Chapter 1 (Continued): The Victim's Secret Life
The city morgue at 4 a.m. was a cathedral of stainless steel and fluorescent light. It hummed with its own peculiar silence—the low drone of refrigeration units, the drip of a sink, the distant echo of a night janitor's cart wheels. Pennyworth stood over Jonathan Briggs' body, now laid out on an autopsy table, pale under the clinical glare. The hole in his forehead looked smaller somehow, neater, as if death had tidied up the violence.
Dr. Aris, the night-shift pathologist, a woman with silver-framed glasses and a perpetual expression of detached curiosity, pointed with the tip of her pen. "Single entry wound. Twenty-two caliber. Subsonic round, based on the lack of cavitation. Professional grade."
"Suppressed?" Pennyworth asked.
"Almost certainly. The neighbors in the apartments above heard nothing. A dog barked at 2:05, but the owner assumed it was a raccoon." She glanced at her notes. "Time of death is consistent with the shot heard—or not heard—at 2:05."
Pennyworth's gaze drifted from the wound to the victim's left hand. The word SOON had been photographed and documented, but now, cleaned, it looked even more stark—a desperate, final memo from a man stepping off a cliff.
"Did he write it himself?"
"Ink under his fingernail," Dr. Aris confirmed. "Same pen as on his palm. A standard Bic ballpoint. He wrote it under stress—the letters are jagged, the pressure uneven. He knew what was coming, Detective. And he knew he had seconds to leave a clue."
But a clue to what? Pennyworth thought. Soon what? Soon you'll be next? Soon you'll understand?
"Anything else on him? Unusual?"
"His watch was stopped at 2:07. Shock, maybe. Or symbolic." She lifted Briggs' right arm. "But look here."
On the inside of the victim's wrist, faint against the pale skin, were four tiny numbers, written in the same blue ink, but smudged, as if he'd tried to wipe them away: 7820.
"A safe combination?" Pennyworth mused aloud. "An address? Part of a phone number?"
"Or a countdown," Dr. Aris said softly. "Seven-eight-two-zero. Days, maybe. Hours."
The door to the morgue swung open, and Morsh entered, carrying a cardboard evidence box and smelling of rain and cheap coffee. He dropped the box on a neighboring empty table with a thud.
"Briggs' office life. Clean as a whistle. Too clean." He pulled out a file. "McAfee & McAfee does taxes for half the mid-sized businesses in Michigan. Briggs handled a special roster of clients—all off-book. Separate server, separate filing system."
"What kind of clients?" Pennyworth asked, his attention fully on the lieutenant.
"The kind that don't like paper trails. Three shell corporations registered in the Caymans. A 'consulting firm' that hasn't consulted anyone in five years but moves millions. And a charity for 'urban revitalization' that's never revitalized anything but its directors' bank accounts." Morsh's face was grim. "He wasn't just a CPA. He was a ghost-maker. He made dirty money look like it died and went to accounting heaven."
Pennyworth took the file. The pages were dense with numbers, transactions, coded entries. It was a ledger of secrets. A man who knew this many secrets was a vault. And vaults only got cracked open two ways: with the combination, or with a shotgun.
"Who were the clients? Names."
"That's the thing," Morsh said, pulling out a single sheet. "There aren't any. Just codes. 'Client A', 'Client B'… up to 'Client K'. Eleven of them."
Eleven. Pennyworth's mind snagged on the number. The K for the eleventh letter. And the four digits on Briggs' wrist: 7820. Not a countdown. A code.
"K is the eleventh client," Pennyworth said, thinking aloud. "Seven, eight, twenty. Seven-eight-two-zero. What if it's not a number? What if it's coordinates? Client 7, File 8, Entry 20? Or Page 78, Line 20?"
He began flipping through the file, his eyes scanning with a speed that made Morsh blink. Page 78 was a summary of quarterly transfers for a corporate entity listed as "Horizon Holdings." Line 20 was a single, massive transfer: $4.2 million, dated three days ago, to an account listed only as AUTHOR.
"There," Pennyworth said, his finger tapping the page. "Four-point-two million. Three days ago. And the recipient: AUTHOR."
The word hung in the cold air, echoing the text message he'd received. The author always signs his work.
"We need to trace this account," Morsh said, already reaching for his phone.
"It'll be gone," Pennyworth said. "A shell within a shell. But the timing… Briggs made this transfer. Then he wrote 'SOON' on his hand. He knew the payment was a trigger. He knew it was his final act." He looked from the file to the body on the slab. "He wasn't killed for what he did. He was killed for what he knew. This payment was a mistake. Or a message he was supposed to send."
Dr. Aris cleared her throat. "Detectives? There's one more thing." She had Briggs' personal effects bagged beside her. She pulled out a small, slim key. "This was sewn into the lining of his suit jacket. Deliberately hidden."
It was a safe deposit box key. No number, just a logo: First Michigan Trust.
---
Dawn was a gray smudge over the lake when Pennyworth and Morsh pulled up to the First Michigan Trust's main branch. The building was a fortress of old money and granite, looking down on the waking city with stoic indifference. The manager, a nervous man named Mr. Ellis, had been summoned from his home. He blinked sleep from his eyes as he led them down into the vault.
"Box 914," Ellis said, his voice echoing in the sterile, silent chamber. He used the bank's master key, and Pennyworth inserted the small key from Briggs' coat. The lock turned with a satisfying thunk.
Inside the long, narrow box was not what Pennyworth expected. No stacks of cash, no bonds, no jewels. There was only a single, sealed manila envelope.
Pennyworth lifted it out. It was heavy. He broke the seal and tilted the contents onto the polished steel table beside the box.
A stack of photographs slid out. Crime scene photos. Old ones, judging by the grain and color tone. A body in an alley. A woman in a car. A man in an office. Each was marked with a date, going back seven years. And paper-clipped to each photo was a newspaper clipping—an article about the case, always with the same conclusion: Death by misadventure. Suicide. Accidental overdose. Case closed.
Beneath the photos was a smaller, black moleskine notebook.
Pennyworth opened it. Jonathan Briggs' handwriting filled the pages—neat, accountant's script, recording not numbers, but names, dates, and a single, chilling word after each entry: AUTHORIZED.
May 15th. James Corben. Ruled overdose. Payment: $200,000. AUTHORIZED.*
*October 3rd.Miranda Vance. Ruled suicide. Payment: $350,000. AUTHORIZED.
March 22nd. Thomas Earle. Ruled accident. Payment: $500,000. AUTHORIZED.
On and on. Eleven entries. Eleven deaths. Eleven payments from various "Client" codes.
The final entry was dated yesterday:
April 12th. Jonathan Briggs. To be ruled homicide (unsolved). Payment: $4.2 million. AUTHORIZATION PENDING.
Pennyworth felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. Briggs hadn't just been keeping records for clients. He'd been keeping records of them. He was the bookkeeper for murder. And his own death was the last line item, a transaction he'd logged himself before it happened. The $4.2 million wasn't a payment he made. It was a payment he was due. His own death benefit.
"He was one of them," Morsh breathed, looking over Pennyworth's shoulder. "He authorized hits. And then he authorized his own."
"No," Pennyworth said, his voice quiet but sharp in the vault. "Look at the word. 'Pending.' He didn't authorize it. He knew it was coming, and he was recording it. This isn't a ledger of crimes he committed. It's a ledger of crimes he witnessed. He was the conscience. And the conscience always gets retired."
He flipped to the very back of the notebook. On the last page, in a script that was shakier, rushed, was a different note:
They call it editing. Making the story clean. The plot must be smooth. Characters who disrupt the narrative must be written out. I was a good editor for years. But I started liking the messy characters. I started wanting a different story.
Now the Author is editing me.
If you're reading this, you've found the truth. They'll say it's the ramblings of a guilty man. They'll say I killed myself out of remorse.
Don't believe the story.
Find the Author.
The words ended there.
Pennyworth closed the notebook, the weight of it immense in his hand. He looked at the photos spread on the table—eleven stories, violently ended. Eleven "edits."
The fluorescent light in the vault buzzed overhead. Mr. Ellis shifted nervously by the door.
"Lieutenant," Pennyworth said, his mind already constructing and deconstructing possibilities. "We need to pull every case file connected to these photos. Quietly. And we need to find out who 'Client K' is. That's the key. Briggs was K. The newest member. The one who lost his nerve."
"You think this 'Author' is one of the other ten clients?"
"I think," Pennyworth said, gathering the photos and the notebook back into the envelope, "the Author isn't a client. The Author is the one who assigns the clients. The writer. The one with the pen." He thought of the message on his phone: The author always signs his work.
He had a terrible, clear feeling. Jonathan Briggs' murder wasn't the end of a story.
It was the dedication page.
And Pennyworth's name was now inscribed beneath it.
As they drove back into the gray dawn, the first edition newspapers were hitting the stands. Pennyworth caught a glimpse of a headline as they passed a corner box:
RESPECTED CPA FOUND DEAD IN TRAGIC ROBBERY GONE WRONG
He stared at it until the car turned the corner and it vanished from sight.
Don't believe the story.
The city woke up around them, blissfully unaware that the words they read, the truths they swallowed, were being written by someone in the shadows with a very sharp pen.
And Pennyworth Hale, the detective who solved every story, had just been handed one he might not survive reading.