Chapter Thirteen - One Too Many
1049 Words
The city hadn’t slept. Not since the Dreamer’s Note.
The morning air was crisp, tinged with the scent of diesel fumes and damp asphalt. At Unit 9’s headquarters, the mood had darkened—no one spoke of it directly, but everyone felt it. A gnawing unease, like the clock was ticking faster toward something inevitable.
Jace Marlon stood in the war room with his hands on his hips, scanning the updated board. Red strings connected victims, a twisted web of obsession and ritual. The Dreamer’s Note, sealed inside a clear bag, hung like a trophy at the center of it all.
Ellis Vale leaned nearby, staring at the board in contemplative silence, his eyes drifting from name to name. His expression was unreadable, somewhere between apathy and calculation.
“You think he’s done?” Ellis asked quietly, as though the words weren’t meant to be heard by anyone but the board itself.
“No,” Jace replied. “He’s just… winding up.”
A sharp knock pulled them both from their thoughts. Maya stepped into the room, jacket already on. “We’ve got something. Security footage from a laundromat near the second victim’s apartment just came in—timestamp matches the window we were looking at.”
Jace grabbed his coat. “Let’s roll.”
They arrived at the scene within minutes. The laundromat was shut down, but the back room had been left untouched since police arrived. The place reeked of detergent and old metal, the machines still humming faintly. The owner, a nervous man in his fifties, handed over the hard drive and disappeared without asking questions.
While Maya spoke with one of the officers outside, Jace and Ellis moved through the aisles of washers, eyes alert.
“There,” Ellis said, pointing to a maintenance closet partially cracked open.
Jace moved in first, flashlight cutting through the dark. Inside, scattered among cleaning supplies and buckets, was a small object tucked into the corner—a wooden token carved with the number seven.
The same token had been found under the fingernails of Victim 3.
“Got something,” Jace called out.
By the time Maya reentered, Jace was slipping the token into an evidence bag. She glanced at it, then at the closet. “Where was it?”
“Ellis found it. Tucked behind the mop bucket,” Jace said, nodding toward his partner.
Ellis gave a small nod of acknowledgment.
Maya’s gaze lingered a moment too long. “That right?” she asked neutrally.
Ellis didn’t answer immediately. “Felt out of place,” he said with a shrug. “So I checked.”
The comment seemed to satisfy everyone—for now.
Back at the office, Jackson cued up the laundromat’s surveillance footage while the team gathered in the conference room. The monitor flickered to life, timestamps crawling along the corner of the screen.
“There’s you, Jace,” Jackson said. “Camera 2. And Ellis… uh…”
He paused.
“Hold on.”
The footage continued, showing Jace stepping inside alone. No Ellis. Not even a shadow of him entering after.
Eric switched to another angle—same result. Jace moved through the room methodically, alone, entering the maintenance closet without hesitation. A few seconds later, he emerged with the evidence bag.
Silence fell in the room like a dropped blade.
“Strange,” Rayna muttered.
Jace shifted in his seat. “He must’ve come in through the back. Cameras didn’t catch it.”
Eric shook his head. “All the exits and entries are covered. No blind spots.”
Ellis sat still, unbothered. “I was there,” he said simply.
Nobody argued, but something subtle shifted in the air.
Maya didn't say anything aloud. She just tilted her head slightly and scribbled something in her notebook.
Later that evening, Maya sat at her desk, the overhead lights flickering in a quiet rhythm. Most of the team had cleared out, the buzz of the day fading into the night hum of the city. But she couldn’t shake the footage, couldn’t shake the precision of the moment.
She opened the personnel files again.
Ellis Vale: Joined the unit six months ago. No formal welcome email. No psych evaluation on file. His personnel photo was a low-res scan, face slightly turned to the side, almost avoiding the camera.
She tried to remember the first time they met. It was at a crime scene. She’d shaken his hand. He’d cracked a joke, something about the irony of blood splatter. But the memory was fuzzy now. Blurred, like recalling a dream through thick fog.
She clicked on the team photo from the CIU-9 holiday gathering. Everyone had been there. She was sure of it. Yet when she scanned the crowd—
No Ellis.
Not in the background. Not even a silhouette.
And yet, she remembered him making a toast.
Didn’t she?
Maya rubbed her temple and made a new entry in her notes.
Ellis Vale – inconsistencies in presence, possible surveillance anomaly?
Her pen hovered.
Or something else?
The following day was colder than usual. As Jace entered HQ, he noticed Maya watching him. Her eyes were guarded, thoughtful—not hostile, but careful.
He didn’t say anything. Neither did she.
Later, in the evidence locker, Ellis leaned against the shelves as Jace sifted through the logged materials.
“They’re starting to ask questions,” Ellis said.
Jace stiffened. “About what?”
“You know what.”
He didn’t respond.
Ellis tilted his head. “You should’ve said you found it yourself.”
“That would’ve raised more questions.”
A small smile ghosted across Ellis’s face. “They’re already asking them, Jace.”
Jace set the file down slowly. “Then maybe we give them something else to follow.”
Ellis didn’t answer. Just melted back into the corridor like smoke.
Maya watched from the security room as Jace exited the locker room, alone.
She rewound the footage.
Played it again.
No one had gone in with him.
No one had come out with him.
But she had passed Ellis in the hallway not five minutes earlier.
She stared at the monitor, heart pounding now in a slow, deliberate rhythm.
Something was wrong.
She didn’t know what.
But she was going to find out.
- Writer
