Chapter 1: The Punctuation
Michigan never slept.
It only pretended to.
At 2:13 a.m., rain glazed the streets of Detroit like polished glass, reflecting neon signs and broken promises in equal measure. The city breathed in the damp—a slow, tired exhale of steam from manhole covers and last-call cigarette smoke. Somewhere between the silence and the sirens, in the quiet pocket where night criminals and early ghosts shared space, Pennyworth Hale stood on a fire escape overlooking what would become his fifty-first murder case.
Twenty-six years old.
Fifty drug cases.
Sixty-five murders.
Forty-seven kidnappings.
The numbers followed him like obedient shadows, never leading, always trailing. He didn't keep count—the department did. The newspapers did. The whispering detectives in precinct hallways two counties over did. To them, he was a statistic that defied statistics. To himself, he was simply a man who noticed things others preferred to overlook.
"Hale. You're late."
Lieutenant Morsh stood under a streetlight, his face carved from the same granite as the buildings around them. At forty-eight, he'd seen more bodies than most coroners, and it showed in the permanent crease between his eyebrows—a fold of skin that had forgotten how to relax.
"I was solving the Archer kidnapping," Pennyworth said, his voice calm, measured. He descended the iron stairs, his long black coat whispering against the railing. "The girl's in St. Mary's now. Parents are with her."
Morsh grunted, a sound that could have meant anything. "This one's different."
"They're all different until they're not."
The alley opened before them—a narrow throat of brick and garbage. Flashlights cut through the rain, their beams catching floating particles of mist like dust in a cathedral. And in the center, a man lay on his back, arms slightly spread, as if he'd decided to take a nap in the grime.
Pennyworth approached without hurry. Speed created blindness. He believed in slow revelation.
The victim was white, late forties, dressed in a suit that had been expensive yesterday. No visible trauma except for the single, neat hole just above his left eyebrow. A punctuation mark.
"Name?" Pennyworth asked, crouching.
"Jonathan Briggs," an officer read from a notepad. "CPA. Works—worked—for McAfee & McAfee downtown. Wife called in missing six hours ago when he didn't come home for dinner."
Pennyworth's eyes moved in practiced patterns. Shoes: polished, but scuffed at the toes from walking. Left shoelace slightly looser than the right. Hands: clean, no defensive wounds, nails recently trimmed. Wedding band: present, but there was a faint tan line suggesting he'd removed it regularly.
"He was meeting someone," Pennyworth murmured.
"What makes you say that?" Morsh asked.
"The shoes. He walked here, at least a few blocks. In the rain. A man this meticulous doesn't scuff his good shoes for fun. He was hurrying. Meeting someone he didn't want his wife knowing about."
"Affair?"
"Maybe. But CPAs don't usually get shot in alleys over affairs." Pennyworth's gaze traveled up the brick wall opposite. "No casing."
"What?"
"The bullet. No shell casing on the ground. Either the shooter picked it up—risky, with police response time—or used a revolver. But revolvers aren't this quiet in enclosed spaces. And look." He pointed to the wall behind Briggs' head. "The angle. The bullet entered here, went through, and impacted brick. But the spatter pattern…"
He stood, moving to the wall. With a gloved hand, he traced an invisible line from the victim's head to a chip in the brick at chest height.
"Shooter was elevated. Second floor, maybe third. Suppressed rifle. Professional."
Morsh frowned. "A hit? On a CPA?"
"Not just a hit," Pennyworth said, his voice dropping. "A message."
"To who?"
Pennyworth didn't answer. His attention had caught on something else—a slight discoloration on the victim's left palm. He took the man's hand, gently opening the fingers.
There, written in faint blue ink that had smeared with rain and sweat, was a single word:
SOON
"He wrote it himself," Pennyworth said. "Ballpoint pen. Recent—the ink hasn't fully set. He knew."
"Knew what?"
"That he was going to die tonight. And he wanted us to know he knew." Pennyworth released the hand, letting it rest back on the wet pavement. "This wasn't a surprise. It was an appointment."
The rain picked up, drumming a cold rhythm on dumpster lids and police car roofs. Pennyworth stepped back, taking in the entire scene—the body, the alley, the dark windows above. A perfect, closed circle of violence. No witnesses. No obvious motive. Just a dead man with a word on his palm and a hole in his head.
"Clean," Morsh muttered. "Too clean."
Pennyworth nodded. Most murders were messy affairs—bursts of anger, fear, desperation. They left traces like fingerprints on a window. This was different. This was surgical.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Unknown number. He almost ignored it—he was working—but something made him answer.
"Pennyworth Hale."
Silence on the line, but not empty silence. The kind filled with breath and intention.
Then a voice, smooth and calm: "You're looking at it wrong."
Pennyworth's posture didn't change, but his eyes narrowed. "Who is this?"
"The period goes at the end of the sentence, Detective. Not the beginning."
The line went dead.
Pennyworth lowered the phone, staring at the screen. Unknown caller. No callback number.
"Problem?" Morsh asked.
"Wrong number," Pennyworth said, slipping the phone back into his coat. But his mind was already racing, connecting dots that might not even be related.
Period. Sentence. Punctuation.
He looked back at Jonathan Briggs, lying in the alley with his secret word and his neat little hole.
What sentence were you, he wondered. And who's writing it?
"Get me everything on Briggs," he told Morsh. "Financials, client list, emails, phone records. And I want building access logs for every structure with a sightline to this alley."
"That's half a block's worth of—"
"Then we'll work through the night," Pennyworth said, his voice leaving no room for argument. He turned up his collar against the rain. "This isn't going to be one of the easy ones."
"You've said that before."
"And I've been right before."
As the coroner's team moved in with their black bags and zippers, Pennyworth took one last look at the scene. The flashing lights painted everything in strobes—a stop-motion tragedy. In his mind, he could already see the report taking shape: Homicide, unknown assailant, investigation ongoing.
But the word on Briggs' palm glowed in his memory.
SOON
Soon what?
Soon again?
He walked back to his car, an unmarked sedan that smelled of coffee and old paper. As he slid into the driver's seat, his phone buzzed again—not a call this time, but a text from an encrypted number.
The author always signs his work.
You just have to know where to look.
Pennyworth stared at the message, the rain on the windshield blurring the world outside into a watercolor of grief and light.
Then, slowly, he typed a reply:
And what story are you telling?
The response came instantly:
Once upon a mystery, there was a detective who thought he could read every story.
This one will read him instead.
Goodnight, Pennyworth.
He didn't text back. He started the car, the engine a low growl in the wet dark. Through the rain-streaked window, he watched them lift Jonathan Briggs into the van, the body bag zipping closed with a sound like a last, sharp breath.
Some cases were puzzles.
Some were mazes.
This one, he sensed with a cold certainty that started in his bones and spread outward, was a first chapter.
And first chapters, he knew, were always written to make you turn the page.
The wipers swept across the glass, clearing then obscuring, clearing then obscuring.
Like truth itself.
He pulled away from the curb, leaving the alley to its darkness and its secrets. Behind him, the crime scene tape fluttered like a ragged banner, marking the spot where a story had ended.
Or perhaps, where one had just begun.
TO BE CONTINUED...