Run: 2026-07-25-01KYCPMS561STQHBY84APM6WNE

Rain hammered the greenhouse glass like fingers demanding to be admitted. Inspector Alma Reyes stepped over the threshold and smelled copper. The orchids had been arranged in a circle around him. Gerald Pemberton lay face down among the crushed white petals. His right hand still clutched a pair of pruning shears. The blades were clean, which struck her as remarkably strange. Someone had wiped them, or he had never used them. Behind her, the constable coughed and looked anywhere but down. "Housekeeper found him at six," he said, consulting his notebook. "Door was locked from inside, and the key is missing." Alma crouched and studied the soil beneath the dead man. Four shallow depressions marked the earth, evenly spaced and deliberate. Not footprints, she thought, but something heavier had stood there. The rain kept knocking, patient as a creditor at midnight.