4338.214 · August 2, 2018 AD
The Shed That Swallowed the Detective
On 2 August 2018, Detective Karl Jenkins entered a shed at Jeffries Manor to arrest Luke Smith — the man whose name connected every missing persons case on his desk. His partner Sarah Lahey heard a motorcycle engine. When she reached the shed two minutes later, it was empty. No detective. No suspect. No motorcycle. No sign anyone had been inside at all. The institution had been investigating its own missing people. Now it was missing one of its own.
Karl Jenkins was the detective who saw the pattern. He was the one who took Jenny Triffett's report when others dismissed it. He was the one who traced Luke Smith's phone number across three separate missing persons files. He was the one who pursued two vehicles into a sealed car park and watched one vanish. He was the one who recognised that the disappearances weren't isolated — that they were connected, accelerating, and converging on something he couldn't yet name.
On 2 August, the something named itself.
Louise Jeffries — the mother of missing man Kain Jeffries, the sister of missing man Jamie Greyson — called emergency services to report she had trapped Luke Smith in a shed at the family estate in Granton. Karl and his partner Sarah Lahey responded. Sarah secured Louise and elderly resident Thelma Jeffries inside the manor house. Karl walked across the grounds toward the shed to arrest the man he'd been chasing for six days.
He entered the shed. Sarah heard the sound of a motorcycle engine. She reached the shed within two minutes. It was completely empty. Not empty of Karl and Luke — empty of everything. No tools, no equipment, no signs of recent occupancy. As if the space had been cleared long before anyone arrived, and whatever happened inside left no trace that human investigation could recover.
Six days later, Sarah Lahey was dead. Nine days after that, Louise Jeffries was murdered. The detective who saw the pattern became part of it.
