Chapter 48
STING
I wake Armen first. One knock, and he’s at the door, alert, reading my face before I say a word.
“Skylight Room,” I say. “Now.”
He doesn’t ask questions. That’s Armen. He pulls on a shirt and follows.
Rogue takes more effort. Three knocks. A muffled, “what the fuck,” from inside. I open the door. He’s face down in his pillow, one arm hanging off the bed.
“Get up.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“I know what time it is. Skylight Room.”
He groans, rolls over, sees my face, and the groan dies. He’s up and moving in seconds. Rogue knows the difference between routine and real. This is real.
The three of us meet in the Skylight Room, door closed. I spread the pages I’ve been studying on the table—Fischer’s property transfer from the city records, Tommy’s trade requisition from last Tuesday. Side by side.
“Look at the handwriting,” I say.
Armen leans in, studies both pages, and takes his time. Rogue looks over his shoulder, squinting in the low light.
“The sevens,” Armen says.
“The sevens. The fours. The capital letters. All of it.”
Armen straightens up and looks at me. “Who wrote this?” He taps the requisition form.
“Tommy.”
Rogue frowns. “Tommy. The logistics guy?”
“Yeah.”
“And this one?” Armen taps the property transfer.
“L. Fischer. City development officer. From Renner’s papers. The signature on the shell companies, the audit denial, the property transfers that created this building.”
Nobody says anything.
Rogue picks up both pages, holds them next to each other, and tilts them toward the light from the cracked skylight. His face changes as he compares. The easygoing bullshit drops away. Underneath it is the Rogue that most people don’t see—sharp, focused, thinking very fast.
“It’s close,” he says. “It’s real close. But handwriting? That’s your evidence?”
“It’s what I’ve got.”
“Handwriting analysis isn’t exactly hard science, Sting. People have similar styles. Could be a coincidence.”
“Slashed sevens, strange fours, the same lean on every capital, the same crossbar on the F. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a match.”
“Or it’s two guys who went to the same school,” Rogue says. Not arguing, just testing. Pushing back the way he does when he wants to make sure we’re not running on assumptions.
I can appreciate that. I do the same.
“How old is Tommy?” he asks.
“Mid-forties. Maybe late forties. Hard to tell.”
“Fischer would be what? Based on the dates on these documents?”
“About the same. The timeline fits.”
“How long has Tommy been here?”
“As long as I can remember. He was already here when we started building this place into what it is.”
Armen nods slowly. “If Fischer signed the property transfers for this building, he’d know it was untraceable. When Rothwell collapsed, he’d know exactly where to hide.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“That’s a theory,” Rogue says. “A good one. But it’s still a theory.”
He’s right. The handwriting is a strong match, but it’s not a fingerprint.
I don’t have a photograph of Landis Fischer to compare to Tommy’s face.
I don’t have a confession. I’ve got two pieces of paper with similar penmanship, a timeline that fits, and a gut feeling that’s been nagging me since seeing this guy chat up Mara.
“There’s something else,” I say. “He’s been spending time with Mara.”
Both of them look at me.
“Mara,” Armen says. Flat.
“Multiple times. In the neutral zone. Long conversations. Focused attention. She told Vi about it. Called him a friend. Said he was helping her understand how the Rot works.”
“Could just be a guy being friendly,” Rogue says. “Mara’s pretty. It follows that some dude is going to move on her.”
“Could be. Or it could be a man who spent a career hiding money and blocking audits, using the new girl to find out what Vi knows about her father and the whole city council. Mara’s trusting.
She’s open. She doesn’t know the rules here yet.
If someone wanted to figure out how deep Vi’s gotten into those papers without asking Vi directly, Mara’s the easiest way in. ”
Rogue sits down. Runs his hand through his hair. “Well, fuck all.”
“Yup.”
Armen picks up the property transfer again, studies Fischer’s signature one more time, then sets it down. “What do you want to do?” he asks.
“Let’s watch him. Don’t spook the guy. Don’t change anything. I want to know who he talks to, where he goes, what he does when he’s not counting boxes. If he’s Fischer, he’s been hiding here for years. He’s careful. If he gets the sense that anyone’s looking at him, he’ll disappear.”
“And Vi?” Rogue asks.
I knew that was coming.
“We don’t tell Vi. Not yet.”
“She’s going to lose her shit when she finds out we sat on this,” Rogue says.
“I know.”
“She’s already pissed at you for the silent treatment. Add this to the pile, and it’s going to be ugly.”
“I know that too. But if we tell Vi right now, she’ll go straight at him.
You know she will. She’ll confront his ass before we have anything solid, and he’ll deny it and walk out of the Rot tonight never to be seen again.
And if he is Fischer, we lose the one connection we have to the people who destroyed this town. ”
Rogue looks at Armen. Armen looks at me.
“Yeah,” Armen says slowly. “We watch. Gather info. When we have something solid, we bring her in. But it needs to be soon, Sting. We can’t sit on this for long.”
“I agree,” I say.
Rogue leans back and stares at the ceiling through the broken glass. “If this guy is really Fischer, he’s been here the whole time. Living with us. Eating our food. And we never noticed.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That part I’m very pissed about.”
“Join the club.”
We sit with it for a minute, three men in a room with cracked glass and bad lighting, looking at two pieces of paper that might mean nothing, or might mean everything.
Then Armen stands. “I’ll take mornings. I can adjust my rounds to keep him in sight without it looking unusual.”
“I’ve got afternoons,” Rogue says. “He comes through the neutral zone most days around two. I’ll be there.”
“I’ll handle nights,” I say. “And the trade records. If he’s been writing requisitions, there’s more samples. I’ll build a comparison.”
Armen nods. Rogue nods. We’re in agreement. It feels good for the three of us to be in a room with a plan, working a problem together, each taking a piece. This is what we do. This is how we built this place.
I’ve been paralyzed by evidence I couldn’t process and feelings I couldn’t express. Now, I’ve got a target, a threat. It’s something I can track, contain, and deal with.
It’s the first time in a long time I’ve had something I can grab onto—and I’m not letting it get away.