The smell of iron and antiseptic hung in the formerly grand hallway like an omen. The cream walls, once beautifully soft, threaded with blood.
Thick, crimson pools of it lay stagnant on the marble floor, glinting under the harsh overhead lights that the crime unit had staged. An evening that had once been cause for celebration now dripped with dread.
Outside the hallway, third-party tape organized by yellow had begun to draw itself against bated breath and occasional flashes from the press like moths ripping to flame.
Inside, Officer Eduardo Marín, tall and broad-shouldered in his pressed navy uniform, took a grim survey of the blood-soaked scene. He took a deep breath and turned to his colleague, who was crouched beside the body.
"Find anything?" he asked.
Lucas, a younger, sharp-eyed officer in his early 30s, looked up from where he was photographing the scene. "No evidence of forced entry, no odd footprints either.
Doesn't sound like the victim attempted self defense at all. It's as if they were… ambushed."
Eduardo's brows furrowed. "Anything on the victim?"
"No ID yet. Broken face, hardly recognizable through the trauma. We're going to need forensics to make the identification or something more."
Briskly, Eduardo stepped away from the widening pool of blood and walked down the hall toward the grand ballroom.
Inside, the mood was somber but still buzzing — groups whispered together, some wept quietly and others simply stood frozen in place, shocked at how grisly the night had become.
On the far side was Mr. Smith, the balding, portly owner of the event in a three-piece suit that was now rumpled by stress and sweat. Eduardo came to him, steadily but firmly.
"Mr. Smith?" Eduardo said, catching the man's eye. "Can I have a word with you?"
Mr. Smith nodded nervously, his pale face twitching as the officer led him away from the crowd and into a quieter corridor.
"Did you notice anyone strange tonight? Someone who didn't appear to be here?"
"No," Smith said quickly. "Everyone seemed… fine. At least to me. There wasn't anyone suspicious."
Eduardo studied the man before him for a beat. There was fear in his eyes, but no deceit. Still, protocol was protocol.
"You have a list of all invited guests and had accessed to the venue?"
"Yes, of course. We keep a full entry log."
"I need that."
Mr. Smith did not hesitate to call over a young male staffer, who was wearing a white shirt and black waistcoat whose nametag hung threateningly by a thread. "Fetch the entry log for Officer Marín. Now."
As the staffer bolted, Eduardo flicked his eyes around the interior like a detective's. They fell on the far corners of the ceiling.
"You've put up CCTV cameras in this place, haven't you?"
Mr. Smith glanced in the same direction and nodded. "Yes. The whole venue is covered. We've even got a camera right by the back hallway."
Eduardo straightened, adopting a commanding tone.
"Perfect."
"I want all the footage right away."
"Of course, Officer," Mr. Smith said as he sought to stay calm. "Come with me. I will show you to the monitoring room."
They passed through a secured door, down a narrow hallway to the security office, an unassuming room cluttered with monitors and recording equipment.
The overworked security tech in the room jumped out of his seat as soon as he saw them.
"Let's see the hallway camera from a half hour before the scream until now," Eduardo said.
The tech nodded and started scrolling back through the timeline.
Eduardo leaned in, eyes squinted as he observed grainy video playing out on the screen.
People coming and going. Suzzanne with the kids in the garden. Felix pacing, phone in hand.
Then…
"Hold on—there," Eduardo gestured to the screen.
Just minutes before the scream, the feed showed a shadow pass into the hallway. The figure was wrapped in a dark suit, head down, striding quickly — but not suspiciously.
What was most striking wasn't the figure's looks but their confidence. They moved like they belonged.
"Enhance the footage. Zoom in."
The tech gave it a try, but the face was hidden by bad lighting.
"Do we have another angle of this corridor?"
"Yes, from the east side. I'll pull it up."
In that time, the staffer came back with a leather binder — the entry log.
Eduardo took it and flipped through the names quickly, checking for anything out of place.
There were hundreds of names. Some handwritten. Some marked with wristband numbers.
Too many.
"Copy the guest list. And save this footage," Eduardo told the tech. "Burn it to a secure drive. We'll take it with us."
He turned to Mr. Smith. "We'll be keeping this area sealed off. No one touches anything until forensics does their sweep."
"Yes, officer."
Exiting the security room, Eduardo breathed out; his brain was already moving. He had a dead body, no identification, a mysterious man and a ballroom full of influential people.
This wasn't merely a murder; it was something far more than he could imagine.
And now… he needed to establish for whom it was intended.
St. Jude Forensic Hospital.
The antiseptic smell was strong in the white halls of St. Jude Forensic Hospital. The daylight poured through the long hallway windows, pale and oblivious of the horrors hidden behind the frosted glass doors of the morgue.
Eduardo waited just outside one of those doors, hands tucked deep in his coat pockets, jaw set tight with quiet tension.
Next to him, Officer Lucas paced impatiently back and forth across the floor, tapping his pen against his leg, looking over now and then toward the double-paned window where the body lay inside still and silent as a question that would not answer itself.
They didn't speak. They didn't need to.
The gravity of the murder hung over them — too vicious, too calculated to be anything other than personal.
Inside, the forensic pathologist, Dr. Selena Jones, looked up from her notes and caught Eduardo's gaze through the glass. She gave a small nod, motioning them to come in.
Eduardo opened the door and cold air hit him away. The quiet inside was only broken by a noise from the vents in the ceiling and the soft sound of medical tools being moved on metal trays.
"What've you got for us?" Eduardo asked, his voice low but just as urgent as they approached the examination table where the lifeless body lay under bright lights, covered with a white sheet from the chest down.
Dr. Jones pulled off her gloves and gestured toward the lifeless man beneath the white sheet.
"Multiple injuries. Several deep stab wounds to the torso, arms, and upper legs— followed by four broken ribs."
"What's most concerning is this—" she leaned in, brushing her hand gently under the neck, "—a clean fracture at the base of the skull. C1 and C2 vertebrae. Someone cracked his neck before the stabbing even began."
Eduardo's jaw tightened as he took in the listen to everything Dr. Jones said. "So he never had a chance."
"No. Whoever did this didn't just wanted him dead. They wanted him... erased."
Lucas winced slightly beside Eduardo, the cold brutality of it still jolting. Eduardo, however, remained steady, though his chest burned with anger.
"Any idea who he is?"
"That's the problem actually," Dr. Jones replied.
"There is no ID on him not anything that can tell us who he is."
"It will take a while to try reconstruct his face, so we can know what he really looks like. If that will even work. He has an acid burn along his jaw and the skin, around his temple is all peeled off. It seems like someone did not want us to know who this person is."
A silence fell. Eduardo's fists curled.
"But," the doctor continued, "I did find something useful."
She moved to the table and carefully raised the man's right hand. The skin was pale and cold, the fingers stiff. "Here."
She rotated the hand to show an inked image of a flared-wing eagle that covered skin below the thumb and wrist.
"A tattoo," Eduardo murmured. "Eagle motif. Looks military. Or cartel-related."
"Could be," she said. "Ask around. Someone must have seen it out there. And that's not all."
She gestured for them to follow her to a tray nearby where a few items had been meticulously packaged in evidence bags.
"This ring," she said, lifting one between her gloved fingers, "was on his left ring finger. Platinum. Engagement Ring — Inscription inside is scratched out, but from the design it looks like an engagement ring. This might help tie him to a missing persons report — if his family's looking."
Lucas leaned closer. "And if they aren't?"
"Then we go deeper," Eduardo answered.
"Someone always talks."
Dr. Jones raised an eyebrow, then patted behind her and pulled out a small object in another sealed evidence bag.
"And this," she said, with emphasis, "could be what turns this whole thing around."
Eduardo grabbed the bag and inspected the object. A silver brooch, rose in silhouette, petals cutting and complicated, a dim flash of red enamel near the stem.
"A brooch?" Eduardo asked.
"It was gripped in the palm," she said. "Tightly. As if he snatched that off somebody during the assault. I searched high and low on his clothes — there's zero sign this ever belonged to him. No pin marks. No matching accessories."
Lucas's eyes widened. "So... the killer does leave something behind."
"Exactly." Dr. Jones crossed her arms. "This rose… it was not meant to be left behind. But it did. And that kind of mistake?" She leaned forward. "Is what gets killers caught."
Eduardo looked down at the brooch, unopened but lethal in implication. He looked at Lucas and then back at the body.
"This is a game-changer," he said, his voice soft yet determination-filled. "If this belonged to the killer—"
"—then their days are numbered," Lucas finished.
Eduardo nodded, tucking the evidence bag inside his jacket with delicate care.
"Run that tattoo through all gang and military databases, clear?" he ordered. "We run the ring through missing persons and jewelers. And have forensics examine that brooch for DNA or fingerprints."
"One print will give us a face."
As they exited, Eduardo looked back and cast a glance at the lifeless body lay on the table.
"You didn't die for nothing," he muttered.
"We'll find them."
And with that, they left the chilly room.
But they weren't alone anymore.
Now, the killer had left a mark.
And so it was only a matter of time before the truth began to claw its way into the light.
Author's Note:
Thankyou for reading:)
Have a Good Day/Night<3<3