Cassandra Cottingham.
There were countless ways to describe her—cruel, cold, calculative. A woman who moved through life like a blade, sharp and precise, cutting through everything in her path.
But there was one thing I knew with certainty, one truth that settled deep into my bones. A woman like her could never possess warmth. Not truly. Whatever kindness she projected was an illusion, carefully crafted, expertly wielded.
The thought of her owning a pet—caring for something fragile, feeding it, nurturing it—was almost laughable. It didn't fit. It didn't belong.
And yet, something about the idea unsettled me.
"So?," I asked, "Remember?"
Her eyebrows arched slightly as she analyzed the photograph in front of her, her expression was unreadable. Honestly, her face had always been unreadable.
"It's a cute cat.," she said.
The cat was photographed dead and was buried fresh. The autopsy claimed it had already been a month. Nothing about it was cute or adorable. It was morbid and maybe a bit recognizable.
"Cute?," I said, "Interesting definition, Dr. Cottingham."
She folded her arms, looking uninterested. Her eye bags had grown a lot from what I had seen from her last encounter. Her hair was not combed properly. Prisons didn't had the luxury to have a comb for her luscious hair.
"It's a local cat.," she clarified, "I love Persian cat, elegant, beautiful and not local."
So, her justification again narrowed down to her being able to buy a cat. A luxurious cat. Especially, Persians.
Narrow-minded and cheap.
"How ironic?," I said, lighting my cigarette out of nowhere, "Isn't it? And it was carefully unearthed from your pristine garden."
She smiled almost confidently. The smile felt more like a challenge than a simple amusement as if I had struck the right cord.
I puffed the cigarette and kept it between my lips as the words settled in the room.
"You know. What's more interesting?"
"What?"
"It was poisoned with Arsenic."
Her smile didn't falter. If anything, it deepened—like she was enjoying a private joke I wasn't in on.
"Arsenic?" she repeated, as if tasting the word. "Classic. A bit antique, don't you think?"
I studied her, letting the silence stretch. She wasn't surprised. Not even a flicker of it.
"You tell me, doctor." I tapped the cigarette against the ashtray, watching the embers dim before taking another slow drag. "After all, who would know better than you?"
She exhaled, tilting her head. "Hoffman, if I wanted to poison something, I'd use something much more refined."
A non-answer. A deliberate one.
"Right." I leaned forward, placing my elbows on the table. "Then why was it in your garden?"
She didn't break eye contact.
"Coincidence," she said smoothly.
"Convenient," I corrected.
Her fingers drummed against her forearm, slow, rhythmic. Calculating. Then she leaned in just slightly, enough for the tension to thicken.
"Hypothetically," she mused, "if I had poisoned a cat, do you really think I'd be careless enough to bury it where you could find it?"
I flicked the cigarette, ash scattering between us.
"That's the thing, Cassandra," I said, watching for any shift in her expression. "You're too smart to be careless. And yet—" I gestured to the photo. "Here we are."
She finally looked down at the image again. Her lips curled, amused.
"Then maybe," she said softly, "you should be asking yourself who wanted you to find it."
"The question is.," I stretched my hand and said, "How did you poison it with milk? With food? I wanna hear your creativity. Especially the world's best opthomologist like you."
"It's just a cat. What's the big deal?"
I let out a low chuckle, shaking my head as I leaned forward, pressing my elbows against the table.
"See, that's the thing," I said, tapping my fingers against the file. "People like you, Cassandra... they always slip up in the smallest ways. It's just a cat. Just an accident. Just a coincidence."
"Doctors like you have an easy access to many poisons. Don't they? Especially as simple and common as pure Arsenic."
"Hunches Hunches Hunches.," she said, "That's all you have."
"Even if I did it ," she said, "What difference would it make? Doctors like me have a lot of chemicals. A hazardous one luke Arsenic too."
"You are not making sense. Right now.," I added.
"I might have mistakenly kept it and the cat.."
"Mistakes?," I interrupted, "Mistakes and you don't align well."
"Wanna hear a story?," she asked in a haunting tone.