The Glitch in the Frame

The Glitch in the Frame
Aiden's POV

My new place is still just a bunch of boxes. It has a fresh paint, cardboard smell, sterile and impersonal-and space yet to feel mine. I’m not even unpacked my couch. I have been sleeping on the floor with a mattress, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t slept for more than ninety minutes at a time since Chacha Remirez was found in her room.

Unfamiliar Brooklyn I’m staring through a window at the city lights-a smudged canvas of indifferent neon. 3:17 a.m.
My thoughts are like a racetrack and I have the same horses running in circles. The glove. The phone calls. The initials on the mirror. The missing earrings. The escalating theatrics.

We 're just not missing anything. We’re being lapped. So we’re not just missing something; we’re being lapped.”

This killer is closer than we know.
I can feel it. It’s not just a hunch anymore. It’s a physical presence, a weight in the room. The feeling of being watched hasn’t left me since I saw that figure in the alley. He’s not just watching his victims; he’s watching us .

He’s enjoying this. I peel off from the window, rubbing my hands on my face. Sleep isn’t coming. I go to the folding table I’ve assembled as a desk and turn on the lamp. My work laptop and a stack of files sit under the harsh light. I hook up the hard drive.
If the street won’t talk, the cameras will.

I bring up the case file, my personal digital wake. Hours and hours of grainy footage with no sound. Every single victim Every lead. I need to find the glitch. The one frame that is all wrong.
I start with Greta Johnson.

I watch the footage from her street. There. The flicker of a man in a dark hoodie, who passed her building three times in a single night. He glances toward her window. The next night, the glove. Nothing. We’ve been over this a hundred times.
I switch to the next file.
Amira Klein. Discovered in the parking garage of her law office, resting over the wheel of her vehicle. No cameras in the garage, only at the street entrance. I watch hours of cars coming and going. A dark sedan passes four times. We ran the plate. It belongs to a pizza delivery guy. Dead end.
Next. Veronica Cheng Dead on the third floor of her penthouse, hanging in the balcony. The camera was seemingly off-line during a fifteen-minute period. The exact window the M.E. places her time of death. The killer knew the building's security system. I pull the street cams. Nothing. Just the usual flow of people, none of who are paying attention.
Next. Chacha Remirez, she had actually A corporate lawyer. Located in a suite at the Mercer Hotel. Hotel security shows her checking in alone a day before her death.

Later, she meets someone in the bar. We see her talking and laughing, but the companion’s back is toward the camera. They go out together. He is clever. He never appears in person..

So Tessa Monroe, finally. We have found her body.

My eyes are burning. I’m just going to shut the laptop down, surrender to the exhaustion, when a new thought comes to me.
I'm looking in the wrong place. I'm looking at their homes. I should be looking at their lives.
I open a separate set of files. Public cameras. Street cams from intersections near their offices. It’s a long shot, a desperate one. I find the feed from the corner of Broad and Exchange, a block from Amira Klein’s firm.

I keep clicking, my finger tapping the arrow key, images racing by in a jagged time-lapse. People flow like water down the sidewalks.
I dial through days of video. Nothing.
I dial into Veronica Cheng’s office in Midtown. A coffee shop camera on the other side of the street. This is even worse. The angle is all wrong, the lens is dirty. I watch the time-lapse. Persons at tables. Taxis. I stop. Rewind.
My heart stutters.
There. A man at an outdoor table. He’s alone. He’s not on his phone. He’s not reading.
He’s just... sitting. He drinks his coffee and his stare is turned up. He’s monitoring the Veronica building’s door.
He’s too far. The picture is blurred. I can't see his face. Just a good-looking guy with dark hair, calm, quiet. He’s there for an hour.
I zoom in, the image breaking down into a nonsensical grid of pixels. But I can see something on his lapel. A pin. A little sparkle of silver.
It’s not enough. It’s nothing.”

Appalled, I switch to the final file. Chacha Remirez . The Mercer Hotel. We got the bar footage, but it’s no good. I pull the lobby cameras. Maybe he wasn't as careful as I thought.
I watch her check in. I watch her walk to the elevator. I scrub ahead an hour. She comes back down, walks toward the bar.
Five minutes later someone comes into the hotel lobby.

He does not go to the desk. Confident and relaxed he heads straight for the bar. He’s got a dark, pricey peacoat on. The camera is high up, looking down. I see the back of his head. Dark hair, perfect posture. He pauses at the door of the tavern, as though in quest of somebody. He turns his head slightly to look around the room.
And the camera shows his profile.
My world stops.

I’m not breathing. The air of my apartment has left. My blood becomes like slush and ice water.

I know that profile. I know that perfect jawline. I know that silky, unruffled, seem-to-be-nothing confidence.

No.

It’s a double. It has to be. My mind is playing tricks. I’m excited. I’m paranoid. I’m seeing the man I hate in every shadow.
I zoom in. The image pixels, but the profile is unmistakable. It’s him. But he said he's veterinarian. A surgeon. A person with a steady, practiced hand.A person with a steady, practiced hand. Someone who knows about anatomy, precision. Someone who knows precisely how to make a mark. Someone who can put an animal down without batting an eye, calm and cool and collected.

“He’s so gentle, Aiden,” Ruthie’s voice, my best friend’s voice, echoes in my head. “He’s the sweetest man I’ve ever known.”
I’m shaking. I’m staring at the screen, looking at the man who is purportedly healing animals — as he struts into a hotel bar to meet a woman who will be dead in 12 hours

He knew her. He knew Chacha Remirez He was watching Veronica Cheng’s office. My phone vibrates on the desk, a harsh, grinding noise in the silence of the room.
I look down. It’s a text. From Ruthie.
It’s a picture. A selfie. Ruthie and Eliot, heads pressed together, grinning, raising champagne glasses in a toast. They are in a car, the streetlights on the West Side Highway trailing by.

The text reads: “He got it!!! The funding for the new clinic came through! Celebrating! Wish you were here bestie! Love you!”
I gaze at the picture. At Eliot’s beaming, flawless face. The face of a predator.
And there, on the lapel of his bespoke blazer, is the flash of silver. The pin. The one I noticed on the man outside Veronica’s office. It's obvious in this photo. A tiny, silver staff with a serpent wrapped around it – topped with a “V”. The vet’s caduceus.
My phone buzzes again. A new text from Ruthie.

“Heading home. Eliot’s driving, he’s a little drunk lol. See you for brunch tomorrow?”
My blood doesn’t just run cold. It stops.
I switch my gaze from the beaming The rock selfie on my phone
to the lofi video on my laptop.
He’s with her. He’s in a car with her. Right now.