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May 1st, 2012
Louisiana State Police CID
Testament of: Martin Eric Hart

The office hummed with low chatter outside—phones ringing, foot steps shuffling, the sound of life moving on outside a small, cornered-off room. Inside, the atmosphere was different. Stilled. Colder. The walls a dull beige, the blinds half-closed, light cutting across Marty's face in sharp streaks. Detective Maynard Gilbough and Detective Thomas Papania sat across from him, clean-cut and clinical in demeanor, but the curiosity hung heavy in the air.

Marty sat back in his chair, his sturdy frame softened by the years, though he still had the polished look of someone who knew how to put on a front. He sipped his coffee—lukewarm by now, black as sin—before letting it settle on the table, his fingers lightly tapping the rim of the plain white mug.

Gilbough broke the silence. "What'd you think, you paired up with him?"

Marty letout a small breath that could've been a laugh. "What'd I think? Well, you don't pick your parents, and you sure as hell don't pick your partner."

He shifted, leaning back slightly, hands clasped in his lap as if gathering himself. "You know, they used to call him The Tax Man for a while? Him, comin' outta Texas like that, nobody knew him. Hell, I didn't know him."

Gilbough nodded, feigning understanding, but his partner, Thomas Papania, leaned in just slightly. "Guy seemed a bit... raw-boned to me. Edgy."

Marty chuckled, shaking his head. "Edgy. Yeah, you could say that. That's... well,that's a polite way of puttin' it. Rust'd pick a fight with the sky if he didn't like its shade of blue." He grinned, brief but amused by the memory, before his eyes turned a little more serious. "But, you know, when we finally got him over to the house—took three months, mind you, three months—this was right when we had the big 419. Dora Lange."

He leaned forward now, elbows resting on the table. "Y'all are here 'bout that, right? Lange, kids in the woods, all that? This—" he motioned vaguely in the air— "this new thing you're lookin' at?"

Gilbough exchanged a glance with Papania before answering. "Yeah, sure. That's thething. But we're more interested in Cohle. How he worked. What kind of guy he was."

Marty stared at them for a moment, maybe trying to size up their intentions. Then, a soft chuckle escaped, dry and humorless. "Strange." He rolled the word over his tongue. "Yeah, Rust was strange. Poor bastard looked like he was on his way to a firing squad when we finally had him over for dinner. Like we were about to put him on trial for somethin' he ain't done yet. That was... That was Rust."

April 26th, 2012
Louisiana State Police CID
Testament of: Rustin Spencer Cohle

Same room, same blinds casting crooked slats of sunlight across the walls, and Rust sat where Marty would days later. The air around him felt heavier. Rustin Spencer Cohle looked less like a man sitting for an interview and more like a man waiting for the end of something. His clothes were oversized, threadbare at the elbows and stained somewhere dark along the hem of his jacket. His hair hung long and tangled, the streaks of gray running wild, while his mustache framed his mouth like a piece of old rope. His eyes—the worst of it—were hollowed, rimmed in red, and stared off somewhere far away.

"Dora. Lange." Rust said the name, voice slow, drawled and rough as gravel scraped under boot. He didn't look at them when he spoke, more at the table, where his fingers toyed with a cigarette. "Yeah. Occult ritual murder. You can thank The Advertiser for that."

He flicked his lighter open. Papania leaned forward sharply, pointing at him. "No, you can't do that in here nowadays."

Rust lifted his gaze to the younger detective, one brow inching up in slow annoyance. The lighter flame hovered close to the cigarette. "Don't be assholes," he said, deadpan. "You wanna hear this or not?"

Papania blinked, unsure how to respond. Gilbough gestured for him to sit back, and Rust lit the cigarette anyway, pulling in a long, deep drag that settled his shoulders just a little. The smoke curled upward, the faint glow of the ember the only bright thing about him.

"Vermilion Parish. Sheriff pulled in CID for assistance on a 419, cane fields outside of Erath. I'd been in Louisiana 'bout three months then. Two previous cases—open, shut. Third one..." He paused, flicking ash onto the floor, his thumb running along the cigarette's edge. "January the third. 1995."

His eyes flickered for just a moment, softening almost imperceptibly. "My daughter's birthday. I remember."

The room seemed to hold its breath. Rust didn't elaborate, didn't explain, but that memory sat there between them like a stone dropped into a pond, its ripples unseen but impossible to ignore. He took another drag, the tip glowing again.

"I remember the way that body looked. I remember the smell in those cane fields. Y'all ever stood in cane fields in the winter? They burn the stubble, mix it with the fog comin' in off the water. It sits heavy. Gets in your clothes. Gets in your lungs."

Rust's gaze flicked back up, locking eyes with Gilbough. "Then you add a body—dead maybe two days—set up like somethin' out of a bad dream. Antlers, symbols...”

His voice trailed off, and he let out a small exhale, a bitter almost-laugh. "And you ask yourself, 'What kind of man sees this? What kind of man does this?'" Rust paused, tilting his head, the cigarette forgotten between his fingers. "Hell of a way to start a new year, huh?"

January 3rd, 1995

The sun had barely risen, its muted light diffused through the dense cloud cover, painting everything in shades of gray. The winter air was cool but heavy, the kind of weight that pressed down on your shoulders like bad news waiting to break. The hum of the old Crown Vic's engine accompanied Marty and Rust as they drove down narrow, cracked roads, past wetlands and fields still shrouded inmorning mist.

Even from miles away, they could see the lingering smoke curling up into the sky—faint tendrils from a fire burned out of turn. Cane fields, a sprawling sea of blackened stalks, stretched across either side of the road. Rust sat in the passenger seat, his elbows braced against the door, eyes locked on the horizon like he was trying to see something nobody else could. Marty, hands firm on the wheel, chewed his lip as the car bumped and rattled along the dirt shoulder.

The call had come in just before 6 a.m.—419. A body, reported by the Vermilion Parish sheriff's office. Out in the fields, something wasn't right. Marty hated early calls. They always set the tone for a bad day.

They pulled up to the scene: half a dozen sheriff cruisers and county trucks, their lights muted in the fog. An officer standing by the yellow tape straightened up as they approached.

Marty killed the engine, opened the door with a heavy thunk, and stepped out into the morning chill. "Hart and Cohle, State CID," he said to the officer, who nodded and started flipping through his log book.

Rust stepped out, pulling on his state police jacket against the cold. He was already scanning the scene, eyes sharp and restless, his gaze drawn to the smoke still hanging in the air beyond the fields. Together, they crossed under the yellow tape, boots crunching against dirt and scorched cane.

Ahead, alone oak tree stood out against the expanse—gnarled branches cutting the sky, roots clawing at the earth. Marty could feel it in his gut already. That wrongness hanging there like something rotting under the skin of the world.

The sheriff—a bulky man with a mustache and a permanent squint—stepped up to greet them.

"Who found her?" Marty asked, his voice flat, all business.

"Farmer and his boy. This spread wasn't scheduled for a burn."

Marty nodded, flicking his eyes toward the cruiser parked nearby. "Let's keep them here. Tape off this road. And give me your log."

The sheriff handed over the notebook, and Marty tucked it under his arm as they moved past the tree, into its shadow.

Then they saw her.

The body.

She was kneeling, facing the trunk like she was praying to it. Naked. Her hands bound with some kind of twine. A blindfold wrapped tight across her face. A crown of antlers had been perched carefully atop her head, an almost sacred positioning that made the scene feel ritualistic—like something ancient and cruel.

Her hair had been brushed to one side, deliberate, exposing the bare skin of her back. On it, drawn in thick, dark paint, was a spiral. Its shape crude but purposeful, etched into her body like a statement.

The silence swelled around them, broken only by the distant crackle of radios and the low murmurs of deputies on the perimeter. Marty stared, his mouth a grimline, while Rust's gaze lingered longer.

Rust was the first to turn away, his eyes sweeping the area with clinical precision. Always looking past things—through them. Marty knew that look. Like Rust was seeing something the rest of them weren't.

"You take the log," Marty said finally, handing the notebook off to a younger officer who had wandered close. "Make sure you get everything down."

Rust didn't hesitate. He reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a pair of rubber gloves, and held them up like a question.

"Go ahead," Marty said, watching as Rust crouched down and moved closer to the body, the gloves snapping faintly as he pulled them on.

The sheriff stood stiffly beside Marty, his face pale and uneasy as he looked anywhere but at the girl. "You ever see something like this?" he asked Marty.

Marty's voice was quiet. "No, sir. Eight years CID, never seen nothin' like this."

The sheriff nodded, almost to himself. "Them symbols. They're Satanic, you ask me. They had a '20/20' on it a few years back."

Marty gave him a glance but didn't respond, focusing instead on Rust, who was leaning in closer to the body.

"ID?" Rust called out, not looking up.

"No, sir," the sheriff replied, shaking his head.

Marty was already moving, pulling his radio off his belt. "We're gonna need more men for a grid search," he said, his tone measured and steady despite the unease rolling off the scene like a wave. "Set up a perimeter wide as possible on those three roads. Post up, take license plates of anything that passes.”

"I-23," he said into the radio.

The response crackled through. "Go ahead, I-23."

"We're gonna need investigator assist on that 419. All you can spare for a canvass."

"Roger that, Detective."

Marty clipped the radio back on and looked at the sheriff, whose relief was palpable.

"Alright, CID is taking over."

The sheriff gave a small nod and backed away, barking orders to his men. Marty let out a slow breath, eyes turning back to the girl by the tree. Rust was still crouched there, motionless now, his head tilted slightly like he was listening to something.

Marty didn't know what Rust was hearing, but he knew he didn't like it.

The scene burned itself into his memory: the body, the crown of antlers, the spiral. It would linger there, deep in his mind, long after they left that field.