At 5:17 a.m., a boy found his father dead in the dining room.
The first thing he did was not call the police.
He took his father's wallet.
Then he wiped his own fingerprints from the knife handle.
Only after that did he call the police.
When the officers arrived twenty minutes later, the house was already full of lies.
Rain had been falling since midnight.
It wasn't heavy, but it was enough to soak the yard of Arman Prakoso's house and turn the morning air cold.
The house stood in an upscale gated community on the north side of Arcapura. A two-story house with a black iron fence, a large yard, two cars in the garage, and a security camera aimed at nearly every corner of the property.
At 5:42, a patrol car stopped in front of the gate.
Inspector Dimas Wicaksana got out first.
He saw a young man standing on the porch.
His face was pale.
His clothes were wet.
His name was Bima Prakoso.
Arman's only son.
"The victim's inside?" Dimas asked.
Bima nodded.
"Dining room."
"You found him?"
"Yes."
"Don't go back in until the forensics team gets here."
Bima didn't answer.
Instead, his gaze fixed on Dimas's hands.
"Sir..."
"What?"
"He was murdered."
Dimas looked at him.
"You saw the wounds?"
Bima shook his head.
"I know."
"How?"
Bima swallowed.
"Because my father never drank coffee this late at night."
Dimas frowned.
"What does that have to do with murder?"
Bima pointed toward the door.
"There are two cups of coffee on the table."
Dimas fell silent.
For the first time that morning, he felt that something was wrong.
Raka arrived at 6:18.
He was no longer wearing a uniform.
A dark gray jacket, black pants, and shoes that had long since lost their original color.
Dimas greeted him on the porch.
"You're late."
"I wasn't called in as police."
"I know."
"Then?"
"I need someone who has no connection to the case."
Raka looked at the house.
"Then don't call me."
Dimas gave him a faint smile.
"That's exactly why I called you."
Raka didn't answer.
He went inside.
The dining room was on the left side of the house.
Arman Prakoso lay on his back on the floor.
He was fifty-one years old.
He wore a white shirt and slacks.
There were no signs of a major struggle.
One chair was overturned.
One cup was shattered on the floor.
The other still sat on the table.
And beside the victim's right hand lay a kitchen knife.
Raka stopped three steps from the victim's body.
"Don't touch anything," he said.
Dimas raised an eyebrow.
"Do I look stupid?"
"Sometimes."
"Thanks."
Raka didn't smile.
His eyes moved slowly.
The table.
The chair.
The window.
The back door.
The floor.
The victim's body.
Then back to the table.
"Two coffees."
Dimas nodded.
"Just like his son said."
"Who made them?"
"Don't know yet."
Raka approached the table.
It wasn't the coffee that caught his attention.
It was the spoons.
There were two of them.
But only one had coffee stains on it.
The second spoon was still clean.
Raka pointed at it.
"Why are there two spoons?"
Dimas shrugged.
"Maybe the guest changed his mind."
Raka looked at him.
"Or someone wanted us to think there was a guest."
Dimas fell silent.
"Not necessarily."
"That's true."
Raka walked toward the window.
It was open about two inches.
Outside, the ground was wet.
There were shoeprints.
Dimas immediately moved closer.
"The perpetrator came in through here?"
Raka didn't answer.
He crouched down.
Studied the prints.
Then he gave a small smile.
"If you want to catch someone, don't get too excited about finding footprints."
"Why not?"
"Because these prints are too perfect."
Dimas looked at him.
"So they're fake?"
"No."
Raka stood.
"The prints are real."
"Then what?"
"What's fake is the story behind them."
8:10 a.m.
An officer took Bima into the living room for an initial interview.
Raka sat across from him.
He brought no case file.
No pen.
Only a glass of water.
"What time did you get home?"
"Ten-thirty."
"From where?"
"A friend's house."
"Who?"
Bima gave him a name.
Raka didn't write it down right away.
"What's your relationship with your father?"
Bima drew a long breath.
"Bad."
"How bad?"
"We argued almost every day."
"Why?"
"The company."
"The inheritance?"
Bima said nothing.
Raka finally picked up his pen.
"If you stay quiet, people will take that as a yes."
Bima looked at him.
"I didn't kill my father."
"I haven't said you did."
"Everyone thinks so."
"Because?"
Bima lowered his head.
"Because I argued with him last night."
"What time?"
"Nine."
"Here?"
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Ten minutes."
"About what?"
Bima rubbed his face.
"My father wanted to sell the company."
"And you disagreed?"
"If the company is sold, all the employees lose their jobs."
"Including you."
Bima fell silent.
Raka watched him.
"So you had a motive."
Bima raised his head.
"I had a reason to be angry. Not a reason to kill."
"What's the difference?"
"An angry person wants something to change."
Bima looked at Raka.
"A murderer wants someone to stop existing."
Raka didn't answer.
The answer was too composed for someone who had just lost his father.
At 9:03, Naya arrived.
She stood outside the gate, holding an umbrella.
"I heard you'd retired."
Raka looked at her from the porch.
"I didn't know reporters were getting their stories from people's front yards now."
"If I'd gotten here five minutes earlier, maybe I could've gotten the story before you."
"Go away."
"The victim is Arman Prakoso?"
Raka said nothing.
Naya smiled.
"So it's true."
Dimas came out.
"Naya, don't interfere with the investigation."
"I'm not interfering."
"You're standing in front of the crime scene."
"I'm standing outside the gate."
"That's still interfering."
Naya looked at Raka.
"Who's the suspect?"
Raka answered flatly.
"His son."
Naya frowned.
"That fast?"
"All the evidence points to him."
"Then it's an easy case."
Raka looked at the house.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Easy cases usually don't need a detective."
11:27 a.m.
The preliminary examination results came in.
Arman had died from stab wounds.
The knife found beside the victim's body was believed to be the murder weapon.
And Bima's fingerprints were found on the handle.
Dimas looked at Raka.
"We've got the weapon."
"Yes."
"Fingerprints."
"Yes."
"Motive."
"Yes."
"Opportunity."
Raka said nothing.
"He also admitted he was at the house last night."
Raka remained silent.
Dimas was starting to lose his patience.
"Raka."
"What?"
"If all the evidence points to Bima, what else are you looking for?"
Raka looked at the examination photos.
"A mistake."
"What mistake?"
"The perpetrator's mistake."
Dimas sighed.
"Every perpetrator makes mistakes."
"That's exactly the problem."
Raka picked up a photo of the dining table.
"If Bima killed his father, he made too many mistakes."
Dimas moved closer.
"And?"
"He wiped his own fingerprints from the knife handle."
Dimas nodded.
"Because he panicked."
"Maybe."
"Then?"
Raka pointed at the knife handle.
"Why did he forget to wipe his fingerprints from the cup?"
Dimas froze.
Raka pointed at the second cup.
"And why did he clean the knife handle but not the underside of the table?"
Dimas looked at him.
"There's blood?"
"No."
Raka pointed to something very small.
A smear of mud.
"The perpetrator came in from outside."
Dimas frowned.
"The shoeprints?"
"No."
Raka shook his head.
"Those prints were made after the rain."
"How do you know?"
"Because the outside of the shoe was wet, but the inside of the print wasn't."
Dimas fell silent.
Raka walked toward the back door.
"The perpetrator didn't come in through the window."
"Then?"
"He was already inside the house."
Dimas followed him.
"Someone inside?"
Raka nodded.
"But not Bima."
1:14 p.m.
The police found the security-camera recording.
The camera at the front of the house showed Bima arriving at 8:47 p.m.
He left at 9:18.
No one else entered after that.
The rear camera had been offline since 7:32 p.m.
Dimas smiled.
"You were wrong."
Raka looked at the screen.
"Why?"
"If no one came in after Bima left, then Bima really was the killer."
Raka pointed at the time stamp on the recording.
"Play it again."
The recording played.
Bima left.
The gate closed.
His car drove away.
Then the yard was empty.
Five minutes.
Ten minutes.
Twenty minutes.
No one was there.
Raka spoke softly.
"Zoom in on the gate."
The operator zoomed in.
Raka narrowed his eyes.
Something appeared.
A shadow.
Dimas moved closer.
"That's a tree."
"No."
"A person?"
Raka nodded.
"Someone's standing behind the gate."
"Why didn't the camera capture his body?"
"Because he knew the camera's blind spot."
Dimas looked at Raka.
"So the perpetrator knew the house's security system."
"Yes."
"Someone close to him?"
"Maybe."
Raka looked at the recording again.
Then his expression changed.
"Something else is strange."
"What?"
"The shadow appeared before Bima came home."
Dimas fell silent.
"That means..."
Raka nodded.
"He was already waiting."
Night fell.
The rain started again.
At the police station, Bima was still being questioned.
Meanwhile, Raka returned to Arman's house.
He stood alone in the dining room.
The lights were off.
Only the light from outside the window came in.
Raka looked at the table.
Two cups.
Two spoons.
One knife.
One overturned chair.
Then he saw something no one else had noticed.
The wall clock.
Its hands had stopped at 10:16 p.m.
Raka moved closer.
He opened the back cover of the clock.
The battery had been removed.
But that wasn't what made him fall silent.
Behind the battery was a small scrap of paper.
There was only one sentence on it.
"If they find my killer, they'll kill the wrong person."
Raka read the sentence twice.
Then his phone rang.
Naya.
"Raka."
"What?"
"I just got some information."
"What information?"
"Arman Prakoso wasn't supposed to die tonight."
Raka frowned.
"What do you mean?"
Naya drew a breath.
"Someone already paid someone to kill him."
"Who?"
"I don't know yet."
Raka stood.
"Then what's the problem?"
Naya was silent for several seconds.
"The payment was made..."
Her voice grew faint.
"...three months ago."
Raka looked again at the scrap of paper in his hand.
Three months.
He pictured Arman's body in his mind.
Then a far more terrifying possibility emerged.
It wasn't that someone had planned Arman's murder.
It was that someone had planned his death long before Arman knew he was the target.
Raka slipped the paper into an evidence bag.
Before leaving the room, he stopped in front of the table.
Two cups.
Two spoons.
One knife.
And one overturned chair.
Everything looked like part of a murder.
But Raka was beginning to suspect that not everything in the room was connected to the murder.
Some of it may have been deliberately placed to make him believe a particular story.
He looked at the door.
Then said to himself:
"The perpetrator isn't hiding the truth."
He turned off the lights.
"He's making us believe in a lie that's true."
Outside the house, a black car slowly pulled away from the community.
Inside, someone turned on a phone.
A message came in.
RAKA FOUND THE LETTER.
The message was read.
Then deleted.
Someone replied:
LET HIM.
A few seconds later, a second message appeared.
WHY?
The reply was only three words.
THAT'S THE POINT.
Next in Chapter 2: Raka is now certain that Arman's murder was more than just a murder. But there's one thing he still doesn't know: the person who killed Arman may not be the person who planned his death. And the person who planned it may have known from the beginning that Raka would be investigating the case.