Chapter Thirty-Five
If someone had told Ash he’d be at the police station after midnight, willingly, he would’ve laughed in their face.
Yet here he was, in Calgrave Central’s entrance hall, desperate enough to beg for someone to talk to him.
He hadn’t planned on showing up, but after half a dozen calls to CMPD’s main line—all met with polite stonewalling—he’d decided the direct approach was faster.
And if ‘faster’ meant annoying the hell out of some cop until they slipped, so be it.
“Look,” Ash said, mustering his most disarming smile, “I just need to talk to Detective Slade. He’s not answering his cell, and it’s urgent.”
The desk sergeant was a broad, doughy man with the kind of weary face that looked carved from stale bread.
His nameplate read J. Higgins, and his eyes held all the warmth of a dead fish.
“Yeah, well, detectives don’t give their addresses out to the general public,” Higgins replied, tone flat as asphalt.
“And unless this is about an active case, you’ll need to make an appointment. ”
Ash drummed his fingers on the granite counter, the sound sharp in the vaulted quiet. Above, the chandelier’s brass arms gleamed like spider legs, casting fractured light across geometric patterns on the marble floor. “You think I came all the way up here to talk about the weather?”
Higgins didn’t blink. Somewhere beyond the ornate railings, a keyboard clattered in short, irritable bursts. “I told you,” the sergeant said, “Slade’s out. I can leave a message.”
Ash leaned forward, smile thinning. Brick wall.
Always the brick walls. The restless charge still hummed under his skin—Rick’s scent, Rick’s touch, the memory of his mouth—making every nerve sing like a live wire.
Patience had never been his strong suit, and tonight it was paper-thin.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said softly, lowering his voice until it brushed the sergeant’s ear like velvet.
He let his gaze linger, let heat unfurl in the edges of his tone, coaxing, inviting. “I need to see him. Right now.”
For a second, Higgins’ pupils dilated, his shoulders slackening as though gravity itself had eased its grip.
The chandelier buzzed, then stuttered, its dozens of bulbs flickering like dying stars.
A tremor ran through the gilded framework, shadows lurching across the patterned marble tiles.
And then—crack. A few of the bulbs burst in a shower of sparks and glass.
Higgins swore, startled, his hand flying to shield his face.
The counter phone shrieked with static and went dead.
A vending machine near the wall spat coins onto the floor with a metallic clatter.
Radios on the officers’ belts sputtered nonsense, coughing out fractured syllables before collapsing into white noise.
In the sudden dimness, chaos broke loose.
Chairs screeched against the marble, officers shouting over one another.
Someone stumbled and sent a stack of paperwork scattering like white doves.
A young patrolman sprinted for the breaker room; another tried slapping his radio, swearing that comms were fried.
The whole lobby throbbed with nervous confusion, a hive rattled from its order.
Ash cursed inwardly. Again. Too much. He’d pushed too hard, and the force inside him had spilled over. His pulse quickened, and for a moment, he thought the entire station might black out.
Through the blur of voices and shuffling bodies, he noticed one solitary figure: a young man in a lab coat, frozen mid-step, staring at him.
He was thin, brown-haired, with wire-rimmed glasses perched on a narrow nose, and the awkward stoop of someone more used to shadows than the spotlight.
Yet his eyes, slightly magnified behind the lenses, had snagged on Ash with an intensity that belied his posture.
Wide, startled, as if he’d stumbled into a dream he wasn’t ready to wake from.
Ash recognized that look. He’d seen it a thousand times on men and women alike, on strangers who lingered too long at the club’s edge. Hunger, hiding behind awe. He pounced on it.
“Hello,” he said, closing the space between them. “These clowns are useless, and I need to reach Detective Slade. Maybe you can help me out?”
The young man jerked, clutching a folder in front of his chest like it might ward Ash off. “I—I’m just a coroner’s assistant,” he stammered, voice paper-thin. “Gordon Cooper. I was on my way to—”
“Listen, Gordon,” Ash cut him off, his tone edged with impatience. “This is urgent.”
“Well, as far as I know, Slade checked out hours ago.” Gordon’s nervous smile twitched, vanishing almost instantly. “He should be home, I guess.”
Ash stepped closer, close enough for his shadow to swallow the technician’s polished shoes. “Home,” he echoed, voice low. “And where’s that?”
Gordon’s mouth gave a helpless twitch. “I—I wouldn’t know.”
Ash let his eyes half-close, lashes lowering into a sultry heaviness. “Can you find out? Please, Gordon.”
The young man swallowed. His throat bobbed, lips parting and pressing shut again.
Around them, the station was still in disarray—phones ringing, radios crackling, uniforms barking orders as papers fluttered to the floor.
No one so much as glanced their way. And when Gordon looked back at Ash, it was with the air of someone yielding to a current stronger than himself. He nodded, barely audible. “Follow me.”
Relief washed over Ash, sharp and sudden.
He trailed the morgue tech down a wide stairwell where the Art Deco grandeur gave way to institutional green, their footsteps echoing in the concrete shaft.
The air grew colder with each step, thick with formaldehyde and industrial cleaner.
Overhead bulbs burned too bright, harsh and utilitarian, nothing like the warm light of the lobby’s chandelier.
They crossed a basement corridor lined with dark granite tiles, past a door marked MORGUE in chipped black letters, past another labeled EVIDENCE, until Gordon unlocked an unmarked office.
The noise from above vanished behind them, swallowed by cinder block and silence.
“Technically, I don’t have clearance for this,” Gordon murmured, dropping into a chair and logging onto the terminal with quick, nervous hands.
“But CMPD’s system is still running on fossils.
You jiggle the right keys, and the doors will open.
” His fingers moved in quick, practiced bursts, the screen blooming with menus and locked files.
His ears had gone scarlet, his jaw clenched with focus, yet his eyes kept darting upward, unable to stop returning to Ash as though pulled on strings.
Ash leaned on the desk, watching the flicker of Gordon’s keystrokes.
“There,” Gordon whispered at last, pulling up Rick Slade’s personnel file. Lines of text scrolled across the monitor, stark and damning. Among the details glowed an address: 109 Talbot Lane, Thornefield. Apartment 14.
Ash fixed it in his mind, already straightening before Gordon could exit the screen. “Thanks, Gordon.”
He didn’t wait for excuses, or permission, or the nervous flutter of protest starting in Gordon’s throat. He was already moving, boots hitting tile, pulse thudding with a single purpose: find Rick.
(12:26 a.m.)
Wind clawed at Ash’s hair as he tore through Brookheim’s streets, the bike an extension of his pulse.
The city throbbed around him—neon signs burning in the mist, towers cutting jagged silhouettes against the night sky—but his focus had tunneled, singular.
He leaned into the curves, exhaust snarling, chasing an instinct older than thought.
He skidded to a halt in front of Rick’s five-story building, tires squealing, the machine ticking down as the engine cooled.
The place rose in weary brick and shadow, windows blind, the full moon painting every ledge in silver.
Ash swung off the bike, boots slapping asphalt, heart thrumming too fast. He took the stairs two at a time, his palm sliding along the railing, until he reached number 14, the name Slade etched across brass.
He hammered on it. Once. Twice. He didn’t give a fuck if he was asleep. “Rick!” His knuckles ached from the force, but the silence from inside the apartment pressed back harder. He tried again, louder, impatience bleeding into anger. “Rick, it’s me! Open the damn door!”
At first, nothing. Then—muffled sounds, a thud, a groan, the scrape of something metal. Rick’s voice was hoarse, strangled, almost inhuman. “Go away!”
The command only tightened the vise around Ash’s ribs.
If Rick thought he could get rid of him that easily, he had another thing coming.
Ash bent, slid the pick from his boot, and set to work.
The pins resisted, stubborn as clenched teeth, each delicate scrape testing his nerves.
He coaxed, adjusted, eased the pressure with practiced patience, and with a twist and click that felt like betrayal, the lock gave at last.
The apartment swallowed him in shadow and heat.
The air pressed upon his lungs, tinged with sweat, copper, and a darker musk that prickled his skin and raised the hairs on his arms as he stepped further in.
The place opened wide: kitchen, dining nook, and living room stitched together in one dim sprawl.
A sofa slouched against the wall, a suit jacket tossed across its arm, blackened with something that looked like dried blood.
Empty bottles and a pair of heavy shoes sat abandoned near the door, as if shed mid-stride.
The counters were bare save for an ashtray crowded with butts, the ghost of smoke clinging to the air.
Spartan, messy, more functional than welcoming. So Rick.