Chapter Text
The rain came down like a verdict — slow, steady, erasing footprints and washing the city into a smear of neon reflections. Detective Raelle Collar stepped out of the squad car and let the cold catch under her collar, steadying the tremor that lived in her hands. The yellow tape flapped at her hip, bright against the dark. Police lights sliced through the rain like knives. Someone had already pulled a tarp over the corner of the alley — where the world had been reduced to two bodies and a message written in someone else’s cruelty.
She knew the scene before she saw it. Years on the job had taught her to look past horror and into the grammar beneath it — what the killer wanted the police to read. Her eyes moved like a scalpel: angles, positions, the way blood pooled, the deliberate cuts like punctuation. There was a rhythm here, and the rhythm had teeth.
Detective Adil met her at the tape, his mouth pulled thin. He handed her a paper cup of coffee without a word. It was half-bitter and still steaming; she took it like a ritual.
“You’re not back on duty, Raelle,” he said, not asking. He watched her the way people watch someone surfacing from deep water.
“I was called in.” Her voice was flat, practiced — the kind that hid the thrum of adrenaline and the echo of other nights just like this one.
Adil nodded. “Two victims. Young. Same signature as the others — surgical. Same… pattern.” He hesitated, then added, “Beth’s old precinct flagged it. They sent the photos up.”
The name hit like a fist.
Beth.
The sound of it hollowed her chest. Beth had been more than a partner — she’d been the compass when Raelle’s world had spun out of control. The night she died, Raelle came back with her hands full of questions and no answers.
She swallowed the memory and moved.
The alley smelled of wet concrete and cigarettes. Two young women lay arranged as though someone had rehearsed it. Fingers splayed, eyes glassy, faces unreadable. The killer’s precision was surgical — almost reverent. On one shoulder, a symbol was carved: a line, a loop, a crosshair. Neat. Controlled. The other girl’s wrist bore a thin red thread, tied with the same deliberate care. Both had faint discoloration around the mouth — forced silence.
The forensic team moved with the sacred choreography of people who touched death to tell its story. Raelle watched, the old autopsy slides flashing through her mind — Beth’s case, the same symbols, the same clean cuts. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t spiral again. That promise hadn’t survived the walk from the car to the tape.
“Who found them?” she asked.
“A jogger. 05:13,” Adil replied. “Surveillance near the deli picked up a white van at 04:30. No plates — wiped. Forensics found isopropyl traces on the cuts. Hospital says whoever did this knew how to suture.”
Surgical. Clean. Prepared. A professional — or someone who wanted to be.
Raelle crouched beside a body, her gloved hand brushing the wet concrete. The world contracted to the size of that circle. Beth’s face — not the photo, but the living memory — pushed behind her eyes. The flash of gunmetal, the sound of boots, Beth’s laugh right before the ambush. The way she’d looked at Raelle when she said something stupid to break tension.
You weren’t there. You could’ve saved her.
The accusation had no voice but always rang loudest when the world went quiet. Raelle let the guilt sit — it steadied her. It kept her awake through the hours when closure was a myth.
“Get me the crime scene photos digitally,” she said to a tech. “Print everything — sutures, fibers, instruments. Blood work expedited, full tox screen. And pull hospital logs for all anonymous suture procedures in the last month.”
Adil raised an eyebrow. “You wanna drive, or—”
“I’m driving.”
She called Director Latham with a clipped update, emotion stripped from her tone. The veneer wasn’t for professionalism — it was armor.
When she finally stepped away from the alley, the rain felt personal, as if it had started just for her. Officers took witness statements under umbrellas slick with water. One handed her a folded set of photographs. The carved symbol stared back at her — familiar and mocking.
Driving back to the station, she replayed every detail. The killer’s choices were deliberate, almost theatrical. They were watching the investigation as much as creating it.
At her desk, she fed the images into the system, zooming in on the sutures and the faint indentations from the tools. Whoever had done this had studied. The cuts were meticulous, threaded like stitches in a lesson plan. This was both ritual and message.
“You need to eat,” Adil said when the halo of her desk lamp was the only light left.
“I’ll grab something later.”
He sighed. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
She almost said, You don’t understand, but instead she took the coffee he offered. The warmth spread through her fingers. The lie followed.
I’m fine. I can handle it.
The first time she heard Scylla Ramshorn’s name was in an email from Latham:
Consultant, Forensic Psychology — available for high-profile serial cases.
The attached photo was clinical, professional. A clean bob of dark hair, steady eyes that looked like they catalogued everything. No attempt at polish, no pretense — just calm focus.
Her CV was concise: trauma studies, behavioral criminology, dissertations on “performative pathology.” That phrase caught Raelle’s eye. Performative. These murders weren’t random — they were theatre.
A knock on the door broke her focus. Adil gestured from the hallway — two suits, media liaisons, hovering like crows. Latham wanted movement. Raelle gave them what they needed to hear.
“Request a formal consult,” she said. “Bring Scylla in as soon as she’s available.”
She told herself it was procedure. Deep down, she wanted a mind sharp enough to see what she saw — someone who could face horror without flinching.
The next two days blurred into interviews, lab reports, and sleepless nights. When Scylla finally arrived, the station seemed to pause for a breath. She carried a slim satchel, her coat too light for the rain, her scarf faintly citrus.
“Young women. Similar MO,” Scylla said softly, scanning the photos. “Sutures mimic surgical closure. The cuts are shallow — intimidation, not efficiency. Cause of death: asphyxiation. It’s performance.”
“You been briefed?” Raelle asked, her voice low and testing.
“Enough.” Scylla’s mouth curved faintly. “I read the Beth file too. There’s overlap. The arrangement of the scenes suggests the killer wants the investigators to recognize themselves in it — to be implicated.”
Raelle felt something shift — not relief, but the start of an understanding. Scylla’s calm wasn’t distance; it was control. The kind of quiet that came right before someone said something that mattered.
“Sit with us,” Raelle said. It wasn’t a suggestion.
Scylla did, folding her hands with care. Together they leaned over the photographs, reading the margins the city had left behind. Outside, the rain tapped at the windows — a metronome counting down to something inevitable.
For the first time since Beth, Raelle felt the world narrow to purpose instead of pain. The hunt wasn’t just noise anymore — it had direction.
Scylla’s voice was soft, deliberate. “They’re performing for someone — maybe you. The ritual is part message, part mirror. Whoever did this wants the investigator to feel it.”
Raelle closed the notebook. “Then they’ll get their wish.”
When she finally walked out into the fading rain, she didn’t feel closer to closure. She felt closer to the thing that had taken Beth — and that was enough.
The city hummed, indifferent and alive. Somewhere out there, a killer was leaving trails like invitations. Raelle pulled her coat tighter, a photograph tucked into her pocket.
She would follow the trail to its end. Whatever waited there would have to face her.
The skyline blurred into light, and the city began to breathe again. So did Raelle — just enough to start the hunt.