PART 1: The Second Interview
Jack was half-asleep when the door opened again.
He jolted upright in the hard plastic chair, eyes bleary and red. He'd lost track of time — no clock in the holding tank, no window, no one saying much except for a barked order to sit, wait, or shut up. When he saw a woman enter, alone, with a folder in one hand and no badge clipped to her belt, he squinted in confusion.
She didn't look like a cop. More like a retired professor — salt-and-pepper hair tied back in a loose bun, trenchcoat open over a plain charcoal blouse, pen tucked behind her ear like it had lived there for twenty years.
Izzy Diaz set the folder down and pulled out the chair across from him. She didn't speak right away.
Jack coughed and sat up straighter. "So, what now? You guys taking turns wearing me down?"
"No," she said, almost absently. "I just like quiet rooms."
Jack blinked.
She smiled faintly, eyes never leaving his face. "You've had a rough night."
"Understatement."
She nodded. "I'm Detective Inspector Diaz. Mind if I ask you a few things?"
He gave a dry laugh. "You're gonna ask them whether I mind or not?"
Izzy folded her hands calmly. "You don't have to answer. No pressure. I'm not part of the official charge team. Just... curious."
Jack narrowed his eyes. "You're internal affairs?"
"No. Just someone who doesn't sleep when the edges don't fit."
He didn't reply. She took that as permission.
"Last night, you said you left Arthur's place around seven-thirty?"
"Roughly. I didn't check the time when I stormed out."
"Stormed?"
He shrugged. "He said some things. I said worse."
"Then?"
"Went to Kelly's Den. Drank. Loudly, apparently."
"No one remembers seeing you after ten-fifteen."
Jack rubbed his face. "Could've been outside. In the alley. I don't know. It blurs."
She studied him. "You black out often?"
"Less than I used to."
"Do you remember Arthur's face when you left?"
Jack blinked. "What?"
"Was he angry? Calm? Did he say anything after you walked away?"
He frowned. "He didn't follow. Just watched me go."
Izzy sat back. "You mentioned earlier there was a shattered glass."
Jack nodded slowly. "Yeah. He threw it."
"Where?"
"Across the room. Toward the... left side. By the wall with the abstract painting. Blue and silver thing. Looked expensive."
Izzy noted something mentally. That detail wasn't in the file.
"Did you pick it up?"
"No. I wasn't cleaning up for him."
"You sure?"
He looked up sharply. "I didn't touch the damn glass."
Izzy paused. "Okay."
She closed the folder and didn't get up right away. Instead, she watched him rub his wrists where the cuffs had been. The gesture was involuntary, childlike.
"You don't look like a killer, Mr. Rourke."
Jack chuckled without humor. "Neither did my brother."
Izzy stood and tapped twice on the glass. The door buzzed. Before she left, she turned back.
"If anything else comes to you — something small, out of place — tell someone. Or don't. I'll be watching either way."
Jack tilted his head. "You always this cryptic?"
She smiled — and for a brief second, there was something kind in it.
"No. Just with people who might be telling the truth."
PART 2: The Timeline Crack
The hum of Precinct 12 at night was low and constant — printers sputtering, keyboards clicking, the occasional cough or burst of laughter from patrol down the hall. But in her corner of the third floor, Izzy Diaz kept things quiet.
She sat in front of her monitor, half-empty coffee in one hand, crime scene log spread across her desk like a surgeon's tray.
Most detectives read timelines front to back. Izzy preferred to go backwards — starting from the moment the system recorded the 911 call.
23:31 – 911 received. Caller: concierge (Robert Whitely), reporting resident unresponsive, blood visible through glass wall of penthouse.
23:28 – Elevator activity: floor 39, up to lobby, no further swipes.
22:47 – Last access log from Arthur Rourke's keycard: building entry.
19:36 – Jack Rourke seen exiting the elevator (security camera still: confirmed).
18:57 – Jack Rourke enters building, buzzed in by Arthur (intercom log: yes).
That was the sequence Sergeant Kerr had staked his whole narrative on — and on paper, it was clean. Too clean.
Izzy leaned back, pen tapping her lip.
Between 19:36, when Jack left, and 22:47, when Arthur's card was used... there was nothing. No visitors. No deliveries. No one logged at the front desk. Nearly three hours of digital silence.
Kerr's report said Arthur was killed between 7:30 and 8:00 — based solely on the assumption Jack was the last person there.
But then why would Arthur's keycard show activity almost two hours later?
She checked the elevator logs again.
22:47 — 39th floor to lobby. One trip.
She pulled the building's lobby camera feed, jumping to that time.
Grainy footage. Concierge at the desk. Elevator doors open. A man steps out. Face obscured. Baseball cap. Hooded jacket. Walks straight out the front.
Not Jack.
Too tall. Too confident. No stumble. No hesitation.
Izzy zoomed in on the timestamp. The system tagged it as 22:47:53.
She wrote it down.
Jack, according to Kerr, was found passed out near Kelly's Den at 00:12, roughly twenty-five minutes after the 911 call.
But if the actual killer walked out at 22:47, and Jack was already blacked out somewhere by then...
She pulled up the location report from the responding officers who found Jack.
Found unconscious, half-seated behind dumpster near Grayson & 12th. Vomit nearby.
She switched to the patrol car GPS logs.
First stop logged at 23:58 — already en route when 911 came in.
They hadn't been dispatched because of the murder.
They were out, found him, called it in separately. Unrelated.
Izzy narrowed her eyes.
So Jack couldn't have been at the scene after 10:45. But Arthur wasn't even confirmed dead until nearly 11:30 — after someone left the building using his keycard.
Which meant Jack left... and someone else arrived later.
Someone who had access. Someone Arthur let in.
She sat back in her chair and rubbed her temple.
They were missing nearly an hour between Arthur's keycard use and the 911 call — time enough to clean up, plant evidence, and vanish.
And no one in the precinct had thought to question it.
Until now.
PART 3: The Scene Revisited
The elevator glided up without a sound. Izzy stood inside, arms folded, staring at her reflection in the brushed steel doors.
She hated penthouses. Always felt like walking into someone else's ego. But this one… this one was curated. Not lived in. And now, sterilized.
Ding.
Floor 39. The doors slid open.
A uniformed officer from forensics — young, nervous, and out of his depth — nodded when she stepped out.
"Inspector Diaz. Wasn't expecting anyone back up here."
Izzy offered him a tight smile. "Just following up. Want to confirm layout, angles, proximity. They'll want it airtight when it goes to trial."
He gestured awkwardly. "Right. Uh, the room's untouched since the initial pass. Just don't move anything."
She didn't answer — just stepped inside.
The penthouse looked identical to the photos. Sleek leather furniture, steel fixtures, glass tables. Not a speck out of place. No visible blood. No violence. It didn't look like a crime scene. It looked like a catalog spread.
She moved slowly, deliberately.
The kitchen island was polished to a shine. No clutter, just a single bowl of fruit that looked like it had been replaced since the murder. Too perfect. Too clean.
Izzy turned to the liquor cabinet.
Top shelf: a row of crystal tumblers. She counted. Eleven.
She counted again. Still eleven.
Standard set: twelve.
She stepped back, scanned the room. No signs of glass swept into a bin, no report from forensics mentioning cleanup.
And yet Jack had said Arthur threw one — toward the painting.
Izzy crossed the room to the far wall. The abstract canvas — swirling blues and silvers — was untouched. Beneath it, the floor was pristine. No scratch marks. No glints of leftover glass.
If a tumbler had shattered, it had been cleaned up perfectly. Not a shard missed. No report mentioned it. No photo showed it.
She took out her phone, covertly snapped a picture of the cabinet. Eleven glasses.
She turned next to the sitting area. Two leather armchairs near the wide window. One facing outward, toward the skyline. The other — oddly — swiveled ninety degrees, pointed toward the blank side wall.
That wasn't decorative.
She walked around it slowly. The placement felt... deliberate. Like someone had turned it mid-conversation. Or like someone had used it.
Too far from the couch to be casual. No drink on the side table. No reading material. Just a single stray fingerprint smudged on the armrest.
She glanced up. The city glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass. From here, you could see all the way to the old shipyard, even the steeple of St. Martin's.
She turned back toward the room. Imagining the scene. Jack standing here. Arthur behind the bar. A conversation turns bitter. Arthur throws a glass. Jack storms out.
And then... what?
Did Arthur sit in that turned chair?
Or did someone else?
She knelt slightly, looking at the carpet near the leg of the chair. One faint impression in the pile — a single circular divot. From a heel. A woman's, maybe. Or someone wearing formal shoes.
Not part of the original photos.
Izzy stood again and walked past the uniform.
"Thanks," she said.
"You, uh... see what you needed?"
She paused at the elevator, pressing the button.
"No. That's the problem."
PART 4: The Redacted Evidence
Back in her office, Izzy laid the crime scene photos across her desk like tarot cards.
Each was timestamped, sequential, numbered in red in the bottom corner.
One through thirty-six.
Except... the angles didn't add up.
She leaned in, scanning photos twenty-three to twenty-six. The documentation showed the living room from multiple sides — from the kitchen, the hall, a high corner angle.
But the side facing the outer window, where the reading chair sat oddly askew?
Nothing.
No angle. No shot.
She checked the log again.
#25 – OMITTED: BLURR — CAMERA MALFUNCTION.
She stared at that word. "Blurr" — misspelled in the official log.
Izzy picked up her desk phone, dialed the Forensics extension.
It rang three times.
"Ballistics and Scene Imaging," said a voice, tired and barely awake.
"Specialist Jules? Diaz here. I'm looking at the Rourke photos. Scene on 49th. There's a missing shot — frame 25. Says it was blurred?"
Jules hesitated. "Uh, yeah. That one didn't come out. Camera glitch. Auto-stabilizer bug."
"Camera glitch." Izzy repeated it like a dentist repeating "oops."
"Yeah. Happens sometimes with those older Canons. Image wouldn't save cleanly. Pixel drop."
"You sure it was dropped? Not deleted?"
Now the voice got defensive. "We don't delete anything without supervisor sign-off. If it was removed, I'd have paperwork."
"You have the raw card?"
Jules sighed. "That was turned in last night."
"Do you still have it?"
A pause. Then, "I might."
"I want to see it."
"That's... highly irregular."
"So is a homicide with no timeline."
Another pause. Then, "You're not lead on this one, are you?"
"No," she said. "Which is why I'm asking nicely first."
Silence.
Then: "If you come now, I've got twenty minutes before a scheduled call."
Izzy hung up.
She grabbed her coat, shoved the scene log into her bag, and left the office without another word.
An hour later, she sat in Jules' cramped lab on the basement level, watching as he inserted a scratched memory card into his reader.
"I didn't scrub anything," he muttered. "If it's gone, it's a tech fault."
He opened a hidden folder — unlabeled, but timestamped for the night of the murder.
Images blinked open across the screen, fast. She counted them by eye.
Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Then — a pause.
"See?" Jules said, pointing at a red X. "File 25. Corrupted."
Izzy narrowed her eyes. "Try importing it into a hex viewer."
Jules sighed, but complied.
The screen blinked — and lines of code scrolled past.
Amidst the corrupted data, a partial image loaded.
Static. Blur. Then — a warped, fisheye frame of the room. Slightly tilted.
In the far corner: the reading chair. Someone seated in it. Just a leg. Dark trouser leg, visible heel, foot crossed over the knee.
Not Arthur.
Definitely not Jack.
She tapped the screen.
"There."
Jules leaned in.
"Well, hell. That's something."
Izzy pulled out her phone and took a snapshot of the corrupted image.
It wasn't admissible in court.
But it was enough to tell her: someone else had been in that room.
And someone had tried very quietly to make sure no one ever knew.
PART 5: Quiet Alarm
Back in her office, Izzy typed slowly — not because she was uncertain, but because she knew exactly how careful she needed to be.
The subject line read:
RE: Request for Internal Image Verification – Case File 09-487 ("Rourke")
The language was precise, neutral, bureaucratic. She mentioned a minor discrepancy in the crime scene photo sequence. Didn't blame anyone. Didn't name Jules. Didn't suggest tampering.
Just a "routine quality control request" for an unprocessed image and timeline audit.
She cc'd it to Records, Archives, and one carefully chosen contact in Legal Affairs who owed her a favor from a decade back.
She did not cc Sergeant Kerr.
Izzy hit send.
Then she sat back and exhaled.
For a long moment, she didn't move. Just watched the cursor blink on the screen.
Then she opened the video feed of Jack's first interview again — not the one she'd watched from behind the glass, but the station's security-recorded version.
She clicked to minute 2:08 — the moment Kerr slid the photo of the letter opener across the table.
Jack flinched.
Not dramatically. Not guilty. Just... startled. Like someone seeing something they should recognize but don't.
Izzy paused the footage and zoomed in on Jack's hands as he reached forward to push the photo back.
The cuff of his coat pulled back.
Frayed edge. Worn fabric.
And — there, just above the wrist — a tiny, dark speck. Not shaped like a blood stain. No smear. More like a single dried drop.
It wasn't conclusive. It wasn't even useful yet.
But it was there.
She reached into her desk drawer, pulled out a yellow legal pad, and wrote one line at the top of a clean page:
JACK IS LYING — BUT NOT ABOUT THE MURDER.
She stared at it for a moment, then circled it twice.
Then she got up, locked her office, and went home — not because the case was over, but because she knew it was only just starting.