The 4th Precinct had always been Sarafina's cathedral. As a child, she had walked these linoleum floors with a sense of inherited sanctity, trailed by the rhythmic jingle of her father's handcuffs and the reverence of men who saw Stephen Cole as a titan of the law. Today, the building felt like a tomb. The air was a stagnant soup of burnt caffeine, wet wool, and the ozone of old printers. It was a scent that used to mean safety. Now, it tasted like ash on her tongue.
Sarafina sat in the lobby, the cream cardstock of the letter she had found at the cemetery tucked deep into her inner coat pocket. It felt like a hot coal against her ribs, a secret fire burning through the fabric. Every officer who walked past offered her the same look, a devastating mixture of pity and avoidance. They saw a victim. They saw a girl whose father had been erased from the roster. None of them saw a colleague.
"The Chief will see you now, Sara," a secretary whispered, her voice thick with a forced, cloying kindness.
Sarafina stood, her spine a steel rod. She pushed through the heavy oak doors of the corner office, a room that had once felt like her father's second home. Chief Halloway sat behind a desk of polished cherry wood, his uniform so crisp it looked like it could cut glass. He didn't look like a man who had just lost a legendary captain. He looked like a man who had just finished a very long, very successful business transaction.
"Sit, Sarafina. Please," Halloway said, gesturing to the leather chair that smelled of expensive hide and old tobacco.
Sarafina remained standing. She preferred the advantage of height, even if her legs felt like they were made of water. "I want to know where we are with the ballistics, Chief. And I want the name of the lead detective on the Mcwell task force. It's been three days. Someone should be in an interrogation room by now."
Halloway sighed, a long, weary sound that lacked any real grief. He leaned forward, his hands clasping over a manila folder with the word COLE stamped in bold, black ink. "There isn't going to be a task force, Sara. Not for this."
The silence that followed was a physical blow. Sarafina felt the air leave her lungs. "Excuse me?"
"We've reviewed the evidence. Or rather, the lack thereof," Halloway continued, his voice dropping into a smooth, paternal register that made Sarafina's skin crawl. "The shooting happened in a blind spot. No cameras. No witnesses. Given your father's history in the narcotics division, the official ruling is going to be a tragic casualty of the streets. A random act of violence in a city that has too much of it. We are summarily closing the investigation to avoid dragging the department through a prolonged, fruitless search."
"A random act?" Sarafina's voice was a low, dangerous vibration. "My father was a Captain. He was executed in an alleyway three blocks from this precinct. You know it was Mcwell. Everyone in this building knows Joseph Mcwell pulled the strings."
"Knowing and proving are two very different animals," Halloway snapped, the mask of the grieving mentor slipping just enough to show the jagged edges of the politician beneath. "The case is closed, Sarafina. Go home. Grieve. Be the daughter Stephen would want you to be. Don't become a ghost chasing a shadow."
A heavy, silver phone on the desk began to buzz. Halloway looked at it, then back at Sarafina. His eyes were cold, distant, and utterly final. "I have a press briefing. Give us time, Sara. We'll take care of the funeral costs. The department looks after its own."
"Its own," Sarafina repeated, the words tasting like poison.
Halloway stood and grabbed his cap, walking toward the side door that led to the briefing room. He left the manila folder sitting on the desk. It was a careless mistake, or perhaps it was a final, arrogant test.
The moment the door clicked shut behind him, Sarafina moved. Her movements were predatory, silent and swift. She reached across the desk and flipped open the folder. Her heart hammered against the letter in her pocket as she scanned the crime scene inventory.
The photos were there, glossy and horrific. She saw her father lying on the wet pavement, the life drained from his eyes. She saw the blood, a dark halo around his head. But as she flipped to the close up of his hands, her breath hitched.
She remembered that night. She had arrived at the scene before the coroner, breaking through the yellow tape while the rain was still fresh. She had seen her father's fingers curled into a tight, protective fist. She had seen the edge of a white envelope clutched in his grip, a piece of paper that hadn't been touched by the grime of the alley.
In the official crime scene photo, his hand was open. Empty.
Sarafina rifled through the evidence logs. Ballistics. Clothing. Wallet. Badge. There was no mention of a letter. There was no mention of a note signed with a sharp, elegant 'M'.
The realization hit her like a physical strike to the solar plexus. The police hadn't lost the evidence. They hadn't overlooked it. They had scrubbed it. The people her father had led, the men who had sworn to uphold the law, had sanitized his death before his body was even cold.
She wasn't standing in a house of justice. She was standing in the stomach of the beast.
A shadow fell across the frosted glass of the office door. Sarafina slammed the folder shut and stepped back just as the door opened. Detective Miller stood there, his hands in his pockets, his face unreadable.
"You shouldn't be in here, Sara," Miller said. His voice was gravelly, lacking the warmth she had known for two decades.
"Why is the case closed, Miller?" she asked, her eyes searching his for any spark of the man who used to bring her father's favorite cigars to the house. "You were his partner. You know this wasn't random."
Miller walked toward her, but he stopped three feet away, maintaining a distance that felt like a canyon. He smelled of cheap peppermint and the metallic scent of a man who spent too much time in the firing range. "Some things are bigger than us, kid. Some debts can't be paid with a badge. Go home. Before you find something you can't walk away from."
"I've already found it," Sarafina whispered.
She pushed past him, her shoulder clipping his. She didn't stop until she was outside, standing on the precinct steps as the city pulse throbbed around her. She reached into her pocket and touched the cardstock of the letter Joseph Mcwell had left for her.
Joseph had known. He had known the police would fail her. He had known her father's legacy was a lie.
She pulled out her phone and dialed a number she had spent years tracking but never had the courage to call. It was a line that led to the dark heart of the Blackwood underworld, a number whispered by informants who usually ended up at the bottom of the river.
The line didn't ring. It simply opened.
The silence on the other end was heavy, sophisticated, and expectant. Sarafina could almost hear the scratch of a fountain pen against paper, the slow, methodical breath of a man who was used to being the only predator in the room.
"I have your letter," Sarafina said, her voice crackling with a lethal new purpose.
There was a pause, a heartbeat of weighted stillness that seemed to stretch across the entire city. Then, a voice emerged from the receiver. It was deep, cultured, and weary, a sound like velvet dragged over broken glass.
"I wondered if you had the spine to read it, Sarafina," Joseph Mcwell said. "The law has abandoned you. The question is, are you ready to see what the truth looks like when it isn't wearing a uniform?"
Sarafina looked back at the precinct, at the flag flying at half mast above a building full of liars. "Tell me where to go."
"Check your pocket, Little Bird," Joseph murmured, the ghost of a dark, possessive smile in his tone. "I never send a letter without a return address."
Sarafina froze. She reached into her coat, her fingers sliding past the letter to the very bottom of the pocket. Her heart stopped as her fingertips brushed something cold, hard, and unfamiliar. She pulled it out.
It was a small, silver key, and a GPS tracker that was already blinking with a steady, blood red light. He had been close enough to touch her at the funeral. He had been close enough to put this in her pocket while she was
grieving.
He wasn't just watching her. He was already inside her world.