Category: Crime

The rain hit the rusted rooftops of the abandoned railyard, turning the dirt into sludge. Jonas Pike, former transit cop turned rail inspector, lit a smoke with shaking fingers. Riley Banks was dead—his only friend, the guy who pulled him out when he went too deep into the bottle.

Officially, it was an accident, just another drifter crushed under a derailed boxcar. But Riley was no drifter. He had called Jonas the night before, whispering about stolen freight—chemicals gone missing, budgets cooked. Now he was just blood and bone against cold steel.

Jonas followed the paper trail, straight to Commissioner Haynes, a man who always seemed a step ahead. When Jonas confronted him, Haynes just smiled. “You know we clean up our own messes, Pike.”

The next day, Jonas left town. He knew this city, its filth ran too deep. Riley had believed in justice. But Jonas had learned—some truths weren’t worth dying for.

The neon sign outside Joe’s Pawn flickered, half-dead, like everything else on Blackport’s west side. Claire Larna, ex-forger, leaned on the counter. The diamond necklace in her palm wasn’t just fake—it was one of her old counterfeits. Ten years clean, and here was her past staring back at her.

“Where’d you get this?” she asked.

Joe scratched his chin. “Guy pawned it an hour ago. Thick accent, said he had a buyer lined up.”

Claire’s stomach tightened. Her work had been flawless, convincing enough to ruin lives. If this piece was resurfacing, someone was about to get played. She stepped out, shadowing Joe’s visitor to a dim bar near the docks.

Inside, a desperate man slid an envelope across the table. The accented seller smirked, pushing the necklace forward. Claire exhaled. No one escaped their past. Not really.

She took a seat beside the buyer. “Walk away,” she murmured. “Take the loss. Trust me.”

He frowned but hesitated.

The forger’s sins couldn’t be erased. But tonight, maybe one could be undone.

The neon from the pawnshop flickered, buzzing like a dying wasp. Marty Pressman leaned against the brick, his coat still holding the scent of old ink and bad decisions. Once, he wrote headlines. Now, he dug up things meant to stay buried.

Mrs. Langford had hired him to find her husband. A respectable banker, she said. Marty found him in a storage unit near the harbor, a bullet in his skull, a ledger clutched in his stiff fingers. The kind of ledger that got men killed.

By the time Marty got back to his office, a man was waiting. Sharp suit, dull eyes. “Walk away,” he murmured.

Marty exhaled slow. He thought of the stories they never printed, the lives wrecked for profit. “No.”

The man sighed. “A shame.”

There was no sound but the hum of traffic when Marty hit the ground. His vision blurred, the city’s lights smearing together. The truth, once again, would stay buried.

The Ferry Street slaughterhouse ran day and night, its stink clinging to the air. Vic used to work the killing floor before taking photos for divorce lawyers—same job, different victims. When Lorraine Lindstrom walked into his office, he knew trouble had his address. Her husband, Karl, owned the slaughterhouse. She thought he was stepping out. Vic followed him, camera ready.

But Karl wasn’t meeting a woman. He was dumping a body behind the plant. The face was familiar—Tommy Russo, a union man who swore he’d prove Karl was skimming wages. Vic took the shot.

Lorraine called that night. “Did you find what I needed?”

Vic hesitated. She wasn’t looking for proof of infidelity. She wanted an out. He imagined her running the slaughterhouse herself.

“You’ll get your pictures,” he said, hanging up. Then he burned the negatives.

Everyone’s guilty, but not everyone gets caught. Vic had learned that much.

The rain hit the glass dome of the Stygian Botanical Station, turning the neon glow of the city outside into a smear of sickly green. Leon Vance lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. Twelve years as an industrial spy, and he still wasn’t used to bodies. Hal Abrams lay sprawled between two rows of engineered orchids, his throat opened like a second mouth.

Leon had been hired to steal a research prototype, but now he was staring at the man who had once saved his life. A chess move he hadn’t seen coming. The exit doors locked behind him—security alert. They’d find Leon standing over the corpse with blood on his hands.

His contact had set him up. No honor among thieves, no clean escapes. He glanced at Abrams’ lifeless eyes and felt the weight of old debts crushing him. Maybe he had never outrun who he was.

The sirens closed in. No use running. He dropped the cigarette. It fizzled against the sterile floor, its brief glow the last warm thing in the cold, endless night.

The rain hit the steel rooftops of Pittsburgh’s Strip District like typewriter keys—sharp, steady, inevitable. Oscar Vale, former union rat turned private investigator, stood outside a boarded-up butcher shop, cigarette dangling from his lips. Inside, Raymond Leto was dead, half his face caved in like a rotted melon. Oscar had warned him to keep quiet. Cheap advice. Useful advice. Ignored advice.

Oscar knew the score. He’d spent years reporting workers who stepped out of line, feeding info to the bosses until the streets turned meaner and his name turned sour. Now, he hunted ghosts—old friends, old debts. A job from Raymond’s widow had seemed simple: find out who was squeezing him. He’d barely scratched the surface before finding his client on ice.

A set of headlights bloomed in the alley. Oscar didn’t flinch. He already knew what was coming. Some bridges don’t burn clean. Some pasts don’t stay buried. And some debts don’t get forgiven—just collected.

The rain slicked streets of the meatpacking district stank of rust and lies. Wes Garner, once a police sketch artist, now traced missing faces for anyone who could pay. Tonight, it was a woman—last seen stepping into a black sedan outside a shuttered slaughterhouse. Her husband swore she was taken. Wes knew better. The woman’s eyes, drawn from a faded photo, looked too much like the ones he used to sketch on wanted posters.

He found the sedan in a crumbling garage near the river. Inside, cigarette butts and perfume clung to the leather seats. A figure moved in the shadows—her. Alive. But not kidnapped. She smirked.

“He sent you?” she exhaled smoke. “Should’ve sent a man who doesn’t already know.”

Wes had seen it before. A second life, a second chance. He’d once thought he could start over too. It never stuck.

Outside, headlights flashed. The husband. A gun.

Wes sighed. Some people never quit chasing ghosts. Or drawing them.

The rain turned the East Side bus depot into a smear of neon and filth. Jessa Faulkner waited under the flickering departures board, one hand on the strap of her camera bag. She wasn’t a photographer anymore. Not since her last exposé got a crime boss’s kid sent upstate. But when a jittery informant told her a city councilman was running guns through the depot, she couldn’t help herself.

He never showed. Instead, two men in long coats appeared, scanning the crowd. Jessa ducked into a maintenance corridor, but a voice behind her stopped her cold.

“Still sniffing around, Faulkner?” It was Cal Briscoe—ex-cop, ex-friend.

She saw it in his eyes. He wasn’t here to help.

“You knew I’d come,” she said.

“They did too.”

She had seconds. Fight or run, it didn’t matter. The truth was worthless if no one lived to tell it.

Outside, a bus rumbled away, leaving nothing behind but ripples in the gutter.

The rain smeared neon into the cracked sidewalk as Roy Mercer lit a cigarette outside the back entrance to the Cascadia Aquarium. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Fifteen years ago, he’d walked away from this place, and from Claire. Now she was dead, found in a filter tank, her lungs full of saltwater.

Roy used to fix the lights in the deep-sea exhibit. He still had the key. Inside, shadows played tricks, twisting along the glass where sharks drifted. He heard footsteps—Jordan Watts, the new owner. Roy had traced Claire’s calls to him.

“She came to me that night,” Jordan said. “Wanted to expose something. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Roy tightened his grip on the wrench in his pocket.

Jordan laughed. “Killing me won’t bring her back.”

Roy exhaled smoke, looking past him at the black water pressing against the glass. He thought about the past, the truth murky and shifting. Then he walked away. Some ghosts weren’t worth drowning for.

The neon buzz of the meatpacking district lit up the rain-soaked alley as I leaned against a locked steel door, nursing the ache in my ribs. My name’s Saoirse Malone, ex-priest turned skip tracer. Tonight, I wasn’t chasing a debtor. I was chasing the ghost of my brother, Martin.

The Boyle Twins, butcher-kingpins who ran the district like their personal abbatoir, claimed Martin was skimming. He swore he wasn’t. Last week, his body showed up in a dumpster, teeth shattered, hands missing, heart carved out. Guilt sank my gut—I’d introduced him to the Twins. Told him it was a break.

A boot scuffed behind me. “Why d’you care, Saoirse? He was dirty,” growled Declan Boyle, his cleaver gleaming in the wet light. I pulled the revolver I’d smuggled under my jacket. “Nobody cuts a man’s heart out to prove he’s stealing. I find out why you really did it, you and Finn are dead.”

Declan barked a laugh. “Ask your brother’s widow. Or can a priest still handle confession?”

My grip tightened, but I let him go. Declan’s laughter echoed down the empty street. At home, Martin’s wife met my eyes, then her gaze fell to the floor. I stared as she clenched a wedding band in her fist, one that wasn’t his.