Page 2 of Little Author

I didn’t hear the footsteps.

I was too deep in this. My fingers brushing the cracked edge of the drainpipe where I’d just fished out the black button, my breath fogging the air as I imagined the scene again and again.

I was playing it on loop like a lover’s memory in my mind.

Her fall, his grip, and the whisper against her ear before everything went still for her.

My fingers trembled as I slipped the button into my coat pocket. It felt hot against my thigh, like it was pulsing with electricity.

“Excuse me…lady?”

The voice hit me like a physical whack to the arm.

I turned too fast and nearly lost my balance.

A man was standing behind the police tape, his brows pulling tightly and his mouth half-open like he wasn’t sure he was seeing what he was seeing.

He wore a cheap black raincoat, zipped up, with a badge hung around his neck on a lanyard, and a takeaway coffee in one hand.

His other hand held a forgotten parka, now slung over his shoulder like an afterthought.

“Are you seriously in the goddamn crime scene?”

I blinked at him.

He stepped closer. “Ma’am. I need you to back away from the evidence area. This is an active investigation.”

I straightened slowly and tried to remember how to ‘play normal.’ “I didn’t touch anything.”

“That’s cute,” he said flatly. “But I saw you crouched over the fountain like you were praying. Is this area significant to you? Had you lost your virginity here or something? Or, are you one of those crime scene junkies with a lover ready to chase you?”

I blushed but didn’t answer.

He stepped under the tape now, closer. Close enough for me to see the faint circles under his eyes, the old scar running down his left cheek like a slice of caution tape. He wasn’t young. Probably pushing forty. He had that look like he smoked his stress and drank his regrets away.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Elodie Tullie.”

I gave him my real name.

Habit. Stupid fucking habit.

His head tilted. “Wait a second. You’re that author, right? The one who writes all that dark shit. What’s its name again…Rue’s Song?”

I winced. “It’s called The Song of Rue .”

“Right…Creepy stuff. My ex-wife reads your crap. I think it just gives the assholes I lock up better ideas than their own moron asses can think up.”

He took a long sip of his coffee and studied me over the rim. I could feel his eyes sliding over the scene, realizing what I had been doing. I wasn’t just trespassing. I was mapping, reconstructing the scene like a play.

He glanced at the bench, the path, and then the drain.

And then I saw it. That shift in his posture, and it wasn’t just irritation now.

Suspicion.

“You see something?” he said.

“No,” I lied. “I was just…curious.”

“Curious is what the internet is for…” He stepped closer, voice lower. “Not breaking into an active crime scene and poking around like you’re starring in a fucking Tellie special.”

I swallowed.

His eyes narrowed. “You knew her?”

Just that she was a rat that snitched on flesh and blood that was her own when he protected her from a drug addicted monster .

“No.”

He waited.

“I saw it on the news. I thought?—”

“You thought what?” He cut in. “That you’d just swing by the site of a murder for inspiration?”

My silence must’ve said enough.

He exhaled hard through his nose, like he was biting back a hundred worse words. “Jesus Christ.”

“I wasn’t hurting anything.”

“You were contaminating a crime scene.”

I shrugged. “You could have missed something in the drain.”

His expression shifted. Barely. Just enough for me to see the flicker of realization. He hadn’t seen it. Neither had anyone else.

I took a step back, wanting some distance from his unwavering gaze.

He watched me now like I had fangs behind my lips. “You didn’t plant something, did you?”

“No.”

“Then why the fuck do you think something is in the drain?”

Because I know him. Because I have felt him move through this alley like a ghost with blood on his hands. Because I’d been dreaming about him for months. Because this scene was already written before she even died.

I stayed silent.

I surveyed the detective. “You may have missed something. I don’t know. Maybe next time, check the drains.”

Then I turned and walked away, the button burning against my thigh, my heart slamming with something close to panic.

Or maybe…arousal.