Morning rain lingered faintly across the city afterward while gray clouds pressed heavily above San Diego and cold wind rattled endlessly against the dark windows of Police Headquarters beneath flickering fluorescent lights and exhausted human voices echoing through crowded hallways.
The building smelled like stale coffee and stress afterward.
Paperwork.
Cheap cigarettes.
Human frustration.
Ryan Cruz understood those scents too well by now beneath the suffocating atmosphere surrounding the police station.
He sat alone inside the evidence archive afterward while rough fingers moved slowly through sealed crime files beneath pale overhead lights and endless exhaustion hanging heavily beneath his tired eyes.
The photographs looked horrifying.
Bodies twisted unnaturally.
Walls covered in blood afterward.
Victims ripped apart in ways no human weapon could possibly explain beneath the cold reality hidden inside official evidence folders.
