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Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Smell
I first noticed the smell on a Tuesday.
Not the usual hallway cocktail of curry and weed that normally leaked under 4B’s door. This was sweeter, metallic, like pennies left in milk. It drifted down the corridor of the Hawthorne Arms and curled under my own door at 4A like it was looking for me by name.
I was hungover, late for a freelance deadline, and trying to ignore the migraine thumping behind my eyes when Mrs. Delgado from 4C started screaming.
By the time I yanked my door open, half the floor was already in bathrobes. Delgado stood frozen outside 4B, one arthritic hand clamped over her mouth. The smell hit me full force then—thick, intimate, wrong.
“Alex,” she croaked when she saw me. “Call someone.”
The building super, Patel, was already fumbling with his master key. Two uniformed cops arrived before he got the door open. They pushed past us, hands on holsters, and disappeared inside.
Twenty minutes later one of them came out holding a clear evidence bag. Inside was a single scrap of paper, folded small.
My name was written on it in blue ballpoint: ALEX REYNARD.
Not printed. Written. My own handwriting.
I felt the hallway tilt.
