Aubrey heads for her desk without slowing, already dialing.Early morning, the sun peeks into the pen. Slater was standing next to the whiteboard, tired. Coffee cups were scattered across the desks in the briefing room. Vince is sitting down, combing through the case file while writing notes.

  Dorian moved to a desk inside the room, clicking through PDFs. Slater walks to the evidence wall, marker twiddling between his fingers—tired eyes.

  “Three boroughs. Three dead. Debt, now logs showing Onyx tied to every one of those buildings. Different tech IDs. One in Queens? Ellias Raines.” Dorian mutters.

  Vince frowning. “But the dad in Stonetown was forced to kill his wife? What’s the MO there?”

  Slater turns around. “Scare tactic, maybe the mother wasn’t supposed to be there? He made him kill her because that wasn’t his hit. Odd fuck… neighbors acted weird anyway.”

  Vince starts walking around and scrunching his face. “Neighbors were debtors too, right? Maybe it was the way the hit was supposed to go.”

  “Both can be true, but Elias, a tech, didn’t show up on more than one report here. If he’s our guy, then this is a slip-up.” Slater turns back around, writing on the board..

  Dorian slouches back. “Or it might not even be him, I mean, don't doubt he faked his entire life just to tie it to a murder he committed?”

  “Fucker is invisible.” Slater shakes his head. “If there's any juice to this theory, then it’s obvious Elias is a big key. He either killed in Queens, or he points us in the vicinity.” Slater points to the whiteboard.

  Aubrey was standing in the doorway, leaning on the frame. “Agreed, Elias isn't expected to be the killer, but he has ties to the blackout, similarly to the other 2. Which ironically operated around the same time limit.”

  Cal comes up behind Aubrey, scanning the board as he steps into the room. “So, you’ve finally got threads that tie together. Stonetown, Ridge, Queens… Onyx at every scene.”

  He pauses, sets his coffee on the edge of the table. “Good work. Keep it tight, though. We can’t run this whole department on coincidences.”

  Then, with a look that lands square on Aubrey: “Officers just brought Elias Raines in. Don’t keep him long.”

  The bullpen shifts. Vince snaps the file shut, Dorian rubs his eyes, Slater sets the marker down like he’s dropping a weight. Aubrey straightens in the doorway. The air feels sharper, heavier.

  Interrogation room.

  Fluorescent lights buzz. The table gleams faintly from bleach. A camera blinks red in the corner.

  Elias Raines sits at the metal table with his palms flat, a paper visitor badge still crooked on his chest. He’s mid-40s, clean jacket, hands with the ground in gray of a man who wrestles cables for a living. Nervous? A little. Not terrified. The kind of guy who assumes he’ll be home by lunch.

  Aubrey comes in with a Styrofoam cup and a manila folder. Vince follows, less formally, with a bottle of water in his hand.

  Aubrey sets the coffee down within reach. “Mr. Raines. Detective Archer.” She shows her badge, then nods at Vince. “Detective Vega. Thanks for coming in.”

  “Do I, uh… am I under arrest?” Elias asks. He doesn’t touch the coffee.

  “Not at this time,” Aubrey says evenly. “This is a voluntary interview. You’re free to leave. I’ll also say if you want a lawyer, we’ll stop and reschedule. Totally your call.”

  “Right.” He licks his lips. “I don’t… I didn’t do anything.”

  “Then this’ll be quick,” Vince says, sliding the water over. “You mind if we record?”

  Elias eyes the red light in the corner. “Record away.”

  Aubrey and Vince slightly glance at each other.

  Aubrey clicks a small digital on the table anyway—redundancy—and presses start. “Stating for the record, present are Detectives Archer and Vince Patterson with the City Homicide Unit. Interviewing Elias Raines, subcontractor previously retained by Onyx Security. Mr. Raines has been advised that this is voluntary. Time is 9:14 a.m.”

  She takes the chair opposite him. Calm posture, hands folded on the folder. “Let’s start simple. You do subcontract electrical and low-voltage work for multiple vendors, including Onyx Security. Correct?”

  “Yeah. I’m 1099. My company’s me. I pick up dailies.”

  “How long with Onyx?”

  “Two years? Maybe a hair more. On and off.” He glances at the coffee, decides against it. “Look, what is this? I do camera swaps, panel reboots, and run new Cat6. I’m not—” He waves vaguely at the mirror. “Whatever this is.”

  Aubrey nods like that’s helpful. “On February 18, you signed a work order for Astoria Boulevard. Temporary power cut, diagnostic on a lobby panel. You logged a shutdown at 9:12 p.m., power restored at 10:03.”

  Elias blinks. “That sounds right.”

  “And four months ago, you didn’t personally do the Ridge Avenue car wash job, but your company was on the short list. You’re familiar with Onyx contracts in that sector.”

  “I know a guy who did Ridge. I didn’t pull that ticket.”

  Vince rolls his chair to the wall and leans. “We’re looking at patterns, Elias, three different places in town, cameras all cut for a short period of time.” Vince folds his arms. “Different tech IDs but same company. The one you work for. Murders at every one of them. Why?”

  A breath sticks in Elias’s throat. He swallows. “I didn’t— I don’t hurt people.”

  “No one said you did,” Aubrey says, steady. “He said patterns.” She slides a photocopy across the table. “Stonetown Apartments—our shorthand—had a camera outage ticket closed the morning after two people were shot. Queens had yours. Ridge had a ‘firmware reboot’ called in the night. Three for three, cameras compromised inside the homicide window.”

  His jaw tightens. “We do dozens of resets. Hundreds. Cameras fail. Power fails. People die in this city every day. Those things are not—” He rubs his forehead. “Not the same.”

  Aubrey lets the silence work for a beat, then: “You logged your time yourself on the Queens ticket?”

  “Yeah,” he says, guarded. “I keyed my own time.”

  “Who keyed Ridge?” Vince asks.

  “Different tech. But I know pretty much all the guys.” Elias fiddles with his fingers under the table.

  “We will,” Aubrey says. “But I brought you in because your name is the only one on paper we can put in a room with a blackout inside a murders time of death. You see the problem?”

  “I was outside,” he says, quickly. “Main panel’s not in the tenant space. I was with the property manager half the time.”

  Aubrey flips a page. “Property manager signs your work order at 8:56 p.m., leaves the building at 9:05 for a ‘call.’ You log power down at 9:12. He’s not with you when you cut. You put ‘PM stepped out’ right here.” She taps the line he wrote.

  Elias sits back, lips pressed thin. “So what? People step out.”

  “So you were alone.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  Vince pushes off the wall more gently. “Help us understand the why. Was someone asking for blind spots? Did somebody offer cash to make sure nothing was recording?”

  “No,” he says too fast. Then, more carefully: “Look— maintenance outages, they’re normal. Sometimes the client wants them off the books because they’re behind on invoices. Sometimes they’ll pay cash to avoid a service call fee. That’s… not rare.”

  “Cash from who?” Aubrey asks.

  “Client,” he says, shrugging. “Manager. Whoever’s around.”

  Aubrey keeps her tone mild. “Elias. You have fingers pointed at you for this murder, nobody else lines up.” She leans closer. “And the worst part is, I know you’re innocent. But I have to get someone for this.” Vince’s aces washed in confusion.

  Elias' face turns white.

  “If there's a time to start talking before things get confusing, then now’s the time. Because we aren’t looking for an honest man making an honest mistake. We don’t care. We want to find the killer.” Aubrey pointing at the paper.

  He hesitates. “The PM handed me an envelope when I arrived. Eighty bucks. Said his boss didn’t want another ticket. That’s not illegal.”

  “It’s not great,” Vince says. “But we’re not tax cops.”

  Elias smirks a little at that and relaxes a fraction. “Okay, so what is this really?”

  Aubrey shifts the folder so he can see the following sheet: a crime scene timeline. “Time of death estimate between 9:20 and 9:45. Cameras dead until 10:03. You see how tight that is?”

  “I didn’t know,” he says, softer now. “I swear to you I didn’t know anyone would—”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “I believe you didn’t go there to kill anybody,” Aubrey says. “But someone else went there knowing no one would see them. And in Queens, you’re the only person who can tell me who wanted it dark.”

  He rubs his knuckles, looks at the coffee again. Doesn’t drink. “You said it yourself: PM.”

  “Walk me through your evening. From the moment you parked.” Aubrey doesn’t blink.

  He exhales. “Pulled up a little after eight-thirty. Parking was garbage. I went around the block. I buzzed. Manager meets me in the lobby. He’s got his jacket on, looks like he’s heading out. Says panel’s been chirping, cameras freezing, just needs a hard reset and a firmware push. He signs the paper, says he has a call, tells me the cutoff and how to bypass the tenant riser so only lobby goes dark. He shows me the crawlspace hatch and—”

  “Stop,” Aubrey says quietly. “He showed you the hatch?”

  Elias nods. “Yeah. Why?”

  Vince’s brows knit. “And then what?”

  “Then he leaves,” Elias says. “Guy in a navy coat is near the door with him. I thought it was his boss at first. They talk low. I don’t care. I get to work.”

  Aubrey feels the small click in her gut. She doesn’t show it. “Describe the coat.”

  “I don’t know. Nice? Dark. Knee length. He had one of those—” Elias fumbles for a word, pinching the air near his belt. “Those square fob things. Blue. Realtors use them? He clipped it on the outside of his pocket. I remember because it looked stupid on a nice coat.”

  Aubrey’s thumb presses into the groove of her ring until it hurts. She keeps her voice even. “Blue fob. Like a Supra eKEY?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Elias says, relieved to know a word he didn’t. “He had a leather folder, too. Portfolio. The kind with a pen loop.”

  Vince glances at Aubrey. Doesn’t say anything.

  “Did the coat man speak to you?” Aubrey asks.

  “Not really. He told the manager, ‘I’ll text when the window opens,’ and the manager said, ‘We’ll be blind.’ Then coat guy looks at me and says—” He frowns, recalling. “‘You’ll ping the panel, yes?’ And I said, ‘I’ll ping.’ He smiled. That’s it.”

  “Accent?” Vince asks. “Local?”

  “Couldn’t place it. Not thick. Just clean. Like he’d worked on it.”

  “Age?”

  “Forty? Fifty? Hard to tell with the coat. Short haircut. The hair looked… expensive.” Elias shrugs, embarrassed by the word.

  “Shoes?” Aubrey asks.

  “Shiny,” Elias says with a huff of a laugh. “I do floors. You notice shoes. These weren’t work boots.”

  Aubrey flips another sheet toward him: the Ridge Avenue service log. “Four months ago. You didn’t pull this ticket, but your supply house records show you bought two rolls of 16-gauge and a bag of three-quarter knockouts that week. That’s panel work… Did you happen to see the same man at Ridge? Or near it? Maybe not that night—anytime close?”

  Elias’s face goes still. “I saw him at Meyer’s Supply,” he says after a beat. “Not at Ridge. A week after. He was at the counter talking to Arnie about lockboxes. I only remember because Arnie said, ‘We don’t sell those, man—try a realtor shop.’ Coat guy laughed, said, ‘Worth asking.’ Same leather folder. Same fob clipped to his pocket.”

  Aubrey lets the admission sit between them. She doesn’t grin. She doesn’t look at Vince. She just writes one steady word in her notebook: fob.

  “What about Stonetown?” Vince asks lightly, as if they’re hashing fantasy football, not double homicide. “You weren’t on that ticket. But you ever hear of Onyx getting a call to ‘test a reboot’ over there? Anybody mention a manager who liked to go off-books?”

  “Onyx got called a lot for walk-ups,” Elias says. “Cheap property groups hate service contracts. They’ll pay one-off, or they’ll pay under the table.”

  “Who called you for Queens?” Aubrey asks. “Not the PM—the scheduler.”

  He rubs his lips. “A voice I didn’t know. Came from a number that didn’t take return calls. Lady said a ticket would be opened in the portal later, but I should go ahead and ‘stage’ so it looks on time. That’s all she said.”

  “Female voice,” Aubrey repeats. “Did she use a name?”

  “No.”

  “Did she say ‘stage’ like that? Or ‘pre-stage’?”

  He thinks. “Pre-stage. Yeah.”

  Aubrey flips to a second timeline, this one with phone records. “We’ve got the PM’s call detail. He gets a text at 8:59 from an unknown number. Leaves the lobby at 9:05. You cut at 9:12. You sure he handed you cash upon arrival?”

  “Yes.”

  “Envelope branded?”

  “Plain.”

  “Any note inside?”

  “A post-it with ‘down 21:12 – up 22:03’ in block numbers. I didn’t keep it.”

  Vince whistles softly. “They gave you the exact window.”

  “It’s how you schedule,” Elias snaps, defensive again. “You don’t drop a building like it’s a light switch. You give a window.”

  “You keep receipts?” Aubrey asks. “Cash logs? Anything that shows you were paid twice—once in the system, once off?”

  His face goes pale. “Look, if this is about taxes—”

  “It’s about two people shot to death while your lights stayed off,” Vince says, patience thinning just enough to show. “But I’ll be real with you. If you don’t separate yourself hard and fast from the people who planned that window, you’re going to own their mess.”

  Elias swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing. “I didn’t plan anything.”

  “Then help me find the man who did,” Aubrey says. “He had a realtor fob. Leather portfolio. Clean accent. What else? Jewelry? Watch? Cufflinks? A car he got into when he left the lobby?”

  Elias stares at the table like the grain is a puzzle he can solve instead. When he speaks, his voice has the flat certainty of someone who finally lets the memory play without editing. “He wore a ring. Not a wedding band. Right hand. Looked like… like a signet. Black face, silver edge. He turned it when he talked. Like a habit.”

  Aubrey’s thumb digs into her own ring, and she makes herself stop. “Right-hand signet ring. You saw a car?”

  “Black SUV,” he says. “Not huge. Clean. He had one of those dealer plate frames with a realtor's name on it. Blue and white. I read it because the font was ugly, but I didn’t care enough to remember.”

  “Try,” Vince says, softer now. “Even a part.”

  Elias closes his eyes. “Hal… Halcyon,” he says, surprising himself as much as them. “Halcyon Property Group. That’s what it said. I think.”

  Aubrey writes it down in slow strokes so she doesn’t press too hard and rip the page.

  “Did he give you a number?” she asks. “A card?”

  “No card. But—” Elias flinches like he’s pulled a splinter. “He texted me once. Not from the scheduler number. From a different one. Said: ‘Let me know.’”

  Aubrey looks up. “Let me know?”

  “I thought he meant the panel,” Elias says. “Like the ‘eye’ icon turns red. I didn’t… I didn’t think anything of it.”

  Vince snorts without humor.

  Aubrey’s pen rests. “Do you still have that text?”

  “I wiped my phone last month,” he says, panicked at how that sounds. “I swap burners when they get glitchy. I’m not hiding anything—my stupid nephew downloads games and kills my storage.”

  “Who paid you at Queens?” she asks, not giving him time to spiral. “In the end. Cash envelope at the start—did anyone else put money in your hand?”

  He breathes. “Coat guy shook my hand when the lights came back. He—he pressed something into my palm. When I looked, it was a folded stack. Twenties and tens. Like one-fifty. He said, ‘Consider it a thank you for staying on schedule.’ Then he walked. Texted somebody, got into the SUV, and left.”

  “Left which way?” Vince asks.

  “North on 31st. Past the deli with the blue awning. That’s all I got.”

  Aubrey glances at the mirror. Slater will be behind it, arms folded, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Good. Let him chew.

  She turns back to Elias. “You said you didn’t know at Ridge. But you saw this same man at Meyer’s Supply a week after, asking about lockboxes.”

  “Yeah,” Elias says. “He smiled like people were furniture.”

  “What did you think he did for a living?” Vince asks.

  “I thought… lawyer, maybe. Or real estate.” Elias looks between them. “You think he’s the guy.”

  “I think he’s a door you can open,” Aubrey says. “For us.”

  Elias stares at her for a long breath. When he speaks again, the defensive tilt is gone; what’s left is shame. “I shouldn’t have taken the cash. I’ve got rent. I got behind. That’s not an excuse. I just—”

  “You’re not on trial today,” Vince says, not unkind. “But help us, and we’ll put a note in the file that you cooperated. That matters.”

  Aubrey slides a form across. “Consent to search your phone for deleted messages and recent calls. Consent to pull your Onyx portal logs. You can say no. But if you want us to treat you like a witness instead of a suspect, this is how.”

  His eyes flick to the door, the coffee, the pen. He signs.

  Aubrey caps the recorder. “Okay. Last pass. Anything else you remember about him—phrases, smells, habits?”

  Elias scrubs his face. “Cologne. Not sweet. Sharp. Like eucalyptus. He stood too straight, like he’d been taught. And when he left the lobby, he checked the corners without moving his head. That’s weird, right? Like—like his eyes went first.”

  “Right-hand signet ring,” Aubrey repeats. “Blue realtor fob. Leather portfolio. Halcyon frame. ‘Let me know.’ Clean accent, trained posture.” She nods once, committing it to the grid in her mind. “That’s good, Mr. Raines. That’s a lot.”

  He exhales all at once, some mix of defeat and relief. “Am I… good to go?”

  “For now,” Vince says. “Don’t leave town. If you swap phones again, bring the old one to us first.”

  Elias almost laughs. It dies halfway. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Vince opens the door and signals a uniform to walk Elias to the lobby. The room breathes differently when he’s gone.

  Aubrey stands there a second longer, thumb unconsciously worrying the groove of her ring, the ache grounding instead of fraying. She looks at the glass. “You heard it.”

  The door behind the mirror clicks, and Slater comes in, coffee in hand, eyes on the notes like they’re a map he grudgingly respects. “Halcyon Property Group,” he says, tasting the words. “Blue fob. Realtor toy. That’s a hell of a thread.”

  “Not a thread,” Vince says, tapping the phrase Aubrey wrote—LET ME KNOW “A leash.”

  Slater lifts his chin at Aubrey. “You think he’s freelance.”

  “I think he’s the same hand on different levers,” she says. “And he’s careful, but not perfect. He repeats himself—tools, language, posture. It’s a pattern—just a quieter one.”

  Slater’s mouth quirks, not quite a smile. “Good work. I’ll have CSU pull exterior cam hits on the 31st for the night of. Traffic cams, too. If we can get a plate off that Halcyon frame…”

  “We don’t need a plate,” Aubrey says, already moving, the colder air of the hall sharpening the edges of her thoughts. “We need their roster: Halcyon’s brokers, their cars, their client lists. Cross with debtors around Stonetown and Ridge. Pull their open houses— see who had an alibi.”

  Vince keeps pace. “And the phone phrase. ‘Let me know.’ Run it through past subpoenas—maybe it shows up in another case.”

  Slater nods once, sober. “We’ve got enough to kick the door of the paperwork.”

  They step into the brighter hall. Phones are already ringing—Dorian pinging camera registries, Cal’s voice somewhere down the corridor telling someone to get Legal on the horn. The building vibrates with motion, the way it does only when a case turns from smoke to outline.

  Aubrey pauses at the bullpen door and looks back through the small square of glass into the interview room. The coffee sits untouched. The chair is skewed. A faint muddy crescent smudges the floor where Elias braced his boot.

  “He thinks he’s invisible,” she says, not to anyone, not really. “He’s not.”

  Vince follows her gaze. “So we hunt him.”

  “I believe we are close, Vince, he’s in our crosshairs. We just have to not miss.” Aubrey says coldly.

  She pushes the door open. Lights hum, boards wait, and outside the windows, the city is a machine of moving parts—some honest, some not, all of them loud.