The night had stretched into morning, but Marcus Dross felt no difference. The sky was a dull gray, clouds heavy, the kind that promised rain but refused to let go of it. He stood outside the police station, leaning against the cold stone wall, a paper cup of coffee in his hand. The drink had long gone lukewarm, untouched.
He stared at it, watching the dark liquid ripple faintly as though mocking him. In ten years of working cases, he had seen corpses twisted by rage, greed, lust, desperation but the scene at the church was something else. Something colder.
Marcus brought the cup to his lips, hesitated, then lowered it. With a small exhale through his nose, he tossed the cup into the trash bin. His hands slipped into his pockets, shoulders heavy.
"That's going to be a lot of work," he whispered to no one.
The doors of the station creaked, and an officer stepped out, folder tucked under his arm. His steps were quick, almost nervous, as though eager to hand the responsibility back to Marcus.
"Detective," the man greeted, holding out the folder. Marcus accepted it with a nod.
"The victim's background," the officer explained. "Name: George Gomez. Age: 49. Worked as a factory machinist. Never married. No children. He was a regular at the church attended prayers almost daily. Neighbors said he was quiet, polite. Nothing out of the ordinary."
Marcus flipped open the folder, scanning the photo clipped inside. A middle-aged man with soft features, the kind of face that disappeared in a crowd. His eyes carried no violence, no hint of the brutal fate waiting for him.
"Thanks," Marcus muttered.
The officer nodded once, almost in relief, before turning back inside.
Marcus stood alone again, eyes falling back to the photo. He studied it longer than he needed to, as though waiting for George Gomez to reveal something.
A devout man, loyal to his God. Tortured, stripped, humiliated, and displayed upside down in the holiest part of the church.
Marcus's brow furrowed. Does the killer hate God?
The thought lingered in his head like smoke.
He let out a long sigh, lowering the folder, his mind pacing even when his body stood still. In all his years, patterns eventually showed themselves greed, vengeance, jealousy. But this? This felt like theater. An act designed to provoke, to speak.
His eyes drifted to the page again. George Gomez.
Normal man. Devoted to faith. Alone in life. And now carved like scripture, his body used as a message.
Marcus closed the folder with a snap and rubbed his thumb against the cover. Something about it didn't sit right. Not just the cruelty of the murder, but the choice of victim. He felt it in his gut there was more to Gomez than a quiet life and prayers.
He checked the sheet clipped inside. Address written in black ink. An apartment across town.
"Alright, George," Marcus murmured under his breath. "Let's see what you left behind."
He pushed off the wall and walked toward the curb where his black car waited. The vehicle sat heavy and still, its polished surface reflecting the dull sky above. He slid into the driver's seat, tossed the folder on the passenger side, and started the engine.
The low rumble filled the silence, but Marcus didn't turn on the radio. He never did. He preferred the quiet, even if it made the echoes of crime scenes harder to push away.
The city passed by in muted tones as he drove. Billboards and streetlights stood over cracked sidewalks where early workers hurried to their jobs. Life moved on, blind to the kind of darkness Marcus carried with him.
His hands tightened briefly on the wheel. For most people, the murder in the church would be just a headline, something to gasp about over breakfast. For him, it was another burden added to the collection already weighing on his back.
The rain finally began to fall, light at first, then heavier, streaking across the windshield. Marcus flipped the wipers on, the rhythmic scrape filling the cabin. The city blurred under water and glass, a shifting gray landscape.
He thought again of George Gomez. A man with no family, no legacy. A man whose last act on earth was to scream beneath a church ceiling while someone peeled his flesh into symbols.
"God-devoted," Marcus muttered bitterly as the wipers dragged across. "And this is what he got."
The thought tasted sour.
He pulled the car into gear, leaving the station behind. Ahead, somewhere in a dim apartment, George Gomez's life waited to be opened like another folder. And Marcus Dross knew well answers never came clean. They bled, they rotted, and they dragged you deeper the closer you looked.
Marcus stepped out of his car, the evening air still carrying the faint echoes of church bells from blocks away. The neighborhood looked ordinary—rusted tricycles leaning against cracked walls, stray dogs sniffing garbage bags left out too long, laundry hanging limp under the gray sky. From the outside, Apartment 16 looked no different. A place where, by all appearances, a quiet, devoted man lived his life in prayer and silence.
But Marcus knew better. People could wear devotion like a mask.
He slid his hand into his pocket, pulling out his favorite bypass tool, a thin strip of steel he had been using since his early days in the force. He jimmied the lock with practiced patience. The mechanism gave way with a soft click, the sound echoing faintly in the hushed hallway.
The door creaked open.
Darkness spilled out like a heavy breath. No light bulbs glowed inside. No scent of incense or candles burned. Instead, the air was thick—suffocating, rotting. Marcus stepped in slowly, his shoes crunching faintly against litter scattered across the floor. His nose wrinkled at the stench: old trash, spoiled food, something metallic… blood.
He scanned the room, pulling out a small flashlight. The beam cut through the gloom. The apartment was a wreck. Clothes were tossed carelessly over broken furniture. Piles of religious pamphlets and prayer books lay damp and torn across the floor, as if soaked by spilled drinks or worse. A small statue of the Virgin Mary stood crooked on a shelf, its face cracked, one painted eye missing. Dust clung to everything.
Marcus muttered under his breath, "So much for devotion."
He walked further in. Then he saw it.
A smear. A dark line across the worn linoleum floor, glistening faintly under his flashlight. Blood. Not dry, not brown and flaking. Fresh. Hours old, at most. Marcus crouched down, pressing two fingers against the streak. Still tacky. His jaw clenched.
His hand went to his phone. He dialed quickly, voice low and steady.
"This is Detective Marcus Dross, Special Investigation Unit. I'm at Apartment 16, Varga Complex. Possible secondary crime scene. Get a team here now."
He ended the call but didn't put the phone away. His instincts told him to keep it close. Something about the silence in the apartment wasn't natural.
The blood trail pulled him deeper inside. He followed slowly, every step echoing too loud in the stillness. The trail wound past the living room into a narrow hallway, walls stained with old moisture, paint peeling in strips. Marcus's beam moved across the walls and landed on scraps of paper pinned there handwritten notes in messy scrawl, biblical verses half-finished, sometimes twisted into nonsense. "He is watching" repeated on several scraps. Others were filled with numbers and letters, incomprehensible, like the markings carved into the victim's flesh.
Marcus whispered, "Son of a bitch…"
He followed the trail into the kitchen.
There it ended. At the sink. The drain was clogged with something. Marcus's light trembled slightly as it revealed the object. His gut twisted.
It was there. Flesh. Torn, mutilated. The missing piece of the victim. Left like some kind of trophy, dropped in the sink like trash.
Marcus's throat tightened. He exhaled through clenched teeth. "F*ck…" His voice cracked low, heavy. He gripped the edge of the sink, his gloved hands whitening. He could almost feel the echo of the torture, the screams that must've filled this very room only hours ago.
The room seemed to breathe with it the blood stains sprayed across the counters, the knife marks etched into the wood, the overturned chair with its legs splintered. It was as if the walls themselves remembered what happened here.
Marcus took a step back. His heel hit a glass bottle, sending it rolling across the floor, clinking hollowly into the dark. His flashlight caught more stains, more fragments fingernail marks dragged down the wall, a rosary snapped in half, its beads scattered across the tiles.
The sirens outside grew louder. A wailing chorus of approaching backup.
But in the moment before they arrived, Marcus stood alone in the apartment's suffocating silence. His breathing loud in his ears, his pulse hammering. The weight of it all pressed down the grotesque cruelty of it, the ritualistic precision, the way it seemed less like murder and more like a message.
The killer wasn't just showing rage. He was performing.
Marcus closed his eyes, forcing his breath steady. He'd seen hundreds of crime scenes in his decade of service. But this… this had teeth. It was personal. It demanded attention.
The sirens cut off suddenly outside. Doors slammed. Boots pounded the hallway. Radios crackled. Soon, the apartment would be swarming with uniforms, cameras, chatter.
But for one heavy moment, Marcus stood there, staring at the sink.
And in the back of his mind, a thought crept in quiet but insistent:
He wanted the people to see this.