The old mansion stood silently at the end of Maple Drive, its windows dark against the cold November sky above. Detective Sarah Chen stepped out of her unmarked sedan and pulled her coat tighter against the bitter wind blowing hard. Yellow crime scene tape fluttered between two oak trees, marking the boundary where normal life ended and death's work began. A uniformed officer approached her with a clipboard in hand, his face pale and drawn from what he had seen. "The body is in the study on the second floor," he said quietly, his voice barely rising above the wind. Sarah nodded and walked up the cracked stone path, her boots crunching on fallen leaves scattered across the neglected ground. The front door hung open like a mouth frozen in a scream, revealing the dark hallway that stretched beyond its frame. She could smell it before she saw anything—the unmistakable metallic scent of blood mixed with expensive perfume lingering in air. On the mahogany desk lay a woman in a red silk dress, her lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling. A single playing card, the queen of spades, had been placed deliberately in her right hand by whoever killed her. Sarah studied the scene carefully, knowing that somewhere in this room the killer had left behind the clue to everything.