(crime story)

Detective Lena Vasko didn’t believe in luck. She believed in logic, patterns, and the way a liar blinked too fast when pressed. But this case… this one was off.

A barista had been found dead behind Café Indigo—frothy milk still steaming in the paper cup beside his body. No signs of forced entry. No witnesses. No motive. Just a sticky note with the word “Sorry” and a lipstick print.

Then, two days later, the confession came.

A trembling man, barely twenty, strolled into the precinct like someone looking for his lost dog.

“I killed him,” he said. “I just… snapped.”

Lena squinted at him. “Name?”

“Artem Lebed.”

His record was clean. A warehouse worker. No connection to the café, no priors.

She tilted her head. “Why’d you do it, Artem?”

He hesitated. “He… insulted my mother.”

“The barista?”

“Yes. He was rude.”

“To your mother?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Uh… last Tuesday.”

Lena leaned back. That was the wrong answer—the barista was on vacation last Tuesday.

Still, she didn’t call him out. Not yet. Amateurs trip over their own lies. She just watched him sweat.

Two hours into the interview, he asked for water. Lena brought him coffee. Bitter. No sugar. No milk. He took one sip and gagged.

“You ever even been to Café Indigo?” she asked.

He avoided her eyes. “Once. I think.”

“You think?”

“Yes.”

“You’re confessing to murder and you’re not sure if you’ve been there?”

He shrugged. “Maybe I blocked it out?”

She dropped the act. “Artem, I don’t think you killed anyone.”

His eyes widened. “But I said I did.”

“You also said the victim insulted your mother on a day he wasn’t even in town. Want to try again?”

He cracked. “They promised to pay off my debt if I confessed,” he mumbled. “Some guys… from a Telegram chat. Said they needed someone to take the fall. Easy prison time. Nothing violent inside.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know real names. Just a username—StickyFingers96.”

Bingo.

That matched the alias from a string of small-time burglaries Lena had been tracking for months. A petty thief turned puppeteer. Using desperate men to cover bigger crimes.

“Congratulations,” she said, cuffing him gently. “You’re not a murderer. You’re bait. Thanks to you, we will go hunting.”

Outside, the city buzzed like always. But Lena smiled. This time, the pattern made sense.

And luck? Maybe she’d start believing in that too.