Chapter 29
BOGDAN
Tessa's photograph of the scan prints is still on my screen when Alison knocks.
I turn the phone facedown before opening the office door. The little gray shapes stay in my head. Yesterday I watched three separate flickers on a monitor and forgot, for a few seconds, every other thing a man might need to fear.
Alison comes in carrying a folder.
“We searched Afterglint this morning,” she says. “Ethan wasn't there.”
The office door closes against my palm. Downstairs at Depot One, a forklift reverses away from a waiting truck, its warning sounding through the wired glass.
I came here on Sunday because the work doesn't stop when somebody shoots at another yard.
Alison asked to see me about the photographer, and I made the office available.
I haven't asked Tessa to send me another picture of the babies. I already have this one saved twice.
“What did you find?”
“Archived original portraits. Personal belongings stored separately from the ordinary work stock. We're checking them against the earlier cases.”
She takes the chair opposite my desk. There's a white scrape along its wooden arm. I notice it while I wait for her to continue, needing something in the room to stay where it was.
Alison lays the folder across her knees rather than offering it to me.
“The chair from Peggy's gallery is there. That helps establish where those pictures were made. We're still working through identities and dates in the older material.”
I think of Peggy on a hotel bed beside a facedown phone, unable to bear what he'd made of her. Tessa had told me more about the altered portrait when I went to the hotel Thursday evening. She'd talked quietly, watching the stairs in case Peggy came looking for her.
The memory tightens something across my chest.
“Tessa and Peggy should hear this with me,” I say.
Alison nods. I turn my phone over and call Tessa before the image can persuade me to put the folder and its meaning between two other tasks.
She answers from the hotel. Peggy is in her room, she says, with a tray of breakfast they have apparently decided still counts as lunch. I ask her to put me on speaker, then tell her Alison is here and the studio has been searched.
The noise behind her stops.
“Did they find him?” Tessa asks.
“No,” Alison says. “We found material we need to compare with the cases. The portrait chair is there, Peggy. Your pictures helped us.”
Alison leans toward my phone on the desk. She doesn't raise her voice or begin speaking as though the women are somewhere far beyond understanding. I remain standing until Tessa asks me whether I'm still there.
“I'm here.” I take the chair behind my desk. “I'm listening.”
Peggy's voice comes through next, quieter than Tessa's. “What material?”
“Original portrait files and prints. Jewelry and hair accessories among the stored belongings. We need to establish who they belonged to and how they came to be there.”
I hear a small clatter at the other end, a spoon or a fork striking a plate. Tessa says Peggy's name. No one answers for a moment.
The paper in Alison's folder shifts as she opens it to her notes. I can see dates down one margin, but none of the photographs. She hasn't brought me a collection of dead women to stare at while my coffee goes cold.
“Does this mean the other women were his clients?” Tessa asks.
“There are possible matches. I'm not calling them confirmed yet. We have to verify the original images and identify the belongings.”
Alison gives them time to take that in. From the warehouse below comes the short rattle of a pallet settling onto concrete. I want to go downstairs and make the noise stop, as though quiet could help the women hear an answer that would make this less terrible.
“Some of the things might have been left after ordinary jobs,” Alison says. “We have to do the work. I don't want you learning a version from somebody who hasn't.”
Peggy draws a breath close enough to the phone for me to hear it catch.
“I sat in that room.”
Tessa says something too softly to make out. Cloth rustles, then Peggy speaks again.
“He moved the chair for me. He asked which side I liked. I was worried about my chin.”
Her voice breaks on the last word. I press my hand flat against the desk. The wood is cool, and beneath my palm a little grain of grit catches in the skin. I want to lift it, brush it away, do anything that lets me move.
I stay where she can hear me.
Alison asks whether Ethan has contacted Peggy again since Wednesday. Peggy says no. She hasn't answered anything else, hasn't opened the gallery again. Tessa keeps a copy of what they sent, and the original conversation is still on Peggy's phone.
“You did the right thing bringing it to me,” Alison tells her. “You don't have to look through it again for us.”
On my side of the call, there's nothing gentle enough to add. Guards outside a building hadn't known what he kept among his things. Peggy could've left his studio beside her escort and spent the whole evening believing she'd been safe in every way that mattered.
I remember watching her kiss him at my club. The shame makes my shirt feel too tight across my shoulders.
Tessa asks what happens next. Alison explains the comparison work briefly, then says she will contact them when she can tell them more. She asks them to preserve any fresh contact and keep using the escorts. The words are practical. They cannot remove the room from Peggy's memory.
“Are you staying together today?” I ask.
“Yes,” Tessa says. “We're staying here.”
I let out a breath I hadn't meant to hold. At least they aren't about to put on their coats and walk past a wall of costumes while every fold looks different to them.
“I'll come later.”
“We'd like that.”
The call ends after Alison confirms she has both their numbers. I leave my phone facedown on the desk. For a moment the office seems very large around the two chairs and the space between them.
Alison closes the folder.
“I know what you want to do,” she says.
I look at her. “Do you?”
“I know I need him alive.”
There's no threat in the way she says it. It's worse than that. She's asking me to understand something she shouldn't have to ask.
I think of the hand I pinned against the fence at Depot Two. Innokenty had been close enough to hurt, and I'd wanted to keep going long after Klim took the gun. Ethan is somewhere with Peggy's face on a screen and the knowledge that he made her cry.
My fingers curl against the desk.
“If we find him, you'll get the location,” I say.
Alison holds my gaze for a moment, then stands. I walk her to the office door. Klim is waiting on the landing with the copies she requested about Innokenty's payments. He joins her on the metal stairs, and I hear them begin talking before their voices disappear into the work below.
I go back to the desk and sit.
The scan image fills my screen again. Tessa sent it this morning with a message about Peggy having started a list of things that come in threes.
She'd told Peggy after we left the clinic.
I'd heard her laughing on the call beside me in the car, and for a little while the sound had made the whole city easier to cross.
Now I look at three small beginnings and try to understand how anyone has the courage to love a child before they can put their arms around it.
Tessa's body is doing something I can't help with by standing in a doorway. There will be appointments I have to sit through and answers I have to wait for. I can pay for care and clear my calendar. I can't buy certainty.
I put the phone in my pocket before Kirill comes in.
He's carrying a stack of amended job sheets. His coat has been changed since Thursday, and the new one falls cleanly over the shoulder where the old cloth tore. He sets the papers on my desk and looks toward the empty visitor's chair.
“Ethan?”
“They've searched the studio. He's gone. They found original pictures and belongings they're checking against the murders.”
Kirill remains standing. Through the window, a truck's rear doors swing shut. The men below are finishing a job they began before the detective arrived.
“The women know?”
“They heard Alison with me.”
He nods, a small movement that doesn't ask for credit from either of us. Then he puts a finger against the first page in the stack.
The extra coverage at Depot Two is in place.
He has the revised shifts, the costs and the names of the people who need a day away from that yard after the gunfire.
I check the totals and sign the authorization beneath them.
A longer column of figures is not the worst consequence I could have been given on Thursday.
Kirill turns the next sheet toward me. This one is for staff displaced by the fire, the people still helping at The Ninth Masque while their own workplace is a blackened shell.
I recognize Garrett's name near the top. His pay is continuing. There's a note beside it that his recovery update has been passed to the staff, with no date set for a full return.
“They want to keep the supper,” Kirill says. “The early one, for the workers.”
I look up. Halloween is six days away. The public party and the small staff meal have been sharing a date for weeks, and in my mind the date has become a door I don't want to open.
“They want to see each other somewhere that isn't outside the burned club,” he adds.
I can understand that. I still want to go home and find Tessa's shoes under the bench, although the house hasn't become safer simply because I miss the way it felt with her inside it.
Kirill waits while I read the note again. He isn't asking me to throw open the loading doors. Most of those workers have spent years learning which doors they're allowed to use.
“Keep the staff plan separate,” I say. “Klim approves everyone and every departure. Nothing stays on the calendar because a promoter wants it.”
Kirill takes the page back. “And the public tickets?”
“Get the refund money ready. Stop new sales while Alison checks the evidence. I want to be able to close it without waiting on anyone's permission.”
He writes the instructions at the bottom.
I picture the ballroom with its paper moon and silver masks, the line outside, strangers dressed to look like somebody else.
The things that made the launch an easy place to get close to Tessa will not become safer because I've spent more money on the lights.
The account balance can carry the refund. It can carry wages and the lost bookings too. I make Kirill look at me before I tell him the next part.
“The workers keep their pay if we cancel. So do the women for the work they've done.”
“I expected that.”
He doesn't sound pleased about the expense, but he doesn't argue. He takes a chair at last, resting his forearms on his knees instead of spreading another balance sheet between us.
“I told you they were bringing trouble into the business,” he says. “Their work gave us the man who was already inside it.”
I remember him in my office weeks ago, angry at the guards and the attention two women were costing us. He'd been willing to say it to my face then. I respect that he can say this to my face now.
“Tessa saw what didn't belong,” I say. “Peggy gave Alison the pictures.”
Kirill looks down at his hands. The new coat pulls across his back when he leans forward.
“My people will cover the staff. Klim gives the overall orders. I won't leave the workers standing around while we argue about whose men they are.”
I nod. For the first time since Alison came through the door, I can see something ahead of me that has shape beyond waiting for a phone to ring. Klim directing the response. Kirill moving the workers. A room full of people who know where to go if a door fails.
It isn't safety yet. It's work we can do before the evening comes.
After Kirill leaves, I unwrap one of the licorice sweets the dispatchers keep in a glass jar by the door. The sugar sticks to my teeth before the bitter anise reaches my tongue. I fold the wrapper until it's small enough to fit beneath my thumbnail, its sweet smell lingering on my fingers.
I've spent half the afternoon thinking about Ethan's pictures. I want to see Tessa's face when I walk into the lounge.
I take out my phone and ask whether she wants anything brought to the hotel. Her reply comes while I'm collecting my coat.
Something Peggy will actually eat. And you.
I read the last two words again, then put the phone away and take the stairs down to the waiting car.