Ravenport

Chapter 5 : Cold Light

Ernie, the homeless man who had found the body, was sitting in the back of a patrol car, wrapped in a blanket. He was thin, with a face weathered by years of street life and a pair of eyes that held a deep, permanent wariness. An officer stood by the car, talking to him gently.

I approached. The officer nodded and stepped aside.

“Ernie?”

The man looked up at me. His eyes were wide, the pupils dilated with residual shock. “Yeah.”

“I’m Detective Hale. Can you tell me what you saw?”

Ernie’s hands trembled around the blanket. “I… I was in my spot. Next building. It’s dry there. I heard nothing. Saw a light, though. A white light, from inside here. Not like a flashlight. Like… a bright light. I thought maybe kids, or junkies. Came to see.”

“What time?”

“Late. Two, maybe three in the morning. The light was just… there. In the middle of the floor. I opened the door, saw it… saw him. I ran. Called you guys from the payphone down on the corner.”

“Did you see anyone else? Hear anything?”

“No one. No sounds. Just the light. And the… the body.” He swallowed hard. “He was just lying there. Like… like a doll. A broken doll.”

“The light,” I pressed. “What did it look like? A lamp? A spotlight?”

Ernie shook his head. “Just light. Coming from… him, maybe. From around him. I don’t know. It was bright, but not warm. Cold light.”

Cold light. I stored that detail. “Thank you, Ernie. We’ll have someone take you to a shelter for the night. You’ll be safe.”

He nodded, but his eyes stayed on the warehouse door, as if expecting the light to reappear.

Chen joined me as I walked back toward the entrance. “Cold light? Could be a portable LED array. Something a perpetrator brought to set the scene.”

“Or something else,” I murmured. I didn’t know what that ‘something else’ could be, but the phrase stuck in my mind.

Donovan returned, his face splashed with rain. “Nothing. No footprints outside beyond ours and the uniforms. No vehicles. No tools. No blood trail. It’s like he dropped from the sky.”

“Or was placed with meticulous care,” Chen said.

The three of us stood under the overhang, watching the forensic team carry the bagged body out on a stretcher. The shape under the black plastic sheet was too flat, too still. It didn’t look like a person anymore. It looked like evidence.

“We need to start somewhere,” Donovan grumbled. “This feels like a dead end already.”

“We start with the face,” I said. “ID the victim. Who was he? Why him? What made him a candidate for… this?”

Chen pulled out her phone. “I’ll get the photos to the techs for facial rec. We should also check missing persons for the last twenty-four hours. See if anyone fits.”

“Good.” I looked back into the dark warehouse. The circle of light where the body had lain was now empty, just a patch of clean concrete. “We also need to understand the space. Who owns this warehouse? What’s its history? Has it been used for anything… unusual?”

“I can run the property records,” Donovan offered.

“Do it.” I turned to face them both. The rain dripped from the edge of the overhang, splashing near our feet. “This isn’t a random act. It’s targeted. It’s planned. There’s a mind behind this. A very, very organized mind. We find the mind, we find the reason.”

Chen met my gaze. “What if the reason doesn’t make sense to us?”

“Then we keep looking until it does.” I pulled my jacket tighter against the chill. “Go home. Get dry. We start fresh in the morning. Meet at the precinct at eight. Bring whatever you find.”

Donovan nodded, already moving toward his car. Chen lingered for a moment.

“You okay?” she asked. It was a simple question, but it carried weight. We hadn’t worked together since my suspension. The reasons for that suspension were a shadow between us.

“I’m fine,” I said, though the word felt hollow.

“You shouldn’t drink tonight,” she said softly, not looking at me. “You’ll need a clear head.”

“I know.”

She hesitated, then turned and walked to her car, a small, efficient sedan that looked as tired as she did.

I stood alone under the overhang, watching the forensic van pull away, its tires slicing through the puddled rainwater. The warehouse was empty again, just a dark shell holding a memory of horror. The rain kept falling, washing the streets, but it wouldn’t wash this away.

I drove home through the weeping city. My apartment was still dark, still silent. The bottle of bourbon sat on the table, the glass beside it empty. I looked at it, then picked up the bottle and put it back in the cupboard. I didn’t pour another drink.

Instead, I sat at the small table by the window and opened my laptop. The screen glowed in the dark room. I started searching. Property records for the warehouse at Pier Twelve. News articles about the area. Police reports for unusual activity in the wharf district over the past year.

The work was a distraction. A way to keep my mind from circling back to that opened chest, those blank eyes, that circle of organs laid out like a gallery exhibit.

But the image stayed. It burned behind my eyes, cold and bright.

A mind that did that. A mind that saw a human body as a thing to be disassembled, displayed. A mind that worked with cold light and surgical precision.

What did that mind want?

And who was next?