The House of Horror

Chapter 19 _ The Lawyer Are Thinking In Confusion

The prosecutor sighed deeply and leaned back on the table. His eyes met hers with a mixture of coldness and mild sarcasm. His voice was measured: “You’re exaggerating, Ms. Susan. It’s neither new nor strange. How many men in Egypt have killed their wives? Many. Nasser isn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. As for yesterday’s case, yes, the body was in a deplorable state. But we’re still waiting for the forensic report. Once it’s issued, we’ll see if this is just another crime… or something else entirely.”

Susan leaned back slightly, but her eyes didn’t flinch. They were like camera lenses, searching for subtle details that others might miss. Her fingers lightly traced a brief note on the glass panel, then she raised her gaze again with quiet defiance.

A heavy silence fell between them, as if the room itself held its breath. In the corner, a digital recorder pulsed with a dim red light, capturing every word. Technology had become a witness, recording the tension, the strength, and the clash of wills between them. Susan knew the prosecutor was deliberately downplaying the situation. There was something in his tone that betrayed him, something that suggested he knew more than he was willing to admit. And behind his cold words—"We'll wait for the forensic report"—lay secrets that might open doors better left closed.

Susan sat down in her chair opposite the prosecutor, her eyes fixed on him. Her voice came out low, but full of conviction:

"I feel there's a connection between Noor's murder and yesterday's incident... a single thread connecting them."

The prosecutor slowly raised his head, his face as hard as stone. His voice was cold, concealing more than it revealed:

"That's all I know, and I told you not to try to use your journalistic wits."

A moment of silence passed between them, but her rapid breathing filled the room. Susan closed her tablet, offered a faint, polite smile, and said, "Thank you, sir." She stood with deliberate steps, extended her hand to shake his, then slipped gracefully out of the office, leaving behind a faint trail of her perfume mingled with an air of mystery.

For a few seconds, the prosecutor stood, staring at the door she had just closed. Suddenly, something stirred within him. He began pacing the office, his hand brushing against the files piled high on the glowing computer screen before carelessly pushing them aside with a mixture of impatience and indifference.

Then he approached the wide glass window overlooking the courtyard below. His gaze fell to the floor, where he saw Susan getting into her sleek black car. He watched her intently for a moment, his brow furrowing as if trying to untangle a knot stuck in his memory.

Then his expression changed. A strange gleam flickered in his eyes, as if he had just remembered something important, something he didn't want to remember. He turned away from the window with quick, decisive steps, his face now dark with worry and surprise, as if the truth itself were knocking forcefully at the door of his mind.

The prosecutor walked slowly toward his desk. He reached into the drawer, took out a cigarette, and lit it deliberately, as if the moment itself demanded a ritual. He took a deep breath, then exhaled, letting the smoke swirl in intermittent waves toward the lamp hanging above his head. The light mingled with the mist, and the desk disappeared into a thick haze.

He whispered, almost loud enough for him to hear, then said,

"There was another murder... in that cursed tower... and no one ever connected it to the others."

He approached the desk, leaned slightly forward, and placed one hand on its surface. He tapped his fingers on the wood with a nervous, rhythmic beat, as if trying to wrest an answer from the silence. Then, with a sudden burst of tension, he asked,

"Who? Who? Who?"

Suddenly, he straightened up, as if an idea had struck him. His eyes flashed with a sharp light as he muttered:

Nabil... Yes, only Nabil.

The coroner said he died of natural causes... sudden heart failure. But...!

He took another drag on his cigarette, releasing another cloud of thick smoke that thickened the air. His gaze drifted into the void, his face hardening, as if trying to convince himself:

Nour... and Nabil... and Mira... that's all I know. Unless... unless there's something we don't know—like that journalist said.

Silence fell over the office again. But it wasn't ordinary silence. It was heavy, haunting, filled with the echo of three names repeating in his head like stones thrown into a bottomless well. Each name sank deeper, sending waves of doubt and terror—waves that never ended.

Susan and the blank sheet of paper—

Night began to weigh heavily on the city, sweeping away a long, unsettling silence. The streets below her apartment seemed deserted, save for a few cars passing intermittently, as if fleeing some unknown fate. The building where journalist Suzanne lived wasn't much different from other modern buildings in Cairo, but this night held something unusual. Her heart pounded with questions, her head heavy with the tangle of crimes, faces, and names.

She opened the door and entered with slow, weary steps, as if dragging the weight of her long day between the prosecutor's office, her sources, and endless reports. She closed the door quietly behind her and leaned against the wood for a moment, needing to feel that at least one thing in her life could be firmly shut. Her breathing was ragged, her features tense.

She headed toward the small kitchen, where she usually began her own ritual upon returning home. She took out her favorite ceramic mug—white with a gold rim—and poured black coffee into it. The aroma filled the air instantly, warming but unable to dispel the chill that had crept into her chest. She stood before the electric kettle longer than necessary, staring at the rising steam as if it might hold answers she couldn't find anywhere else. Clutching the cup as if it were a precious object she couldn't bear to lose, she walked to her room. Her footsteps echoed louder than usual on the wooden floor, as if the house itself shared her anxiety. She pushed the door open gently and entered.

The room was meticulously arranged, with the precision of a journalist: a desk in the corner, a small bookshelf pressed against the wall, a simple bed, and a half-drawn curtain that let in a soft orange light from the streetlights outside.

She sat at her desk, placed the cup beside her, and opened her laptop. The screen lit up suddenly, as if waiting for her to finish what she had left unfinished. She quickly scrolled through the files until her investigation files, which had spanned weeks, appeared: photos from Mira's crime scene, documents related to Noor's case, old newspaper clippings, and names that appeared so frequently they began to haunt her waking and sleeping hours.

She opened the file of photos of Mira's body. Her breath caught at the first image. The young woman's face appeared almost indistinct, as if death hadn't completely erased her features. She scrolled through more photos: the dark street, the bloodstains, the expressions of the policemen sitting around the body. Her chest tightened. For a moment, she felt that if she stared any longer, she would hear Mira's screams right in her ears.

She closed the file abruptly, as if pulling her hand away from a burning wall.

Another file. Noor's case. New photos, reports, words repeated: "strangulation," "bruises," "Nasser's execution." She rubbed her forehead with a trembling hand and quickly shut down her laptop, its black screen suddenly appearing as a mirror reflecting her anxiety.

She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of crisp white paper and a black pen. She held the page before her like a battlefield waiting to be marked out.

She drew the first large circle at the top and wrote inside: "Nasser."

Her pen stopped. The name itself had a particular resonance. Nasser—the man accused of murdering his wife—was executed in front of everyone. And yet... the killings hadn't stopped. She pressed the letters harder against the paper, as if cementing it as the cornerstone. From his circle, she drew a line descending to a smaller one: "Malik."

Her eyes narrowed. A man's shadow, shrouded in contradictions and mystery. Newspaper clippings, conflicting witness accounts, whispers she couldn't verify. His enigmatic nature was enough to keep him firmly in her memory.

Another line extended from Malik to a third circle: "Sophia."

She wrote slowly. The letters seemed to glow more than they should. Her fingers tightened on the pen. After a moment's hesitation, she added a question mark next to Malik's name, and another next to Sophia's.

"You two..." she whispered.

You are the key. But to which door?

She bent down and drew two more circles at the bottom of the page. In one: "Nour." In the other: "Mira."

Leaning back in her chair, she studied the network of circles and lines, a spiderweb with Nasser at its center, extending outward toward faces and names bound together by secrets. She lifted her cup and took a sip of bitter coffee. It tasted sharp, but the bitterness wasn't just from the roasted beans; it stemmed from the realization that something far bigger lay behind these crimes than she had imagined.

She set the cup down and tapped her fingers nervously on the paper. She stared again at the names:

Nasser… Malek… Sophia… Noor… Mira.

Then she murmured quietly,

"Where were Malek and Sophia after Noor died? After Nasser was executed? Are they still living in that cursed tower?"

Her voice was more than a breath. She added,

"And if they are… what connects them to all of this?"

She raised her head, her eyes fixed on the ceiling light. For a brief moment, she imagined the smoke of her troubled mind rising, thick enough to fill the entire room. The mystery was no longer confined to the crimes; it had seeped into her life, turning her days and nights upside down.

Her eyes returned to the paper. It was no longer just a page; it had become a mirror, reflecting the shadows she feared. Every name throbbed with weight, bearing blood, screams, and unfinished stories.

Her eyelids grew heavy with exhaustion, but her mind was sharper than ever, racing in a relentless pursuit of the unknown.

"I will find the truth," she whispered, a promise in the silence.

"Even if it costs me my life."

Finally, she put down the pen, but left the paper right in the middle of the desk, like a sacred relic she dared not disturb. Slowly, she rose and switched off the lamp, then sat down on the chair