The Phantom Detective Shaina Tranquilino September 24, 2024
Detective Tammy Westbrook stared at the yellowing scrap of paper she had just pulled from the old filing cabinet in the precinct’s archives. Its corners curled with age, the ink faint but unmistakable: a name, an address, and a time. The handwriting was jagged and oddly familiar, as if she’d seen it before—but that was impossible. She had spent the past three nights buried in cold cases, trying to find some sort of breakthrough in a string of disappearances that had been haunting her city. Five people, gone without a trace over the last six months. No suspects. No witnesses. No clues.
Until now.
Her gaze lingered on the name at the bottom of the note: Detective Levi Cross.
Tammy frowned. Levi Cross had been a legend—once. He’d solved cases no one else could, seen patterns where others saw chaos. But he was no longer a detective. He wasn’t even alive. Cross had been dead for over fifty years.
How could his name be on a note about a case he could never have known?
The address was a run-down warehouse on the outskirts of town, a place Tammy had already been to twice during her investigation. Both times, she’d found nothing. Tonight, though, something told her it would be different.
As she prepared to leave, she slipped the note into her coat pocket, her thoughts swirling in uncertainty. The clock in her office read 10:45 PM. The time written on the note was 11:30 PM. She had less than an hour.
The warehouse loomed in the darkness, its rusted metal walls barely illuminated by the flickering streetlights. Tammy parked her car in the shadow of a crumbling building and made her way toward the entrance. The heavy doors creaked as she pushed them open, the sound echoing in the vast, empty space.
For a moment, the only thing she could hear was the soft drip of water from somewhere deep inside the warehouse. She glanced at her watch. 11:28 PM.
The moment she stepped forward, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out, expecting to see a message from the precinct, but what she found made her breath catch in her throat.
The screen displayed a single text, no sender.
“Follow the light.”
As she read the words, a faint glow appeared in the distance, a soft, unnatural light filtering through the cracks in the far wall. Tammy's pulse quickened. She hadn’t noticed any light before.
She crossed the vast warehouse floor, her footsteps muffled by dust. As she approached the glowing wall, she realized the light was coming from behind a stack of decaying wooden crates. Pushing them aside, she found a small, hidden doorway. It had been sealed, the edges rusted shut, but now it stood slightly ajar.
She hesitated for a moment, her instincts warning her to turn back, but her curiosity overpowered her caution. She pulled the door open and stepped through.
The room beyond was smaller, musty, and barely furnished. But there, in the center, sat a table—and on it, another note, identical in texture to the one she’d found earlier. She approached cautiously, her fingers trembling as she picked it up.
“The answers are in the past, Detective Westbrook. Dig deeper.”
She blinked in disbelief. Whoever was sending these messages knew her. They knew about the case. They knew about her personally. But how?
“Who are you?” Tammy whispered, her voice swallowed by the silence.
There was no response. Only the faint drip of water, the oppressive darkness, and the eerie glow that now seemed to dim.
She pocketed the note, her mind spinning. If she wanted answers, she needed to look into Levi Cross. It seemed insane—how could a dead man be involved? But whoever was sending these messages knew things only Cross could have known. That was impossible, unless—
Unless Cross wasn’t as dead as everyone thought.
Back at the precinct, Tammy combed through the archives, pulling every file connected to Levi Cross. His last case had been in 1971, a series of brutal murders that had gone unsolved. Cross had been obsessed with it—according to old reports, he’d spent months following leads that led nowhere, until one night, he vanished. His body had never been found.
Tammy stared at a grainy photograph of Cross. His sharp eyes seemed to bore into her even through the faded image. There was something almost familiar about him, as if she’d seen that intensity before.
She flipped through the reports again. Among them was a photocopy of his personal journal, filled with cryptic notes and musings about his cases. One entry caught her eye, dated just days before his disappearance:
“The pattern repeats. The city calls for its protector. I will not be there to answer, but someone will.”
Chills ran down her spine.
That night, she barely slept, her dreams filled with the image of Levi Cross, standing in the shadows, always just out of reach.
The next morning, Tammy visited the last known address of Cross’s old partner, Frank Harris. Harris had retired years ago, but if anyone knew more about Cross, it would be him.
She found the aging detective in a modest house on the edge of town, sitting by the window, watching the world go by.
“Harris,” Tammy began, after introducing herself. “I’m looking into Levi Cross’s old cases. I need to know—did he ever mention anything about coming back? About finishing what he started?”
The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Cross? You’re barking up a haunted tree, kid. Cross was… different, but he didn’t believe in ghosts.”
Tammy handed him the notes she’d found, her breath catching as she saw his expression change.
“This is his handwriting,” Harris muttered, his voice barely a whisper. “But that’s not possible. He’s been dead for decades.”
Tammy leaned forward. “Do you think he could still be out there? Trying to finish what he started?”
Harris shook his head slowly. “Cross was a great detective, but he wasn’t immortal. If someone’s leaving you these notes, it’s not him.”
Tammy left, more confused than ever. Yet as she drove back to the precinct, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Levi Cross wasn’t entirely gone.
That night, another note awaited her on her desk. It simply read:
“The final piece is where it all began.”
Tammy stood in front of the old, crumbling house that had once belonged to Levi Cross. The air was thick with the weight of history, the building abandoned, forgotten. She stepped inside, the floor creaking beneath her boots.
In the corner of the darkened living room, she saw it—a stack of old newspapers, files, and notes, untouched for decades. Among them, another letter, waiting for her:
“I never left, Detective Westbrook. The truth is buried here. Finish what I could not.”
She looked around, realizing the truth. Cross hadn’t been sending her these messages from beyond the grave—he had died all those years ago. But in his obsession, in his determination to solve the unsolvable, he had left behind a trail. A phantom detective, still working through her, guiding her to the final clue.
Tammy knelt down and sifted through the files. There, beneath the dust and time, she found it—the key to solving both Cross’s final case and the disappearances haunting her city.
Levi Cross had never stopped investigating.
And now, neither would she.