Chapter Eight
The rain hadn’t let up since the afternoon. It came in steady sheets, then staccato bursts, tapping against the windows of Rick’s office like skeletal fingers. The city was always wet, always bruised by clouds and shadows, but tonight it felt drowned, as if the sky was trying to baptize it.
The Spire Division’s headquarters buzzed with movement and chatter like static on an old radio, a constant white noise that made everything feel suspended in amber—time slowed, nerves frayed.
The overhead bulbs poured out their flat, unforgiving glare, giving the bullpen a jaundiced pallor.
Two empty pizza boxes curled open on a table by the water cooler, crusts congealing in grease.
Somewhere, a vending machine groaned and coughed up a soda no one had asked for.
Rick had spent the whole damn day shaking the truth out of Eclipse staffers, he and Frank tag-teaming interviews in a back room that stank of sweat and old nerves.
One worker after another filed through, each more jittery than the last, their stories vague, overlapping, half-soaked in glitter and cheap vodka.
They tried to stitch it all together into something coherent, something that pointed somewhere.
It was a waste of time. Everyone clammed up the second the cameras went off.
Some were spooked, some just bored, but nobody saw a thing—at least nothing they were willing to talk about.
And the latest victim still had no name, no ID, no matches in the system; just a faceless John Doe adding to the body count.
Now he stood before the crime board with arms crossed and his shirt sleeves rolled, smoke curling from the cigarette tucked between his lips.
His eyes were tracing the same loops they’d been dragging for weeks.
Five victims. Five photos, each clipped under harsh yellow pins.
Their bodies were dumped miles apart, but the method, the damage, the silence surrounding them were identical.
Threaded red twine spidered between tacks and notecards and blurry surveillance stills.
It was a map of debris; a puzzle that refused to speak.
Frustrated, Rick crushed the butt into a chipped tray and strode out into the bullpen, hands on hips.
At her desk near the rear windows, Kitty Bennett, the department’s resident whiz at anything with a power button, leaned into the glow of her monitor.
Soft platinum curls framed her mid-twenties face in sculpted waves, the style equal parts glamorous and saucy.
A fitted sweater hugged her petite frame in beige cashmere.
She wore lipstick too red for the hour and oversized cat-eye glasses that reflected the screen.
“Anything on that damn symbol?” Rick asked, scratching his chin as he approached. He realized he hadn’t shaved in over a week.
Kitty didn’t look up. “You try decoding hand-written eldritch graffiti for sixteen hours and see if your brain doesn’t turn into goo.
” Her voice was velvet embroidered with sarcasm.
“I’ve got some Enochian theorists in a flame war with a Theban Alphabet subreddit, and two occult historians locked in a debate over whether the mark is part of a lost 19th-century lodge cipher. It’s a circus.”
Rick leaned on the edge of her desk, watching the swirl of data and cryptic images flit across her screen. “So, nothing concrete.”
“Not unless you count ‘esoteric jibber-jabber’ as concrete.” She finally glanced up, pushing her glasses up her nose with a finger tipped in plum polish. “Honestly, Rick, if this stuff’s legit, it’s old. Obscure. Pre-internet, or so warped it doesn’t register.”
Frank appeared beside him, coffee in hand, tie loosened. “Give her a break, Rick. She’s doing what she can.”
“She always does.” Rick gave Kitty a nod of respect. “Even when she looks like she stepped out of a Lucky Strike ad.”
Kitty preened slightly. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Detective.”
Frank smirked. “All right, I’m off. The wife’s waiting, and the girls are in one of their moods. Teenage hormone hurricanes. They practically hiss at each other now.”
“Ah,” Kitty said, mock-solemn. “The joys of fatherhood.”
“Beats sitting here chasing ghosts.” Frank glanced at Rick. “You should get some rest, too. You’ll think clearer in the morning.”
Rick pulled out another cigarette from his pack and lit it. “Not done yet.”
“You never are,” Frank muttered, stepping closer so that only Rick could hear him. “I see the way this case is eating you, buddy. Don’t go down that path again.”
Rick didn’t answer. He knew what Frank meant: he was taking it personally, getting too close, becoming obsessed.
Just like five years ago, when he clawed his way through hell to solve Lucas’s murder and nearly didn’t come back.
But this wasn’t the same. Couldn’t be. This wasn’t about his brother. “Go home, Frank,” he said. “I’m fine.”
Frank sighed and clapped him on the shoulder. “All right. Don’t drown in the ashtray, and if you find anything useful, call me. Otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Tell Stella I said hi,” Rick murmured.
“Will do. Try not to punch anyone.” Frank gave Kitty a two-finger salute, put his hat on, and left, the elevator doors closing behind him.
Rick returned to his office, smoking and pacing like a wolf in a glass cage, eyes returning again and again to the board like something new might emerge if he just looked hard enough. There was a logic here. A pattern. It just refused to be known.
The symbol itched at the edge of his vision. No one could read it; not Kitty, not the internet’s archives of arcana, not anyone alive and ordinary. But it wasn’t nonsense. Rick felt that in his bones.
Kitty was right: the internet had failed.
He’d have to ask for help of another kind.
The kind that came with fangs and old debts.
He fished out his phone, thumb scrolling through contacts until Schreck’s name surfaced, the one number he’d hoped never to use again.
‘Need a word. Urgent,’ he typed, hit send, and slid the phone back into his pocket like it might bite.
There. Done. Nothing to do now but wait.
A knock made him turn his head. Kitty stood there in her coat, wrapping her silk scarf around her neck, hesitating a beat too long near Rick’s door. “I’m turning in, too. Don’t stay too late, Rick. You’re not made of stone, you know.”
“Goodnight, dollface,” he said, making her cheeks flush pink.
“Goodnight, Rick.”
When she was gone, the place thinned out like a fading dream.
Chairs emptied. Voices quieted. The bullpen dimmed as the night crew settled into the hush of graveyard hours.
Rain pressed harder, a ceaseless percussion on the glass, punctuated only by the clock’s ticking and the flicker of old lights.
The scent of Kitty’s perfume lingered—violets and something woody.
Rick shut the door to his office and turned the overheads off.
Only his desk lamp stayed on, casting a coppery glow over the crime board, a crooked constellation of the dead.
He sparked the match again, the flame catching with a hiss, then dropped into his chair and stared.
Outside, the city wept against the glass.
He inhaled deeply, the burn grounding him. His gaze drifted; not to the victims this time, but to the red-ringed photo pinned beside them.
Ash Hunter.
That damned smudge of a mugshot. No matter how high they cranked the contrast, the kid’s face wouldn’t come through clean.
Something in it resisted clarity, like a photo exposed to too much light.
The distortion was subtle, just enough to look natural.
But Rick knew better. You didn’t work this long and not recognize the tremor of something wrong behind the curtain.
He took one more drag and exhaled slowly. Then he stood, unable to resist the pull any longer.
He moved across the dimmed police station like another shadow, uncannily noiseless for a man his size.
He passed rows of empty desks and bulletin boards crammed with missing person photos, stopping at the small office just outside the bullpen, where Officer Jacobs sat in front of the security monitors, half a sandwich hanging from his fingers.
“Detective Slade,” Jacobs said mid-chew, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Didn’t expect you still here.”
“I want to see the prisoner.”
Jacobs swallowed. “Sure. Nothing to see, though. He hasn’t moved in hours. Out cold.”
He angled the monitor toward Rick. The black-and-white feed showed Ash sprawled on the cot, still as an oil painting, one arm slung over his eyes, the other curled over his stomach.
Even in sleep, he was… magnetic. Vulnerable and commanding at once.
A deadly thing pretending to be safe. A beauty not to be trusted.
Rick leaned in, brow furrowing at the faint outlines on the cell floor. “What’s that beside him?”
Jacobs looked sheepish. “Uh… Hayes said the kid seemed pale. Said he hadn’t eaten all day, so…”
“So he brought him a pizza and a beer?” Rick’s voice sliced through the quiet like a saw. “What the hell is this—Grand Hotel?”
Jacobs straightened defensively. “It won’t happen again, sir.”
Rick said nothing. His jaw worked, molars grinding.
He wasn’t angry about the food. Not really.
He stared at the screen, arms folded tight.
A pizza. A goddamn beer. Marvin Hayes, of all people.
The kid could get anyone wrapped around his little finger—Rick knew that.
He’d felt the pull himself, strong enough to shake him.
But knowing Ash had cozied up to someone else, even for something this small, scraped raw in ways he didn’t want to name.
Rick shifted his weight, his gaze scanning the image.
Ash wasn’t faking, not this time. You couldn’t manufacture sleep like that—boneless, unaware.
It made something tighten in Rick’s gut.
He told himself he was watching for signs of deception.
It was just surveillance, nothing else. What he didn’t admit was how long he’d been staring.
Minutes passed. A muscle ticked in his cheek. The hum of the monitor filled the space where logic once lived. Finally, Rick pulled away with a grunt. “Don’t let anyone else down there tonight.”
Jacobs nodded quickly. “Understood.”
Rick turned and walked away, the flare of tobacco briefly illuminating his face before darkness returned.
Back in his office, the door shut behind him with a soft click.
The bourbon bottle in his drawer was nearly empty.
He loosened his tie, toed off his shoes, and poured what was left.
Then he put out his cigarette and lowered himself onto the couch in the corner, the steady drip of the storm outside beating its own rhythm against the ache inside his skull.
The last wisps of smoke danced in the lamplight as his eyes closed against his will.