If I had known that writing crime novels would give me so much joy, I would have started writing them decades ago.
I had so much fun writing Dark Water that I couldn't wait to start the next book in what I hope will become a series: The Calloway and Hayes Mysteries. I have ideas flooding my head, often keeping me up at night, but I love it.
A few days after finishing the first draft of Dark Water, I started coming up with a new case, which is set mostly in Ottawa's ByWard Market. This story is even darker than the first novel, with many layers. There's a serial killer in Ottawa and ritualistic murders, but are they actually related?
As I said, last week, I've even come up with a title for the next book: The Watcher. And this week, I started laying out the outline for the story. As with Dark Water, I have spreadsheets and notes, with characters and plot lines, and I'm taking what I learned from the first book to be even more organized the second time around.
I've even written a rough draft of the prologue for The Watcher, which I've decided to share with you. But I need to set it up a bit, first.
In Dark Water, we learn that Detective Sergeant Erin Hayes moved to Ottawa after a promotion from the Niagara Regional Police Services. She had never even been to Ottawa before this transfer, so she's getting used to the city at the same time that she's settling into her new position with her new team.
Hayes lives in an apartment building in the Lincoln Heights area, her unit overlooking Mud Lake and the Ottawa River. On the nights that she can get home at a decent hour, she likes to change into something comfortable, pour herself a glass of wine, and sit on her balcony to enjoy the sunset.
Hayes lives with two roommates who are also OPS employees. Becca Pierson is a communications operator (dispatcher) and Maya Rahman is a patrol constable. The three often work hours that seldom sees them together in the apartment.
The Watcher begins on a rare night when the three have a Friday night off, together, and they decide to hit the ByWard Market. And that's where the story begins...
The rhythm of the bass and percussion followed them into the night air of the ByWard Market. Even at one in the morning, the streets were alive. Laughter echoed from the patios that still clung to their last customers, whilst taxis idled at curbsides, headlights cutting through the smoke that was curling from a nearby shawarma stand. The air held the sharp scent of gin and cigarettes, twisting together with the sweetness of fried dough from the Beaver Tails stall, its workers starting the shutdown for the night. The rise and fall of drunken voices, the clatter of bottles dumped into recycle bins by weary bartenders. Pooling light from streetlamps carved bright islands that contrasted the dark alleys that were to be avoided. A gentle breeze carried a quieter rhythm amid the careless laughter and echoing footsteps—an invisible patience in the air, like something holding its breath just beyond the reach of a neon glow.
The heavy club doors swung shut behind them, muffling the throb of music until it was nothing more than a pulse of memory. Becca Pierson was the tallest of the trio, her black dress shimmering faintly under the jaundiced streetlights, long legs moving with a confidence that was sharpened by heels. She tilted her head back as she laughed, light-brown waves of hair spilling over her shoulders, her giggle colored by the cocktails she had downed, inside. Maya Rahman walked beside her; shorter but solid, every step purposeful even after three vodka sodas. Her pink skirt caught and released the glow of passing headlights, and she tugged absently at the hem of her sleeveless blouse, smirking at Becca’s retelling of some clumsy pickup attempt. Erin Hayes trailed less than a half-pace behind, her sequined red dress catching moving light like embers. There was nothing loose or sloppy in her gaze, not even with the haze of tequila. She watched her friends with a warmth that softened the detective’s usual edge.
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| Image: Perplexity |
All three were laughing, shoulders brushing close as a warm breeze swept the humid, summer night air. They carried themselves with a mix of loosened joy and the quiet gravity of women who lived their waking hours inside the machinery of Ottawa crime. Tonight, though, they were only three friends in the Market, teasing one another about desperate men and bad pickup lines.
They didn’t see the still figure across the street, the one who noticed them first for their laughter, then for the way the light caught their hair, and finally through the lens of a camera raised from a shadow.
Behind him, beyond the reach of laughter and neon, the chocolatier’s shop sat as if abandoned. Its window displays—rows of truffles, glossy pralines, brittle wrapped in gold foil—were now only vague shapes in the dark, dulled by the sheen of glass. Inside, the sweetness that usually hung in the air had curdled under the weight of silence.
On the tiled floor between the display cases lay the owner, her body carefully placed, as though she had been gently lowered rather than violently killed. Her arms rested neatly at her sides, her face turned up, expression softened into something almost serene, as if she were only sleeping amidst her creations. Around her, deliberate patterns had been scrawled and arranged: carefully positioned objects and markings that broke the order of the shop with unsettling precision. The symbols seemed to radiate outward, framing her in an unnatural tableau.
The harmony of the arrangement made the scene more chilling—not a crime of passion, but one of patience and intent, every detail calibrated. Had anyone been standing above her, they would have recognized that this was not simply a body, but a message waiting to be read.
Outside, the Market carried on with its noise and chaos, blind to the quiet horror concealed just one pane of glass away, reflecting the three women as they climbed into their hired HOVR ride and made their way out of the ByWard Market.
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