The call came in just before dawn, when Millbrook's harbor was still cloaked in a fog thick enough to dull the lamps along the pier.
Detective Adrian Graves stepped out of his sedan, the morning chill knifing through his coat. The boards beneath his boots were slick from condensation, and every step gave a muted groan that echoed faintly in the quiet.
Ahead, yellow crime scene tape fluttered weakly between two sawhorse barricades. A uniformed officer held the line, face drawn in the sickly glow of a portable work light. Beyond it, CSU techs crouched in methodical silence, their breath steaming as they angled cameras and evidence bags.
Kane Mercer, his partner for the last two years, stood near the railing with a notebook in hand. He spotted Adrian and lifted a gloved hand in greeting.
"You look like hell," Kane said.
"Didn't have time to iron my smile," Adrian replied, ducking under the tape. "What do we have?"
Kane flicked his eyes toward the far end of the pier. "Male victim, late forties to early fifties. Fisherman found him about forty minutes ago. No ID yet."
<
The overlay slid across Adrian's awareness with clinical detachment. He'd stopped trying to describe it months ago — the way the system's input threaded through his own thoughts, offering conclusions before he'd consciously pieced the scene together.
"Show me," he said.
The victim lay near the last mooring post, arms splayed unnaturally wide. His jacket had been cut open from the collar down, exposing a chest marked by precise, deliberate carvings — intersecting arcs and sharp points that seemed to form a sigil.
Blood had dried in thin rivulets, dark against pallid skin. There was no pooling beneath him.
"Not killed here," Adrian murmured.
"Yeah," Kane said. "No spatter, no drag marks either. Whoever brought him here wanted him seen, but didn't want to leave a trail."
<
Adrian crouched, careful to keep his boots clear of the evidence grid CSU had chalked into the weathered boards.
"Livor's fixed along the back," said one of the techs, without looking up from her camera. "Temp's ambient. TOD's probably three to five hours ago."
Adrian scanned the perimeter. Fog clung stubbornly to the outer rail, obscuring the dark water below. The faint slap of waves against pylons mixed with the creak of old wood. A gull shrieked somewhere out in the grey.
<
Kane knelt beside him. "Check this out — no ligature marks, no defensive wounds."
"Means he didn't fight," Adrian said. "Could be sedation, could be he knew the killer."
Kane raised an eyebrow. "Or both."
A CSU tech approached with a sealed evidence bag. Inside was a thin length of coarse thread, tangled and slightly frayed.
"Found snagged on the victim's cuff button," she said.
Adrian studied it. "Chain of custody?"
"Logged as Item 1-A, tagged under this case number." She turned the label so he could read it.
"Good," he said. "Get it to trace."
The tech moved off, logging the bag's transfer into the digital chain before heading toward the mobile lab van.
Kane watched her go. "Sometimes I think the evidence gets better treatment than we do."
"Evidence doesn't argue back," Adrian said.
By 06:20, every angle had been photographed twice, and CSU was working their way outward from the body in concentric sweeps. Adrian made his own slow circuit, eyes tracing over every nail head, every patch of peeling paint.
Halfway along the pier's north edge, he found a smear — faint, but distinct — on the railing: ash, pale against the damp wood.
He scraped a small sample into a sterile vial.
<
Adrian straightened, tucking the vial into his coat pocket until he could pass it to CSU.
It was just after 06:35 when Gia Carter arrived.
The forensic doctor moved with her usual precision, dark hair pulled back, black gloves already on. Her coat flared briefly in the wind before settling around her frame.
"Morning," she said, though her tone made it clear she didn't mean it.
"Victim's over here," Adrian said.
She crouched beside the body, her gaze traveling the carvings without hesitation. "Blade work's clean. Consistent depth, consistent pressure. Whoever did this wasn't guessing."
Kane joined them. "So, surgeon?"
"Could be," Gia said. "Could also be someone who practiced on cadavers… or on something less mobile than a living person."
<
Gia pulled a penlight from her coat, checking the pupils. "Fixed, dilated. Rigor complete. TOD's about what you'd expect from the scene estimate."
Adrian nodded, mentally slotting her verbal conclusion alongside the silent confirmation from Crimelink.
Gia shifted her weight and angled the penlight toward a thin abrasion near the victim's clavicle.
"Here," she said. "Barely visible under the carving — shallow scrape, linear, about three centimeters. Could be from restraint, or maybe a buckle strap."
Kane leaned in. "Doesn't fit the rest of the work."
"No," Gia said. "It's incidental. Which means it might be important."
<
Adrian logged the observation into his notebook. He preferred paper on-scene — less glare, less chance of data loss — and would transcribe later.
Two CSU techs arrived with the stretcher, their movements crisp but unhurried.
"Bagging hands," one of them announced.
Gia straightened and stepped back as they slipped paper evidence bags over each of the victim's hands, securing them with tape to preserve any trace material under the nails. The tech called out each step for the body cam as he worked.
"Left hand bagged — sealed. Right hand bagged — sealed. Both documented under sub-tags 1-B and 1-C."
Adrian nodded to himself. Procedure was tight tonight. That mattered. Cases like this didn't give you a second chance to recover trace.
On the far side of the pier, a uniform officer was speaking to an older man in heavy fishing gear — the one who had found the body. Adrian crossed over.
"You're the one who called it in?" Adrian asked.
The fisherman's eyes were still wide. "Yeah. Came down for the morning net. I saw… well, saw him there. Didn't touch nothing, swear on it."
"Name?"
"Earl Simons. I run the third trawler from the left over there." He gestured vaguely toward the wall of fog.
"Anyone else here when you arrived?"
"No, sir. Dead quiet. Didn't hear a thing until I got close enough to see… those cuts." Earl's voice cracked, and he pulled his cap lower over his brow.
<
Adrian made a note, then passed the man a witness card. "If you remember anything, no matter how small, call this number."
Earl took the card like it might burn him and nodded quickly.
Back at the body, Gia was directing the final photographs before the techs moved the victim. The flash lit the fog in brief, stark bursts, bleaching the scene into high contrast.
"Alright," Gia said, removing her gloves with a snap. "I'll know more after the autopsy, but prelim says he was dead before the first cut was made. Cleaned, too — there's almost no secondary bleeding."
Kane exhaled slowly. "So staged. 100 percent staged."
Adrian glanced at the sigil again, letting Crimelink's silent processing run in parallel to his own thoughts.
<
At 07:05, CSU began their final sweep, bagging every piece of debris within ten meters of the body's position. A cigarette butt, damp but intact, went into an evidence tube. So did a small scrap of brown paper with smudged ink.
Adrian stopped the tech handling the paper. "Let me see that."
She held the sealed bag up to the light. The ink looked like part of a printed letter — "ER" — with the edges torn jagged.
<
Adrian handed it back. "Tag and send it to the lab. Priority if possible."
By the time the body was loaded into the van, the fog had begun to lift in thin streaks, revealing the faint shimmer of the bay. Adrian stood near the barricade, scanning the pier one last time.
Kane came up beside him. "You look like you're waiting for it to talk to you."
"Sometimes it does," Adrian said.
Kane gave him a sideways glance but didn't press. They'd worked together long enough for Kane to know when Adrian was running something in his head — or, more accurately, when something was running in his head.
They signed off the scene at 07:22. The CSU lead handed Adrian the preliminary evidence log — two full pages already — and promised a digital copy within the hour.
Walking back to their car, Kane shoved his hands into his pockets. "Breakfast before HQ?"
"HQ first," Adrian said. "We'll need the board ready before the ME calls."
<
The overlay appeared so sharply that Adrian almost paused mid-step.
He didn't mention it to Kane yet. There'd be time to review the feed at the station, and no point tipping his hand until he knew what it showed.
The drive back into Millbrook was quiet at first.
Dawn had burned off most of the fog, leaving a dull, pewter sky. The streets were wet from last night's drizzle, the kind of slick sheen that reflected tail lights in smears.
Kane drove with one hand on the wheel, the other nursing a travel mug of black coffee that smelled burnt.
"You ever notice," Kane said after a few blocks, "how the quiet scenes hit harder than the bloody ones?"
Adrian kept his eyes on the passing storefronts. "Because you know the killer had time to think."
Kane snorted. "You've got a way of putting things, Graves."
<
Adrian ignored the overlay.
Millbrook PD's headquarters loomed at the end of Jefferson Avenue, a blocky, concrete-and-glass structure that always looked colder than the weather outside.
Inside, the lobby smelled faintly of floor polish and stale coffee.
Uniforms moved in and out of the security checkpoint, the metal detector chirping occasionally.
They flashed their badges, signed the log, and rode the elevator to the third floor — Violent Crimes.
The moment the doors slid open, they were hit with the low hum of printers, phones, and too many conversations happening at once.
Their squad room was a cramped grid of desks, half-hidden under stacks of case files and monitors showing grainy security feeds.
Kane went straight for their shared workspace, dumping his coat over the back of his chair.
Adrian headed for the evidence room first.
The clerk, a wiry man with a voice like sandpaper, was already scanning in the pier scene's bags and tubes.
"Graves," he said without looking up. "Got your prelim tags. Full chain-of-custody digital copies will hit your inbox in twenty."
"Appreciate it," Adrian said.
He took the manila envelope of printed logs and headed back to the squad room.
Kane had already started clearing the whiteboard. He wiped away a mess of dry-erase residue from the last case and started writing the new header:
CASE 2024-0315: JOHN DOE — PIER HOMICIDE
Under it, Kane listed columns for Victim, Scene, Suspects, Evidence, and Leads.
Adrian tacked up the printed crime scene photos, arranging them in sequence from the pier entrance to the final close-up of the sigil.
The pattern stared back at him from the glossy print.
<
Adrian kept that note in his head but didn't share it yet. Kane's style was to build the picture with what they could prove, not what they might prove.
At 08:17, Gia arrived in a lab coat over her civilian clothes, holding a Styrofoam cup in one hand and a file folder in the other.
"Autopsy scheduled for eleven," she said, setting the folder down. "Prelim tox screen in progress. No defensive wounds except for minor forearm bruising. He didn't fight much, if at all."
Kane frowned. "So he either knew the perp or was too out of it to fight."
"Or both," Gia said.
Adrian made a note under the "Victim" column.
When Kane stepped out to answer a call, Adrian used the moment to dig into Crimelink's flagged anomaly.
The municipal camera feed came up on his monitor. The grainy black-and-white clip showed the pier access road at 03:41 AM — a lone sedan rolling past, lights off, too far from the curb to catch a clear plate.
Crimelink's overlay painted it in red and ran a partial profile:
<
Adrian scrubbed the feed back and forth, noting the faint dent in the left rear quarter panel. Small, but distinctive.
He saved the still to a secure folder.
By 08:45, the whiteboard was filling up.
Victim: Male, late 40s to early 50s, Caucasian, no wallet or ID, dressed in plain slacks and shirt.Scene: South Pier, heavy fog, low temp, no immediate witnesses except finder.Evidence: Sigil carved into torso, cigarette butt, paper scrap with partial lettering, abrasion near clavicle.Leads: Unregistered vehicle sighted 03:41 AM near scene.
Kane came back, chewing on a toothpick. "Dispatch just got a call," he said. "Another body. Different location."
Adrian felt Crimelink pulse behind his eyes — not just an alert, but an almost eager surge.
<
Kane grabbed his coat. "Let's go ruin our morning."
The call came in from West Millbrook, a residential district just over the river.
Kane gunned the unmarked sedan through mid-morning traffic, wipers dragging across a windshield that didn't need them. It was an old habit — he hated anything on the glass.
"Two bodies in one morning," he said, threading the car between a bus and a box truck. "Either it's our lucky day, or the city's having one hell of a week."
Adrian scanned the GPS feed on the dashboard tablet. "Caller was a jogger. Said she saw a man lying near the path, didn't want to get too close."
Kane grunted. "Smart. Never touch the scene. Most people can't resist."
They crossed the Jefferson Bridge, the water below brown and slow-moving, and swung into the quieter streets of West Millbrook. The neighborhood had a different rhythm than the downtown sprawl — tidy lawns, trimmed hedges, and mailboxes that looked like they'd been painted yesterday.
Patrol cruisers were already blocking the jogging path entrance when they rolled up.
Kane flashed his badge to the uniform in charge. "Detectives Graves and Kane, Violent Crimes."
"Scene's secure," the officer said. "No one's touched him. Jogger's waiting with another patrol two blocks down."
"Keep her there," Adrian said. "We'll talk after."
They ducked under the yellow tape. The path was narrow, hemmed in by leafless trees whose branches rattled in the breeze. A thin layer of frost clung to the grass on either side.
The body lay half-on, half-off the gravel path.
Male, early fifties. Expensive-looking coat open at the front. And there — same sigil carved into the torso, only this time it was deeper, almost gouged.
The man's face was pale in a way that didn't match the cold. Lips slightly parted, eyes clouded.
Gia's voice crackled over the radio. "I'm en route. Fifteen minutes out."
<
<
The overlay pulsed amber, still processing.
Adrian crouched beside the body, scanning the immediate area. He spotted something half-buried in frost near the victim's left hand — a black leather glove, not his size.
Kane was already photographing the scene. "Looks like our guy didn't stick around long. No scuff marks, no drag trail."
Adrian bagged the glove, then noted faint tire impressions at the path's edge. The pattern wasn't from a bicycle — too wide, too deep.
"Vehicle came in close," Adrian said. "Dropped him here or picked up someone else."
<
Adrian stood. "We might have a location."
Kane raised an eyebrow. "You got that from a glove?"
Adrian didn't answer.
Gia arrived, moving with brisk efficiency despite the cold. She knelt, giving the wound a quick but thorough visual inspection.
"Depth suggests force applied with both hands on the handle," she said. "He wanted that cut deep. And…" She pointed at the victim's inner wrist. "…Ligature marks. He was restrained before."
Kane straightened. "So either this guy fought harder, or the killer wanted to make sure he didn't get the chance."
The CSU team fanned out, combing the frosted ground for trace evidence. One tech called over — he'd found a cigarette butt about ten feet from the path.
Adrian sealed it in a vial, noting the same brand as at the pier.
<
They stayed at the scene for another hour, processing every inch. By the time the body was zipped into a bag and loaded for transport, Adrian's fingers were stiff from the cold.
Back at the car, Kane let out a long breath. "Two bodies, same signature, maybe the same day. Either we've got a spree starting, or someone's sending us a message."
<
Adrian leaned back in his seat, eyes on the frost-dusted trees outside. If Crimelink was right, this was only the beginning.