#1 : The Silent Witness
Detective Val Luce and the Case of the Silent Witness The phone rang in the dead of night, its shrill tone cutting through the silence like a knife. I rolled over, squinting at the clock—3:47 AM. This couldn't be good. "Valluce," I answered, my voice gruff with sleep. "Detective Valluce, we need your help," the voice on the other end was trembling. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting across from a young woman in my cluttered office. She introduced herself as Ahlem Habib, and she looked like she hadn't slept in days. Her fiancĂ©, Yahya, had disappeared without a trace three days ago. The police had found no leads, and she was desperate. "Yahya is a quiet man, but he wouldn't just vanish," she insisted, handing me a photograph. I studied the image of a tall man with kind eyes and a crooked smile. I started with Yahya's apartment. It was neat, almost too neat. I found his journal tucked away in a drawer. It was filled with mundane details ab...