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Lindsey Perez was dead.
The news had hit Peter like a ton of bricks. His partner— his only friend, was dead. Gone, no longer breathing, never to be seen again. Whatever way you put it, it all meant the same.
The call to her mother went as well as expected. It was hard enough to inform her of the incident but to tell a mother that her baby girl was dead and gone? All thanks to a serial killer he was incapable of catching? That was a tall order, especially when he couldn’t get the stained sheets of her hospital bed out of his mind.
He had to bite back tears— to shove down all his grief and anger with each word. It was cruel enough to be breaking the news over the phone, the least he could do was hold it together as he comforted her weeping mother.
Peter was never taught how to properly deal with his feelings. He only knew how to drown them out— to throw himself into his work and push his emotions aside to be dealt with later. But later never came. In times like these, all he knew was his job.
He promised Mrs. Perez that he would catch the person responsible for Lindsey’s demise. And he planned to do exactly that.
So when he found himself face to face with the newest addition to Jigsaw’s little circus, he couldn’t help but get ahead of himself. Chasing him down had been a thrill in itself but finally cornering him with nowhere to go? That would be a whole other level of satisfaction.
There was a coffin, shining bright in the center of the room, its lid open, inviting a body to take its place in the bed of glass inside. It was the perfect contraption to catch a killer in. All he had to do was get him inside. It would be easy.
Peter should have known that when it came to the Jigsaw case, things were never so easy. The most fatal mistake one could make when on this case was to believe they were even a step ahead of him. Everything was meticulously planned, Jigsaw always won.
As he slammed the glass door shut on Hoffman, trapping him in the tight confines after a flurry of blows, Peter thought things would be different. He had him. The case would be closed, he would avenge Lindsey.
But then the door to the room slammed shut, snapping him out of his fantasy, dragging him back to the cruel reality before him.
And then the walls began to move in, the coffin began to lower. And something in him snapped.
Like a feral beast, he clawed at the box, barking demands at the smug man staring back. A smug reminder that he was on the wrong side of the glass. A smug reminder that Lindsey’s killer was going to walk free.
As the walls closed in, his helplessness dawned on him. He couldn’t escape this fate. He was going to die and—
He wouldn’t avenge her.
That thought pained him more than the metal jaws that snapped his bones in half and crushed them to dust. His promise to her mother would go unfulfilled. Hoffman would live to be the hero. Peter would have his legacy— for a deadman cannot refute any sullying of his own name. A deadman could only put his faith in the living to do so.
But what does a deadman do when the only living he could trust was dead too?
As the walls touched, he found his life flashing before his eyes, slipping from his grasp as his chest rattled and split. In the lucid stream of memories, he found that one thing remained constant. No matter the moment, someone was always there— someone was always by his side.
Peter Strahm died with one thing on his mind— not the Jigsaw case, not Mark Hoffman who was making his getaway, not even his broken promise. No, instead he died with one person in particular on his mind, someone who stuck out like a sore thumb throughout all his trials and tribulations, someone who he could call a friend. As the walls turned him to paste, the last face he saw flash before him was the face of his best friend— Special Agent Lindsey Perez.