The dead didn't always look dead right away. Sometimes they looked as if they'd simply stopped mid-routine—tea left unfinished, the television still on, and slippers perfectly aligned beside the couch like someone had taken the time to be polite before passing.
That was what the patrol officer thought when he first found Howard Laskey. Howard was eighty-one, a retired dockworker who lived alone in a small house near the marsh road. The officer had initially called it in as a standard unattended death, but then he noticed the chair had been moved. It hadn't been knocked over in a struggle; it had been carefully repositioned so that Howard was facing the window.
It was as if someone had wanted him to watch the street.
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It was Sunday, a day when Grayhaven felt slower, though never quite peaceful. Harley stepped into the small home and felt the air immediately—stale, warm, and faintly scented with peppermint. Isaiah stood at her shoulder, his eyes moving in slow, rhythmic sweeps of the room.
Brian went straight to the kitchen, scanning for medication bottles and signs of a struggle, while Lucas knelt by the body. Alex hovered near the doorway, already pulling the neighborhood camera grid onto his tablet.
Howard Laskey sat in an armchair by the front window, his hands resting on the arms with his palms down. He didn't look defensive or pleading. His eyes were half-closed and his chin was slightly dipped. There was no blood and no obvious trauma, but his lips were tinted a faint, bruising blue.
Harley's gaze shifted to the small teacup on the side table. It was half-full and still smelled faintly sweet. Lucas looked up from the body. "Could be cardiac. Could be respiratory."
Harley didn't answer. She was staring at Howard's hands. The nails were clean—too clean for a man who had spent his life on the docks, or even for a man enjoying a quiet retirement. Someone had scrubbed them.
Isaiah noticed it too. "He didn't do that himself."
"No," Harley agreed.
"Teapot's still warm," Brian called from the kitchen.
Lucas frowned. "Warm?"
"Warm," Brian repeated, turning to face them. "Someone boiled water recently."
Harley looked at the microwave clock. It was blinking, having been reset. She wondered if there had been a power outage, or if someone had intentionally unplugged it. She filed the detail away and stepped toward the window. Outside, the street was quiet, but the curtains were slightly parted—just enough for Howard to have been positioned to see someone arrive or leave.
"Why face him toward the street?" Isaiah asked quietly.
Harley didn't have to answer, because the reason was already walking toward the front door. A woman in her late fifties, wearing a neat sweater and carrying a grocery bag, stopped dead on the sidewalk when she saw the police cars. Her face shifted from shock to worry, and then into something more complicated—recognition.
She approached slowly. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice thin. "Is this... Mr. Laskey?"
Brian stepped outside to intercept her. "Yes. Who are you?"
"Marjorie Vance. I live two houses down."
Lucas stood in the doorway. "Do you know him well?"
Marjorie nodded quickly. "Not close, but I check on him sometimes. On Sundays."
Isaiah's eyes sharpened at the mention of the day. "Why Sundays?" Harley asked.
Marjorie's gaze flicked toward the house. "Because... he always had a visitor on Sundays. For months now."
"A visitor?" Brian's jaw tightened.
Marjorie nodded again. "Every Sunday."
Lucas stood up slowly. "Who?"
Marjorie's mouth opened, then closed. She looked genuinely frustrated with herself. "I don't know."
"You don't know who visited him every week for months?" Brian asked, his skepticism clear.
"I saw them," she insisted. "Always around noon. Same time, same pattern. But I... I can't describe them."
Harley watched her face carefully. The woman wasn't lying; she was genuinely confused. "It was a man," Marjorie started, then immediately shook her head. "No—maybe a woman."
"That's not helpful," Brian muttered.
"They wore a hat or a hood," Marjorie's voice cracked. "They carried a bag sometimes. They'd stay an hour, maybe two."
"Did Howard seem afraid of them?" Harley asked.
Marjorie hesitated. "...No."
"Did he seem happy?" Isaiah asked.
Marjorie looked down at her shoes. "No."
That answer felt more honest than anything else she had said. Harley's gaze sharpened. "Then why didn't you call anyone?"
Marjorie's face tightened. "Because he told me not to. He said they were... helping him."
"And you believed that?" Isaiah's voice was low.
Marjorie swallowed hard. "I wanted to."
That line hit harder than a confession. Wanting to believe was how people managed to ignore the things they shouldn't. Harley looked back at Howard through the window—facing the street, watching, waiting. The visitor hadn't come today. Or they had, and this was how they'd left him.
__
Alex stepped forward, holding out his tablet. "Okay, the neighbors' doorbell cam across the street caught something."
He turned the screen to show footage from 11:56 AM. A figure walked up the sidewalk toward Howard's house, wearing a long coat and a low hat, carrying a bag. Their face wasn't visible, but their gait was calm and familiar. They reached the door, and then the footage glitched.
It wasn't a total blackout, but a stutter—two seconds repeated over and over. Then the feed resumed at 12:18 PM. The figure was gone, and Howard's curtains were slightly parted.
Brian went cold. Lucas stared at the loop. Isaiah's jaw tightened. "Someone edited a doorbell cam," Harley said.
Alex nodded, looking pale. "It's not just that. The file has a remote access mark."
"How does a random visitor hack a doorbell cam?" Brian exhaled.
Harley didn't answer, because the question itself was the trap. The visitor wasn't random; they were consistent, deliberate, and weekly. And now, for the first time, they had left behind something besides uncertainty: they had left a body.
__
Lucas stepped back into the living room and began checking Howard's pockets. He froze, then slowly pulled out a small, folded piece of paper from the man's cardigan. It was old and thin, looking as if it had been folded and refolded a hundred times.
Lucas opened it carefully. It was a handwritten note with only one line: If I miss Sunday, look under the floorboard by the window.
Isaiah took a slow breath, and Brian whispered, "He knew."
He knew he might not survive. He knew the visitor wasn't there to help him. And he had waited until the last possible moment to ask for someone to find what he'd hidden.
Harley looked at the floorboard near the window, then at the curtains, and finally at the street outside. The visitor was gone, but the game was still very much in play.