Cracks in the Mask
987 Words
Wickfield Police Department – Records Division
Detective Elias Marquez stood in the chill of the third-floor records archive, stacks of Aaron Cole’s personnel history, psych evals, and case reviews spread across the desk in front of her.
She’d been digging for five hours straight.
Something didn’t add up.
Aaron’s story—hiking solo on Gunner’s Trail, slipping down a ledge, hitting his head, and crawling back with a minor knee injury—was clean. Too clean. Marquez had seen plenty of hiking accidents. They didn’t come back with shallow scratches and neat bandages.
She opened the medical intake file attached to his return-to-work clearance. Signed off by a “Dr. Helen Graves” from a small clinic up north.
But a quick departmental call revealed:
> “That clinic shut down two years ago.”
“No licensed practitioner by that name in the state registry.”
Strike one.
Marquez examined the photos taken during Aaron’s return. A forehead laceration—about 2 inches across, low bleeding, superficial. A smear of bruising around the right temple.
But…
No swelling behind the ear or crown area, where you'd expect force trauma from a fall.
No abrasions on the palms, no embedded bark or leaf fragments, which hikers often get from dragging themselves through rough terrain.
His nails were clipped and clean. Not a speck of dirt. She turned to the photos of his clothes, collected by evidencee as a formality.
> No rips.
No soil marks.
No embedded fibres or signs of impact.
If he’d fallen off a ledge, the ledge had velvet edges and a foam landing.
Strike two.
Next, she ran a time-lapse on his activity log from before his disappearance. Aaron was meticulous—his swipe card, department log-ins, and digital footprints were always clean and frequent.
Until the night of Howard Johnson’s murder.
There was a sudden 24-hour black hole.
No swipe-ins. No GPS pings.
Nothing.
Not even a coffee shop receipt.
That was not like Aaron.
And that, Marquez knew, wasn’t just a red flag.
It was a siren.
Strike three.
She returned to her office and pinned Aaron’s badge photo next to a timeline of the Black Thread murders.
Each kill was listed, along with:
Crime scene forensic summaries
Victim profiles
Stitched words
Scene access logs
She drew a red thread between Aaron’s days off and the time stamps on four major scenes—including the original thread kills that only a few officers ever had clearance to review.
He had profiled these murders in public lectures. With eerie detail.
Too much detail.
In one case, he described a ligature angle that had never been disclosed to the press or internal memos—a minor rope burn on the left ankle at a 42° angle, consistent with someone kneeling during restraint.
That angle had only been noted in the internal crime scene photo database.
Which Aaron should’ve never had access to.
Marquez scrolled through email access logs.
And there it was.
> Cole, Aaron – Forensics Access Override – 11:03 p.m. – 5 months ago
Her lips tightened.
The bastard had hacked in—or convinced someone to look the other way.
Later That Day – Jessie’s Apartment
Jessie’s kitchen table had become a war room.
Crime scene photos. Map printouts. Surveillance snapshots. Timelines. Threads.
Levi sat across from her, bruised and pale but conscious now, sipping from a steaming mug while nursing the welt on the side of his face.
“He’s not going to vanish,” Jessie said. “He’s too proud. He walked back into work, knowing you and I were still out here.”
“He wanted to look innocent,” Levi said.
“No,” Jessie replied. “He wanted to look superior.”
She stood and pinned a new photo on the board—Aaron, smiling in his badge photo.
“He knows I’m the original Black Thread. He’s not just copying me anymore. He’s trying to outmaneuver me.”
“So what do we do?” Levi asked.
Jessie stared at the board, silent for a long moment.
“Marquez suspects him,” she said finally. “She brought him into Interrogation Room 2 today.”
Levi’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s serious.”
“But she doesn’t know how deep it goes,” Jessie muttered. “She thinks he’s the copycat. She doesn’t know he’s hunting me.”
Levi rubbed his face. “So do we tell her?”
Jessie looked over. “And risk her tracing it back to me?”
“No,” he sighed. “Didn’t think so.”
Jessie sat back down and laid out the plan:
> Step 1: Follow Aaron. Discreetly. Learn his routine again now that he’s back. Avoid confrontation.
Step 2: Wait for him to slip up—because he would. He wanted to be seen. That was his flaw.
Step 3: Use the one thing he didn’t know: Jessie’s ability to fake innocence better than anyone.
“He thinks he’s writing the next chapter,” she said. “Let’s make sure it’s his last.”
Levi looked at her for a long moment. “You think you can kill him?”
Jessie didn’t answer right away.
“I think,” she said slowly, “I have no choice.”
Meanwhile – In the Dark
Aaron Cole stood in the corner of his apartment, turning the lights off one by one. Outside, the city hummed in darkness. He smiled faintly as he watched Jessie’s name flash across his tablet screen in the department registry.
> Jessie Black – Crime Scene Technician – Field Certification #3217#
He ran his finger down the page.
> Assigned: Mr. Howard Johnson crime scene
Perfect.
He placed the tablet down next to a folded sheet of paper.
It read only three words:
You’re not safe.
Aaron smiled.
Because now it was a game.
And Jessie had just stepped onto his board.
- Writer
