The Stage
The Stage
Unknown POV
The apartment is a theater. That’s the only thing that keeps going through my mind. It’s a perfect warm stage set for a romantic comedy, and the star has just been turned into roadkill in the first act. The scent of top-notch coffee and burnt gunpowder lingers in the air, a nauseating talisman. Blood, an obscene amount of it, stains the white silk robe of Chacha Remirez and creeps the grout lines in the immaculate tile.
It’s too much blood for one clean shot. He lingered.Forensics is here, their quiet, methodical work a stark contrast to the violence they’re documenting. They are bagging the phone, the holy grail of this investigation—a live-streamed murder. The media circus outside is already a raging beast, separated by a thin strip of blue. This isn’t just a murder, it’s a media event, and Lewis, the real murderer that son of a bitch, arranged it that way.
I kneel by Chacha’s head, and I make myself look beyond the destruction of her face, to the killer’s signature. "TT." It’s not like the others. The "E", "TT" and "S" on our victims in New York were precise, deep, almost surgical. That's different. This is angry. The letters overlap, carved by a furious serrated motion. This is not art. This is rage.Dana points to the "gift" box, still sitting on the counter.
"He's merging his worlds."This is where the dots stop connecting. Why break with the 13th pattern, just two days early? Why change the signature from a single letter to a double? Then single? Why air it? It’s a mess of new variables. The fastidious, patient professor has left. In his place is a rabid animal. We didn't just find him. It feels like we unleashed him.
We can't get answers from the dead. We have to start with the living. The first interview is the fiancé, Miguel. We catch up with him at his brother’s apartment across town, where he was supposed to be hiding out to avoid seeing Chacha’s dress.He’s in that awful, gray space of shock. He’s sitting on a sofa, looking at his phone, his thumb poised over her contact.
He probably thinks if he calls her enough, she’ll pick up."Detective," he whispers, his voice hoarse. "They said... they said it's on the internet."
“We’re doing everything we can to get that video taken down,” I lie. It's not a lie, technically, but we both know it's impossible. That video is already all over. It will haunt him for the rest of his life.
“Did Chacha have any enemies?” The question sounds grotesque, hollow, even to me as I utter it.
He looks up at me, his eyes adrift in a confusion so profound there is no bottom to it. "Enemies? Everyone loved Chacha. She... she was sunshine. You meet her and you just want to be friends with her."
“Anybody from her past?”
Dana gently inquires as she enters. "An ex? Like she owe or something?"
"I don't think so."
"We were happy. We were... we were choosing a font for the invitations last night. A font." He chokes in saying it.I need to push. "How about workplace? She was an attorney. She must have worked on some tough cases."
"She was stressed," admits Miguel, his hand rubbing his face. "But not afraid. She was... she was handling this big faculty dispute with her firm. Some NYU prof who was suing them. She said the guy was ‘unhinged’ but the firm was ‘handling it." My heart skips a beat. NYU.
“Do you remember his name?"
"No," says Miguel, his voice cracking. "Oh god, she was supposed to go shopping. I was supposed to see her tonight. I... I can't..." He crumbles, and we have to get out of here. He’s a victim too, and he gave us all he had. He’s not connecting the dots; he doesn’t know that they’re dots.
The investigation continues. We hunt down the maid of honor, Jessica, the one Chacha was supposed to hook up with for the wedding-dress meeting. We locate her at the bridal boutique, a ludicrously lavish joint with white carpets and champagne flutes. She has been in the lobby two hours, and her expression has changed from irritate to anxious.When she notices our badges, her face drains of all colours.
Telling her is one of the worst things I've ever had to do. Her wail is a thin, high-pitched noise that leaves the shop's impeccably clothed mannequins looking like they are silently screaming.Once we get her into a private office where she is chugging water, we ask the same questions. “Did she seem scared? Nervous for anyone?"
"No!" Jessica sobs, her mascara trailing down her cheeks in black rivers. "She was on top of the world. We were texting this morning! She was... happy. She was concerned about her TikTok numbers, not... not this." She waves vaguely, too horrified to put it into words.This confirms it. Chacha was blindsided. This wasn’t a stalker she knew to fear. It was a predator she didn’t see coming.”What about her work?”
I ask, hating myself for it.
"Miguel brought up a case she was handling.”
"Jessica snorts a broken, watery laugh. "Oh, 'Professor Grievance'? Right, she complained about him. Said he was a “sad, creepy little man” who kept sending these insane, rambling messages to the partners. Like, manifesto-level crazy. She was assisting in drafting the motion to dismiss his claim
."A sad, creepy little man. The same man who just put a bullet in her and carved his and his dead girlfriend's initials into her skin."Did she ever meet him?" I ask."I don't think so. She just read his crazy emails. She said he was a 'total nutjob' but harmless." She frowns deeply. "She said he was just a friend and harmless.”
The dots are coming into focus, but the image is still hazy, out of focus. We’re now at Raskin, Adler and Finch. It's a glass and steel temple in Midtown, and the whole thing is already under lockdown. Chacha’s murder has made that high-powered firm a morgue, and the news that the partner who was shot was the firm’s co-managing partner has everyone on edge. We're escorted to the managing partner's office. He's a guy named Adler, who’s all pinstripes and controlled panic.
"This is an unthinkable tragedy," he says with his fingers steepled. His hands are shaking."She was a lovable person ," I say and get straight to the point.Adler's face is getting more tense. That is a... disheveled and privileged issue.”
"Mr. Adler," Dana says, her voice icy, "your colleague just got killed by someone, live streamed to 20,000 people. Privilege walked right out the door. Talk."He talks. He’s confirmed everything. The frustration over his tenure track dismissal. The growing, unhinged emails. “He accused the university of ‘plagiarizing his genius.’ He referred to the partners of this company as ‘leeches on the body of intellect.’”
"Have you ever brought up Chacha Remirez by name?" I ask.Adler is green in the face. He nods.
"Last week. His part was formally and irrevocably grounded out by the panel. The name of Chacha was on the filing as junior counsel. He sent... he sent an email right to the partners. He copied her.”
"What did
it say?"
Adler wheels his tall, leather chair around, logs into his computer, and locates the email.
He turns the screen to us. it's in one line - to the partners — but the last sentence is for Chacha."I see you, Ms. Remirez. Your perfection is an illusion. And all illusions must be carved away.
I feel like my blood has turned to ice. It is actually a line from the poem Colorado. A direct threat.
"And you did what?" I demand, my own voice getting louder.
"You reported this? You gave her security?"
"Reported what?" Adler sputters, finally losing his temper. "A line of bad poetry? We get angry clients and opposing counsel threatening us every day. I told her to block his email. I told her he was a crank!"
We leave the firm to the sound of my teeth grinding in my ears. Up in the precinct, it’s deafening. The chief is screaming about leaks. The media is screaming about a ‘serial killer on TikTok.’ I stand in front of the murder board. I pin Chacha's smiling, vibrant photo against the bloody crime scene images from her kitchen.The dots are all there now, and they link to create a picture of pure, terrifying rage. “He wasn’t spelling,” I tell Dana, who is downing her third coffee. “What?”
“The letters.I was thinking he was spelling a word. He’s not. It was a ritual. A countdown. Then the Colorado victims… those were the first draft. Elise Morgan was Dillon’s ‘perfect’ piece, the one to which he dedicated the book.”
“What about us?”
Dana asks, her voice low. “We got close. The Colorado file. We broke his rhythm.” “We broke his concentration,” I correct, pointing at the picture of Lewis. “He’s not that calm, calculating ‘artist’ anymore. He’s like a cornered animal.
The grievance dismissal, Chacha’s ‘perfection,’ her happiness… she used to be a lawyer, she was stunning, and she was standing up for the people who turned him down. He spotted her, and he snapped.”I look at the “T” on the board. “This wasn’t a letter in a sequence. This was an execution. He broke his Rule 13 because he was too excited to wait.
And the ‘T’? Well, it’s not a letter. It’s a brand. He’s signing his work.”
My desk phone rings. It’s the chief. "Aiden. There’s a BOLO out for Lewis. An arrest warrant for him. We have his face, we have the video. But... we have a problem. He’s on the run. But we are wrong. We found his decaying corpse in his garage.”
"I hang up, the thin humming of the phone ringing in my ear. “He's gone, Dana.”
“Gone?”
“Oh, he’s not just gone, Dana,” I say as I gr
ab my keys. “Ethan Lewis is dead. Apparently someone killed him, what we have now is his skeleton.”