Why? What? When? Where? How? And who? My mind reeled with questions while I sat in the police cruiser. At least I had moved up to the front passenger seat now, as if I were Officer Gilliam’s partner. Of course, I wasn’t. But I guess he felt bad about having me ride in the back seat looking like a criminal. At the very least it was a move up in status.
I stared ahead at the rain hitting the windshield, while the questions continued their assault on my brain. What was in those missing files? And what was so explosive that she called a reporter from the Central Jersey Courier? How did three people end up dead? Were the others safe? Who was next?
“Daniel. Daniel. Daniel?” Gilliam’s voice. I didn’t realize how long I was lost in my own thoughts.
“Sorry. I’m back.”
Gilliam sighed. “We need to talk. Whether you realize it or not, you are smack in the middle of all this.”
I nodded. Gilliam read off the charges against me. “Accused of burglarizing the first victim’s home. You were in the second victim’s car last night. And texts from the third victim this morning summoning you.”
“I wish I could tell you.”
We sat silently while I stared ahead through the movement of the windshield wipers. The rain got heavier, so Gilliam sped up the wipers to accommodate. The wipers-as-metronome was now 120 beats per minute. Combined with the patter of raindrops on the roof and windshield, it reminded me of a Four Tops song, which I started to sing semi-consciously. Gilliam picked up on it and began bopping his head to the beat of the wipers and sang out the next line with me.
I stopped singing, but Gilliam kept on. Belting it out and mangling the lyrics as he went along.
“Reach out. Reach out. I’ll be there, to something something you. I’ll be there, and something something through.”
“You seem a lot more relaxed now,” I said. “I think singing aloud helps you. You should do it more often.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.”
The conversation ended and there was no more talking until Gilliam parked the cruiser in front of the offices of the Central Jersey Courier, a small storefront next to a UPS Store in a strip mall.
“Can I go inside with you?” I asked. Before Gilliam could say no, I added: “I promise not to ask any questions.”
“Fine,” Gilliam said. “But one word and you ride back to North Winslow in the rear seat.”
Like a criminal.
“Sounds fair,” I answered.
“We have a lot of ground to cover.”
“We?”
“Yeah. I think it’s better to keep you nearby. Bad things seem to happen when you’re off on your own.”
He wasn’t wrong.
SMALL TOWN SYMPHONY (in Four Deadly Movements)
Genre: Domestic Thriller
Release: March 2026
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Amazon | Bookshop.org | Solstice Publishing
Daniel Cole is a 27-year-old musical genius whose extraordinary auditory memory allows him to hear patterns others can’t. All he wants is to finally move out of his parents’ house and into his own place, but his non-normative demeanor has an alienating effect on the people he encounters. Instead, he is labeled a “Freak” and accused of a string of burglaries at real estate open houses. With his entire future in jeopardy, he sets out to clear his name, enlisting his only friend, a mechanic with a criminal past, to assist him. But when Daniel’s unconventional investigative style, enhanced by his auditory memory and perfect pitch, uncovers otherwise overlooked musical clues, he unwittingly exposes an underbelly of corruption in the seemingly idyllic town. And with each new revelation, another body turns up, with Daniel always implicated as the prime suspect.
Enter Nat Gilliam, the small-town cop tasked with the investigation. An outsider to the community himself, Gilliam empathizes with Daniel’s struggles against the judgmental villagers. Still, he can’t eliminate Daniel as a suspect. Alongside a local journalist with her own outsider status, their investigations crisscross and finally converge with the realization that Daniel’s auditory memory holds the key to unlocking the town’s sordid secrets and solving four murders.
Meet the author
Sloan Richman, originally from Brooklyn, New York, now lives across the East River in Manhattan with his wife, son, and crime-solving cat. He works as a technical writer by day, but at night, prowls the mean streets of the city looking for wrongs to write. He graduated from University of Pennsylvania with a BA in chemistry and received his MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, both of which have been helpful in plotting murders. Small Town Symphony (in Four Deadly Movements) is his debut novel. Reach Sloan at www.sloanrichman.com.