The city howled with sirens.

  Every screen, every whisper, every dripping alley of Sin Haven carried the same headline: Redneck is dead.

  I’d been on desk duty barely two hours when the rain started to come down sideways, drumming the precinct windows as if it wanted in.

  Then the engine growled, low and armored and expensive, and the whole lobby seemed to flinch.

  A black Land Cruiser pulled up out front, sleek enough to look foreign to this part of town. Four men in coal-black suits stepped out, umbrellas rising in perfect sync.

  And then he came out.

  Mayor Jonson.

  I’d seen him once before at a charity banquet, all bright lights, champagne, and speeches about reform.

  Now he looked carved from stormwater and grief, his grey hair plastered back, his coat heavy as guilt. From his breast pocket hung a silver watch that swung like a pendulum counting sins instead of seconds.

  “Mayor Jonson’s here!” I blurted before my brain caught up.

  The precinct froze. Even the phones stopped ringing for a moment.

  We all knew why he’d come. His wife, the mayor’s immaculate Selene, had been found near Redneck’s body, half-conscious and half-covered in blood that wasn’t hers.

  Victim, witness… maybe something worse.

  The city was already taking sides.

  The mayor didn’t look at me when he passed. He didn’t look at anyone. He just kept walking, water trailing from his coat like smoke, toward the stairs that led up to Chief Harrison’s office.

  I followed at a distance. Not assigned, not invited, only pulled by curiosity and that stupid instinct that says history is about to happen, and you might as well watch it ruin someone.

  The upper hall smelled of polish and stale cigar smoke. Portraits of past chiefs lined the walls, every one of them smiling like they’d gotten away with something.

  From below came muffled screams and the clanging of metal doors, our usual background music.

  The chief’s door swung open before the mayor could knock. Smoke rolled out, thick and sweet.

  Harrison sat behind his desk, a mountain of a man polishing his glasses with a silk square. He didn’t rise; he never did. The desk looked more like his altar.

  “Well now,” he said, his voice booming, “if it isn’t His Honor, the Mayor himself. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  The mayor’s reply was low and tight. “Cut the gospel, Harrison. You’ve got more sinners on payroll than on your prayer list. I’m here for Selene. Is she all right?”

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  The chief chuckled, the sound deep enough to rattle the glass frames on the wall. “Easy now, Mayor. There’s a little sinner in all of us, even you.”

  He leaned back, the chair’s leather groaning under him. “I’m just here to guide the flock, and sometimes that means using a heavy hand.”

  He nodded toward the corner where a Bible sat untouched beside a half-empty bottle of whisky. “Your lady’s being asked about our little bat-man. Tell me, was that your doing?”

  The mayor stiffened. “What rubbish. I may want that devil’s syndicate gone, but I’m bound by law. I’ll go through the right way.”

  The chief smiled like a man who didn’t believe in the right way. “Sure you will.”

  I stepped back before either of them noticed me.

  Downstairs, someone yelled about a missing evidence file; a phone started ringing again; life went on, pretending it didn’t hear the storm building above.

  Through the door I caught one last sound: the faint tick of the mayor’s silver watch, steady as judgment.

  The rain hadn’t eased. It had only changed rhythm, softer now, like the city whispering after its own scream.

  I was halfway down the corridor when the elevator doors sighed open.

  Two officers stepped out first, then a woman between them, pale and trembling, wrapped in a grey blanket that looked too thin for what she’d been through.

  Selene Jonson.

  She wasn’t the photograph the city knew. Her makeup had run to ash, her eyes glassed over as if she were still somewhere else. One hand clutched the blanket; the other hung uselessly at her side, fingers twitching as though they wanted to remember something they shouldn’t.

  Behind her came the mayor, coat unbuttoned, face carved in grief. He moved through us without speaking, just a nod here, a glare there. When he reached her, he laid both hands on her shoulders.

  “Easy, love,” he said, low enough that only I could hear. “You’re safe now.”

  She nodded, but her eyes didn’t move. Safety was a word that had stopped meaning anything in this building.

  He looked up at me then. Rainwater still clung to his lashes.

  “You’re on this case?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His gaze stayed on me a second too long. “Then deliver justice, Officer Elmroot. Real justice.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He simply guided her toward the exit, his men falling in behind like black shadows with umbrellas.

  I watched them cross the lobby, her steps small and his firm, the storm swallowing them both as the doors closed.

  Justice.

  For who?

  For the mayor’s wife, or the devil’s dead hound?

  If I failed to find the killer, the law would bury me in paperwork and the Devil would get him.

  If I found him first, the Devil’s men might bury me for real, and the law would kill him anyway. A true lose-lose game.

  Upstairs, a phone rang, muffled by the ceiling. I climbed, more out of habit than duty.

  Through the half-closed door of the chief’s office came the sound of his voice, slow and heavy.

  “Yeah, no statement. She remembers nothing. But we’ll find him. The Devil wants his ghost back, and I don’t plan to disappoint.”

  The receiver clicked, and silence settled in its place, thick, patient, full of smoke.

  I leaned against the cold wall, staring at the floor tiles.

  Law was such a strange creature, demanding that even a man who killed a monster must answer for it, or else the other monsters would come collecting.

  Some nights I wondered which side I worked for.

  Tonight, the rain didn’t bother to answer.