Part 2: The Whispering Ghost – News

ByAdmin June 13, 2026June 13, 2026

The police had looked into it briefly, but when they found Mateo’s bloody clothes and the knife, the corporate angle was dropped as a coincidence. It was easier to believe a jealous, angry husband had killed his wife over an argument than to untangle a multi-million dollar corporate smuggling ring.

Vance walked over to the evidence boxes. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and began digging through the plastic-sealed bags.

The knife. The keys. The photos of the crime scene. The flannel shirt.

He pulled out the shirt. It was a heavy red-and-black plaid wool shirt. The right sleeve and chest were stiffened with old, dark brown stains—Lucia’s blood.

“Mateo claimed he left this shirt in the garage three days before the murder,” Vance muttered to himself, remembering the interrogation tapes. “He said someone must have taken it.”

Vance held the shirt up to the harsh fluorescent light. He turned it over. He looked at the collar. He looked at the buttons.

And then, his eyes narrowed.

There was something wrong with the third buttonhole from the top. The threads were frayed, stretched out, as if a button had been violently ripped through it. But all the buttons were perfectly intact. They were pristine, cheap plastic buttons, sewn on with tight, bright red thread.

Vance grabbed a magnifying glass from the warden’s desk drawer

Vance grabbed a magnifying glass from the warden’s desk drawer. He peered closer at the red thread holding the buttons to the shirt.

The thread used to sew the buttons onto the shirt was a polyester blend. But the thread used to construct the rest of the shirt’s seams was a heavy-duty cotton-nylon twist.

“Someone re-sewed these buttons,” Vance whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs. “Someone took a shirt that looked exactly like Mateo’s, or took Mateo’s actual shirt from the garage, put it on, did the deed, tore a button in the struggle… and then repaired it before planting it in his truck.”

“But who would have access to his garage?” Warden Vance asked, leaning over his shoulder. “And who would know about the Vanguard audit?”

The Call from the Grave

Detective Vance didn’t answer. He went back to the box of Lucia’s personal effects. Her purse. Her wallet. Her phone—an old model iPhone that had been locked behind a passcode the state forensics team had never bothered to crack because they already had their man.

“We never got into her phone,” Vance said, lifting the plastic bag containing the device. “The tech back then couldn’t bypass the encryption without wiping the drive, and the DA said it wasn’t necessary for a conviction.”

The operating system is obsolete

“It’s been five years, Robert,” the warden said. “The battery is dead. The operating system is obsolete.”

“But the forensic tech at the precinct now has the brute-force software,” Vance said, his eyes gleaming with a dangerous spark. “If there’s a ledger, or a record of who she was talking to before she died, it’s in this phone.”

He grabbed his coat and the evidence bags. “I’m taking this to the lab. Watch the girl. Don’t let anyone near her. Not the DA, not the press, nobody.”

As Vance rushed out of the prison doors, the sky outside had turned a bruised, heavy purple. A storm was rolling in over the valley.

He arrived at the precinct city crime lab forty minutes later. He dumped the phone onto the desk of a young, caffeinated digital forensics specialist named Toby.

“Extract it,” Vance ordered. “Everything. Call logs, deleted messages, cloud backups from October 2021.”

Toby looked at the ancient iPhone, then at the frantic, disheveled retired detective. “Man, this takes time. The software has to run dictionary attacks against the passcode. It could take twelve hours, it could take three days—”

“We have thirty-six hours before Mateo Vargas gets a needle in his arm, Toby! Run the damn program!”