Last Season Meo Fusciuni 2024

It wasn't long ago that his partner was shot in the back during a routine operation.

For a moment, on that cold, rainy day, Dt. Mueller had turned away from a car too soon. FBI Detective Marshall Cuttler can still hear the shot that took Dt. Mueller's life.

Now he sits in his old Bronco, driving across Colorado on Interstate 70.

He hasn't had his FBI badge and service weapon for several months now. He couldn't handle the pressure. All the questions about why he wasn't at the suspect's car, why he left Mueller behind.

After several days and nights of bourbon, microwave mac n cheese, and Las Vegas Reds, he tried to give his life a new direction.

In the smoky window of a small office on the outskirts, he saw a sign that read "Looking for private detectives" as he drove by.

His first case was almost stereotypical: a cheated wife whose husband, in a midlife crisis, he had photographed with the much too young babysitter in a dingy motel in the woods near Cripple Creek.

But now a young girl had been missing for several weeks. The 12-year-old Patricia had not returned home from a baseball game. Her name seamlessly joins a sad list that Colorado has been compiling for more than 15 years.

Cuttler was already familiar with this list from his active time at the FBI. Back then, they were all puzzled.

His investigations lead him deep into the woods.

He set off in the middle of the night. Filter coffee and nicotine keep him going through the dark mountain roads, where for hours he encounters neither oncoming traffic nor houses.

Here the road ends. He packs his backpack, his old revolver, and enters the forest. He wants to use the last hours of darkness to get closer to the old lodge.

In the middle of the woods, the dry ground, with all its branches, creaks under his steps.

There it is, the darkness is broken by a campfire. It could already be smelled several miles ahead. The smoke is carried through the entire forest in the cold morning air.

Cuttler pauses and lights a cigarette, almost as if he knows it could be his last.

In the old wooden house, he can't see anyone. The flickering light inside came from a fireplace.

He spins the cylinder of his revolver to check if it was loaded.

Suddenly raindrops hit the cartridges of his revolver. An unexpected rain front came out of nowhere and extinguished the campfire in front of the lodge within minutes.

A moment of silence and darkness hits Cuttler deep in his thoughts.

Have all the events surrounding his old partner brought him to a predetermined path right here? Was this his true calling? The rescue of Patricia should become his last assignment, his final mission.

He chooses his steps carefully, as the clay ground has become slippery from the rain.

There are only a few meters left to the entrance of the house.

He cautiously looks through a window, and his eyes widen.

Three young girls are kneeling, gagged and dressed in white linen dresses, in front of the fireplace.

The lodge seems to consist of a single large room. He can't spot anyone else in the room. Cuttler had already noticed that no car, which is essential for the rocky road up into the mountains, was parked at the house. Was the kidnapper perhaps not even present?

Slowly, he pushes the door open, his weapon at the ready.

The three girls initially do not notice his intrusion. As he gets closer, one of them turns around. It wasn't Patricia, as she must have been much older.

Her gaze was vacant and filled with hatred.

Cuttler suddenly felt a great emptiness inside.

She had recognized her captor.