The sliding glass door rattled open. I didn’t even have to yell.
The second the track squeaked, Linda dropped the heavy black garbage bag and bolted. She scrambled over the cedar fence with the frantic energy of a cornered animal, leaving one of her white sneakers behind in the grass.
I didn’t chase her. I didn’t need to. I had it all in crisp 4K resolution. My unhinged neighbor, finally caught red-handed vandalizing my property.
Smirking, I pocketed my phone and stepped out onto the sunbaked patio. The dropped bag had tipped over, spilling a mound of fine white powder onto the stamped concrete. I nudged it with my shoe, assuming it was sugar meant to destroy my filtration system, or maybe industrial weed killer.
Then, a violent, chemical hiss drew my eyes to the pool.
The powder she had thrown wasn’t just floating. It was reacting. The milky white splashes were rapidly sinking, boiling into aggressive, fizzing plumes. But the bubbles weren’t white anymore.
They were turning a brilliant, glowing crimson.
My stomach plummeted. A conversation from last summer’s block party suddenly hit me like a physical blow. *Linda isn’t just a nosy neighbor.* She’s a forensic chemist for the county.
She wasn’t poisoning my pool. She was testing it.
The deep red cloud rapidly expanded, blooming like a massive, undeniable stain directly over the deep end—right above the heavy, tarp-wrapped bundle I had meticulously chained to the main drain three nights ago. The reagent was reacting to the microscopic traces of blood seeping through the canvas.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. A single text message lit up the lock screen. It was an unknown number, but I knew exactly who sent it.
*“I knew it was him. Sirens are two minutes away.”*