My voice sounded too loud in the quiet hallway.
There was a smell. It wasn’t dinner. It wasn’t her perfume. It was the sharp, chemical stinging of bleach. And underneath the bleach, there was something else. Copper. Metallic. The smell of old pennies.
I know that smell. Every operator knows that smell. It is the scent of violence.
I moved through the house, clearing rooms out of instinct. Living room: clear. Kitchen: clear. But the dining room… the rug was gone. The hardwood floor was wet. Someone had scrubbed it, but in the moonlight filtering through the window, I could see the dark stains that the bleach hadn’t quite lifted.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, shattering the silence. It was a number I didn’t know.
“Is this Hunter?” a voice asked. It was deep, professional, and tired.
“Speaking.”
“This is Detective Miller. You need to get to St. Jude’s Medical Center. Immediately.”
