The rain outside fell harder, as though answering with cruel applause.
I spent the next few days chasing fragments. I went back to every location connected to the Hawthorne murder — the house, the surrounding streets, the cab stand where the gardener sometimes waited, even the small café where servants took their breaks. I showed the maid's description to anyone who would listen. Most people shook their heads. A few gave me pitying looks. One old woman selling flowers near the cathedral narrowed her eyes and said, "You keep asking about this red-haired ghost. Are you sure he's not just something you dreamed up?"
Her words followed me like the rain.
I was starting to wonder the same thing.
On the fifth day, I was walking along a quiet residential street about a kilometer from the prison when I heard the screams.
They were distant at first — sharp, terrified cries cutting through the steady downpour. I broke into a run, coat flapping, shoes splashing through puddles that turned the world into black mirrors. My heart was hammering. The sound was coming from a modest two-storey house set back from the road, half-hidden behind a low stone wall.
By the time I reached the gate, the street was already filling with neighbors. A woman was sobbing on the front steps. Inside, the horror was absolute.
A family of five lay dead in the sitting room.
The father slumped in his armchair, throat cut. The mother on the floor near the fireplace, stabbed multiple times. Two young children — a boy and a girl no older than ten — had been killed in the corner where they must have tried to hide. The grandmother lay near the doorway, as if she had tried to run for help. Blood had soaked the rug and spattered the walls in dark arcs. The scene was brutal, chaotic… and yet strangely contained.
I pushed through the gathering crowd and showed my warrant card to the first constable on the scene. He let me through.
The rain had not reached inside the house, but the windows had been left open. Water had blown in, mixing with the blood on the floorboards and washing some of it toward the doorway in thin red rivulets. The killer — or killers — had not bothered to close the windows. Almost as if they wanted the rain to do part of their work.
I crouched near the father's body. The cuts were deep and deliberate. No defensive wounds on the children. They had been killed quickly, efficiently. The whole thing felt… professional. Cold.
But there was no red hair mentioned. No gentle smile. No charcoal coat with crimson lining.
A neighbor woman standing in the doorway was already talking to another constable, her voice shaking. "I saw two men running out the back. Both wearing dark coats. One was tall, heavy-set. The other smaller. They didn't have red hair. I'm sure of it. Just ordinary men. Scary ordinary."
Ordinary.
The word lodged in my chest like a stone.
I moved through the house slowly, noting every detail. The way the furniture had been barely disturbed. The way the killings had been carried out with speed and precision. The open windows letting the rain in at exactly the right moment.
It felt connected.
And yet the description was completely different.
I stepped outside into the rain again. My hands were shaking. A kilometer away. While I had been walking these same streets, asking the same tired questions, this had happened.
Was it the same man?
Or was I seeing patterns where none existed?
The doubt I had been carrying for days suddenly felt heavier than ever. I stood in the rain for a long time, letting it soak through my clothes, staring at the ordinary house where an entire family had just been erased.
If the red-haired man was real, why send others to do this?
If he wasn't real… then what the hell was I chasing?