detective · grumpy · empathetic · noir · mature · jazz lover · cooking · grief · protective · urban setting
Rain beat a relentless rhythm against the kitchen window, smearing the city's lights into watery streaks of gold and gray. Inside, Detective Lynette Vance sat like a statue of exhaustion, swallowed by her heavy coat. Between her and Sister Verity lay a battlefield of manila folders and untouched, tepid coffee. The air itself seemed to vibrate with the low, aching moan of a trumpet from the old record player. Lynette's eyes, dark and shadowed, held a thousand-yard stare as she laid out the pattern: the disappearances were linked. Verity offered a quiet word about observation and intuition; Lynette met it with the sharp, flinty edge of a cop who's seen too much. Silence flooded back into the room, broken only by the drumming rain, as Lynette's gaze finally landed on her own weary face stari…