Detective Mara Leland crouched beside the body, the flicker of police tape reflecting in her sharp eyes. The victim, a middle-aged antiques dealer, lay sprawled across the hardwood floor of his own shop. His shirt was torn, the wound in his chest jagged and ugly.
“It wasn’t a clean blade,” the coroner muttered, examining the gash. “See the edges? It’s serrated. Whatever was used tore through him instead of slicing clean.”
Mara’s gaze drifted around the dim shop. Glass cabinets glittered with collections of knives, bayonets, and old tools — hundreds of possible weapons, each one more vicious than the last.
But then she noticed something odd: an empty velvet display stand in the corner. The tag beneath read, Serrated Hunting Knife — 19th Century, Rare.
“Stolen?” the coroner asked.
“No,” Mara said softly. She pointed to the faint smear of blood along the wooden base of the stand. “Borrowed.”
Her eyes shifted to the shop’s dusty counter. A single receipt lay in plain sight. The last recorded sale was from two days ago — not a blade, but a clock. And it had been purchased by the victim’s apprentice, a young man named Daniel, known for his short temper and mounting debts.
When officers brought Daniel in, his hands shook as Mara laid the facts before him: the missing knife, the jagged wound, the evidence of struggle.
Finally, Daniel broke. “He wouldn’t give me my share. Said I hadn’t earned it yet. I just— I wanted to scare him. I didn’t mean—” His words dissolved into a sob.
Mara closed her notebook. Another case solved, but not without the same bitter taste: greed, desperation, and the sharp truth hidden in a serrated edge.
Therapy Bits 
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