CHAPTER FIVE
Jenna stepped out of her car into the police station parking lot, squinting against the glare of late morning sunlight.
The brick building stood solid and reassuring, a constant in a world that seemed increasingly unstable.
As she made her way to the entrance, her sister's words—"Red is for rage"—echoed in her mind, the phrase lodging in her thoughts like a splinter beneath skin, impossible to ignore.
The station hummed with the familiar sounds of ringing phones and muffled conversations of officers comparing notes over their coffee mugs.
Jenna nodded to Officer Ramirez at the front desk, who was balancing a phone receiver between ear and shoulder while scribbling furiously on a notepad.
She caught Detective Wilson’s eye as he hurried past with a manila folder tucked under his arm, his tie already loosened though the day had barely begun.
Jake was waiting in her office, leaning against her desk with his arms crossed over his neat blue shirt. When she entered, he straightened and said without preamble, “Derek Sullivan is dead. Strangled. Found early this morning in the old textile district by someone walking their dog.”
Jenna exhaled slowly, absorbing the information. “Derek Sullivan,” she repeated, settling into her chair. “Can’t say I’m entirely shocked.”
“Because of his outstanding character?” Jake asked, taking the seat across from her.
“Derek made it his life’s mission to antagonize everyone in Trentville.
Assault charges, bar fights, neighborhood disputes—there’s a whole file cabinet of complaints against him, going way back before you started working here.
You and I have both had our run-ins with him.
Half the town had reason to dislike him. ”
“True enough,” Jake acknowledged. “But this wasn’t just another bar fight gone bad.” He pulled out his phone and swiped through to a folder. “This is... different. Stark called it ritualistic. And I agree.”
A cold current of unease traveled through Jenna’s body. “Show me.”
Jake gave her the phone. The first image showed a body sprawled on concrete, face-up, in what appeared to be an alley between two abandoned mill buildings.
Jenna swiped to the next photo, taken nearer the body. Red yarn—vivid, almost lurid in its brightness—was wrapped around the victim’s limbs in elaborate patterns, crisscrossing his torso like a macabre art installation.
“What the hell?” she whispered, looking more closely. The yarn wasn’t simply thrown over the body; it had been methodically wound around his arms and legs, then across his chest in geometric designs.
“Wrapped in red yarn,” Jake said quietly. “There’s more. Keep going.”
The next several images showed close-ups of the yarn work, the patterns more intricate than she’d initially realized.
One photo captured Derek’s face, his eyes staring sightlessly, his features frozen in an expression of surprise rather than terror.
Around his neck, visible beneath the yarn, was a thin, dark bruise—the mark of the garrote that had ended his life.
“Red,” Jenna said, looking up from the phone.
“Is that significant?”
“Jake, Piper said something right before you called. She had one of her... communications.” Even now, Jenna struggled to find the right word for her sister’s experiences. “She said, ‘Red is for rage.’ She said it twice.”
Jake’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were.” Jenna set the phone down on her desk, the images still glowing on its screen. “It happened minutes before you called. She was wide awake, seemed perfectly normal. Then she went rigid, her eyes unfocused, and those words just came out of her, almost like she was in a trance.”
“And now we have a body wrapped in red yarn.” Jake said. “That’s one hell of a coincidence, if it is one.”
“My gut says it’s not,” Jenna admitted, the knot in her stomach tightening. “And that worries me, Jake. If Piper is somehow... connected to this, sensing it, what does that mean?”
“Has she ever had these communications about murder victims before?”
“We don’t really know,” Jenna said. “We’re still figuring out how her abilities work. She told me she felt really isolated for a lot of those years. I doubt that she had any way of finding out if her visions were connected to anything that actually happened.”
Jake leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"Melissa Stark thinks the murder weapon was a cord or something like that.
And speaking of the staging—Stark says Derek had been dead for hours when the body was found at 7:30 a.m., since between 1:30 and 3:30, probably.
The killer probably took their time with those yarn patterns. "
Jenna turned back to the photos, studying the elaborate winding of the yarn. “You’d need time for this, yes. But not necessarily any exceptional strength to overpower Derek.”
“Probably not,” Jake confirmed. “According to Aaron Hopper, Derek was wasted last night—barely able to stand by closing time. And years of heavy drinking had taken their toll. Derek wasn’t the tough guy he used to be.”
“So our suspect pool is not limited to people who could overpower a fully alert adult man,” Jenna said, thinking aloud. “Which leaves us with... almost anyone.” She paused, focusing on the interview Jake had mentioned. “What else did Aaron Hopper tell you?”
Jake pulled out his notebook, flipping it open.
“I caught him at the bar while he was setting up for the day. He said that yesterday Derek had been belligerent from the start—came in already buzzed, kept demanding doubles. Around 9:30 or 10:00 p.m., Derek tried to pick a fight with another patron—a guy in a blue shirt.”
“Any reason why?”
“None that made sense to Aaron. I interviewed a few of the patrons from last night, found out who the guy was. His name’s Lester Marks—was just sitting at the bar, minding his own business.
Derek kept giving him looks, then started mumbling something about ‘guys like him’ thinking they were better than everyone else.
Aaron had to step between them when Derek tried to take a swing. ”
“Did you speak with Marks?”
Jake nodded. “Found him at Hank’s Derby across from the Twilight Inn, where he was staying. He’s a long-haul trucker, was just stopping in Trentville for the night. Says he had never seen Derek before in his life, has no idea why the guy targeted him.”
“Could he have followed Derek after the bar closed? Maybe decided to teach him a lesson?”
“Extremely unlikely. I checked the surveillance cameras at the Twilight Inn. Marks returned to his room at 1:13 a.m. and didn’t emerge until 6:45 this morning. Based on the timeline Stark gave us, Derek was most likely killed after Marks had gone back to the motel.”
Jenna leaned back in her chair, processing the information. “So Aaron throws Derek out at closing time, which would be what—1:30 a.m.? And Derek starts walking home, likely taking a shortcut through the textile district.”
“That’s my guess,” Jake agreed. “It’s about a fifteen-minute walk from the Centaur’s Den to where the body was found, even accounting for Derek’s condition. The timing fits.”
“And someone followed him,” Jenna said softly. “Someone who either knew his route or was watching the bar, waiting for him to leave.”
“There’s one more thing,” Jake added. “According to Aaron, Derek had some kind of argument with Brenda Drummond earlier in the evening.”
Jenna’s eyebrows lifted at the mention of a woman she’d long disliked—and so did much of Trentville. Jenna had no fond memories of having Ms. Drummond as a teacher in high school. And she hadn’t mellowed during the years since her husband left her for a young woman.
Now that she was retired from teaching, Ms. Drummond channeled her bitterness into her role as the moderator of TownCircle, the digital bulletin board where neighbors aired grievances and spread gossip under the thin veneer of “community service.”
“What did they argue about?” Jenna asked.
“Aaron didn’t know, but I thought I’d better pay her a visit.”
“I’ll come with you.” Jenna stood, gathering her jacket. The images of Derek’s yarn-wrapped body lingered in her mind, the red strands forming patterns that seemed to hold meaning just beyond her grasp. “Let’s see what Miss Neighborhood Watch has to say for herself.”
Jenna got to her feet. “We need to have one of our team check for unusual purchases of red yarn recently.”
“This kind of yarn, “Jake said, pulling out an evidence bag with a red strand inside.
“Looks pretty ordinary,” she said, taking the bag. Even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the red yarn wrapped around Derek Sullivan’s lifeless body was merely the first strand in a web that would ensnare even more than it had so far.
As they headed back through the station, Jenna stopped and turned to Officer Davis, who was passing with a stack of files. “Davis, I need you to check with all the craft and fabric stores in town. Find out if anyone’s bought especially large quantities of this specific type.”
“Yes, Sheriff,” Davis replied, shifting the files to his other arm and taking the yarn bag. “How far back should I go?”
“Let’s start with the past month,” Jenna decided. “And Davis? Be discreet. Don’t mention any connection to Derek Sullivan’s death.”
Outside, the sun had slipped behind a bank of clouds, casting the world in shades of gray. “I’ll drive,” Jake said as they approached Jenna’s cruiser. She hesitated, then handed him the keys without argument.
As Jake slid behind the wheel, Jenna settled into the passenger seat beside him.
“What are we dealing with, Jake?” she asked quietly. “First we find Piper after twenty years, then within days, she has a psychic episode with some kind of connection to a local murder with ritualistic elements.”
“Are her skills anything like yours?” Jake asked.
Jenna considered, her thoughts tangled. “I don’t know.
Maybe they aren’t ‘skills’ at all. It seems more chaotic for her, unpredictable.
My lucid dreams—they’re a tool. I can focus, make sense of them.
Piper was awake. She seemed to just... experience something that prompted those words. She didn’t know what they might mean.”
“And yet she was spot-on. The yarn, the color red. Even if she can’t control it, she has some kind of insight.”
"That's part of what makes it hard," Jenna said, her voice almost a whisper.
"For years, we didn't know if she was alive or dead.
I was terrified she'd never come back, that she'd always be a mystery I couldn't solve. But now she’s here, and I still feel powerless to help her.
All this... I guess it makes sense that she'd have insights, but I never imagined it would be like this. "
“Still, you are twins,” Jake said, a hint of wonder in his voice. “Parallel skills isn’t really that surprising, is it? And if your sister is sensing things about this killer, she could help us.”
Jenna hesitated, weighing her words. “No, but it’s not comforting, either.
If Piper is connecting to this case like I think she is, it means she’s tapped into something dark that she’s never learned to control.
It could be dangerous. Dr. White warned me to keep her clear of the kind of darkness you and I deal with all the time.
I’ve got to do everything I can to do that. ”
“You can help her learn how to deal with it.”
“I’d rather she didn’t have to handle it at all. I just want it … to go away.”
A silence fell between them.
“Let’s go see what Brenda Drummond knows,” she said as Jake started the car.
But as they drove away from the police station, Piper’s words continued to echo in her mind: Red is for rage. Red is for rage. What new evil was beginning to unfurl in Trentville? And why, after twenty years of absence, was Piper suddenly in the middle of it all?