The rain hadn't stopped. By the time Adrian Raines pulled onto the cracked asphalt of East 12th Street, the gutters overflowed like veins slit open, carrying the city's filth into the sewers. Blue and red lights bounced across graffiti-tagged walls, turning them into a sick carnival of shadows. The neighborhood smelled of wet asphalt, old piss, and the kind of desperation you couldn't wash away.
Adrian stepped out of his car, collar up against the storm, his coat already damp from the drive. No umbrella. He never carried one. A man like him didn't fight the rain; he let it sink into his bones until he couldn't tell where the storm ended and he began.
Uniforms milled around the perimeter. He caught their stares — some curious, some wary. They knew better than to approach him with small talk. Raines wasn't the kind of man you asked about the weather.
A sergeant nodded him through. "Second one tonight. Same setup."
"Show me," Adrian muttered. His voice was gravel, worn down by years of smoke and whiskey.
---
The apartment building was a rotting skeleton, bricks eroded by years of neglect, windows patched with cardboard. Inside, the air was heavy with mold and copper. Adrian climbed the stairs, his boots thudding on warped wood. Each step echoed, as though the building itself was holding its breath.
At the end of the hall, door 4C stood open. Yellow tape fluttered. Inside, the second victim waited.
The man was sprawled across a stained mattress, arms stretched wide, wrists bound with the same cruel wire as the first. His shirt was torn open, chest carved with precise, deliberate cuts. The wounds weren't random. They formed letters. Crude, jagged, but unmistakable.
Adrian crouched, his eyes tracing the bloodied grooves carved into flesh. Four letters, deep enough to leave scars if the man had lived long enough to heal.
FAYE.
Not the full name — not Fayette — but close enough. A signature in progress.
Adrian's jaw tightened. The taste of metal filled his mouth, as though the air itself had turned to rust. He lit a cigarette, ignoring the frown of the coroner nearby. Smoke curled into the damp air, trying to mask the stench of death.
"Cause of death?" he asked flatly.
The coroner, an older man with eyes too tired to pretend anymore, adjusted his gloves. "Knife through the heart. Quick. But he was alive for the carvings."
Adrian took a long drag, his eyes never leaving the body. "So he suffered."
The coroner nodded grimly. "Yeah. And judging by the bindings, our killer wanted him to. Same wire as the first victim."
Adrian exhaled slowly, the smoke mingling with the shadows. He glanced at the floor beside the mattress. A slip of paper, edges curling from the damp. He crouched and read the words written in the same jagged black hand as before:
DO YOU REMEMBER FAYETTE?
The letters swam in his vision, dragging him somewhere he didn't want to go.
He remembered Fayette.
He remembered the man's booming voice, the medals pinned proudly to his chest, the way neighbors saluted him in the street. He remembered the bruises hidden beneath his sister's sleeves, the long nights where he prayed the old man would just not come home. He remembered the silence of their mother, and later, the silence of her grave.
Adrian blinked hard, dragging himself back to the present. His cigarette burned low between his fingers, the ash long and fragile.
"Detective?" the coroner asked cautiously. "You alright?"
Adrian ground the cigarette out against the peeling wall. "Bag the note. Same as before. Prints, handwriting, whatever you can pull."
"On it."
---
Adrian stood, scanning the apartment. It wasn't random. None of this was random. The killer hadn't chosen an abandoned warehouse and a rotten apartment by chance. They wanted the locations to feel forgotten, discarded — like Fayette himself.
He stepped into the hallway, the walls lined with peeling paint and roaches scuttling into cracks. A uniform lingered nearby, clearly waiting for orders.
"Victim's name?" Adrian asked.
"Tenant ID says Leonard Briggs. Forty-seven. Worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs."
Adrian froze. His gaze sharpened like glass. "VA?"
"Yes, sir."
Adrian didn't respond immediately. His stomach tightened with something colder than dread. Leonard Briggs. VA. Fayette had dealt with the VA. Endless battles over benefits, claims, medical treatment. Adrian remembered sitting in waiting rooms as a boy, his father raging at clerks behind bulletproof glass, shouting about medals, about sacrifice, about betrayal.
If Briggs had worked there back then…
Adrian's throat was dry. "Pull his records. I want every file, every complaint, every case he touched. Tonight."
The uniform nodded quickly and left.
Adrian leaned against the wall, staring at the rain streaking down the broken window at the end of the hall. Fayette's ghost was everywhere tonight. Every drop of blood whispered his name.
---
Hours later, Adrian sat in his car outside the building, the cigarette smoke thick inside the cabin. The city hummed beyond the glass, indifferent to the nightmare unraveling within it.
He should have gone home. He should have poured another drink, buried himself in numbness. But instead, he found himself staring at his phone. His thumb hovered over a contact he hadn't dialed in months.
Clara.
His sister.
The last time they'd spoken, it had ended in screaming. She'd accused him of abandoning her after Fayette's death, of pretending none of it had happened, of letting the world believe the lie of their father's honor while she carried the weight of his sins. He'd walked out on her that night, and neither of them had looked back.
Now, with Fayette's name bleeding across corpses, he thought of her again. Of her bitterness. Of the way her voice had cracked when she said: You're just like him. Cold. Pretending. Coward.
Adrian's thumb trembled over the call button. But he didn't press it. He shoved the phone back into his coat pocket and lit another cigarette instead.
---
Back at the precinct, the walls buzzed with chatter. Two murders in one night had set the place on fire. Officers swapped theories, piecing together patterns that didn't exist. Adrian ignored them all, retreating to his office — a dim little box that smelled of stale coffee and smoke.
The files arrived just after dawn. Leonard Briggs, VA clerk. Adrian flipped through the paperwork, his eyes scanning faster with every page. Complaints, appeals, denials. Fayette Raines appeared three times, each note angrier than the last. Fayette demanding compensation, Fayette threatening lawsuits, Fayette blacklisted for "violent outbursts."
And at the bottom of one page, a signature that made Adrian's blood run cold.
Case closed. Denied by Leonard Briggs.
Adrian closed the file slowly, his hand trembling just enough for the cigarette ash to fall onto the desk.
This wasn't random. The killer wasn't just taunting him with Fayette's name. They were going after the people connected to Fayette's past. People who had wronged him, or at least, people his children believed had wronged him.
Adrian leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. The light flickered above, buzzing faintly like an insect trapped in a jar.
He whispered to himself, barely audible. "What the hell are you trying to tell me?"
---