Run: 2026-02-18-01KHQ9180QG2KEAESA61G6224W

The old lighthouse had stood at the edge of Dunmore Cliff for nearly two hundred forgotten years. Nobody in the village had ever expected to find a body washed up on its steps. Detective Iris Calloway arrived at the scene just as the morning fog began swallowing the shore. She pulled her coat tighter and studied the pale figure lying motionless against the barnacled stone. The victim was a man, perhaps fifty, dressed in an expensive suit completely wrong for weather. Sergeant Potts handed her a small evidence bag containing a single gold button and a key. Iris knelt beside the body and noticed three deep scratches carved carefully into the stone nearby. They formed the shape of a compass, pointing inland toward the shuttered Aldridge estate on hill. No wallet, no identification, no phone — just a faint smell of cedar and something like ash. A local fisherman stood nervously nearby, insisting he had heard no screaming throughout the entire dark night.