Red Jack
1735 Words
Chapter One: Monday Morning Chaos
Detective Aria Kane was running late. Again.
Her apartment was a mess—clothes draped over chairs, half-empty coffee cups on the counter, and a perpetually blinking microwave clock that mocked her every morning. She darted out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, checking her phone with one hand as she toweled her hair with the other.
Five missed calls. Three texts from her mom. One from Jenna, her best friend:
> "Girl, you alive? Thought you said you were off the coffee last night?"
Aria smirked. Coffee was the only thing keeping her alive. That and adrenaline.
She yanked on black jeans, a rumpled blouse, and her leather jacket, then tied her hair into a loose ponytail as she shoved files, a badge, and her half-dead phone into her bag. She was about to sprint out the door when her phone rang again.
“Detective Kane,” she said, out of breath.
It was Lieutenant Brooks, his voice tight.
“Aria, we’ve got a situation. High-profile homicide. Downtown. I need you there now.”
Of course. Monday morning was never just Monday morning.
Twenty minutes later, sirens painted the city in red and blue as she arrived at the scene—a glittering apartment complex overlooking the skyline. Reporters were already swarming like vultures, cameras flashing as crime scene tape flapped in the wind.
The victim: Jason Callahan, 26, son of real estate tycoon Henry Callahan.
Inside the penthouse, blood pooled on polished marble floors. And above it, written in jagged red letters:
“The past never dies.”
Aria stared at the message, a cold weight settling in her stomach.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t just a murder.
It was a warning.
—
Chapter Two: Making a Name
The penthouse was a circus.
Uniformed officers moved like ants, photographing evidence, bagging samples, interviewing neighbors who looked more annoyed about the noise than shocked about the murder.
Aria stepped carefully around the blood, scanning the room. The victim lay sprawled on the floor, eyes open, frozen in terror. Jason Callahan—rich, young, and dead before sunrise.
“Don’t contaminate my crime scene, rookie,” Detective Mason grunted as she walked past. His salt-and-pepper beard and permanent scowl made him look carved from stone.
Aria ignored him. Mason had twenty years on the force and a chip on his shoulder about her promotion. She was young, sure. But she was good.
She crouched near the message on the wall. The blood had already begun to darken around the edges, but the strokes were uneven, messy.
“Fingerprints?” she asked the forensics tech.
“Smudged. Killer wore gloves,” the tech said.
Aria’s eyes moved to the broken wine glass on the floor, then to the security camera in the corner. The light was off.
She looked at Mason. “Camera’s dead.”
“No kidding,” he said. “Power was cut right before the murder. Killer knew what they were doing.”
Aria resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Everything about this crime screamed professional—except the message. That was personal.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Jenna:
> “Coffee at noon? Don’t say you’re too busy. I’m buying.”
Aria pocketed the phone. No time for coffee now.
She stood, scanning the room one last time. Something felt off. The killer had left a message but no other trace. Why?
“Detective Kane,” Lieutenant Brooks called from the doorway. “Press wants a statement.”
Aria sighed. “Great. Because nothing says ‘good morning’ like getting grilled by reporters about a murder.”
As she walked past Mason, he muttered, “Careful, Kane. High-profile cases eat rookies alive.”
She shot him a look. “Then I guess I’ll just have to prove I’m not on the menu.”
But inside, she felt the pressure closing in.
This case was going to define her career.
—
Chapter Three: Ghosts in the System
By noon, the city was already buzzing with the murder. News outlets had plastered Jason Callahan’s face across every screen, headlines screaming about the “Penthouse Mystery.”
Aria sat at her desk in the precinct, her jacket thrown over the back of her chair, scrolling through the preliminary reports on her laptop.
No fingerprints.
No forced entry.
Security system disabled fifteen minutes before the murder.
A ghost. That’s what it felt like—a ghost had waltzed into the Callahan penthouse, killed the heir to a real estate empire, left a bloody threat on the wall, and vanished without a trace.
“Working hard, or hardly working?”
Jenna’s voice cut through the buzz of the precinct. She stood there with two coffee cups, grinning like she owned the place.
Aria raised an eyebrow. “How did you even get in here?”
“Charisma,” Jenna said, handing her a cup. “Also, the guy at the front desk likes me. What’s with the murder face?”
Aria sighed, rubbing her forehead. “High-profile case. Pressure from the mayor. And apparently, I’m supposed to solve it without sleeping or eating.”
“Sounds fun.” Jenna sipped her coffee, then lowered her voice. “You okay? You’ve got that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one you had last year when that arson case nearly ate you alive.”
Aria didn’t answer. Because she wasn’t okay. Not really. There was something about the message on the wall—The past never dies—that crawled under her skin.
Before she could say anything, Lieutenant Brooks appeared. “Kane. Another body. Midtown. Same signature.”
Aria froze.
Another body.
The killer wasn’t just sending a message. They were escalating.
—
Chapter Four: A Killer’s Pattern
The second crime scene was nothing like the first.
This time it was an abandoned office building on the east side, all cracked windows and peeling paint. The air inside was thick with dust and something far worse—blood.
The victim, a man in his fifties, lay slumped against the wall. The same jagged handwriting scrawled above him in red:
“The past never dies.”
Aria’s stomach twisted. Two murders in less than twenty-four hours. Same signature. Same eerie precision.
“Victim’s name is Harold Benton,” Mason said, reading from his notepad. “Former city council member. Retired five years ago. Lived alone.”
“Connection to Jason Callahan?” Aria asked.
“None that we can see… yet.”
She crouched near the body, noting the angle of the blood spatter, the careful placement of the message. It wasn’t sloppy rage. It was calculated.
“This isn’t random,” she murmured.
Mason grunted. “You think?”
Aria ignored him. Two victims. Both tied to power and wealth. Both murdered with chilling precision.
Her phone buzzed.
> Mom: Dinner Sunday. Don’t make excuses. I’m inviting Pastor Collins.
Aria almost laughed. Murder investigations and blind dates courtesy of her mother. That was her life in a nutshell.
She slipped the phone back into her pocket as the forensics tech approached.
“Detective Kane,” he said. “We found something this time.”
He held up a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a tiny scrap of paper, folded tight, stained with blood.
Aria took it carefully. Written on the paper, in the same jagged handwriting, were four words:
“You buried the truth.”
—
Chapter Five: A False Trail
The crime scene was nearly cleared out when Aria noticed it—half-buried beneath a pile of fallen ceiling tiles near the victim’s body.
A silver chain.
Glinting faintly under the harsh crime scene lights, the chain had a small tag engraved with the initials M.R.
Mason leaned over her shoulder. “Looks like the killer got sloppy.”
“Or he wanted us to think so,” Aria muttered.
The forensics tech bagged the chain, but something about it felt… staged. Too easy.
Back at the precinct, they ran the initials. Marcus Reid. A name popped up—a man with a long rap sheet, last known address on the east side.
“Bingo,” Mason said, grabbing his coat. “Let’s bring him in.”
Aria hesitated. The killer had been careful, precise, almost surgical with everything until now. Why leave behind something so obvious?
Still, protocol was protocol.
They raided Marcus Reid’s apartment an hour later. It was empty. Dusty. No sign he’d been there in weeks.
And taped to the cracked mirror in the bathroom was a note written in the same jagged scrawl:
“Too slow, Detective.”
Aria’s stomach sank.
It hadn’t been a clue.
It had been bait.
—
Chapter Six: Threads of the Past
Aria sat in the precinct conference room surrounded by old case files piled so high they looked like paper skyscrapers. The killer wanted them to “dig up the past”? Fine. She’d dig until her hands bled.
The victims—Jason Callahan, the real estate heir, and Harold Benton, the retired councilman—had nothing in common on the surface. Different neighborhoods. Different backgrounds. Different lives.
But buried in the records, Aria found it: a twenty-year-old corruption case.
Construction contracts. Bribes. A cover-up involving half the city’s elite.
The case had collapsed when witnesses mysteriously backed out, evidence vanished, and the whole thing faded into silence.
Jason Callahan’s father. Harold Benton. Three more names.
The killer wasn’t picking victims at random. He was crossing names off a list.
“Lieutenant,” Aria said, spreading the files across the table, “this isn’t about the victims. It’s about what they did twenty years ago.”
Brooks frowned. “You’re saying the killer’s cleaning house?”
“I’m saying,” Aria said, her voice low, “we might already know who’s next.”
Before Brooks could respond, Mason entered holding an evidence bag. Inside was a second photo—this time of the precinct itself.
And scrawled on the back, in that same jagged handwriting:
“Tick-tock, Detective.”
Which was distracted by the entering of Jason Callahan's father, he was demanding answers.
“If you can't find him, I should find some other detective then" he said angrily
“We're trying our best sir" she said but he didn't even wait for her to complete it before storming off.
—
- Writer
