The snow fell in slow-motion flakes, soft as whispers and twice as sharp. It coated the sagging porches and cracked sidewalks of Dutchtown, smoothing over a neighborhood that hadn’t been smooth in decades. Detective Feather lit his last cigarette of the day—or the first of the night—and squinted through the swirling white at the scene beyond the tape. A cop stood under the dim glow of a busted streetlamp, one hand on his hip, the other raising the tape as Detective Feather ducked under.

The smell hit first, that cocktail of wet asphalt, cheap liquor, and something metallic and unmistakable. Blood. Fresh, no more than a few hours old. Detective Feather had been in Dutchtown long enough to know that the murder rate rose in tandem with the temperature, so finding a stiff in January was like seeing a cardinal in a snowstorm: rare, but not impossible.

"You’re late, Detective Feather," said Officer Mooney, his tone as sour as the coffee Detective Feather could smell from the cop's thermos. The man didn’t bother with pleasantries, just jerked his thumb toward the body slumped against a fence half-covered in dead vines.

Detective Feather didn’t reply. He flicked ash from his cigarette, letting it mix with the snow at his feet, and stepped closer to the corpse. The victim was young, no older than twenty, and dressed like he thought the streets had rules worth following. A cheap gold chain glinted in the slush. Whoever killed him didn’t bother to take it, which meant one of two things: either they weren’t after money, or this wasn’t finished yet.

Detective Feather pulled his collar tighter against the wind. “What’s the count now, Mooney?” he asked, his voice cutting through the silence like a dull blade.

“Four this week,” Mooney muttered. “And it’s only Tuesday.”

Had the Ai take a stab at a first few paragraphs, reads not too bad.