This story was published in September 2025 by Freedom Fiction Journal
He hadn’t expected to come home to a dead body. Nor would he have guessed that the ghost-white corpse sprawled on his couch would be his former fiancée.
Jack Walters didn’t need to check her pulse to confirm Chloé was dead. Her head clung tenuously to her torso by a thin thread of tendons and muscle, dangling as if she were a marionette with severed strings. Blood pooled on the vinyl flooring at her feet. Splatters of crimson dotted his oak-veneer coffee table.
I need to process this. Jack dropped into the only seat in his small living room not occupied by a dead woman, an Ikea chair made of curved pine that aspired to be a rocker. He wrapped his arms around himself and forced the chair back and forth. Collect yourself. In time, emotions came. Sadness that he and Chloé would never reunite. Anger that someone had set him up for murder. Fear of what would come next.
& & &
The detective’s demeanor unnerved him. Jack understood he was a suspect in Chloé’s murder. But he was the one who called the police. He hadn’t been home at the time of her death. He repeated his alibi.
“I was at Mickey’s, having a pint of Guinness.” Perhaps two. His memory was hazy. “Ask the bartender, she’ll remember.”
“You left your apartment to go have a beer on a Sunday afternoon. Is that normal behavior for you? Predictable?”
He paused. “No, not really.”
The detective, who had introduced himself as Inspector Sanchez, leaned forward. His dark eyebrows narrowed. “And you claim you hadn’t spoken with or seen Chloé Pappas in two years.”
“I didn’t claim that, it’s the truth.”
Sanchez waved at one of the many individuals scouring his apartment. A young woman brought over a clear bag that held a knife covered in blood. “This would appear to be yours, Mr. Walters.” He nodded toward the galley kitchen just behind Jack. “Unless you have an explanation for the empty slot in your knife block.”
There was a knife missing, Jack saw, and the one in the bag might fit. “Okay, maybe that’s my knife. But whoever did this killed Chloé in my apartment, for Chrissake. Using one of my knives doesn’t seem surprising.”
“What does seem surprising,” Sanchez said, “is someone going through the trouble to take the victim’s life here. The killer would need to monitor your house, wait for you to leave for an Irish pub even though you just said that wasn’t part of your pattern, and then bring the victim, alive, into your apartment.”
Jack had to acknowledge that the scenario seemed implausible. He lived in the basement apartment of a San Francisco townhouse. Anyone on the block could easily see when he left, as the only way in or out of his apartment was the below-street-level front door with steps to the street. The murderer—or perhaps more than one, easier to keep Chloé in line—would be just as visible. “I can’t tell you who did this or why, Inspector. Just that I didn’t do it.”
& & &
Hours after discovering Chloé dead on his couch, Jack’s apartment remained a crime scene. That was why he found himself that evening in a rundown motel on the edge of town. Faded wallpaper struggled to cling to crumbling drywall. Lining one baseboard was what looked like spilled coffee grounds, suggesting he was sharing the room with a family of cockroaches. Lumps from an ancient mattress pressed into him as his ancient laptop warmed his thighs.
Chloé unfriended Jack on Facebook two years ago when she dumped him. For months prior to their breakup, Jack worried about her increasingly deteriorating mental health. He recalled their last night together, in a cottage they had rented for the weekend at a winery in Sonoma County. Evenings were the worst for her, when her personality would change from sunny to delusional. That night was no different.
It began with delight, as she loved the complimentary wine left for them in the small structure’s living room. Then Chloé grew morose as they sat by the fire Jack had built in the cottage’s stone fireplace and he opened a second bottle they had brought with them. By late evening, paranoia set in. She insisted she was in mortal danger and bolted into the winery’s maze of vineyards. Concerned, he chased after her in his bare feet, a cloudy night denying him any moonlight to guide him. He finally found her huddled in the corner of a metal shed behind a rack of empty wine barrels. It took some doing, but he convinced her to accompany him back to the cottage as he ignored the pain in his feet from scrapes endured in the chase. The next morning, before they went to the main house for breakfast, Jack again encouraged her to get psychiatric help. She said nothing, nor did she over the B&B host’s pancakes or on the drive back to San Francisco. The next day, he received a text from Chloé. They were through.
Jack kept tabs on her, however. Her Facebook settings allowed friends of friends to see her page, and they still had online friends in common. It wasn’t stalking. He just missed her. His last two years were a kaleidoscopic blur consisting of a series of meaningless hookups. Not a single woman compared to Chloé.
Jack’s body tensed as he took in a recent online post. The photo caught his attention first, a close-up of her left hand. A large diamond sparkled on a gold engagement ring.
Chloé was engaged? He read the text. Her husband-to-be had proposed to her on his sailboat in San Francisco Bay. Jack knew who Christopher Brand was. Chloé had been posting about him for a year. He and Jack were in the same line of work, both engineers. Jack slaved away at a tech startup, creating software-as-a-service that tracked inventory for convenience stores. Brand was the CEO of a market-disrupting AI software company worth billions. You sure traded up, Chloé. He wondered if she had ever sought professional help, or if Brand had just decided to live with her delusions. It was some time before Jack remembered she would never have a chance to marry.
& & &
Morning sun poured through the wall-to-ceiling windows of his employer’s converted industrial space. Jack didn’t welcome the sunlight as he sat at his sparsely decorated desk in the open-plan office, his head pounding with a worse-than-usual hangover. He had needed whiskey to fall asleep in the dingy motel room after the day he’d experienced. Chloé haunted his dreams. In one, she tried to speak to him from his couch, but her lack of vocal cords produced only soft gurgling.
His coworkers had to know. He learned the media was on the case from the volume of voicemails from reporters on his phone when he woke up. After turning off all notifications, he scanned for news. There were a lot of articles. They all said the authorities were withholding the victim’s name until next of kin had been informed and the body formally identified. But every outlet reported her body had been found by police in the apartment of Jack Walters. It wasn’t the police who found her, I did. Why wouldn’t they let the reporters know that? You can’t be the killer if you find the body.
“Jack?”
He recognized his boss’ voice and turned. Jack’s coworkers stared with such intensity he felt heat around his collar. His boss stood at the other end of the open-plan office, arms crossed. Next to him loomed Inspector Sanchez and two uniformed police officers.
& & &
Jack resisted the urge to complain about the interrogation room’s heat. He suspected he would find no sympathy. The high temperature had to be the cause of his sweat. Sanchez sat across from him, no emotion on his bearded face. He slid a set of stapled papers across the table toward Jack.
“Can you explain this?” Sanchez asked.
Jack’s wrists were chained to the edge of the table, making it difficult to retrieve the papers. As he read the contents, he became confused.
“These aren’t mine,” he finally said.
“Is that so,” Sanchez said, more as a statement than a question. “A total of twenty-two text messages between you and Chloé Pappas yesterday morning, initiated by you. We’ve confirmed it’s your phone number.”
This made no sense. He hadn’t texted her. It was impossible. She had blocked his number after they broke up.
Sanchez pointed at the papers. “You tell her you’re upset she’s engaged. She tries to put you off. You insist she visit your apartment to talk this out. Finally, she relents.” He pulled the papers back toward him and turned to the second sheet. “If that will put an end to this, she wrote. The last text she ever sent.”
Jack considered a suspect he had been mulling over last night before whiskey helped him find much-needed sleep. Chloe’s fiancé, Christopher Brand. He was a coding genius, an artificial intelligence pioneer. Could he be setting up Jack for the murder? A man like that could easily hack Jack’s phone remotely and create a false text chain.
“I want a lawyer.”
& & &
The prison cell was as frigid as the interrogation room was hot, yet Jack was burning up. His hands shook. He was alone, and he felt abandoned by the world.
As Jack didn’t know any attorneys and feared he couldn’t afford one, Sanchez had brought in a public defender named Henry something-or-other. A middle-aged man in a rumpled suit, he said things didn’t look good for Jack. He’d file a motion in the morning to secure release on bail, but for tonight, Jack would remain in jail. The lawyer had been interested in learning Jack’s theory on the real killer until he heard Christopher Brand’s name. Apparently, Henry refused to believe a pillar of society could commit such a heinous crime. There was a wing named after Brand in a hospital in Mountain View, his court-appointed attorney pointed out. Then Henry left, leaving Jack to wonder how much bail would cost. He had no savings. His parents no longer spoke to him. Jack had a few friends, but not the type to pony up their own money to help him.
God, I want a drink. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so sober. It wasn’t just the lack of alcohol in his system. It was, well, everything. He knew Brand had set him up, although Jack couldn’t imagine why the man had wanted to kill Chloé.
Jack had no idea what time it was. They had taken his phone, and he didn’t own a watch. No natural light reached his cell. He lay back on the thin mattress on a stiff metal bunk secured to the cinderblock wall by two chains. It wasn’t worse than the motel room bed. Jack needed sleep. He wasn’t sure how easy that would be without some whiskey to help him.
& & &
The public defender stood outside the cell door. The day before, he had joined Jack in the cell. Now, Henry appeared ready to flee. “I told you yesterday I can only help you if you’re honest with me.”
“What are you talking about? I was honest, I swear.”
Henry pulled a laptop from a worn leather shoulder bag. “The police have already given me a copy of this file. Remarkable speed, providing evidence to the defense. It’s clear they’re not worried about securing a conviction.” He opened the laptop, revealing the thumbnail of a video, and pressed play.
Jack moved forward to get a better view, ignoring Henry’s step backward. The feed was in black and white and recorded from across Jack’s jail cell. In the video, Jack saw himself standing where he stood now, by the cell door. He looked up and spotted the small camera, then returned his gaze to the video.
The sound was tinny from the laptop’s tiny speakers, but the words he spoke on the recording were clear enough. “The bitch was going to marry some rich dick. If I couldn’t have her, no one could. So I killed her. Who wouldn’t?”
Jack’s exclamation of surprise coincided with the click of Henry’s laptop closing. That isn’t me. It was obvious now. Christopher Brand was an AI genius. He had created this video, but Jack knew there was technology that could discern fakes. Maybe a digital forensics expert could even trace it back to Brand’s software, or better yet, his computer. He didn’t bother to share that with the attorney, knowing he wouldn’t listen. Instead, Jack spoke the truth. “I… didn’t kill her.”
Henry sighed. “Sanchez says your alibi doesn’t wash. You didn’t arrive at the bar until after the estimated time of death.” He slid the laptop back into his bag. “Look, Jack, I’m an overworked public defender. Consider hiring a private attorney. Maybe one could argue temporary insanity, find a shrink to say you suffer from dissociative amnesia. Do you ever have blackouts?”
Jack sat on the hard bunk, ignoring its metal bar frame as it dug into him. Sure, he had blackouts. They were par for the course with drinking. But this was allegedly filmed last night. When Jack finally fell asleep, he was stone sober. Jack once again recalled his final night with Chloé, when she had been so paranoid. He heard some of her words now, as if pulled from a dark cave deep within his mind. She accused him of becoming a different person when he drank. Hateful. Angry. Terrifying.
Far more recent memories surfaced in snippets. Reading her Facebook post. Picking up his phone. Opening his apartment door to greet Chloé. Grabbing his knife.
* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Patrick Ross 2025
Image courtesty of Geralt on Pixabay