1
TWO YEARS BACK
Wide establishing. Night. Rain on the window, venetian blinds throwing hard stripes.
Dr. Tracy Grant at a desk buried in paper, one lamp. Face in shadow. The
nameplate at the edge of the desk: DR. TRACY GRANT — legible, unremarked.
It was the DRIFT trial. My first one as PI.
Sixty subjects. Twelve weeks. And a quiet you only get in a conference room where somebody has just read the entire consent form out loud. All eleven pages. Including the optional saliva sample.
2
Tight on a spreadsheet over Tracy's shoulder. Endless rows. One column running blank, down and down, past the
bottom edge of the panel.
Somebody clammed up. I didn't know until closeout when I pulled the export. An empty column of data. Six weeks.
The column stared at me and I stared right back, like a raccoon stares at a motion-sensor porch light.
3
Tracy's face, close. Half-lit, blind-stripes across the eyes. A cold cup of coffee at the
edge of frame.
Six weeks of silence, and I'd been sitting on it the whole time.
Sure, you can write it up. Put it in the report. Hand it to the IRB with a straight face and a fresh haircut. What you can't do is get it back.
4
TONIGHT
New desk, same rain. Tracy's phone lights up face-up on the blotter — the only color on the
page so far. Purple spilling across the papers and up her jaw.
⚠ 031 — no response in 3 days
This time was different. This time I had a canary.
Three days in, it sang. Somebody was watching the joint, and it wasn't the night janitor.
5
Light floods. Warm and ordinary — Tracy mid-call, half-smiling, one shoe off. Daylight
through the window. Blinds gone, rain gone, no detective anywhere in the frame.
Hey — haven't heard from you. Everything okay?
Her mother was in the hospital. She needed a week. We paused her, and she finished the study.
6
Closing shot, echoing panel 1 — same desk, transformed. Tidy. Lamp off. Daylight.
Coat over the chair, case folder closed, the DR. TRACY GRANT nameplate square to the edge.
She's finally drinking the coffee.
Three days is a phone call. Six weeks is a limitations section.
The coffee was cold. Cold as Reviewer 2.
I guess there's some things software just can't fix.
Art direction — panel by panel
1Full noir + flashback frame. She reads competent, not defeated — upright, sleeves rolled. Nobody is sad yet. Before, not younger. Two years doesn't visibly age anyone, so don't try to show it on her face. Signal the gap with circumstance instead: different hair, no reading glasses yet, a rougher desk. The tag, the double frame and the sepia are already carrying the time. The nameplate is how the reader learns whose case this is — the captions never say, so it has to be readable here. The Dr. stays on: for a PI the doctorate is the job title, and the contrast with Connie's untitled plate is the point.
2The blank column is the villain. Bleed it off the panel edge so it reads bottomless.
3Emotional floor of the page — deepest blacks. Everything after this gets lighter. Last flashback frame.
4The hinge of the page — and the return to the present. Frame goes single, sepia drops, first purple anywhere. The glow is the only color in frame.
5The climax. Noir fully dissolves — no shadow, no stripes, hard cut from panel 4, not a fade. Payoff is human, not technical: the participant is a person with a life, never a data point. Caption stays in her voice — the plainness is in the writing, not in a typeface change.
6The button. Same voice throughout, but it loosens here — this is the radio-serial sign-off, narrator stepping out of the case to talk to the audience. Case-specific choice, not a series rule: compose as a mirror of panel 1 so this page closes where it opened. Only worth doing where a page already has a strong opening image to answer.
Series rules live in the Casebook
The standing rules for voice, page structure, look, cast, and ethics have moved to
the Casebook,
along with the full case index and running order. This page keeps only what's specific to
this case — the panel copy and the per-panel art direction above.