Detective by the Wayside Part Two

Detective by the Wayside – Part Two
By Vladimir Vorobiev Abadenskiy

Chapter Thirteen

Quinn dropped into the shaft first. The steps were damp, slick. Each one rattled in his joints. The air smelled of earth, decay, and something that shouldn’t exist. Behind him came Tammy’s near-silent steps — but the way she gripped her gun betrayed the tension in her fingers. Horn stayed up top, wrapped in bandages, pale, but still sharp-eyed like an old hound. He sat by the opening, pistol in hand, waiting. He knew they’d be back.

The basement stretched deeper, giving way to an older network of tunnels — pre-war, clearly.

“You ever see this on a map?” Quinn whispered.

“Not even close,” Tammy muttered back. “But they used to build these under Toronto in the forties. Then forgot. Like everything else.”

The flashlight revealed patches of brick and concrete, all blackened with mildew and age. Rags, toys, and newspapers lined the floor. They passed a sealed door. Childlike handwriting scrawled across it: “Don’t go in. It’s dark.”

Something squeaked in the distance.

“You heard that?”

“Yeah. Sounds like…”

A child crying. Weak. Real. Not a recording. Not a trick. Real.

They ran.

The room burst open without warning — an old furnace room, walls black with soot. In the corner — a cage. Heavy. Solid. Inside — a boy. Dark hair, bruised face, eyes unfocused. His whole body frozen in some deep, silent shutdown.

Quinn rushed forward. Tammy covered the room.

“You’re safe now. We’ve got you. You held on. That’s brave.”

The boy didn’t respond. He no longer believed in rescue. Quinn lifted the lid. No lock — just heavy iron. He cradled the child. So light. Frighteningly light.

Then a click behind them.

“Don’t ruin the shot,” said a voice.

They spun around.

A man stood in the doorway. Tall. Coat and hat. His face hidden behind a theatrical mime-style mask. In his hand — an old Panasonic camcorder, humming. A relic from the 1970s.

Tammy fired — twice. He vanished. Just stepped into the dark.

Quinn turned to her.

“Get him upstairs. Now.”

“You’re crazy! He could be armed!”

“He’s got a camera, Tammy. Not a weapon. He wants us scared. He wants us watching.”

“Then tell me what to watch,” she snapped. “Because I’m ready to shoot.”

The boy clutched her hand weakly.

“Go. Get him out,” Quinn said.

He turned into a different hallway.

Photos lined the tunnel walls. Polaroids. Children. Scenes frozen in nightmare. One showed Tammy, caught mid-yawn at the coffee machine. Another, Horn sleeping in his cruiser. A third — Quinn himself in his chair.

All real. All from inside their lives.

Underneath each: a date. And one line scribbled in marker.

“Roles assigned. On with the show.”

He stopped cold.

They had been watched since day one.

Chapter Fourteen

“Some films shouldn’t be rewatched. Especially when you’re the main character.”

Quinn emerged from the tunnel clutching the photos. The city above felt fake — like someone had rebuilt Toronto with cheap props. Gray sky. Muted light. Traffic noise filtered like it passed through celluloid.

Horn sat on the hood of the car, draped in an army blanket, cigarette in his mouth, pistol holstered. Tammy stood beside him, still holding the boy who hadn’t said a word. He simply stared — not scared, but empty, like someone who understood everything already.

“Where is he?” Horn asked.

“Gone,” Quinn said hoarsely. “Like he rehearsed it.”

Tammy looked up.

“Find anything?”

Quinn fanned out the Polaroids. Himself. Tammy. Horn. All within the last seventy-two hours.

“He was right there. Watching. Always.”

Tammy swallowed.

“He’s not just hunting.”

“No,” said Horn, flicking away his cigarette. “This is theater. And we’re cast.”

An hour later, they were back at the precinct. Horn got patched up. The boy — taken to a clinic under guard. Still silent. Still staring.

“Is it her?” Tammy asked, looking into the interview room.

Quinn nodded.

“The suspect’s mother. Ray Kaufman. The one who might’ve built all this. Maybe not alone.”

An elderly woman entered. Stooped, gray-haired, wrapped in a coat older than the station. She clutched a bag with pills and an orange.

“Thank you for coming,” Quinn said as she sat.

“He was a good boy,” she said, unprompted. “Until his son died.”

“We need to know where he might go.”

She stared at her hands for a long time.

“He said if the world won’t listen, he’d force it to look. Said silence is worse than screaming. Ever hear that?”

“We found a setup,” Quinn said. “A child locked in a cage. Lights. Camera. Props. Like a set.”

She closed her eyes.

“Then it’s started.”

“What has?”

“The Screening. He called it that. The ‘Screening of Pain.’ Said if filmed right, no one could look away. The world’s tired of heroes. Now it has to face what it ignored.”

Tammy and Quinn exchanged a look.

“Where?” Tammy asked.

The old woman pulled out a business card — old and faded.

“Gloria Theater,” Quinn read aloud. “It’s been shut down fifteen years.”

“That’s where he filmed with his father. As a child. It’s his cathedral.”

Back in the car, Tammy muttered, “He won’t stop. Not until someone applauds.”

“Then we destroy the projector,” Quinn said. “And burn the reel.”

The city stretched ahead of them — every person a potential extra, every window a potential camera. But now Quinn knew: this film wasn’t for the world.

It was for him.




Chapter Fifteen

“Some doors open inward. Straight into the abyss.”

From the outside, the Gloria Theater looked like the city had forgotten it decades ago. Broken windows on the second floor, boarded side doors, sagging posters from the VHS era, and that unmistakable stench of abandonment that never quite fades — not in spring, not in summer. But tonight felt different.

“Looks like something out of a nightmare,” Tammy muttered as they stepped from the car.

“That’s because it is,” Quinn said, adjusting his holster. “Shot in arthouse style.”

Two old, unmarked vehicles sat in the rear parking lot.

“He’s either inside,” Horn growled, “or left those as a message.”

“Everything’s a message now,” Quinn said. “The only question is — for what.”

The side door was bolted shut, but someone had carefully cut an opening between the boards. An invitation. “For those who dare.”

Inside, the air was thick with dust, old wine, and the hum of bad wiring. Movie posters lined the walls — No Country for Old Men, The Night Porter, White Noise.

“Oh, he’s a film buff,” Tammy whispered.

“Or obsessed with making pain look beautiful.”

The main hall opened before them — crumbling plaster, sagging ceiling. The rows of seats were half-dismantled. But in the first two rows sat mannequins. Child-sized. Dressed in winter hats and jackets, each holding a numbered card.

And one screen — pristine, stretched tight like a fresh wound. In front, an old camera. On its tripod, a letter.

Quinn stepped forward and opened it. He read aloud:

“Those who are ready to watch — stay. Those who fear — leave. Tonight, there will be a scene. The last. And maybe... it’s about you. Lights down. Projection begins. — R.”

Tammy raised her pistol slightly.

“A trap?”

“No,” said Quinn. “A finale. Or what he wants us to think is one.”

Suddenly, a switch flipped. Somewhere inside the walls, a generator coughed to life. The projector whirred. The lights dimmed. The seats creaked.

“Who did that?!” Horn shouted. He lunged for the rear door. Locked.

The screen lit up.

Black and white footage. The camera panned down streets, down precinct hallways, into homes. It showed the detectives — their sleepless nights, their arguments, their silence.

Then — children. In cages. One silent. Another whispering a prayer. No narration. No dialogue. Just a childlike xylophone playing in the background.

Quinn couldn’t look away. Each face was real. Each scene — a crime. Not staged. Not faked. He saw the boy from the basement. Others still missing.

“We were too late,” Tammy whispered.

Then the camera turned. On screen: Quinn, staring at the board in the precinct. Unaware he was being filmed. Next: Tammy, fixing her hair in the locker room. Horn — blood-soaked, leaning against his car.

“He filmed everything,” Quinn said. “Himself. With his own hands.”

The final scene: the empty theater. This one. Tonight. And on the screen — the three of them. Standing just as they were now, watching the screen. Someone had filmed them from behind.

“He’s here,” said Horn.

“No,” Quinn replied. “He was here. And maybe… not alone.”

The light blinked off. The projection ended. The camera on stage — gone. The tripod stood bare. In the front row, a note:

“Thank you for playing. The next episode is on the streets. The camera is still rolling.”

Tammy tightened her grip on the pistol.

“We didn’t stop him.”

“No,” Quinn said. “We just opened the credits.”



Chapter Sixteen

“In the stage lights, faces vanish — but the director’s gaze remains.”

They drove away from the Gloria in complete silence. The theater screen still burned in the backs of their minds like a projector left running inside their skulls. The car stereo was off. Horn wasn’t swearing. Tammy wasn’t smoking. Even Quinn — usually simmering beneath the surface — seemed burned out.

“So what now?” Tammy finally asked.

“Now he’s playing in the open,” Quinn said. “He’s shown us he knows where we sleep. Who we’re with. What we fear. And he’s going to keep filming.”

“He might release it,” Tammy said. “Put it online.”

“No,” Quinn shook his head. “It’s not for the crowd. This isn’t about fame. It’s about reaction. Personal. Real pain.”

Horn tapped the dashboard with a dry knuckle.

“Pain’s his medium. And we’re actors without a script.”

Back at the precinct, Quinn laid the photos out on the evidence board. Mannequins. The camera. Their own faces. It was a storyboard now — a timeline of horror, framed like a film pitch.

“He’s not just a killer,” Quinn said. “He’s an artist. Without an audience. Without an ending.”

“How do we find him?” Tammy asked. “We have no voice. No face. No forensics. His own mother speaks in riddles.”

Quinn stepped to the window. Outside, the city looked unchanged. But now every shadow could be a film crew.

“What if he’s already among us?” he murmured. “What if he’s cutting together his next scene… right now?”

“We need to strike first,” Horn said. “Take the lead.”

“No,” Quinn said flatly. “We make him reveal himself. On his own.”

He clicked on an old tape recorder. It hissed with static.

“What’s this?” Tammy asked.

“Found in the basement. Audio cassette. Not just footage — voice. One time. At the forty-seven second mark.”

They listened. Static. Then creaking. Then a man’s voice:

“They’ll watch. Even if they don’t understand what they’re watching.”

Quinn froze the tape with a finger.

“That’s him. Calm. Clear. No emotion. He believes this is art.”

“Can we run it?” Tammy asked.

“We’ll try. But it’s too clean. No accent. Like a BBC narrator.”

Horn snorted.

“Educated. Or just insane with good gear.”

Quinn stared at the board. Where the victims once were — now was his own photo.

“We’re bait. One by one. He can’t stand silence. He’ll come.”

“So where’s our stage?” Tammy asked.

Quinn pointed to the map. Marked a spot.

“Where it began. The Danforth basement. We’re going back. Only this time, with cameras. He wants to direct. We’ll give him the scene.”

And for the first time, his voice wasn’t weighed down with dread — but laced with trap.

Darkness would film darkness.




Chapter Seventeen

“Terror isn't the scream. It's the silence whispering: ‘Keep watching.’”

The basement was the same. But the air wasn’t. It had thickened — like a fevered breath trapped between concrete lungs. The walls seemed to sweat memories: fear, pleas, damp pajamas, dried blood.

Quinn led the way. A camera was already recording. Not theirs. A red LED blinked from the far corner — the eye of a witness. A judge. An executioner. A viewer.

“He’s already watching,” Horn said. “I feel it.”

“Good,” Quinn replied. “Let him.”

He stepped into the room — the one with the cage. It was gone. But its imprint still stained the floor. A black square, darker than the concrete around it, as if the floor itself remembered confinement.

Tammy examined the walls.

“There’s something new. Writing. In blood.”

Horn squinted at the crude lines.

“Not just writing. It’s a script.”

On the wall, shaky letters spelled:

“Scene Four. Admit fear. Embrace guilt. Face the lens. And cry, finally.”

Tammy’s face turned pale.

“That’s about us.”

“No,” Quinn whispered. “It’s about her.”

He pulled out a weathered photograph. A girl, maybe nine. School uniform. Huge smile. But her eyes — they knew something.

“She went missing a year ago. Case was closed. Parents divorced over it. But this… this is her. He’s showing her to us. Through text. Through shadows. Through our eyes.”

Horn crouched and pulled something from the dust. A child’s hair clip. Pink, shaped like a butterfly.

“We failed her,” he murmured. “We just walked past.”

Tammy sank to the floor, her hands covering her face.

“Why her?”

“Because she was the first,” Quinn said, sitting beside her. “The beginning. The one the system forgot. But he didn’t. And now he wants us to remember. Through pain. Through cameras. Through every breath we take.”

Suddenly, the floodlights flared on — blinding.

A figure stood above, on the rusted balcony. Tall. Coat. Hat. Faceless.

“You’re late,” the voice said. “But the shoot’s rolling.”

Horn fired. Twice. Gunshots rang like thunder in a crypt.

Nothing. The figure vanished.

A speaker crackled overhead. A recorded voice:

“I wanted you to feel it. To know what it’s like — to wait for someone who never comes.”

Tammy cried. Silent tears. Like a child too tired for sound.

Quinn stood, staring into the dark.

“I’m here,” he said. “I hear you. And I’m not leaving.”

From below, something echoed — footsteps. Where there were no stairs. No floors. Just earth.

And in that moment, all three of them knew:

The film hadn’t started.

It was only now beginning.




Chapter Eighteen

“Real fear begins when there’s no version left to disbelieve.”

They emerged before dawn. The city streets were empty, and Toronto felt abandoned — not by war, but by indifference. Like someone had hit pause, and the people just never came back.

Tammy lit her second cigarette in silence. Her hands trembled.

“We didn’t go down there chasing ghosts, right?” she asked quietly.

Quinn said nothing. He kept replaying the voice from the speaker. The same tone they’d heard on the tape. Calm. Measured. Surgical.

“He let us live,” Horn said. “Not out of mercy. He’s setting up the next act.”

Quinn nodded. He felt it too. They weren’t opponents — they were characters. With no script rights.

Back at the precinct, the silence was suffocating. Officers exchanged looks as the three of them walked in. The story had already spread. The mannequins. The footage. The theater. The myth now ran faster than official memos.

“Anything from forensics?” Quinn asked the lab techs.

“Yes, but you’re not going to like it. The writing on the wall? It was blood. His own. He cut himself and wrote with it. No gloves. No prints. Clean.”

Quinn clenched his jaw. Another message — not out of madness, but principle. A code.

Tammy opened her laptop. Screens filled with missing children. Snippets. Headlines. Names. She traced connections.

“Sixteen kids. Three years. No one saw a link. Until he made them watch.”

Quinn leaned over the desk.

“He’s not a god. He’s a hurt kid with a camera and access to gear.”

Horn entered with a file folder.

“We’ve got something. Near the theater — a white van spotted. Security footage caught a partial plate. Traced it to a rental under the name Richard Crawford.”

“Fake name,” Quinn said. “But it’s a thread. Let’s pull.”

He studied the footage. Inside the van, barely visible behind the glass — a face. Blurred. Shadowed. But the eyes — cold and still.

“He’s taunting us,” Horn growled. “He left that shot on purpose.”

“Then it’s time to play along,” Quinn said. “Pretend we accept the script.”

He looked at the board again — victims, mannequins, cages. And one old business card left from the visit to Kaufman’s mother.

The back had a doodle. No one had paid it attention. Until now.

It was a sketch of a building — a half-abandoned hotel in East York. Rooftop shaped like a screen.

He turned to Tammy.

“Next scene’s there. He’s waiting. And I’m done playing the actor.”

Tammy crushed her cigarette.

“Then let’s go to the set.”




Chapter Nineteen

“Not every empty building is dead. Some are just waiting for an audience.”

The old Bayview Hotel looked like it had died sometime in the late sixties and no one had bothered to bury it. Peeling facade, rusted rails, broken flagpole. No birds perched on the ledges. Just silence — thick, anticipatory.

Quinn knew this wasn’t just a location.

It was a summons.

If they didn’t enter, someone else would be chosen. The killer wouldn’t stop. He would just recast the part.

“Cameras ready?” Quinn asked.

“All rolling,” Tammy replied. “Analog only. No digital signals. He can jam them, but tape will survive.”

Horn checked his radio.

“Comms are good for now. But tech warned — thick concrete. Could go dead fast.”

They stepped inside.

The air was a cocktail of mildew, rotting fabric, and iron. The kind of scent that clings to crime scenes. The floor groaned underfoot like an old man complaining in his sleep. The walls were cracked open like brittle skin. Fire-blackened beams clawed out from the ceiling.

“He didn’t just choose this place,” Quinn muttered. “He lived here. Or hid here. Too many signs. This is a set.”

In the lobby: a single armchair. In front of it — a projector. Across the room, a screen stretched tight over a crumbling wall. Next to it — a cassette. Handwritten label: “Childhood. Act 1.”

Quinn didn’t touch it.

“He wants us to watch,” he said. “But we’re not the audience anymore. We’re the ending.”

Tammy headed upstairs. Horn went down into the basement. They moved with precision. No words wasted. Every step was a risk assessment.

On the third floor, Quinn found a door.

Locked.

It gave way on the third kick.

Inside: a bed. Walls plastered with photos. Children’s faces. Newspaper clippings. A personal file on each victim. He raised his camera. Started recording evidence.

“This is his war room.”

One photo stopped him cold. The girl with the butterfly hair clip. But now the background showed something new — an adult’s hand.

Barely visible.

But Quinn knew that hand.

His own.

“Goddamn it…” he whispered. “Taken during her interview. Three years ago. He was there. He filmed it. He was watching.”

Radio static.

“John,” Horn’s voice crackled, “sound down here. Generator kicked on. Projector too. It's playing. By itself.”

Quinn ran. Down corridors. Stairs. Into the main hall.

The screen flickered.

Black-and-white film again. The basement. The cage. A child sobbing. The camera shakes — handheld. Then a flash — a face. Just for a split second. His.

“Stop it!” Quinn yelled.

The projector whined. The reel kept spinning. New footage — Toronto, today. Near a school. A playground. Children.

Tammy burst in.

“He’s already filming again. A new victim. While we’re in here.”

Quinn yanked the projector off its mount. The film tore with a shriek.

Silence crashed down like a curtain.

He stood. His breath sharp.

“We move. Now. No more cinema. This is real.”

And the look in his eyes was no longer a detective’s.

It was a father’s.

Who knew what it meant to be one second too late.




Chapter Twenty

“There are frames you can’t erase. They hook into your memory like rusted claws into flesh.”

Toronto was drowning in rain — filthy, cold, not washing the city clean, but grinding its stink deeper into the streets. Patrol lights rippled in puddles like cheap special effects. The city felt peeled back, raw.

The scene was an alley near a school. No cameras. Just shadows thicker than the brick they clung to.

The body lay on a plastic tarp.

A woman. Young. Hair matted with blood. Dress torn. Legs folded like a broken doll’s. Eyes gouged out. And from her mouth — a strip of vintage film, 1970s stock.

Quinn stood above her in stillness. Horn was chewing through his glove to smoke through it.

Tammy knelt by the body, inspecting the slice on her neck.

“Same signature. Clean. Almost surgical. And he left… a card.”

She held it up. Scrawled in red:

“She didn’t watch. Now you must.”

On the wall beside the body, in blood:

“ACT II. THERE WILL BE NO SECOND TAKE.”

“That’s a cop,” Horn muttered hoarsely. “Jane Stevens. Deep cover. We didn’t get to her in time. He knew she was one of ours.”

Quinn felt something crack between his ribs. Not rage. Worse — the personal sting of deliberate pain. The killer hadn’t just struck a victim.

He had struck them.

“He’s targeting us now. All of us. This isn’t a hunt anymore. This is the response. His show is finished. We’re in the credits.”

Tammy led him to a metal dropbox nearby. Inside — parts.

A woman’s hand. A jaw. Wet film, coiled like entrails. And a photo. Horn, asleep in the back seat of his patrol car. In the background — Jane. Alive. Laughing. And in the window behind her — a shadow.

“He was there,” Tammy whispered. “Even when we thought we were alone.”

Quinn unspooled the film and held it to the light. Blood blurred the frame, but the content was clear. Jane. Screaming. Being cut. Dying not under a blade — but under a lens.

“We didn’t stop him,” Horn said. “We gave him an audience.”

“Then we’ll be his finale,” Quinn growled. “No reshoots. No goodbyes. Just truth. Just blood.”

A siren howled in the distance. The rain hammered harder. The film melted in Quinn’s palm, but he didn’t let it go.

On the back of the strip, another message:

“One of you is next. The role is written. The camera is rolling.”

They all knew: the next scene was already being filmed.

Not somewhere. Not someday.

But now.
In someone’s room.
In someone’s mind.

And the blood hadn’t finished flowing.




Chapter Twenty-One

“Some frames don’t end. They continue inside you.”

They found her seven hours later.

Stuffed in a dumpster behind an abandoned auto shop.

A young woman. Nurse at the city clinic. Dismembered. Her arms placed neatly at her sides. Her face — cut clean like a mask and sewn onto cardboard. Taped to her chest: another reel of old film, hand-wound like a forgotten student project from the seventies.

Quinn didn’t speak. The moment he saw her, something inside him stopped turning.

Everything about the scene felt like d;j; vu — not because it had happened before, but because the killer wanted it to feel that way. He was recreating horror. Sampling old nightmares like a sadistic DJ. Seamlessly editing the past into the present.

“He wanted a reaction,” Tammy whispered. “This wasn’t vengeance. This was composition. Montage. He’s splicing our lives into his.”

Horn stood back, green in the face. But he kept it down. Only winced when he saw the message scratched into the underside of the dumpster lid:

“ACT III. YOU’RE TOO LATE.”

“He thinks this is a film,” Horn hissed. “And we’re the audience?”

“No,” Quinn said. “He’s not a director. He’s a butcher with a storyboard.”

Back in the lab, the coroner spoke softly.

“The tissue was treated with formaldehyde. Preservation. Like he was prepping her… for a scene.”

Tammy flipped through the pathology reports.

“He’s copying seventies snuff killers — real ones. Greasepaint, poses, fake posters. This isn’t a spree. It’s a portfolio.”

But then came a break.

On the back of the cardboard mask — a partial fingerprint. Smudged, but usable.

They ran it.

Name: Simon Redford. Age: 39.

Former film student. Montreal. In 1977, he made an underground short called “The Cut”. Nonfiction. Everyone in it died — for real. The film was seized. Redford was institutionalized. Released after three years. Then he vanished.

Officially: presumed dead.

Officially: wrong.

“He’s been here the whole time,” Quinn said. “Different names. Shooting in basements. Archiving tapes. Waiting.”

Tammy stared at the map. Points lit up like fresh blood on old wounds.

“He doesn’t just want to be seen now. He wants to make us part of the frame. His final cut.”

Quinn slammed the board with a palm.

“Three victims. Three days. One vision. No mistakes. He’s working toward a scene. A public one. With noise. Screams. A finale.”

“Where?” Horn asked.

Quinn didn’t hesitate.

“Where it’ll hurt the most.”

He pointed to the map — a hilltop in the center of the city.

St. Paul’s Children’s Hospital.
Visible from every direction.
Today: open house.
Dozens of families.
An old auditorium inside. With a stage.

Quinn turned to his team.

“If we’re late — he’ll make sure the end credits roll over their bodies.”

Outside, the storm swelled.
CCTV crackled.
And in one of the hospital’s windows, something moved.
A figure.
A camera.

Not for broadcast.

For remembrance.



Chapter Twenty-Two

“You can wipe off blood — but not what you’ve seen.”

St. Paul’s Children’s Hospital loomed like a bastion of hope. White walls. Trimmed hedges. Laughter in the courtyards. Balloons, parents, nurses in pastel scrubs. Everything clean. Everything safe.

But Quinn knew better.
He was here.
Today.
Now.

He stood by the rear entrance, a bead of sweat running down his spine. Not from heat — from knowing. The kind of knowing that sets your bones vibrating. He could smell the predator. Like ozone before lightning.

“All teams are in place,” Tammy reported as she jogged up the steps. “Six groups inside. No weapons in view. Staff are briefed. No panic.”

“What if he’s not outside?” Horn said from the fire exit. “What if he’s already in?”

Quinn didn’t answer. Because Horn might be right.

On the third floor, in the art therapy room, children’s drawings covered the walls — suns, stick horses, blue houses.

And one picture stood out.

A tall man in a black hat. No face. Something in his hand — a camera.

Underneath, in crooked crayon:

“He was here. He watched me.”

Quinn snatched the paper.

“Who drew this?” he barked at a nearby orderly.

“Peter Johnson. Room 8. But he was discharged yesterday.”

“Who picked him up?”

“Some man. Black jacket. Said he was the uncle.”

“It was him,” Quinn growled. “He’s already taken the boy. We’re behind again.”

Blood spots — faint, deliberate — led down the service stairwell. Not fresh. Not gushing. Dripped. Like a breadcrumb trail.

They followed it into the basement. Under renovation. Supposedly sealed.

Darkness.
The hum of old pipes.
A taste of bleach and rust in the air.
And something else.

Iron.
Old blood.

The third door gave under Quinn’s boot.

Inside — a stage.

A makeshift platform built of crates. And on it — a boy. Alive. Bound. Gagged. Next to him, a camera, already rolling.

No killer.

Just a note taped to the tripod:

“I’m near.
I’ve filmed you.
Every step.
Every fear.
Thank you for the footage.
Next scene: final credits.”

Then something dropped from the ceiling.

A sack.

A body.

A woman — a nurse — the one who’d vanished last week. Split open. Hung like a set piece. Head stuffed with film.

Tammy yanked the boy off the crate, clutching him to her chest.

“He let us win. Almost.”

“No,” Quinn muttered. “He gave us a pause. So we’d think we were alive.”

Then — a click.

From the camera’s speaker, a voice crackled:

“Now keep watching. Don’t look away. Even if it hurts.”

And in that moment,
the silence took the director’s chair again.



Chapter Twenty-Three

“Some endings aren’t written. They’re carved out.”

Morning broke in smears of smoke and rain. The precinct stank of stale coffee, old sweat, and open wounds that hadn't scabbed over. No one spoke above a whisper. As if afraid the case itself could still hear.

Quinn stood at his office window, watching nothing happen. A bus stopped. A woman walked her dog. Someone spilled coffee. The world kept going, oblivious. But he knew: the killer was still out there. Or his work was.

“He’s toying with the ending,” Quinn said without turning.

“Or he knows exactly how it ends,” Tammy answered, stepping in with a new file. “But he wants us to suffer through every reel.”

Horn slapped two photos on the desk.

Still frames from the crime scene projector. The hanging body. The spinning camera. And in the mirror — a figure.

Hat. Shadowed face. But unmistakably alive.

“He wants us to see him,” Horn muttered. “He wants us to come.”

“Then he’s waiting,” Quinn said. “Waiting to kill the final character.”

They drove out. No backup. No tactical unit. Just the three of them — weapons, flashlights, and an old map of the forgotten tunnels beneath the city.

The location from the final note: a long-abandoned theatre, closed since 1968. Once home to a play that ended in fire. Everyone died. Since then, boarded up. Until now.

“If he’s really in there,” Horn said, “we’re walking into a trap.”

“Then better us than another child,” Quinn replied. “Let’s end his film.”

Inside, it was as dark as buried memory. Air thick as oil. The floor groaned beneath their boots like a reluctant grave.

On the stage: four chairs. Each occupied by a mannequin.

One in a police uniform.
One in a doctor’s coat.
One in a school uniform.
And one — naked, with a sign pinned to its chest:

“You.”

A camera stood before them. Running. The spotlight burned hot. And behind it — footsteps.

They turned.

He stood there.

Tall. Hat. Burnt face wrapped in gauze. In his hand — a pistol. But it hung low, relaxed. He didn’t aim.

“You came,” he said. “Thank you.”

“This what you wanted?” Quinn asked. “Us? Here?”

“I wanted you to know,” the man replied. “That you're no different. You just didn’t have a camera.”

“You murdered people,” Horn growled.

“I captured what you ignored.”

Tammy raised her weapon.

“You’re finished.”

He stepped forward, eyes on Quinn.

“Film me. As I am. End it clean.”

Quinn didn’t hesitate.

He shot him in the chest.

The killer staggered, dropped the gun. Fell backward. The camera shattered under him. The lightbulb burst.

Silence.

Tammy lowered her arm.

“Is that it?”

Quinn stared at the broken glass of the lens.

“Yes.”

But in his gut, he knew —
the reel still turned.
Not on screen.
In them.



Chapter Twenty-Four

“Sometimes silence isn’t peace. It’s an edit without sound.”

A week passed.

The city went back to traffic jams, overheard laughter, broken umbrellas. Caf;s refilled. Radios hummed. Parents kissed kids on foreheads like nothing had ever happened.

But inside Homicide, nothing was forgotten.

Quinn sat in the dark. His desk lamp cast a cone of amber over a stack of black-and-white photos and a single old videotape — scratched, unlabeled. He flipped through the photos slowly, like he was reading subtitles in a foreign language only he understood.

On the wall behind him — a new board.

Mostly empty.

Only one image pinned in the center: the mannequins onstage.
Four.
One labeled: “You.”
Its stare — somehow real.

Tammy entered quietly, like stepping into a confession booth.

“You haven’t slept,” she said.

“He won’t let me,” Quinn answered. “Even dead. If he is dead.”

“He wanted us to shoot him,” she said. “That was part of it.”

“He wrote his own ending,” Quinn muttered. “And left us to live in it.”

“Or to continue it,” she said. “Maybe he was waiting for one of us to pick up the camera.”

The door creaked. Horn walked in with a sealed envelope in one hand. His face — grayer than usual.

“No return address. Hand-delivered. Same handwriting.”

Inside: a new VHS tape.

Tammy’s breath caught.

Quinn slid it into the machine. The screen fuzzed, then blinked on.

Footage.

Them — in the abandoned theatre. From above. Different angle.
Not the killer’s view.
Someone else.

They watched as the scene played out. The killer fell. But just before, in the corner of the stage — another figure emerged. Similar build. Same hat.

He picked up a second camera.

The film cut to black.

“Double,” Horn whispered. “Or… follower. Or hallucination.”

“Or,” Tammy said, “he was never alone.”

“Or he wants us to think that,” Quinn said. “So we’ll never sleep.”

Outside the window, spring rolled in like an unreliable alibi. Kids played. Horns blared. Nothing stopped.

Quinn didn’t move.

“Run it again,” he said.

Tammy didn’t ask why. She just rewound the tape.

Outside the office — light. Inside — a frame, locked in time.

And from the speaker of the turned-off monitor came one last whisper, so faint it was almost imagined:

“Thank you for watching.
The end is just a new shot list.”






END OF PART TWO