The apartment felt different now. The "locked-room" mystery had evaporated, replaced by the clinical reality of a crime scene. It wasn't a puzzle anymore; it was a stage.
Harley stood by the front door, her eyes locked on the chain latch. Isaiah was a shadow at her side. Brian hovered near the kitchen, while Lucas leafed through Mercer's printed financial statements. Near the desk, Alex was hunched over, squinting at the laptop.
Silence stretched thin until Harley spoke. "If the killer left through the maintenance corridor, they needed this door locked from the inside to sell the illusion."
"Right," Brian said.
"But the chain makes that impossible from the hallway," Lucas added, not looking up from the papers.
Harley didn't argue. She just dropped into a crouch, peering at the sliver of space between the door and the frame. "It's not impossible."
Isaiah's posture shifted. "You're thinking a line."
She gave a small, distracted nod.
"Like fishing line?" Brian asked, skeptical.
Harley stood and turned to the building manager. "Do you have any thin wire? Or heavy thread?"
A few minutes later, she was standing in the hallway with a length of nylon cord. The team watched from inside. She pulled the door shut—leaving it unlocked—and began feeding the cord through the crack.
"No way," Lucas muttered.
Using the cord like a surgical tool, Harley snagged the loop of the chain. She lifted, guided, and gave it a sharp, practiced tug.
Click.
The chain slid into the track. From the outside.
Total silence.
Brian let out a long breath. "Okay then."
"That's actually disturbing," Lucas said.
Isaiah wasn't looking at the door; he was watching Harley. His gaze wasn't impressed—it was calculating. "You've seen that before."
"Years ago," she said shortly. She didn't elaborate.
__
"There's more," Alex called out.
They crowded around the desk. The laptop was humming now, tethered to a power cable provided by the manager. Alex scrolled through the last activity log.
"Video call at 9:26 PM."
Harley went still. "That's after he entered the apartment."
"So he was still alive," Isaiah noted.
"With who?" Brian asked.
Alex pulled up the metadata. "Encrypted service. No name. But I found some fragments in the cache." He tapped a key, and a distorted, metallic voice scratched through the speakers.
"…Daniel. Don't stall."
Harley's jaw set. Then came Mercer's voice—thin, desperate.
"…I need more time."
"Time for what?" Lucas asked.
"Financials?" Brian guessed.
Alex was already nodding. "Large transfers started at 9:40 PM. Multiple accounts, then shifted to crypto wallets."
"He was under duress," Harley said.
"He had to be conscious to authorize those transfers," Isaiah added.
Lucas crossed his arms. "So this wasn't just a hit. It was an extraction."
The momentum shifted. Brian went into high gear. "Who stands to gain? Partners? Debtors? An ex?"
Alex checked the records. "No spouse. No kids. But there's a sister—Mina Mercer. She's a co-signer on several of these accounts."
"Start with her," Brian said.
Harley agreed instantly. It was her first mistake of the night.
__
Mina Mercer arrived at the station looking like a portrait of controlled grief. She was professional, composed, and helpful.
"I don't know why anyone would want to hurt Daniel," she told them, her voice steady.
"You two shared several accounts," Brian pointed out.
"Yes."
Lucas slid a bank statement across the table. "Can you explain these irregular withdrawals from two months ago?"
Mina didn't flinch. "Daniel was under a lot of stress. He made some poor choices."
Harley watched her for any sign of a crack, but there was nothing. No micro-expressions, no tells. Just a woman mourning her brother.
"You were out of town Tuesday?" Isaiah asked.
"I was at a conference. I have the registration and hotel receipts."
They checked. It was all verified.
Harley felt a prickle of irritation. It had felt too easy, too convenient. She'd let the obvious answer blind her to the details, and she hated being wrong. Isaiah noticed the frustration in her eyes, but he stayed quiet.
__
While the others stayed with the electronics, Isaiah went back to the maintenance corridor alone. He walked the length of it, flashlight clicking on.
Halfway down, he stopped.
He knelt, the beam of light hitting the dusty floor at an angle. There weren't just one set of prints. There were two. One set was heavy, wide-soled. The other was lighter, narrower.
He stood up slowly. This wasn't a solo act.
__
"Guys," Alex's voice echoed from the apartment.
When Isaiah returned, Alex was pointing at a remote-access program buried in the background processes. "Someone mirrored the building's security system to an external device."
"So the footage wasn't edited after the fact," Brian realized.
"It was manipulated in real-time," Harley said, the pieces finally clicking.
Isaiah looked at her. "That requires a specific kind of access. Physical access."
Lucas looked toward the door. "Building access."
They didn't go to the manager's office. They went to Apartment 3A.
Eugene Hart. A retired IT contractor who had been "helpful" during the initial walkthrough. Maybe a little too helpful.
When Brian knocked, Eugene opened the door with a weary sigh. "You again?"
"You worked in network security, Eugene," Isaiah said, stepping into the doorway.
"I'm retired."
Harley didn't wait for an invite. She pushed past him. On his desk sat a laptop with a portable drive plugged in. She turned the screen. The building's surveillance interface was staring back at her.
Eugene's hands began to shake.
"Explain," Brian said, his voice dropping an octave.
"I didn't kill him!" Eugene stammered. "Mina... she told me he was stealing. She said she just needed to get into his accounts to protect the family money."
"You edited the feed," Isaiah said.
Eugene nodded weakly.
"And the second set of footprints in the corridor?" Lucas asked.
Eugene hesitated, then whispered, "Her."
__
They brought Mina back in. She tried to maintain the act, but the coldness had started to seep through the cracks.
Harley didn't go for the throat this time. She kept her voice low, almost conversational. "You didn't mean to kill him at first, did you? You just wanted to scare him into moving the money."
Mina's jaw tightened.
"But he realized what you were doing," Isaiah added. "And you knew he'd go to the police."
Mina's breathing turned shallow.
"The citrus," Harley said.
Mina blinked, confused.
"Daniel was deathly allergic," Harley continued. "You brought the drink. You knew exactly what would happen if he drank it. It's a clean way to kill someone when you're standing right in front of them."
The silence in the room became heavy. Finally, Mina exhaled, the grief vanishing to reveal a sharp, jagged resentment.
"He was going to ruin everything," she said, her voice devoid of emotion. "He was going to expose us both. I did what I had to do."
__
Back at Major Crimes, the air felt still.
"Two-man job, staged locked-room, live-edited video," Lucas said, leaning back in his chair. "That's a hell of a lot of work for a payout."
"Greed is a full-time job," Brian muttered.
Isaiah looked over at Harley. "You leaned too hard on the sister at the start."
Harley didn't look away. "I did."
Isaiah gave a single, sharp nod. "But you adjusted."
For the first time since they'd met, the tension between them wasn't a wall. It was a bridge.
"That's the job," she said.