking happened at the downtown college. Please be warned that what I am about to say may disturb others,” the news report says. “The witness first came upon the scene when they found five bloody fingerprints on the construction site within the new rest area. They informed the police that the first thing that caught their eyes was the strip of a forearm protruding through the concrete, giving off the impression that whoever got buried under pounds of cement tried to scramble for purchase but only ended up drowning instead. Later, Amber Lee, the victim, was identified by her family, who received an anonymous album of photos showcasing her distinct features. That’s all we’ve come to learn tonight, folks, but the police have already begun a thorough investigation, starting with Richards Contracting and the CEO, Liam Richards.

 

“Huh, I could have sworn I saw a similar thing this summer, but the only difference is the fingerprint pattern,” I mumbled. Wait a minute; this means that I was by a dead body only a few months ago. Great, this will not be good for me or my Dad. 

 

I vigorously scroll down the article, hoping for further information to be written. My stomach dropped when I saw the photo. Yep. My hunch was correct. It has the exact placement as the one I saw on the slab.

 

I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

 

I told Adrian first. We were in the library—he listened quietly, leaning forward, his heterochromatic eyes unreadable.

 

Then we told the twins. Casey gaped. “Are you saying your dad—?”

 

“I don’t know. But something’s wrong. He saw the print and told me to forget it. Then it was gone.”

 

Stacey was already pulling out her laptop. “There were killings like this in 2007. Back then, they called him ‘The Fingerprint Killer.’ But it stopped. Or we thought it did.”

 

“That was when my dad was in college,” I said slowly. “He was a junior. Same school.”

 

No one said it aloud, but we all thought the same thing.

 

October 

This month turned everything into a horror movie.

 

Two more students were killed. And every scene left the victim’s fingerprint. Like a calling card. A trophy.

 

Stacey became obsessed with digging into the case. She pulled old articles and mapped out locations. One night, she said, “Every victim, past and present, is tied to a construction site. All under Richards Contracting.”

 

“You think my dad’s been doing this for years?” My voice cracked.

 

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “But I think he’s hiding something. Maybe… maybe you’re the only one who can stop him.”

 

Even though it felt wrong, we went to the Halloween party together. But Stacey said he’d strike again. That maybe, just maybe, we could catch him.

 

Casey dressed as a flapper. Stacey wore a trench coat and a deerstalker—“themed costume,” she said with a small smile. I went as Dracula with a soccer jersey. Adrian showed up in a vintage lawyer suit. Fitting.

 

The house was huge. Loud. Crowded.

Too crowded.

 

Somewhere between songs, the power cut out.

 

Screams.

 

I grabbed Stacey’s hand. “Where’s Casey?”

 

“She went upstairs—bathroom maybe?”

 

I shoved through the partygoers. Then I saw him. The Fingerprint Killer. Hidden behind a blank white drama mask and the shadows, with only the moonlight as their spotlight.

 

Standing in the hallway, blood on his shirt. A knife in his hand. I could already tell that more students died tonight. 

 

“Why are you doing this?” I say with fake confidence.

 

He stared back. “They all had to mean something. No one cared when they disappeared. I gave them meaning. A legacy.”

 

He stepped toward me.

 

“I sent their fingerprints to their families,” he said. “They’ll never be forgotten now.”

 

I was frozen. When Adrian came out of nowhere and slammed a fire extinguisher into the killer’s side, he went down, groaning.

 

“Guys! Head to my car. We need to get out of here!”

 

With Adrian’s help, we found Stacey and Casey appearing out of the darkness, crying. We all sprinted out the door and hopped in my car.

 

“Oh my god, we’re going to die,” Casey wails.

 

“No, we won’t”, I say. “Let's all stick together tonight in my dorm room. There may not be much space, but everyone can feel safe.”

 

“Agreed”, Adrian declares.

 

“Um, guys, I think the killer is tailing us,” Stacy said frantically. “And they’re gaining speed. Kevin! Drive faster!”

 

Great, just what I needed: a car chase on the busiest night of all nights. No words were spoken the moment we arrived, but everyone was in sync, hopping out of the car and sprinting to the doors. Tunnel vision took over us all, knowing that if we got past those doors, we would be safe enough with the security and have ample time to call the police. Then, all of a sudden, shots started to fly around our heads.

 

“Take cover!” I shout. Gasping for breath, we scrambled away from our only chance at survival and hid behind the school’s statue.

 

“Where can we go?” Casey whispers.

 

“Maybe the library? That way, we can lock ourselves behind the thick door in the archives room; we just need to distract him,” Stacey recommends.

 

“Wait, but wouldn’t we have to cut through the construction site? It’s too dangerous,” I say. 

 

“We have no other choice,” Adrian mentions. “On my count, we’ll go—.”

 

“Have you all had enough?” the killer interrupts. I look over my shoulder and see the killer tauntingly saunter toward us with a menacing look. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

 

“Run,” I whisper to my friends. 

 

Fortunately, the darkness allowed us to flee in the opposite direction unnoticed. Upon arriving at the construction site, we recognized that we had to carefully ascend the scaffolding to access the library’s archive window. Unfortunately, we were too sluggish. The killer caught up with us. 

 

Then—

 

A wooden floorboard groaned under the pressure and came loose.

 

Stacey shoved Casey forward. Grabbed the killer and…

 

And fell through.

 

“NO!” Casey shrieks.

 

Then everything started to crumble. It forced us to go through the library’s window.

 

I screamed her name, but the debris swallowed her.

 

Once we contacted the police, we hurried to exit through the doors and ran to the carnage. Casey immediately began to sob uncontrollably at Stacey’s body. Adrian and I approached the killer, who was trapped beneath the rubble. I tore the mask away, and my world tilted on its axis. 

I didn’t want to believe it, but perhaps I shouldn’t have ignored the signs so that more people could be alive today. 

 

My Dad. Bloodied. Crushed. Dead except for one thing.

 

His fingerprint. Right on a piece of metal rod. 

 

Still intact.

 

The final fingerprint.

 

Early November

The funeral was brutal. We thought that was the end.

 

But it wasn’t.

 

Before Casey’s eulogy, Adrian pulled me to the side, white-faced and shaking. He shoved a file on my chest.

 

“My father... he was Liam’s lawyer.”

 

I stared at him.

 

“He knew. He covered up multiple murders back in 2007. The first one was ruled an accident. My dad buried the evidence. Settled with the victim’s family. That’s why the killings stopped. Liam got scared. But he didn’t stop.”

 

Adrian’s hands trembled.

 

“Stacey knew. She had the file. She gave it to me before the party. If anything happened to her, I had to make it right.”

 

I opened the folder.

 

Photos. Case reports. Settlement papers signed by both our fathers.

 

My knees gave out.

 

“We need to end this,” I sighed.

 

Adrian nodded.

 

And we did.

 

We gave everything to the police. To the press. To Stacey’s mother.

 

Because the truth didn’t just have a fingerprint, it had a paper trail.

 

The ultimate legacy of the girl who rescued us all.

 

THE END.