CHICAGO — The mayor and the police told one story. Theirs was a panoramic tale of greed and vanity, of an actor who hungered for more money and fame, staged a hoax making him the victim of a hate crime, paid off two accomplices, besmirched the name of a good city and then, maddeningly, got away with it.

The prosecutor’s version was more complicated. He secured a 16-count felony indictment, then dropped all the charges with no warning. He added a hasty and bewildering postscript, saying that the actor — though officially cleared — had not been exonerated of wrongdoing.

The actor, Jussie Smollett, had the simplest story of all: He’s innocent.

All three narratives collided this week in Chicago, a city riven by race, class, violence and secrecy. It was the ideal backdrop.

“The story is bizarre from beginning to end,” Sara Paretsky, the Chicago novelist whose best-selling mysteries are set in the city, said in an email Tuesday night.

She had followed the story from the beginning, and found herself “profoundly depressed” by the decision by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to drop the charges. “Every time I think we’ve elected someone who might rise above the corruption that encases Chicago like a wool glove on a hot July day, the electee runs to do something to prove it’s the same old same old.”

On Wednesday, the confusion of the day before — a whirl of accusations, dropped charges, fiery news conferences and chaotic courthouse scenes — had hardly cleared.

[Read more about the war of words in Chicago.]

The saga surrounding Mr. Smollett, a star of the Fox drama “Empire,” began in Chicago in January, when he filed a police report saying that he had been attacked while walking downtown by two men who not only put a rope around his neck, but also made racial and homophobic slurs and said that Chicago was “MAGA country.”

A national outpouring of sympathy followed, even from President Trump, who called the incident “horrible.” The police investigated for weeks, scouring surveillance video for evidence of the attack.

But in February, the authorities in Chicago said they believed Mr. Smollett had staged the mugging and apparent hate crime in an effort to get attention and a pay raise.

And on Tuesday came the most dramatic twist of all: The Cook County state’s attorney’s office announced abruptly that all charges would be dropped against Mr. Smollett, who appeared at the courthouse looking serene. He stood in front of a scrum of reporters, read from handwritten notecards and declared that he had been vindicated.

“I’ve been truthful and consistent on every single level since Day 1,” he said. “This has been an incredibly difficult time, honestly one of the worst of my entire life, but I am a man of faith and I’m a man that has knowledge of my history, and I would not bring my family, our lives or the movement through a fire like this.”

[Here’s a timeline of events of the Smollett case.]

As he left the courthouse, Mr. Smollett posed with fans. The court file on his case was sealed immediately.

Joe Magats, the prosecutor who made the decision to drop the charges, scrambled to explain himself, saying in an interview that Mr. Smollett was not a threat to public safety.

And across the city, where they gathered for a graduation ceremony for police officers, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Eddie Johnson, the police superintendent, were caught by surprise.

“From top to bottom, this is not on the level,” said a furious Mr. Emanuel, who is not running for re-election. He called the action by the prosecutor “a whitewash of justice.”

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