Detective Vincent: To be Competent

Chapter 3: The First Case

I woke up knowing today would be different.

It was my first official case without Graves.

I went through my usual morning routine, showered, got dressed, ate something, and checked my equipment before leaving. My notebook was there, my phone was charged, and my badge and everything else were in place.

I stopped for a moment and thought about my first case. Back then, I barely knew what I was doing. I could notice things, but I didn't know which details mattered or how they connected. Graves had spent every case teaching me something, usually without giving me the answer.

I sat on the sofa and looked through my notebook. Case by case, I had learned what to look for and what not to assume. Examine the room before focusing on the body. Question what doesn't fit. Don't decide what happened before checking the evidence. A clue could matter because of what was missing, not just what was there. Most importantly, don't stop looking just because you found an answer.

I wrote a few things down. Look before deciding. Question what doesn't fit. Don't assume the location of the crime. Don't stop after finding the murderer.

I looked at the notes for a moment.

“Would be quiet without Graves.”

I smiled slightly, then remembered the question he had asked me so many times.

“What do you see?”

Today, Graves wouldn't be standing beside me asking it.

I'd have to ask myself.

I checked the message about the case. The information was brief. Two people had been murdered in different buildings of the same large complex. The police had secured both locations, and I was being sent to handle the investigation.

Two victims. Two buildings. Same complex.

I started thinking about how the murders could be connected. Same murderer? Different killers? Same motive? Different motives?

I stopped myself.

I didn't have enough information yet. There was no point building a theory before seeing the scenes.

I put my phone away, grabbed my equipment, and left my apartment.

The morning sunlight spread across the street, lighting up the buildings and parked cars. People were already heading to work, some carrying coffee while others waited for buses and taxis. The air felt cool, and everything looked normal.

But it felt different.

For the first time, I wasn't going to a crime scene with Graves beside me. I was going alone.

Part of me felt good about it. I had spent months learning from him, solving cases beside him, making mistakes, correcting them, and eventually reaching the point where he barely needed to correct me. Now I could finally find out how much of it had actually stayed with me.

But there was something lonely about it too.

I got into my car and sat there for a moment, looking through the windshield at the morning street. Then I started the engine.

The drive to the complex was mostly quiet. I kept thinking about the case, but every time I started building a theory, I stopped myself. I didn't know the victims. I hadn't seen the buildings or the bodies. There was nothing useful I could conclude yet.

So I let the thoughts settle and focused on getting there.

The complex was on the edge of Westbridge, large enough to contain several separate buildings. By the time I arrived, several police vehicles were already parked near the entrance.

I slowed down and looked around before getting out. Building A stood closer to the main road, an older residential structure with several windows facing the parking area. Another building stood farther inside, with smaller structures and service areas beyond it.

I parked near the police vehicles and stepped out. A police officer was waiting near the entrance.

“Detective Mercer?”

I nodded.

He approached me and briefly explained the situation. Two victims had been found in separate buildings, both appearing to have been murdered. The officers had secured the locations and were waiting for me to begin the investigation.

“Which building was found first?” I asked.

He pointed toward the older building.

I looked at it for a moment.

We walked toward Building A. As we approached, I looked around the complex again, taking note of the entrances, parking area, paths between the buildings, and the surrounding structures. I didn't know it yet, but all of it would matter.

The officer led me through the entrance and toward the first crime scene. I stopped briefly before entering.

Room first.

Body second.

I took a breath and stepped inside.

The first thing that bothered me was the blood. There was a large pool near the body, but smaller stains continued toward the couch. Some drops were round, while others were stretched slightly, as if they had landed while someone was moving. I crouched beside the largest stain and examined it carefully. The blood hadn't been disturbed much, which was strange. If the victim had been moving while bleeding this heavily, I expected more obvious footprints or smears.

I looked toward the couch. Nothing.

Then I noticed a thin line running across the floor. At first I thought it was a scratch, but when I touched it with the tip of my glove, I realized it wasn't. It looked like something had been dragged across the floor, although the mark stopped halfway between the couch and the table. I wrote it down and moved toward the couch.

One cushion was on the floor, while the other was pushed almost completely against the backrest. Underneath it, I found a small metal object.

A bullet casing.

I picked it up carefully and examined it. There was no obvious firearm wound on the victim, so I looked around the room. No bullet hole. No damaged wall. No broken glass. Nothing on the furniture suggested that a bullet had struck it.

The casing had clearly been fired. There was a slight deformation near one side, almost as if the bullet had struck something hard.

But there was nothing in the room that looked like it had been hit.

I checked the walls and furniture from different angles. No c***k. No indentation. No chipped paint. I wrote another note: bullet fired, impact location unknown.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

That didn't help.

I moved back toward the body. There were several deep wounds across the torso and smaller cuts along the hands and forearms. Defensive wounds. The victim had fought back. None of the injuries looked like a gunshot, so either the casing had nothing to do with the murder, or something was missing from the scene.

I checked the victim's clothes. His wallet was still there. His keys were still there. His watch was still on his wrist.

His phone wasn't.

I checked his pockets again. Nothing. Maybe the murderer had taken it. Maybe it had been destroyed. Maybe the victim had dropped it somewhere outside. I added another note and continued examining the body.

Then I noticed something else.

One shoe was missing.

His right shoe was still there, but his left foot was bare. I searched underneath the couch, beneath the table, around the body, near the entrance, and eventually checked the hallway.

Nothing.

Why would someone remove one shoe?

It could have come off during the struggle, but if that happened, where was it? I examined the remaining shoe and noticed pale dust stuck to the sole. I rubbed a small amount between my gloved fingers.

Concrete dust, maybe.

Or plaster.

I couldn't tell.

There wasn't much dust on the floor, which made the amount on the shoe more noticeable. I followed the direction of the sole toward the entrance, but nothing explained where it had come from.

I turned back toward the body and noticed a faint chemical smell around the collar of his shirt. I leaned closer. It wasn't strong enough to identify. Something medicinal, perhaps. Cleaning chemical. Solvent. Maybe nothing at all.

At this point, the room was beginning to feel less like a murder scene and more like a collection of unrelated problems. A bullet casing with no visible impact. Severe wounds with no firearm injury. A missing phone. A missing shoe. Dust on the remaining shoe. A strange chemical smell. Blood suggesting movement. Furniture suggesting a struggle. No forced entry.

I looked toward the windows. One was slightly open while the other was locked. The open one faced the rear side of the complex, where a narrow service path ran three floors below. I looked down, but there were no obvious footprints, no blood, and nothing that immediately suggested someone had climbed down.

I examined the window frame. There was a tiny scratch near the bottom. I leaned closer.

It looked fresh.

Maybe.

I couldn't tell.

I photographed it and wrote it down anyway. There was also a small amount of dust on the windowsill, with part of it appearing disturbed. Someone could have touched it, or the window could have been opened recently. It could also have happened days ago.

I stepped away from the window and looked at the room again. The chair was overturned, the table had been moved, the lamp was broken, and the couch cushion was on the floor. Everything suggested a violent struggle, but some of the damage looked strangely convenient. The chair was overturned where someone would expect it to be during a fight. The lamp had broken near the body. The table had moved just enough to make the room look disturbed.

I crouched beside the table and noticed a small scratch underneath one of its legs. The scratch didn't line up with the table's current position.

Had the table been moved twice?

I wrote it down and stood up. The more I examined the room, the less confident I became. The victim had clearly been attacked and fought back, but I couldn't tell which parts were consequences of the murder and which had been deliberately created afterward.

I checked his hands again. There was a small amount of blood under one fingernail, then another trace on the other hand. Maybe the victim had scratched the murderer. I wrote that down before noticing a faint red smear on the underside of the table. It was too small to tell whether it was blood, and it could have come from the victim, the murderer, or even been there before the murder.

I photographed it.

Another question.

I looked at my notebook. The list was getting longer: bullet casing, unknown impact, missing phone, missing shoe, dust on shoe, chemical smell, open window, possible window mark, strange blood movement, furniture possibly repositioned, unknown red smear.

Any one of those things could have been meaningless. All of them together were harder to ignore.

I tried connecting them. Maybe the murderer had entered through the window. Maybe the victim had known them and let them in. Maybe the bullet had been fired during the confrontation and struck something that was later removed. Maybe the missing phone was important. Maybe the missing shoe had been removed because it contained something. Maybe the dust came from somewhere else in the complex. Maybe the chemical smell belonged to the murderer. Maybe the entire struggle had been staged.

I stopped.

I was doing exactly what Graves had warned me about. I was trying to make everything fit before I knew whether the pieces belonged to the same puzzle.

I crossed out several assumptions and focused on what I actually knew. The victim was dead. He had suffered multiple injuries and fought back. Someone had been inside without forcing entry. The room had been disturbed. A bullet had been fired somewhere, but its impact couldn't be found. The phone and one shoe were missing, and several details remained unexplained.

That was enough for now.

I closed my notebook. I had a theory, but it wasn't a solution. I was probably somewhere around seventy percent. Maybe seventy-five. Enough to continue, but not enough to decide.

I took one last look around the room. The bullet casing was still bothering me. So was the missing shoe. So was the window. So was the blood.

Maybe none of them mattered. Or maybe they were all connected.

I wouldn't know until I saw the second scene.

I left the room and headed toward the other building.

I walked toward Building B with the officer following a few steps behind me. Unlike Building A, this part of the complex looked more industrial. The building was older, with concrete walls, metal doors, and several maintenance areas connected by narrow hallways.

The officer opened the door and stepped aside.

I entered.

The room was much cleaner than the first crime scene. There were metal shelves along the walls, a large workbench near the back, and several maintenance tools arranged around the room. An overhead light was still on even though daylight came through the small windows.

The victim was lying almost directly in the center of the room. I stopped. Something felt wrong. I looked around before approaching the body.

There was blood on the floor near the metal shelf, a small amount near the workbench, and another faint smear closer to the wall. But none of it appeared to come from the body.

I crouched beside the victim.

No blood. No visible wounds. No damage to the clothes. No defensive injuries.

I checked the neck, arms, chest, and face. Nothing. The body looked almost untouched.

I looked back at the blood around the room. That didn't make sense. If the victim hadn't been injured, where had the blood come from?

I examined the floor around the body more carefully. The blood was scattered in several different places, but there was no obvious trail connecting any of them. The victim was lying in the center of the room, almost as if someone had deliberately placed him there.

I looked at his clothes. Nothing was torn. His wallet was still there. His phone was still in his pocket. His watch was still on his wrist.

His keys were missing.

I checked his pockets again. Nothing.

I stood up and looked around the room. There was a heavy metal tool lying near the workbench, with blood smeared across one side. For a moment, it looked like a murder weapon.

But there was no wound on the victim.

I picked it up carefully and examined it. The blood was real. At least, it looked real. But why would blood be on a weapon when the victim had no injuries?

I placed it back where it had been found. Then I noticed something else.

A strange smell. I crouched near the body again and leaned closer.

Nothing.

The smell wasn't coming from the victim. I checked the floor, then the workbench, then the shelves. The smell was faint, but it reminded me of something chemical.

Poison.

The thought came immediately. I looked at the victim again. Maybe he had been poisoned.

There were no wounds because there didn't need to be. I examined his mouth, then his hands and clothing. Nothing obvious.

I looked around for a cup or bottle. There was one coffee cup sitting on the workbench.

Untouched.

I photographed it and examined the liquid. It looked normal. I didn't touch it. I checked the maintenance area again. The room had several small cabinets and storage containers. Some contained cleaning chemicals, while others held tools and equipment. I didn't know which ones belonged there and which didn't.

Then I remembered the first building. The chemical smell. The faint smell around the collar of the first victim's shirt. I had almost ignored it because I couldn't identify it. Now there was a similar smell here.

I stood still for a moment. That connected them. Or maybe it didn't. I wrote it down anyway.

Possible poison.

Possible connection to Building A.

I looked back at the body. Still no damage. No blood. No obvious cause of death. But blood was scattered around the room. That made things even stranger.

If he had been poisoned, why was there blood? And if the blood belonged to him, why wasn't there a wound?

I examined the blood near the metal shelf again. There was more of it there than anywhere else. I looked at the shelf, but nothing appeared damaged. No sharp edge. No broken object. Nothing that could explain it.

I moved toward the workbench. A small cabinet underneath it was slightly open. Inside were several tools, bottles, and cleaning supplies.

One container was missing.

I checked the labels. Nothing immediately stood out. I closed the cabinet. Then I looked at the windows.

Both were closed.

Metal bars covered them from the inside. Nobody could have climbed through them.

I checked the door. It had been locked when the police arrived. No forced entry. So if this was poison, the murderer could have left without needing a visible escape route.

But then why leave blood around the room?

And why place the body in the center?

I looked down at the floor. There was pale dust around the room.

Concrete dust.

The same kind I'd noticed on the remaining shoe from Building A. For a moment, I thought I'd found another connection.

Then I noticed the dust covering almost everything. The shelves, the workbench, the corners, the doorway. It was part of the building.

Another dead end.

I returned to the body. The victim's right hand was slightly clenched. I examined his fingers and noticed a small amount of dirt underneath his fingernails. That could have come from the maintenance work.

Or from a struggle.

I couldn't tell.

There was also a faint discoloration around one fingernail.

I photographed it.

Then I looked at the body again. No wound. No blood. No visible damage. If the poison theory was correct, the blood had nothing to do with the actual killing.

Maybe it had been planted.

Maybe the murderer had killed someone else here. Maybe the blood came from another person. Or maybe I was trying to connect things that had nothing to do with each other.

I opened my notebook.

Building A.

Multiple wounds.

Defensive injuries.

Blood.

Missing phone.

Missing shoe.

Bullet casing.

Chemical smell.

Building B.

No wounds.

No blood on body.

Blood throughout scene.

Possible poison.

Missing keys.

Locked door.

Barred windows.

Possible weapon.

Untouched coffee.

Chemical smell.

I stared at the two lists.

The same smell.

The same dust.

Two completely different bodies. Two completely different scenes. But both scenes contained evidence that didn't fit.

I crossed out the word poison.

Then I wrote it again.

I couldn't decide.

Maybe the second victim had been poisoned. Maybe the first victim had been poisoned too. Maybe the smell had nothing to do with either death.

I looked around the room one last time. Something had happened here.

I just didn't know what.

And for the first time, I wasn't sure whether I was looking at two murders…or two pieces of the same murder.

I closed my notebook.

I needed to stop looking at the bodies. I needed to understand the complex itself.

I left Building B and stepped outside and looked across the complex.

The two crime scenes had given me more questions than answers. The buildings were connected, but the murders didn't seem to be. I had spent enough time examining the bodies. If I wanted to understand what happened, I needed to understand the place itself.

I walked farther around the complex, past the areas where the police had already searched. Most of the buildings were still being maintained, while several sections were barely used. Farther behind Building B was an unfinished section that looked like it had been closed for a long time.

The door was supposed to remain closed unless maintenance workers needed to enter.

It wasn't.

It was slightly open.

I stopped in front of it and looked inside.

The room was unfinished. The walls were bare concrete with no paint, and old boxes, tools, and maintenance equipment were scattered around the area. Most of the objects were covered in dust, and spider webs stretched between several of them.

It looked like nobody had been inside for a long time. I stepped inside and slowly scanned the room. Nothing stood out at first.

Then I noticed something. A small section near the back had no spider web.

I stared at it for a moment.

It was barely noticeable. The surrounding equipment had webs covering it, but one small area was completely clear.

I walked closer.

A large stack of old boxes stood against what looked like a solid wooden wall. The boxes were dusty and worn, and everything about them suggested they had been sitting there for years.

I examined the boxes.

One of them had a slightly cleaner patch of dust around its edge.

I frowned.

It was subtle enough that I almost ignored it. I moved the box slightly. The dust underneath was different.

Someone had touched it.

Maybe.

I looked at the wooden wall behind the boxes. It looked completely normal. Old, dusty, and solid. I started moving the boxes one by one. After removing several of them, I noticed a tiny cut in the wooden wall.

I leaned closer.

There was no dust inside the cut. The surrounding wood was covered in dust, but the inside of the scratch was clean.

Fresh.

I ran my eyes across the wall again. There was another tiny edge beside it.

I pressed against it.

The wooden section moved.

I pushed again.

The entire piece opened inward like a door.

I stared at it.

The cut was so clean that I couldn't see where the door ended and the wall began. Whoever had made it had done a very good job hiding it.

Behind the false wall was a narrow, dark space. I took out my flashlight and looked inside.

The first thing I noticed was a shoe.

It was old and dirty, covered in dust and grime. It looked like it had been sitting there for years.

I stepped closer.

Then I saw the body.

I froze.

The victim had been brutally mutilated. The body looked as though it had been torn apart, with several internal organs ripped out and scattered around the small space.

I looked around carefully.

There was no obvious sign that anyone had recently entered.

I examined the body first, then the surrounding area. I photographed everything I could and tried to understand what had happened.

Then I noticed something lying beside the body. At first, I assumed it was simply another result of the mutilation.

But something was wrong.

For a moment, everything I had learned came back to me. My first case. The mistakes I made. The things Graves had taught me. Every case after that.

I remembered how long it took to understand the smallest details, how often I had gone home still thinking about a case, and how many times I had woken up already thinking about the same questions.

I was confident.

Confident enough to believe that I could solve this one too. I could follow the clues. I could find the murderer. I could probably catch them. But then another thought appeared.

“At what cost?”

Every morning, I'd wake up already thinking about it. I'd spend the entire day following clues, questioning people, checking evidence, and trying to understand what the murderer wanted me to see.

Then I'd go home tired and still think about it. I'd wake up the next day and do it again. The pressure would keep building. Every new body would create another question. Every unanswered clue would follow me home.

There would be no real break.

No single moment where I could breathe properly and forget about the case. On top of that, they wouldn't stop after one mistake.

They would keep moving. I'd keep following. They'd leave another clue. I'd find it. Another body. Another question. Another night without sleep.

For months.

Maybe for years.

I looked at the body again. I knew I could probably solve it.

That was the problem.

I understood what kind of person had left it. They didn't want to hide. They wanted someone to find them. They wanted someone smart enough to follow the trail. They wanted the investigation. They wanted the chase.

They wanted me.

The message was a pure challenge, stitched on the intestine with a thread.

The thread was almost the same color as the tissue, making it nearly impossible to notice unless I looked directly at it.

“Do you wanna play? Mr. Detective.”

Aw hell nah.

I'm twenty-five, that's old enough. I'm retiring.

Vincent quits his job.

Author's note:

With this, Vincent's detective story comes to an end, with him retiring at the age of 25, head held high and with absolutely no regrets about his decision.

I truly appreciate everyone who took the time to follow Vincent's story from the beginning all the way to the end. Your time and attention mean a lot to me as a writer. I hope you enjoyed the journey, even if the ending may have been a little… unexpected.

Thank you for giving this story a chance, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And once again, thank you for reading.

Chapter 4 will be a short epilogue about Vincent's life after retirement. It will not continue the detective story.