What Remains Unsaid

Chapter Ten-The Vanishing

They started calling it “The Crowe Case” on the news the kind of irony that only small towns and gossip could twist into legend.

By the time the reporters arrived at the station, I was already gone.

No one saw me leave. No one stopped me.

The last thing they had of me on record was a keycard swipe at 8:47 p.m., the night Lee turned in her report to Internal Affairs.

She had done what she promised: told the truth.

I sat in my car at the edge of Miller’s Creek, engine off, watching the reflection of the courthouse lights shimmer across the black water.

The night was colder than usual, the kind that seeped into the bones and refused to leave. A storm was coming, the clouds low and bruised, pressing down on the earth.

Inside the glove compartment sat the letter. My confession. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just another version of the truth, written to sound like remorse.

I’d written it three times and torn it up twice.

What do you even say when the person you’ve been chasing your whole life turns out to be yourself?

Earlier that evening, Lee had come to my house.

No uniform. No backup. Just her, standing in the doorway, rain on her jacket, her expression unreadable.

“You already know why I’m here,” she said quietly.

I nodded. “You turned it in?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “I didn’t want to. But I had to.”

I smiled faintly. “You did what a good detective should.”

Her voice trembled when she asked, “Why, Alan? Why her?”

I looked past her, toward the framed photo on my wall, a crime scene years old, long closed. Lydia’s smile still sharp in my memory, the way she’d laughed when she told me she’d chosen Marcus. The way she’d broken me without even looking back.

“She was supposed to love me,” I said finally. “Not him.”

Lee’s eyes filled with something I couldn’t name, grief, maybe. Or pity. “You could’ve moved on.”

“I tried,” I whispered. “But every time I looked at him, I saw her. And every time I saw her, I saw what I could’ve been. So I ended it.”

Lee took a slow step back. “They’ll come for you, Alan. You know that.”

“I know.”

I met her eyes then, and something like peace settled between us. “But you did good, Lee. You always were the better detective.”

When she left, she didn’t look back.

Now, hours later, I watched the rain start to fall across the lake, thin and steady. The drops hit the surface like whispers, the kind that carry secrets to the depths where no one ever finds them.

I got out of the car and walked toward the pier.

The wood creaked beneath my boots. The water below was black, endless. Behind me, thunder rumbled, low and distant.

In my pocket, my badge felt heavier than ever. The symbol of a life I’d built on justice, and shattered with my own hands.

I thought about Marcus, sitting alone in his small apartment now, probably still wondering how everything went so wrong.

He would never know the truth. Not fully. Maybe that was mercy. Maybe not.

I looked out over the lake and said her name once. “Lydia.”

It came out like a sigh.

Lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the surface for a heartbeat, and in that moment, it looked almost peaceful. Almost forgiving.

Then the storm swallowed it all again.

By morning, they found my car still parked by the lake.

Door open. Engine cold.

My badge was on the dashboard. My service pistol was gone.

No body was ever recovered.

Some said I drove into the water, weighed down by guilt. Others said I fled, changed my name, vanished into another town like the ghost I’d become.

Lee didn’t believe either version.

She stood by the lake that morning, hands in her coat pockets, watching the divers pull up nothing but mud and weeds. The wind carried a light mist, brushing against her face like a memory.

Agent Rosner stepped beside her. “If he’s out there, we’ll find him.”

She didn’t look away from the water. “No,” she said softly. “You won’t.”

Rosner frowned. “You think he’s dead?”

She was quiet for a moment, then shook her head. “No. I think he’s where he’s always been, two steps ahead, hiding behind the story.”

Her gaze dropped to the water again. “But stories have a way of catching up.”

Weeks later, she received an unmarked envelope in her mailbox.

No return address. Inside was a single sheet of paper, no name, no signature, just one line written in Alan Crowe’s handwriting:

“You were right, Lee. But justice isn’t always served in court.”

Below it was a photo, the lake, taken from the pier.

In the corner of the frame, faint but unmistakable, was a reflection of someone standing in the distance.

A man in a dark coat.

Lee read the letter twice before burning it in her sink.

As the flame curled the paper into ash, she whispered, “Goodbye, Alan.”

That night, she returned to the station and looked at the empty desk where he used to sit. The badge number still engraved on the brass plaque, the faint outline of old case files long cleared away.

Outside, the rain began again.

And somewhere, maybe in another town, another name, another face, Alan Crowe watched it fall too.

Still chasing ghosts.

Still trying to believe he’d found justice.

But the truth?

The truth was that justice had already found him.