The sky over Oakhaven didn't hold the sun; it held a thick, oily haze that tasted of copper and exhaust. It was a city that had forgotten its own name, a sprawling concrete graveyard where the buildings leaned against each other like tired drunks.
Detective Leo pushed through the heavy oak doors of the Sterling estate, his boots clicking sharply against the marble floor. He didn't look at the architecture. He didn't care about the gold leaf on the ceiling. He was focused on the smell—the cloying, metallic scent of fresh blood mixed with the artificial sweetness of vanilla frosting.
"Don't touch the brass!" Leo barked at a rookie officer who was leaning against a banister. "Get the perimeter tape up. Now. If I see one footprint that isn't supposed to be here, I'm taking it out of your paycheck."
Leo adjusted his black leather jacket, his fingers brushing against the silver necklace tucked beneath his shirt. He was 6'1", a wall of muscle and restless energy. His black mullet was damp from the rain, and his green eyes scanned the room with a clinical, aggressive intensity.
"You're being loud again, Leo."
The voice was low, smooth, and came from right behind his shoulder. Leo didn't flinch. He knew that voice better than his own.
Alex stood there, a shadow in a grey overcoat. His long white hair was pulled back into a severe, tidy knot, making the jagged scar across his cheek stand out like a pale lightning bolt. His blood-red eyes were fixed on the floor, tracking things no one else noticed.
"The neighbors are watching from their windows," Alex said quietly, his gaze shifting to a corner of the ceiling. "The noise makes them feel like we're in control. But we aren't."
"We're in control when I say we are," Leo grunted, though he lowered his volume. "You see anything yet?"
"The air is still heavy," Alex whispered. "The heat hasn't left the bodies. We're close."
They entered the dining hall. It was a high-end birthday party frozen in a nightmare.
The birthday boy, a ten-year-old named Toby, sat at the head of the table. He was the only one left alive, though "alive" was a generous term.
He sat in a catatonic state, his eyes wide and vacant, staring at the center of the table. Around him lay the wreckage of his life.
His father was slumped over a chair, his throat opened with a single, surgical stroke. His mother was across the room, sprawled near the gift table, her hands still clutching a piece of colorful wrapping paper. Three guests—business associates of the father—were positioned in a semi-circle, their bodies twisted into unnatural, almost theatrical poses.
And then there was the clown. He was slumped against the far wall, his face paint smeared with red that wasn't greasepaint.
"Messy," Leo muttered, walking toward the father's body. "Brutal. Someone lost their mind."
"No," Alex said. He was walking slowly around the perimeter of the table, his hands behind his back. He didn't look at the blood. He looked at the angles. "This wasn't a loss of control. Look at the guests, Leo."
Leo stepped back, squinting. "They're dead, Alex. What am I looking at?"
"The spacing," Alex noted, his voice devoid of emotion. "They are exactly four feet apart. The mother was killed first—the blood pooling suggests she's been dead the longest. The father was last. He was forced to watch."
Leo felt a surge of heat in his chest—the familiar, burning anger that fueled his work. "Sick bastard. To do this in front of a kid?"
"The kid wasn't the audience," Alex said, stopping behind the boy. He didn't touch him; he knew better. "The killer was."
In the center of the table sat a massive, three-tier chocolate cake. It was splattered with red. And there, pushed deep into the top layer where a candle should have been, was a bright yellow rubber ball.
Leo put on a pair of latex gloves. He reached out and pulled the ball from the frosting. He held it up to the light.
It was a standard, cheap toy, but someone had taken the time to paint a face on it. Not a happy face. The eyes were two jagged black slits, and the mouth was a wide, toothy grin that seemed to mock the carnage in the room.
"A smileball," Leo whispered. The media had been whispering the name for weeks, but this was the first time it had been confirmed at a scene of this scale.
"Leo," Alex called out. He was standing by the heavy velvet curtains near the French doors.
Leo walked over, his boots sticking to the floor. "What?"
Alex pointed to a small wooden stool tucked behind the curtain. On the floor next to it were three gum wrappers and a slight indentation in the plush carpet.
"He sat here," Alex said. "After he killed them. He sat here and watched the boy. He stayed for at least twenty minutes. He wasn't in a rush. He wanted to see the aftermath. He wanted to hear the boy stop screaming and start being silent."
Leo's grip tightened on the smileball, his knuckles turning white. The thought of someone sitting in the dark, watching a traumatized child in a room full of corpses, made him want to punch a hole through the wall.
"Why this house? Why today?" Leo asked, his voice cracking with suppressed rage.
"Because it was a celebration," Alex replied. "He likes to ruin things that are supposed to be perfect. It's not about the victims. It's about the irony."
Leo turned away, shouting at the forensics team to get the boy to a hospital and start the sweep. He spent the next three hours barking orders, documenting the wounds, and arguing with the Deputy Chief on the phone.
He was a whirlwind of movement, a man trying to outrun the silence of the room.
Alex, meanwhile, stayed in the shadows. He moved like a ghost, measuring the distance between the bodies, sniffing the air for chemical traces, and staring at the blood patterns with a calculating, almost mathematical focus. He didn't speak unless he had to. He was the anchor to Leo's storm.
By 2:00 AM, the bodies had been cleared, and the room was a hollow shell of crime tape and chalk outlines. The silence Leo feared began to settle in.
"We're missing something," Leo said, wiping sweat from his forehead. He was standing by the gift table, his eyes tired. "The killer is playing with us, but how did he get in? No forced entry. No security alarms triggered."
He began tossing through the pile of presents, half-expecting to find another ball. He pushed aside a box of LEGOs, a remote-controlled car, and a large stuffed bear.
Underneath a discarded gift bag, he saw a glimmer of black plastic.
"Alex, get over here."
Alex crossed the room in three long strides.
Tucked into the corner of the gift table, hidden behind a decorative ribbon, was a tiny, high-definition camera lens. It was no bigger than a shirt button, mounted on a small black box.
"A nanny cam?" Leo asked.
Alex knelt down, his dark red eyes narrowing. "No. The wiring is external. It's a transmitter. It's broadcasting."
Leo reached out, his heart hammering against his ribs. He carefully turned the device around. On the back, a tiny LCD screen flickered to life.
It wasn't a recording. It was a live feed of the room.
Leo saw himself on the screen. He saw Alex standing behind him. They were being watched in real-time.
A line of text began to scroll across the bottom of the tiny screen, the bright white letters cutting through the darkness of the room.
"DID YOU LIKE THE SHOW, DETECTIVE?"
Leo felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He looked up, his eyes darting to the dark corners of the hall, the empty doorways, and the shadows behind the curtains.
"He's still here," Leo whispered, his hand flying to his holster.
But Alex wasn't looking at the room. He was looking at the camera, his face a mask of cold, calculating stone.
"No," Alex said, his voice barely audible. "He isn't here. He's everywhere."
Suddenly, the screen on the camera flickered. The text vanished, replaced by a single image: a close-up of the yellow smileball Leo was still holding in his other hand.
And then, every phone in the room—Leo's, Alex's, and the abandoned phones of the victims on the table—began to ring simultaneously.
Leo pulled his phone from his pocket. The caller ID was a string of zeros. He swiped to answer, his voice a low growl.
"Who is this?"
There was no voice on the other end. Only the sound of a child's birthday party—children laughing, a clown honking a horn, and the sound of someone blowing out candles.
And then, a sharp, clicking sound.
The lights in the Sterling estate went out, plunging them into absolute, suffocating darkness.