The alley was different in the daylight, yet the horror lingered. Davies, Grace, and Ryan walked slowly, the silence broken only by the echo of their footsteps on the cracked
pavement. The air was thick with a
palpable sense of fear, a weight that pressed down on them even under the bright morning sun. Residents watched from behind closed curtains, their faces pale and anxious as they peeked through half-drawn blinds. The windows of the surrounding buildings were dark, like vacant eyes staring out onto the
grim scene. Davies scanned the alley,
his gaze sweeping over the stained brick walls, the overflowing dumpsters, the
patches of weeds pushing through the cracks in the concrete. It was an ordinary alley, in an ordinary neighborhood. Yet it held a secret, he thought. A dark, terrible secret.
Davies, Grace, and Ryan began their re-interviews, approaching each house with a mix of hope and trepidation. The doors opened hesitantly, revealing faces etched with worry and suspicion. The detectives were met with a wall of fear and resistance. "We didn't see anything," was the common refrain. "We were inside all night." One woman added, almost apologetically, "It was raining so hard that night. The wind was howling.
You couldn't hear a thing over the gush of the rain." Davies nodded. He understood. He pressed on gently. "Even with the rain and wind, did you hear anything unusual? Anything at all?" Finally, a few residents began to whisper. They spoke of strange noises – scratching, growling – that night. One middle-aged man, his face pale,
mentioned that his dog had been acting strangely, barking and whining at unseen
presences in the alley. An elderly woman, her hands trembling, whispered, "Something… something was out there. I heard Buster barking, going absolutely uneasy. He never barks like that. It was… terrifying. I was too scared to look." A man approached the detectives, his eyes wide and unfocused. "You want to know what I saw?" he said. "I saw shadows. Big shadows. Moving… fast. Like… huntin'." He paused, took a drag from his cigarette. "Eyes… red. Glowing
red." He chuckled nervously. A teenage girl, leaning out her window, grinned playfully. "Oh my god! Buster and Jimmy went nuts that night," she said, a teasing glint in her eyes. Ryan, who had spoken briefly with the man
earlier, couldn't help but grin slightly. Grace, despite the grimness of the situation, couldn't suppress a small smile either. Davies listened patiently, filing away the information. Getting official statements proved difficult; the
residents were too afraid to be named, too afraid of what might be lurking in the shadows. They spoke in riddles and vague descriptions, their fear a tangible presence in the air. Davies knew they were holding back, but he also knew that pushing too hard would only make them clam up completely. He listened patiently, piecing together the fragments of information, trying to discern a
pattern in their whispered accounts.
While Grace photographed the grimy walls, Davies's gaze drifted upwards, drawn by something that hadn't been there before. Or, more accurately, something that hadn't been *noticed* before. High on the brick wall, well out of reach for any normal person, were a series of deep, parallel gouges. They looked like… claw marks. But impossibly large. And too deep.
Grace joined him, tilting her head back to get a better view. "What are those?" she asked, her voice hushed. Davies frowned, examining the marks closely. The concrete was chipped and fractured along the edges, the raw surfaces exposed and stark against the
weathered brick. *They're new,* he realized. *Definitely new.* He ran a gloved hand lightly over the texture of the wall, feeling the rough edges of the gouges. *No animal could reach that high,* he thought. *And no animal could inflict
that kind of damage.* The marks were too
deliberate, too… *purposeful*. He stepped
back, trying to visualize the force that could have created such deep gashes in the concrete. *It's almost like… a blade,* he thought. *A large, curved blade.* The image of a scythe flashed through his mind, but he dismissed it as quickly as it came. *Who uses a scythe these days? It's absurd.* There had to be a logical explanation. He studied the marks again, trying to discern a pattern, a clue. The angle… it's almost as if something was swung, something large and heavy, and the arc of the swing… it passed close to where Thomas's body was found. He shook his head slightly.
*It's too early to draw conclusions. What could have made these?*
As Grace finished photographing the scratch marks, Ryan, who'd been methodically
widening his search perimeter, called out, "Sir, over here!" Davies and Grace joined him near the alley's edge, where it opened onto a quiet side street.
Ryan pointed to a patch of dirt partially hidden beneath a tangle of weeds. "Looks like something was buried here," he said, carefully kicking away the loose soil. Lying there, face down, was a broken cellphone. The screen was a shattered mosaic of cracks, and the casing was dented and scratched. Davies crouched down, carefully picking up the phone. "Bag it," he instructed Grace.
"Every piece counts, even the broken ones." He turned the phone over in his hands, examining the damage. It was an older model. *Probably wouldn't be missed much,* he thought. *But why bury it?* He glanced back at the alley, then at the spot where Thomas's body was found. It was a considerable distance, far enough that it wouldn't have been part of the initial crime scene perimeter.
*Too far to be directly related… or is it?* At this point, they couldn't afford to dismiss anything. "We'll run the usual tests," he said to Ryan and Grace.
"Fingerprints, trace evidence… and see if forensics can pull any data from the chip, even if the screen's smashed." He pocketed the evidence bag, a nagging feeling that this broken phone, seemingly insignificant, might be more important than it appeared.