This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

Detective Sarah Chen had always found comfort in the quiet hours after midnight, when the precinct settled into its nocturnal rhythm and the chaos of the day shift gave way to a more contemplative pace. Tonight, however, as she made her way down the fluorescent-lit corridor toward the evidence locker, an unsettling feeling gnawed at her conscience. Three months had passed since the Richardson murder case had been officially closed, yet something about the conclusion continued to trouble her like a splinter beneath the skin.

The evidence room stretched before her in neat, labeled rows, each shelf containing the remnants of human tragedy and criminal intent. Box after box held the detritus of broken lives and shattered trust, catalogued and stored with bureaucratic precision. Sarah pulled her access card from her jacket pocket and swiped it through the reader, listening to the electronic beep that granted her entry into this repository of secrets.

She had legitimate reasons for being here at this hour. A new case involving a series of break-ins in the warehouse district required her to review similar crimes from the past five years, looking for patterns that might reveal the perpetrator's identity. But as she gathered the relevant files, her eyes kept drifting toward the corner where Box 847-R sat on its designated shelf, containing the physical evidence from the Richardson case.

Margaret Richardson had been found dead in her downtown apartment on a Tuesday morning in March, apparently the victim of a robbery gone wrong. The medical examiner had determined that she died from blunt force trauma to the head, inflicted by a heavy object that was never recovered. Her apartment had been ransacked, valuable jewelry was missing, and there were no signs of forced entry, suggesting she had known her attacker or had been careless about security.