"Chapter 2: The Journalist and the Second Edit
The sky over Detroit had settled into a bruised, perpetual twilight—the kind of gray that seemed less like weather and more like a mood. In his small, sparse apartment that smelled of old books and stronger coffee, Pennyworth Hale spread the contents of Jonathan Briggs' safe deposit box across his oak desk. The crime scene photos formed a grim mosaic under the lamplight. Eleven stories. Eleven endings. All AUTHORIZED.
The word thrummed in his mind, a sinister echo.
His own text from the unknown number glowed on his phone screen, set apart from the evidence:
Once upon a mystery, there was a detective who thought he could read every story.
This one will read him instead.
He wasn't being taunted. He was being oriented. Like a reader handed a table of contents.
A sharp, efficient knock broke his concentration. Not Morsh's heavy fist. This was different.
Pennyworth swept the photos into a drawer, leaving only Briggs' black notebook open on the desk. He moved to the door and opened it without asking who it was.
The woman on his threshold was in her mid-twenties, with intelligent eyes that took in the entirety of him and the slice of his apartment behind him in one swift, analytical glance. She wore a practical trench coat, her auburn hair pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail. A leather satchel was slung over her shoulder.
"Pennyworth Hale?" Her voice was calm, direct.
"You know I am."
"I'm Nancy Drew.Michigan Chronicle."
"I know who you are,"he said. Her investigative series on county corruption had won awards. She was a dog with a bone, and the political class feared her. "What do you want?"
"To trade," she said, not waiting for an invitation, stepping past him into the apartment. She assessed the space with a reporter's eye—the ordered shelves, the lack of personal effects, the single desk illuminated like a stage. "You have a problem. I have a piece of it."
"I don't have problems. I solve them."
"Not this one."She turned to face him, her expression serious. "Jonathan Briggs was a source of mine. For three months. We were meeting last night. He never showed."
The air in the room tightened. Pennyworth closed the door slowly. "What were you meeting about?"
"He called it 'The Editing Process.' Said he could give me names, dates, payments. Proof that certain high-profile deaths over the last seven years weren't tragedies. They were… corrections." Her gaze flicked to the black notebook on his desk. She recognized it immediately. "He gave me a digital copy of his ledger two days ago. The physical one was his insurance. I see you found it."
Pennyworth didn't move, his mind recalibrating. Briggs had reached out to a journalist. He was preparing to blow the whole operation open. That's why SOON was on his palm. Not a warning of his death—a promise of exposure. And he'd been edited out before he could hit 'publish.'
"Who are the clients, Nancy?"
"I don't know.The codes were all I had. He was going to give me the decryption key last night. In person. Said it wasn't safe to transmit." She walked to the desk, her fingers hovering over the notebook but not touching it. A respect for evidence. "But he gave me one name. Not a client. The facilitator. The one who connects the money to the… editors."
Pennyworth waited.
"Paul McAfee."
The senior partner of Briggs'firm. It fit perfectly. The respectable front. The flow of dirty money through clean ledgers.
"McAfee is the banker," Nancy continued. "But he's not the Author. Briggs was terrified of the Author. Said he was more of an idea than a person. A standard. A rule of 'narrative cleanliness.'"
The plot must be smooth.
The words from Briggs' journal echoed in the room.
"Why come to me?" Pennyworth asked. "You have a story. Run it."
"Because an hour ago,"Nancy said, pulling a folded sheet of printer paper from her satchel, "this was slid under my apartment door."
She handed it to him. It was a simple, clean sheet. In the center, printed in a classic serif font, was a single line:
ARTICLE DRAFT: "LOCAL JOURNALIST FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDE" – FILE UNDER OBITUARIES.
Beneath it, a postscript in italics: First drafts are always rough. Let's edit.
The cold professionalism of it was more threatening than any shouted curse. It was a memo from HR in hell.
"They know I have the ledger," Nancy said, her bravado cracking for just a second, revealing the steel-wire fear beneath. "They'll come for me. And they'll make it look like I jumped or swallowed pills. Just like the others. I need protection. But more than that, I need this story to live. If I vanish, it dies with me. You're the only detective with a solve rate high enough, a profile public enough, that if you start digging, people will notice. Even if they make you stop."
Pennyworth looked from the threatening note to her determined face. She wasn't just asking for help. She was handing him the fuse. "You want me to light the match."
"I want you to find the arsonist before the whole city burns down in a 'perfectly explainable fire.'" She met his gaze. "Briggs said you were a variable. The one number in the equation that never quite balanced. He said if anyone could follow the ink back to the pen, it was you."
Before Pennyworth could respond, his phone rang. Morsh.
He answered."Hale."
Morsh's voice was gravel wrapped in tension. "We've got another one. Different script, same author."
---
The second body lay in the polished marble lobby of the McAfee & McAfee building, a jarring splash of chaos in a temple of order. Paul McAfee, sixty-two, senior partner, was sprawled at the foot of his own firm's logo, embedded in the floor. The cause of death was immediately, grotesquely clear. A stainless steel letter opener was buried to the hilt in his right eye socket.
Pennyworth and Nancy arrived together, her press credentials getting them through the outer cordon. Morsh shot a hard look at Nancy but didn't object to her presence. He was too focused on the surreal scene.
"Security cameras?" Pennyworth asked, crouching by the body. The position was all wrong. McAfee was on his back, arms at his sides. Not a defensive posture. A resigned one.
"Malfunctioned. All of them. For a seven-minute window starting at 7:02 a.m." Morsh said. "Cleaners found him at 7:15. Front door was still locked from the inside. Elevator logs show no movement. It's a sealed room."
"It's not a murder," Nancy whispered, her reporter's voice hushed. "It's a statement."
Pennyworth saw it. The letter opener. In the eye. The banker who looked away, who saw what he shouldn't, punished for his sight. A brutal, symbolic edit.
Then he saw the paper. Clutched in McAfee's left hand, crumpled but legible, was a single sheet of expensive firm stationery. On it, typed:
CLIENT K TERMINATED. ACCOUNTS RECONCILED.
NARRATIVE THREAT: NEUTRALIZED.
PROCEED TO NEXT EDIT: CHARACTER 'N. DREW' — PENDING REVIEW.
Nancy's blood drained from her face. Her initials were right there, in the cold, corporate language of her own death warrant.
Morsh read it, his jaw tightening. "They're talking about her like she's a file."
"That's how they see everything,"Pennyworth said, rising. His mind was ice-clear, the pattern snapping into dreadful focus. Briggs kept the ledger. McAfee moved the money. They were the system's left and right hands. The left hand developed a conscience, so it was cut off. The right hand was now a liability, so it was removed. Efficiency. Not rage. Editing.
And the next candidate for deletion was standing right beside him, her breath coming a little too fast.
"You're not going home," Pennyworth said to Nancy, his tone leaving no room for debate. "You're coming with me. Morsh, I need a safe house. Off the books. Now."
Morsh nodded, already dialing. "On it. But Hale… they knew we'd find this note. They're telling us she's next. This is a challenge."
"It's a first move," Pennyworth corrected, his eyes scanning the perfect, empty lobby. "In a game they think only they know how to play."
He looked at Nancy, at the fear she was mastering behind her eyes. He thought of the ledger, the eleven authorized deaths, the chilling, bureaucratic evil of it all. This wasn't a crime of passion. It was a crime of philosophy. The belief that some people were mere characters, to be written in or out for the sake of a cleaner plot.
The Author was editing his story.
And Pennyworth Hale had just decided to become a grammatical error they could not erase.
As they left the marble morgue of McAfee & McAfee, a uniformed officer approached Morsh, holding an evidence bag. Inside was a single, unused bullet.
"Found it, Lieutenant. On the reception desk. Like a… calling card."
It was a .22 caliber round. Subsonic. The same as the one that killed Briggs.
Pennyworth took the bag, holding it up to the light. Etched into the brass casing, by a fine, precise tool, was a tiny symbol: a fountain pen nib.
The author always signs his work.
He pocket the bullet, the metal cold against his fingers.
The game was indeed on.
And Chapter 2 had just taken a very dark turn.