We don't really know
We don't really know
Aiden's POV
It has been raining since morning. As it taps rhythmically against the window of my car, it serves as the monotonous percussion for a case that is going nowhere but spinning. I’m sitting on an McMansion-style stoop outside Greta Johnson’s townhouse, watching the crime scene team pack up their gear, their movements methodical and fatigued. The bright patrol car lights reflect off the wet street and complementary colors are projected upon the buildings in alternating panels of red and blue. It’s a watercolor of bad news, and I’m sick of the view.
Another lead. Another disappointment.
I finally make my way out, tightening my threadbare should I say threadbare? I need a new coat.
I hug my coat around me in the unrelenting drizzle. It’s cold and smells like damp concrete and iron — the city’s underbelly’s eternal cologne. Dana waves me over, her ponytail soaked and sticking to the nape of her neck, a clipboard tucked beneath her arm. She appears as depleted as I am.
“They found something,” she says before I can even ask. Her voice is flat—already dashing my hopes.
I raise an eyebrow. “Something good? Or just something?”
She hesitates, and that pause is all the information I need to know. “A glove,” she says finally. “Leather. Men’s size. It was found hidden behind Greta’s trash bins outside, beneath the eaves.”
I breathe out, a puff of white vapor in the chilly air. “And?”
“And...it correlates to partial fibers collected from beneath the carpet at Marjorie Philips’ townhouse,”
Now that's got my attention. The ghost of the previous body pops up immediately. I take the bag of evidence she hands me. The glove seems normal—black, frayed in the knuckles, nothing elaborate. But the second I look at it, something twists in my chest. It’s too clean for something "found." It seems like it was placed under the mat. Marjorie’s case has been a ghost haunting every nook and cranny of this investigation. We’ve pursued over twenty leads—drivers, lovers, ex-clients—only for everything to circle back to nothing. And now this. Another bit of evidence that’s likely to turn to dust as soon as forensics gets hold of it.
“Who reported it?” I say, my eyes sweeping across the perimeter.
“Neighbor,” Dana answers as she points at the house a couple of doors away. “Claims she saw a man walking around at Greta’s place last night. Couldn’t see his face, said he was tall, wearing a hat. She thought it was a delivery guy until she noticed cop cars this morning.”
I visualize Greta’s townhouse. The door is wide open. She is still inside, giving her statement to another officer. Through the window I can see her profile. She seems rattled, her eyes are red and her hands are shaking as she holds a mug of tea. She is a lawyer, and also a close friend of Marjorie’s. I can’t get rid of this sour feeling that this isn’t an accident. This is a pattern.
“Same guy, you think?” Dana queries softly, her words barely audible through the drizzle.
“I dunno,” I whisper. “But it has a familiar smell. Too familiar.”
We walk toward the scene and step around muddy footprints and yellow tape sagging in the wind. "Her name is Mindy, she said she got a call around 2 a.m.," Dana says as she turns a page on her clipboard. "Someone breathing on the line. She hung up after twenty seconds. Phone number was blocked.”
I stop and turn to her. “Breathing?”
She nods grimly. “Like someone wanted her to know he was there. Just listening to her panic.”
And that same cold itch begins crawling up the back of my neck the second time — the one that only comes when something fits too perfectly. The killer’s pattern has always been deliberate. He toys with them first. He watches. He waits. This is not a quick kill; it is the slow, agonizing prelude. He wants them to know he's coming. Then he strikes when they least expect it."
“Has she received any packages recently?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“A box of lilies three days ago,” Dana says. “White ones. No sender.”
“Of course,” I mutter. “Classic.”
\---
The lilies. Always the goddamn lilies. Every victim received one before they died. A funeral wreath delivered early. Except Marjorie’s note wasn’t signed. This one wasn’t either. The killer is getting bolder—or sloppier. I’m betting on bolder.
Inside the townhouse, the stale perfume smell mingles with the heavy anxiety in the air.Greta sits on a plush beige couch, flanked by a junior officer who looks terrified of saying
She exhales shakily as soon as she see me.
“Detective West?”
I nod and take the seat in the armchair opposite of her. “Ma’am, I know this is difficult, but we need to go through everything with a fine-tooth comb. Every detail.”
She gives me a quick nod as she grabs the mug. “Of course. Anything.”
“A call last night, you said?”
“Yes. It was—odd. It initially seemed like one of those prank calls just static. Then I realized the line was silent. Completely silent. And I could hear... breathing.
I jot that down, my jaw tightening. “And you didn’t see anybody out there?”
“No. I looked, but... nothing. But I’ve felt watched lately, Detective. For the past week. It’s as if someone has been trailing me from my office. I keep seeing the same dark car.”
That phrase again. The ice in my stomach hardens. It’s the same thing Marjorie said two weeks before she was found dead.
My heart races. “Did you say anything to anyone?”
“Only Marjorie,” Mindy whispers. “A few days before... before she... She told me to disregard it. Said maybe it was just stress. But now—”
Her voice breaks, and she wipes her eyes. Dana and I exchange a look, one that’s become all too common — that of grim frustration and pity. Those perfect intimates and then aptly describes us: We’re always one step behind.
\---
When we walk out, the rain has finally stopped. The world feels still, too still.The silence is louder than the storm
“Do you think they’re related?” Dana asked as water bubbled in the street; we headed back to the car as the gray sky lay low overhead.
“It sure does,” I whisper. “He’s escalating. But we have no prints, no video, no witnesses. Just a glove and a ghost.”
She sighs, unlocking the car. “You need rest, Aiden. You look like crap.”
I look at her and manage a weak, humorless smile. “You sound like Ruthie.”
Dana doesn’t smile back. “Did you talk to her?”
The question throws me off, and the smug expression leaves my face. I shake my head and look away. “No. Not since the wedding.”
“She’s your best friend,” she said softly, not as a scolding, just an observation.
“I know,” I mutter, getting into the passenger seat. “But it’s complicated.”
She looks at me for a second, then drops it, starts the car. I watch the city slide by as we drive through, gray streets and drowsy faces, bits of neon flashing through the rain on the asphalt. Instead of focusing on the case, my mind kept straying to Ruthie, and from Ruthie to Eliot.
There was just something about her new husband that never felt right to me. His smile is too perfect, his tone too smooth. There’s a darkness there, that which lies behind expensive suits and effortless charm. I saw it at the wedding, how he looked at her, the flash of something possessive and cold in his eyes when I hugged her.
I try to dislodge the thought, but I can’t. As I stare down at the bag for evidence that's on my lap—the black leather glove gleaming ever so slightly beneath the light of the dashboard—I feel it. That same itch. That same voice in my head, telling me something isn’t right.
That evening I find myself back at the station, the overhead fluorescent lights humming a grating melody. The smell of stale coffee and paper fills the air. Dana’s going over statements and I’m going through the long dead reports that are scattered all over my desk.
Marjorie’s photos. The lilies. The precise, almost surgical incisions just behind her ear.
Everything screams precision — someone methodical, calculated. But why lawyers? Why them in particular?
I skim the new report on Greta. The fibers under the glove partially match those discovered at Marjorie’s location, but no prints. Like before. A dead end disguised as a break.
But I can’t shake something. I just open the photo from the evidence bag. The glove is too clean to be something that lay outside in the rain even under the protection of an eave. It was placed. Positioned. A distraction. A message.
Dana yawns and leans on my desk. “Maybe it’s a copycat,” she says. “Maybe,” I say inattentively, though I don’t really think so. Copycats are loud; they want to be noticed. That’s not this guy. He’s a whisper. The control, the silence. He’s invisible.”
“Go home,” she says at last. “You’ll drive yourself crazy.”
I don’t argue. I pack up my files, and step outside.
The night air is crisp, cold enough to make my skin hurt. I jam my hands in my pockets and head for my car, my footsteps ringing on the deserted street. That’s when I feel it. The tingle on the nape of my neck. I stop. I listen. Nothing but the city humming in the distance. I pivot, and at this point in the street something grabs me—there’s a figure, standing half-hidden by a lamppost.
Tall. Still. Watching.
I squint, but before I get closer or shout, he turns. He doesn't run. He backs up, a flawless, leisurely retreat, and vanishes in the dimness of an alley.
My pulse spikes. I run across the street, coming to a stop on the wet asphalt. “Hey!” I shout down the alley. Nothing. Only the distant receding sound of footsteps. I swear under my breath. Back at the car I take another look at the glove on the passenger’s side.
There’s something about this case that seems nearer than ever — and for the first time I can’t get the feeling out of my head that the k
iller isn’t just looking at his next victim.
He’s watching us.
And maybe… someone I love is just TOO CLOSE.