#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 fiancé, 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 about his day-to-day life, but the last entry caught my eye: "Meeting tonight. Mustn't be late."

Next, I visited Yahya's workplace, a small tech firm downtown. His colleagues were shocked by his disappearance but had little to offer. However, one coworker mentioned seeing Yahya arguing with a man in a dark suit a few days before he went missing.

While questioning Yahya's neighbor, an elderly woman with a penchant for gossip, she mentioned a frequent visitor—a tall man with a scar on his left cheek. 

"Always looked like trouble," she muttered.

Following the neighbor's tip, I checked the city's surveillance cameras. After hours of footage, I finally spotted the scarred man meeting with Yahya outside a cafe. The plot thickened.

I tracked the man to an abandoned warehouse on the edge of town.

It was a cliche, sure, but sometimes cliches hold the truth. Inside, the air was thick with dust and tension.

"Looking for something, Detective?" The voice was smooth, too smooth. The scarred man stepped out of the shadows, a smirk on his face.

We exchanged words, and I quickly realized he was more dangerous than anticipated. Just as things started to look bleak, I managed to slip away, using a stack of crates as a diversion. Not my most graceful moment, but it worked.

Back at my office, I pieced together the clues. Yahya had stumbled upon something at work—something dangerous. The scarred man was part of a criminal organization using the tech firm to launder money. Yahya had threatened to expose them, and they made him disappear.

I needed proof. Returning to the warehouse, I found a hidden ledger detailing their illicit activities. It was risky, but I called Ahlem and asked her to meet me there with the police.

The police arrived just in time, catching the criminals 

red-handed. Yahya was found, alive but shaken, locked in a basement room.

The police managed to arrest the scarred man and a few of his accomplices and took them for further investigation, but it was clear that this was just the tip of the iceberg. The ledger revealed the organization's vast reach, implicating several 

high-profile figures and hinting at operations spanning multiple cities and countries.

Ahlem's tearful reunion with Yahya was a sight for sore eyes. As I watched them embrace, I couldn't help but reflect on the twists and turns of the case. It had been a close call, but justice had been served.

As I walked back to my car, the weight of the ledger in my hand, I knew this was just the beginning. The organization was still out there, and they wouldn't go down without a fight. There were more mysteries to solve, and more secrets to uncover. And Detective Valluce was ready for whatever came next.