I got the call just past midnight. The kind of hour that doesn't belong to anyone decent. My office clock had been stuck at twelve for months, but the phone still worked, buzzing through the stale air like a reminder that I owed rent and sleep.
The rain hadn't come down all evening, though it should've. The clouds had been dragging across the city since dusk, heavy as guilt, but they didn't break. The sidewalks were damp, sure, but the air carried that thick smell of rain that never followed through. I remember thinking it felt like the sky was holding its breath.
The voice on the other end was clipped, official, and trying not to sound desperate. "Detective Murphy? We have a situation at the City Museum. Possible theft. You're recommended."
"Recommended by who?"
A pause, papers shuffling. "A Mr. Hannigan. Said you don't scare easy."
Hannigan was a security consultant I'd helped a year back when a gallery's accountant tried to fake a break-in to cover a gambling debt. I figured the museum must've lost something expensive, maybe insured for more than it was worth.
"I'll be there in twenty," I said.
The museum sat on the corner of Franklin and 9th, all marble columns and stone lions that looked tired of watching people lie. There were cops outside, smoking under the awning, coats up against the wind that didn't move.
Inside, the place smelled like dust and ozone. Every light in the main hall was on, but the shadows didn't behave right. They hung thicker near the exhibits, as if the light didn't know where to land.
Hannigan met me at the door. Still tall, still nervous. "Murphy, thank Christ. You'll want to see this."
He led me past the cordon tape to a display case in the center of the floor. The glass wasn't broken—it was warped inward, like someone had pressed a hot bowl over it and let it sink. The edges were smooth, glossy, untouched by tools. Inside, the pedestal was empty.
"What was taken?" I asked.
"The Solar Tear," he said. "Diamond, rare cut. It was supposed to be impossible to scratch. We kept it under three locks, reinforced glass, pressure sensors. The cameras went black for eight seconds. That's all it took."
I crouched, examined the floor. No shards, no prints, just the faint smell of burnt air.
"Any sign of forced entry?"
"None. The doors were locked from the inside. No alarms tripped."
The nearest guard looked half asleep on his feet. I asked him what he saw.
"Nothing," he said. "We lost power for a few seconds. When it came back, the case looked like that."
"What about sound?"
He hesitated. "There was a low noise, like thunder, but not outside. Like it was under the floor."
I made a note in my pad: eight seconds—low frequency disturbance. The kind of thing you write without believing.
Hannigan shifted, uneasy. "You ever seen glass melt like that?"
"Not without heat." I ran a finger along the warped edge. It was cool. "Any footprints?"
"Just ours," he said. "And one janitor's, but he was cleared. He's over there."
The janitor sat on a bench near the staff door, hands clasped tight. Older man, hair like steel wool, uniform clean enough to show he cared. His name tag read L. Parks.
"You were on shift?" I asked.
He nodded. "Mop and bucket, ground floor. I was doing the east wing when the lights flickered. Looked up toward the skylight—swear I saw someone standing under it."
"What kind of someone?"
He squinted, remembering. "Tall, dark coat. Didn't see a face. He wasn't holding a crowbar or nothing. Just… something that glowed. Small, like he caught it between his hands."
I waited, let him think.
"Then the lights died. When they came back, he was gone."
"You tell the cops that?"
"They said it was nerves. But I know what I saw. Looked like he was holding a star."
I didn't write that last part down. I'd heard plenty of nonsense in my time, and light tricks weren't new. Still, the phrasing sat wrong with me.
When I left the museum, the streetlights were humming low, and the clouds overhead still hadn't delivered a drop. The air felt heavy enough to drink.
On the drive back, the radio kept cutting in and out. Static, news, more static. I caught a few lines between the noise: "—strange reports from multiple hospitals—patients not responding—" then another burst of hiss.
I turned it off. Night air was quieter, even with the city awake.
I stopped at a diner on East 12th, one of those places that smelled like burnt coffee and aluminum. The waitress poured me a cup before I asked. She looked tired in that way only night workers do.
"You hear about the hospitals?" she asked, like it was small talk.
"On the radio, yeah. What's going on?"
"Doctors don't know. People aren't healing right. Cuts stay open, stitches don't hold. My cousin's a nurse at Mercy—says they're calling it some kind of clotting disorder." She shook her head. "Whole city's gone strange lately. Feels like a storm that never hits."
I nodded, kept my thoughts to myself.
When I stepped outside again, the air was colder. A thunderhead rolled above the skyline, silent.
Back at my office, I set the coffee down beside the case notes and went through what I had.
Item: Solar Tear. Diamond-class gemstone, value estimated in the millions.
Security breach: Eight seconds of blackout.
Result: Display melted inward.
Witness report: Unidentified man, dark coat, light source unclassified.
It read like a cheap pulp story, the kind you'd find in the back of a magazine. But the museum had cameras. I borrowed the tapes, spooled them up on my old player.
The footage showed the hall in perfect stillness. Then, at exactly 02:16:08, everything froze. The image cut to black. When it returned, the pedestal was empty. No shadow, no shape, no intruder. Just a faint flicker at the edge of the frame, like a spark fading.
I replayed it until my eyes hurt. The gap was clean—no transition, no glitch pattern. Just gone.
I paused the video on the frame right before the blackout. In the far corner, near the baseboard, a faint mark glinted. I leaned closer. It looked like a scratched line, maybe dust. But when I zoomed in, the pattern became clearer: a small five-pointed star, etched into the marble.
I printed the frame, circled the mark, wrote a note beside it: Find source of etching.
When I looked back at the paper ten minutes later, the circle I'd drawn wasn't there. The ink was gone, but the paper wasn't smudged. Just clean, white, like nothing had been written.
Maybe I was overtired. Maybe the pen was running dry. I put it aside and lit a cigarette.
[Cutaway – Third Person]
At Mercy Hospital, the halls were crowded. A nurse held her breath as she changed a dressing for the third time on a soldier with shrapnel in his leg. The wound looked as fresh as the day he'd come in. Across the ward, a surgeon lowered his scalpel, shaking his head.
No one died that night, but no one improved either. The air itself seemed to weigh on them.
[Back to Murphy]
I didn't sleep. Spent the rest of the night checking weather reports, half to distract myself. Every station said the same thing: high humidity, heavy cloud formation, zero precipitation. Not "light rain." Not "dry spell." Just zero.
By dawn, my window was fogged from the inside, the kind of damp that doesn't come from weather. I opened it anyway. The street below looked washed out, gray. People were walking faster, shoulders hunched like they knew something was off but couldn't name it.
I turned on the radio again. A woman's voice, calm but strained:
"—meteorological anomaly continues for the third day. Atmospheric models cannot explain the lack of rainfall. In other news, hospitals are requesting additional funding for unexplained complications in post-surgical patients—"
The announcer's voice warped for a second, like the tape twisted. Then silence.
The cigarette in my hand had burned down to the filter. I didn't remember lighting it.
Around noon, I went back to the museum to pick up the security logs. On the way, a newspaper boy was shouting headlines.
NO RAIN IN FIVE DAYS — DOCTORS STUMPED BY NON-HEALING SYNDROME.
He offered me a copy for a dime. The photo on the front showed a hospital ward full of bandaged patients staring at the camera, blank as mannequins.
When I reached the museum, Hannigan was pacing the hall. "Murphy, you hear the news?"
"About the hospitals, yeah."
"You think it's connected?"
I shrugged. "Don't know. Gem theft doesn't usually come with a weather report."
He didn't laugh. Neither did I.
I went back to the display room. The warped glass had been removed, the pedestal cleaned. But there was still a faint ring where the gem had sat, darker than the marble around it. Like a burn mark.
I leaned closer and caught my own reflection on the polished floor—only for a second. Then the reflection didn't move when I did. Just stayed there, a half-second delay. I blinked, and it was gone.
That was when I decided to file the report, cash the retainer, and maybe take a break. You can only look at strange things so long before they start looking back.
That evening, I was halfway through my second glass of whiskey when the phone rang again. No voice this time—just the sound of static, then a click.
I stared at the receiver. The air in the room felt thick, like before lightning.
The radio was still on, low volume. The announcer's voice came through again:
"—official statement from the Department of Health—no known pathogen involved. Several reports suggest the phenomenon may be psychosomatic—"
Then another line, almost lost in the crackle:
"—meteorological division notes an absence of recorded rainfall patterns worldwide—"
Worldwide.
I turned off the radio. Wrote one last line in my notebook:
Gem stolen. No rain. No recovery. Connection uncertain.
[Cutaway – Third Person]
Somewhere across the city, a child scraped her knee on the pavement. Her mother dabbed at it with a rag. Hours passed, and the blood didn't dry. By morning, the wound looked exactly the same.
At the edge of town, a man stared at his reflection in a puddle that never rippled. He lifted his hand, and the reflection didn't follow.
[Back to Murphy]
I stayed by the window, watching the streetlights flicker. The sky was still full of clouds, black and heavy. But nothing fell.
Cases start simple. A missing ring, a runaway husband, a stolen gem. You tell yourself it's just another job.
But that night, I had the feeling something bigger was being taken—something the city couldn't name.
And for the first time in years, I hoped I wouldn't be the one asked to find it.
End of Part I: The Gem Theft