Episode three-The Wake-Up Call
986 Words
Detective Ava Ramirez hated waiting.
Especially in parking lots.
She sat behind the wheel of her unmarked Dodge, foot tapping against the floor mat, watching the gas station across the street through a veil of drizzle. Her coffee was cold. Her headache was back. The woman behind the counter had overcharged her for the third time this week, and she’d been too tired to argue.
The man she was waiting for was already twenty minutes late.
Doyle had told her he’d be here “just after sunup.” The sun was now well above the hills, its gray light filtering through the low clouds like a bad habit.
She took another sip of the bitter coffee and winced.
A black pickup truck pulled into the lot across the street. Beat to hell. Mud-caked tires. No plates. A dog in the back — some kind of shepherd mix, alert but quiet.
Ava’s eyes narrowed as the driver stepped out.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Worn jeans, black coat, hood pulled up. He moved like someone who didn’t want to be seen but knew he would be. Confident, but not in a flashy way. Controlled. Measured.
She grabbed the folder from the passenger seat and stepped out into the cold.
As she crossed the lot, Elias Creed looked up.
Their eyes met.
And for the first time in five years, he spoke to someone about the case that had ended his life.
“You’re not Doyle,” he said.
“No,” Ava replied. “I’m what Doyle sends when he wants to stay at his desk and smoke through the fun parts.”
Creed’s eyes flicked over her. Not in a condescending way — not even in a man-studying-a-woman way. Just: gathering data. Fast, sharp, automatic. She recognized the profiler instinct instantly.
“You’re Ramirez,” he said.
“Detective Ava Ramirez,” she corrected.
“You’re new.”
“Five months. Transferred from Albuquerque. Didn’t come for the scenery.”
He didn’t smile. “Why are you here?”
“Because the woman we found yesterday died the same way your wife did. And you’re the only person who might understand why.”
A silence passed between them. Not awkward. Heavy.
Creed leaned against his truck. “You read the case file?”
“I read what they gave me.”
“Then you didn’t read enough.”
Ava resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Are you always this charming, or is it just before breakfast?”
He didn’t respond. Just opened the passenger door and grabbed a leather satchel. Worn at the corners. Heavy. He handed it to her without explanation.
She opened it and pulled out a thin stack of papers. Photos. Diagrams. A handwritten timeline.
“What’s this?”
“Everything that wasn’t in the official file,” Creed said. “I didn’t give it to the Bureau. I didn’t trust them.”
“Why not?”
“Because someone inside helped the killer cover their tracks. Maybe more than one someone.”
Ava stared at him. “That’s a big claim.”
“I don’t make small ones.”
She looked back at the photos. Notes in the margins. Symbols she didn’t recognize. Dates. One name was underlined in red three times: Dr. Lyle Mercer.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
Creed’s jaw tightened. “A psychologist. Private consultant. Worked with me on a few joint cases. He was also Amelia’s therapist. She was seeing him the year before she died.”
“Did you interview him?”
“I tried. He disappeared the week after her body was found. No forwarding address. No family.”
“And you think he’s connected?”
“I think he was scared of something. Or someone.”
Ava looked back at him. “And what do you think he’s scared of now?”
Creed looked up at the gray sky. Then back at her. “Me.”
For the first time, Ava understood what Doyle meant when he said Elias Creed didn’t come back to play nice. The man in front of her wasn’t just a profiler or a grieving husband — he was something else. Sharper. Harder. Someone who had burned all the soft parts of himself away and kept only what could survive the fire.
She handed the satchel back. “You want to see the new scene?”
He nodded.
She motioned for him to follow and walked toward her car. Halfway there, he stopped and looked back at the truck. The dog stared at him through the back window.
“Leave it running?” Ava asked.
“She doesn’t like strangers.”
Ava raised an eyebrow. “Neither do you, apparently.”
Creed didn’t answer. He opened the passenger door of her car and slid inside without another word.
As she pulled out of the lot, the clouds above Hollow Creek thickened into something darker. The forecast hadn’t called for snow, but Ava had the creeping feeling that something was building overhead — a pressure, a silence too deep to ignore.
Beside her, Elias Creed sat with his hands folded in his lap, eyes locked on the road ahead.
“You ever think about what you’d do if you found the guy?” she asked suddenly.
“Every day.”
She nodded once. “And?”
His voice was quiet. “It’s not about what I’d do to him.”
She glanced at him. “Then what is it about?”
He didn’t look at her. Just said, “What I’d do to myself after.”
Ava fell silent.
She didn’t know what she expected when she met Elias Creed. Maybe an angry drunk, half-insane and haunted. Maybe a cold intellectual, too smart for the rest of the room.
But she hadn’t expected this — a man who looked like he’d already solved the riddle… and didn’t like the answer he’d found.
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