Edward
His leather satchel bounces against his leg as he goes, and he adjusts the strap while pushing his black-rimmed glasses back up on his nose.
He wonders if he should have bothered bringing all this paperwork with him—write-ups he’d done on the new video footage, crime statistics, other reports on similar murders in this part of the city.
How some of those statistics line up with the business dealings of Grand Central and Lumines.
Anything that might help convince Samantha Lang to give him more of whatever she knows.
Paperboy, some of the officers teasingly call him at the station when they see him hauling in boxes full of news clippings or struggling for an hour with the office’s copy machine.
But he still keeps scanning documents, still stays hunched over stacks of reports on his desk, still reads through cases in bed with his night-light on while his boyfriend sleeps.
Or strange evidence that isn’t evidence at all.
Like the footage with William Taylor.
Edward could clearly see the young man’s face in the video as he walked up to Connie, could see him lift a hand and touch her shoulder. But there were no physical wounds found on her body, nor any fingerprints, nor anything directly connecting Will’s gesture to Connie’s death.
The footage wasn’t even saved in the same directory as all the other evidence for Connie. Edward found it in the archives, an unsorted clip in a sea of discarded files. Evidence like that didn’t just accidentally end up there. Someone tossed it.
Edward doesn’t know exactly who it might be, or how many could be involved, but he has seen the department’s ties to these corporations, has noticed a senior detective who meets with Diamond Taylor, knows the chief attends fundraisers for mayoral candidate Doherty.
There is a bigger story in this social web, but Edward hasn’t quite pieced it together yet. So, for now, he’s trying to be careful—he reached out to Sam on a burner phone, checked to make sure he wasn’t being followed this morning.
Even with the video, Edward feels limited in what he can do. Will touched Connie’s shoulder, she stiffened, and he walked away and got back into his car. By the time he drove off, she had fallen to her hands and knees, then collapsed.
It isn’t incriminating. She could have had any number of undiagnosed conditions, which their medical examiner is now checking for.
Heart attack. Aneurysm. Blood clot. It isn’t enough to convict Will of anything.
The best Edward could do is perhaps bring him in for questioning, which Will won’t agree to without a lawyer present, anyway.
And Grand Central’s lawyers are notoriously powerful.
Edward scowls at the movie screen. He isn’t sure what bothers him more—the lack of enough solid evidence to settle these cases, or the fact that the old-timers at the station seem largely to have given up.
Look at this kid.
You’re wasting your time, chasing all these dead ends.
Leave it be.
Just let him. The young ones’ll realize it eventually.
He doesn’t get it. All his life, he has strived to finish what he starts, has found deep satisfaction in a job well done. And yet, at the station, he sees so many others with their determination worn away. What’s the point of becoming a detective if you have no itch to solve a mystery?
Up on the screen, a car drives slowly past the two chatting men and parks under an apartment complex. Inside, the driver’s face is obscured in shadows.
Edward watches the film for ten minutes before a presence behind him draws his attention.
It’s the way the echo changes around him now, hitting something small and solid in the seat directly at his back, a figure who doesn’t say anything.
It’s so subtle that a part of him is convinced no one is there at all.
It’s just himself and his anticipation creating a ghost out of the air.
A moment later, he feels a hand touch his upper arm, pulling subtly at him, gesturing wordlessly for him to stand.
His skin prickles. He does as the stranger wants.
As he rises to his feet, the hand begins to pat him down, searching the insides of his jacket, checking for wires running under his clothes, fingers gliding across his chest and back.
He keeps his hands raised and remains very still.
“You’re not being recorded,” he says quietly.
The figure doesn’t answer. At last, the hand withdraws, and a second later, he feels two fingers press gently against the top of his shoulder. He sits back down. The chair squeaks under his weight.
“You told me seat 9F,” Edward says without turning his head. “But it’s broken.”
“Glad you can think for yourself,” she replies.
In person, Samantha Lang’s voice is soft, and something in his mind automatically wants to ignore it, as if convincing himself that she isn’t really there. Edward frowns and forces himself to concentrate.
“I appreciate you meeting me here,” he says.
There’s another pause. On the screen, a woman steps out of the apartment complex and walks past the parked car. As she turns the corner, the driver starts the engine and trails after her.
“You have a strong soul,” Sam says.
It’s an odd comment, and Edward finds himself blushing, unsure how to answer. “Is that your way of saying I’m bold to meet you here?” he asks.
“It means you must have the stomach for this kind of job.”
He gets the sense that she actually means something else, but he doesn’t know what it might be, and he doesn’t pry. “Well,” he replies, “someone has to do it.”
“What’s in the bag?”
He pushes his glasses up, undoes his satchel’s clip, and starts pulling out his folder of neatly organized documents. “Some evidence for you. I thought you might appreciate seeing the other cases I’ve been working on.”
“These are the ones you mentioned on the phone.”
“That’s correct.”
“Which ones?”
He holds up one of the reports to one side so that she can take it. “More recently, a Grand Central employee you might know. Ashley Hanover? Does that name ring a bell?”
She doesn’t answer right away, nor does she take the report. When Sam doesn’t speak, it seems as though she’s disappeared entirely. Edward puts down the report after a while. He fights the urge to turn around, to check whether or not the seat behind him is actually empty.
On the screen, the car turns the corner to find that the woman it was trailing has vanished. The driver pulls over. His face is wrinkled with confusion.
“And why do you think that’s similar to my mother’s case?” Sam finally says.
“Well, you all seem to run in the same circles.”
“My mother wasn’t connected to the Lumines Group or Grand Central.”
He straightens. “But she was.”
“She didn’t know I work for Grand Central.”
“I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about her.” He frowns. “You didn’t know?”
Sam is quiet.
He clears his throat. “Some years back, your mother was employed in a factory owned by the Lumines Group. She quit two decades ago.”
Her continued silence tells him that this is a revelation for her.
“Your mother worked under a supervisor named Henry Maclan,” he continues, “who was found dead recently at a downtown bar. And Maclan had recently attended a hotel event with Kane Zhukov, who was killed the night after Maclan—under circumstances as strange as those of your mother’s.
” He shakes his head. “I have the video of Will with your mother, but I can’t prove that he did anything in particular to her.
The autopsy results certainly didn’t turn up anything.
Like the others, there’s no evidence of any weapons used.
No conclusive agreement on how the victims might have died.
So, you see. These are the similarities that I have to investigate. ”
“Why?”
He frowns again. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you have to?”
“Well, ma’am, it’s my job.”
“It’s the job of your colleagues too. But you’re the only one to follow through. Why?”
She’s suspicious of his intentions, he realizes. “Because my parents taught me that if I’m going to do something, I’d better do it right.”
“And you still listen to your parents?”
“Well, they’re not around anymore. So I mostly listen to myself these days.”
She doesn’t offer her condolences, but something about her pause this time feels like a shared grief, and he respects it, letting them both linger in it for a while.
In the silence, he recalls watching his father grade papers at the dinner table, his mother coming home at six in the morning in her blue scrubs.
Somehow, they still managed to walk him to school every morning, still both showed up at his graduation, still helped him move into his college dorm.
It didn’t seem like that long ago when they were both healthy and strong.
Eddie, his mother used to say as she twisted her braids up into a tight bun. People like us, we have to work twice as hard to get half the reward. But we still show up, don’t we? And we show them, don’t we?
“Listen, Miss Lang,” Edward says gently, tucking away his old wounds.
“I may not know what exactly is going on here, but I know there’s something wrong in the undercurrents of this city.
Deaths with evidence that doesn’t make any sense.
Ties between these corporations that I can’t explain.
I get a lot of cold shoulders from people, a lot of half-baked answers.
And maybe I’m just new to the force and don’t know any better.
But I know you loved your mother. And I know you wouldn’t have called me back, you wouldn’t have come here, if you didn’t think you could help me.
Now, you don’t have to give me anything.
I’m impressed you even showed up. But if there is anything at all that you feel willing to give, I’d appreciate it, more than you could know. ”