Raymond Holt sat hunched over his cluttered desk, the dim, flickering light of a single desk lamp casting long shadows across the room. It was late—well past midnight—but Raymond wasn’t the kind of man who paid attention to the clock, especially not when his mind was chewing through a case like a dog with a bone. The office smelled of stale cigarettes and cheap whiskey, the air thick with tension, as though the walls themselves had absorbed the stress and sleepless nights that hung over him like a fog.

His desk was an explosion of papers—crime scene photos, scribbled notes, and witness statements all thrown together in a chaotic mess. A half-empty bottle of bourbon sat next to a chipped coffee mug, the liquid still swirling from Raymond’s restless fidgeting. His leather jacket, worn from years of brawls and bad decisions, hung loosely on the back of his chair, barely clinging to the edge as if it too had given up for the night. But not Raymond. Raymond never quit.

His fingers drummed relentlessly against the table, creating a low, incessant rhythm, the sound of a man on the verge of unraveling. His hazel eyes, bloodshot and tired, darted across the room as though the answers to the case were hidden in the cracks of the walls or buried beneath the stack of files he hadn’t yet gotten to. The cigarette between his lips had long since burned out, leaving only the bitter taste of ash and frustration. He lit another without thinking, the familiar flick of his silver Zippo cutting through the silence as a small flame sparked to life.

He leaned back, exhaling a long, slow drag of smoke that curled upward in the still air. The cases had been piling up. This one—the murder of a local gang leader—was getting to him more than usual. Something about it didn’t sit right. Loose ends everywhere. The type of case where the answers were there, but they were slippery, just out of reach, like trying to catch smoke with your hands. He could feel it in his gut—something was off. The evidence wasn’t lining up. And it irked.