The Gables didn’t truly sleep; it just powered down into standby mode.
At 2:00 AM, the streetlights of Bittersweet Court hummed with a low-voltage buzz, casting long, skeletal shadows across the lawns. Maya crouched behind the boxwood hedge that separated the community pool from the main road, her heart performing a frantic drum solo against her ribs. The air was heavy with the chemical scent of chlorine and the organic rot of the wetlands, a nauseating perfume of sanitation and decay.
“Stop breathing so loud,” Elena Russo whispered. She was kneeling beside Maya, dressed in black surgical scrubs that blended perfectly with the shadows.
“I’m not breathing loud,” Maya hissed back. “I’m having a panic attack. There’s a difference.”
“Save the cortisol for the extraction,” Elena said, checking her watch. “Security patrol passed three minutes ago. We have a twelve-minute window before they loop back.”
They were staring at the Community Management Center—a polite euphemism for a glorified shed that housed the pool pumps, the landscaping equipment, and the Homeowners Association archives. It was a small structure with cedar shake siding and white trim, looking like a dollhouse for a very bureaucratic child.
“Do you really think the records are in there?” Maya asked, wiping her damp palms on her leggings. “Everything is digital now.”
“Not 1994,” Elena corrected. “Digital migration didn’t happen until 2005. I checked the board meeting minutes online. Everything prior to the migration is stored in ‘physical retention.’ That means a filing cabinet in a shed.”
Maya looked at the door. It had a keypad lock and a deadbolt. “We don’t have the code. And unless you brought a battering ram, the deadbolt is a problem.”
Elena reached into her pocket and pulled out a small leather roll. She unfurled it on the grass to reveal a gleaming set of silver tools. Tension wrenches. Picks. Rakes.
Maya stared at her neighbor. “You’re a pediatric surgeon.”
“I work with tiny, intricate systems under high pressure,” Elena said, selecting a slim pick. “Lockpicking is just anatomy without the blood. It’s great for dexterity training.”
She moved to the door, her movements fluid and confident. Maya stayed by the hedge, serving as the lookout. The silence of the neighborhood felt amplified. A sprinkler system hissed to life three houses down, sounding like a snake in the grass.
“Click,” Elena whispered.
The deadbolt slid back with a heavy thunk. Elena bypassed the keypad by shimming the latch—a trick she claimed she learned on YouTube during a particularly boring on-call shift.
“We’re in,” Elena said.
They slipped inside, closing the door softly behind them. The air inside was stifling, smelling of dust, toner, and old paper. Maya clicked on her penlight, keeping the beam low to avoid alerting anyone outside.
The room was lined with metal filing cabinets, each labeled with a year in meticulous Dymo tape.
1990-1992. 1993-1995.
“Jackpot,” Maya breathed.
She rushed to the second cabinet. It was locked, but the lock was a cheap wafer mechanism. Elena had it open in six seconds.
The drawer slid out on screeching rollers. Maya winced at the noise, freezing for a second to listen for sirens. Silence.
She began flipping through the hanging folders.
January… February… March…
The files were incredibly detailed. The HOA kept track of everything: paint color approvals, noise complaints, parking violations. It was a chronicle of petty grievances and suburban power plays.
“Here,” Maya said, her fingers landing on August 1994. “The month Juniper died.”
She pulled the folder out. It felt light. Too light.
Maya opened it on top of the cabinet, shining her light on the pages.
“What is it?” Elena asked, looking over her shoulder.
“It’s empty,” Maya said, her voice hollow.
The folder wasn’t entirely empty. It contained a single sheet of paper—a noise complaint filed on August 1st regarding a barking dog. But the rest of the month—the weeks leading up to the murder on the 21st—was gone.
Maya looked closer at the metal prongs of the folder. There were jagged scraps of paper caught in the clamps.
“Someone ripped them out,” Maya whispered. “Look at the edges. This wasn’t a careful purge. This was a frantic removal.”
“When?” Elena asked. “Recently?”
Maya ran her finger over the jagged paper remains. “The paper isn’t yellowed at the tear. The fibers look fresh compared to the rest of the file. This happened… maybe this week? Maybe when the podcast started?”
“So the killer—or whoever is protecting him—has access to this shed,” Elena reasoned. “Which means it’s someone on the board. Or someone with keys.”
“Or someone who can pick locks,” Maya said, looking at Elena.
Elena raised an eyebrow. “If I had the pages, I wouldn’t be breaking in with you, Maya.”
“I know, I know. I’m just…” Maya stopped.
Outside, the gravel crunched.
It was a distinctive sound. Heavy boots. Slow, deliberate steps.
Maya killed her light instantly. “Someone’s coming.”
They scrambled away from the cabinets, diving behind the massive pool pump machinery in the corner of the room. The metal casing was cold against Maya’s back. She held her breath, her hand gripping Elena’s arm hard enough to bruise.
The door handle jiggled. Then the keypad beeped. Beep-beep-beep-beep. A valid code.
The door swung open. A beam of light—much stronger than Maya’s penlight—swept the room. It danced over the filing cabinets, the desk, and the floor, missing their hiding spot by inches.
A figure stepped inside.
From her angle, Maya could only see legs. heavy work boots. Dark cargo pants. The figure moved to the filing cabinet Maya had left slightly open.
A gloved hand pushed the drawer shut with a violent slam.
“Rats,” a voice muttered. It was male, soft, and devoid of inflection.
Maya recognized the voice. It wasn’t the gravelly narrator of the podcast. It was thinner, reedier.
It was Elias Thorne. The current HOA President. The man who measured grass height with a ruler.
Elias didn’t leave. He stood there, breathing rhythmically. He turned in a slow circle, shining his light into the corners. He knew something was wrong. He could probably smell the disruption in the dust.
The beam swept over the pool pump. It hit Maya’s shoe.
The light stopped.
“You can come out,” Elias said. “I’ve already called the police, so running would be ill-advised.”
Maya’s mind raced. If they were arrested for breaking and entering, the investigation was over. Her credibility would be destroyed. Dan would leave her. The podcast would mock her.
She needed a narrative. Fast.
She stood up, hands raised, shielding her eyes from the blinding light.
“Please don’t call the police, Elias,” Maya said, trying to sound pathetic rather than guilty. “It’s just me. Maya Lin-Baker.”
Elias didn’t lower the light. “Mrs. Lin-Baker. And Dr. Russo. An interesting pair for a burglary.”
Elena stood up next to her, smoothing her scrubs with dignified calm. “It’s not a burglary, Elias. It’s a rescue mission.”
“Rescue?” Elias tilted his head. The light shifted enough for Maya to see his face. He was a narrow man with wire-rimmed glasses that reflected the glare. He looked like a librarian who enjoyed shushing people a little too much.
“Mittens,” Maya blurted out.
“Excuse me?”
“My cat,” Maya lied. “He got out. I saw him run toward the shed. I thought… I thought he might have slipped in through the vent. We heard scratching.”
Elias stared at her. The silence stretched, taut as a wire.
“You don’t have a cat, Maya,” Elias said. “I reviewed your move-in application. You have a son, a husband, and a Honda Odyssey. No pets listed.”
Maya’s stomach dropped. Of course he knew.
“He’s… a foster,” Maya improvised, doubling down. “We just got him today. From the shelter. We were going to submit the paperwork tomorrow. I swear, Elias, Leo is hysterical. We just wanted to find the cat.”
Elias moved the light from Maya to the filing cabinet, then back to Maya. He wasn’t buying it. But he also didn’t seem eager to have the police swarming his shed.
“This building is restricted property,” Elias said, his voice dropping an octave. “It contains sensitive community data. If I find that anything has been disturbed…”
“Nothing touched,” Elena said smoothly. “Just looking for a kitten.”
Elias took a step closer. He invaded their personal space, smelling of stale coffee and WD-40. He looked at the open lock on the filing cabinet. He touched the metal with a gloved finger.
“Bylaw 9.3 states that all foster animals must be registered within 24 hours,” Elias recited. “And Bylaw 14.1 strictly prohibits trespassing on utility structures.”
He turned back to them, his eyes cold behind the lenses.
“I’m going to let you go,” Elias said.
Maya almost collapsed with relief. “Thank you, Elias. We really—”
“But,” he interrupted, holding up a finger. “If I see you near this shed again… or if I see you digging where you don’t belong… I won’t call the police. I’ll call the Board. We have mechanisms for dealing with disruptive residents. Liens. Fines. Eviction.”
“We understand,” Elena said, gripping Maya’s arm to pull her toward the door.
“And Maya?” Elias called out as they reached the threshold.
Maya stopped.
“Make sure you find that cat,” Elias said. A small, tight smile touched his lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “The wetlands are full of coyotes. Things that wander off in the dark tend to disappear.”
They walked out into the humid night, forcing themselves not to run until they were past the pool gate.
Once they were safely behind the hedge of Number 2, Maya leaned against a tree, gasping for air.
“He knows,” Maya whispered. “He knows we weren’t looking for a cat.”
“He doesn’t care about the cat,” Elena said, stripping off her latex gloves. “Did you see his gloves? He was wearing cotton archival gloves. At 2 AM.”
“So?”
“So, he wasn’t checking the pool pumps, Maya,” Elena said, looking back at the shed where the flashlight beam was still moving. “He was there to do exactly what we were doing. He was checking the files.”
“To protect them?” Maya asked.
“Or to finish destroying them,” Elena said. “The missing pages… whoever ripped them out left the tabs. It was sloppy. Elias isn’t sloppy. He’s meticulous.”
“Someone beat him to it,” Maya realized. “Someone else got there first.”
“And Elias is terrified of who it is,” Elena finished.
Maya looked at the shed. The light inside went out. The darkness reclaimed the structure.
“He’s not the killer,” Maya whispered. “He’s the janitor. He’s cleaning up the mess.”
“Then we need to find the mess before he scrubs it,” Elena said.
As they parted ways in the shadows of the cul-de-sac, Maya touched her pocket. She hadn’t come away empty-handed. In the chaos of hiding, she had palmed the single piece of paper that had been left in the folder—the noise complaint from August 1st.
She pulled it out under the streetlight of her driveway.
COMPLAINANT: Sarah Vance AGAINST: Resident at 4 Bittersweet Court NATURE OF COMPLAINT: Loud arguing, female screaming, potential domestic disturbance.
It wasn’t a dog. It was Juniper screaming. Three weeks before she died. And Sarah had reported it to the HOA, not the police.
Maya looked at Sarah’s dark house. Sarah had known Juniper was in danger weeks in advance. And she had filed a form instead of saving a life.