CHAPTER 8
Malcolm
The worst threats are the ones that know where people sit.
Not where they work. Not where they live. Those can be bought, searched, scraped, followed. Addresses are paper. Offices have leases. Homes leave records.
But a booth in a bad coffee shop from eleven years ago?
That is memory with a weapon.
Clara’s hand is still on the sugar caddy.
Three packets lined in a row. White. Pink.
White. Her fingers have stopped moving, but the rest of her has gone too quiet.
Across from her, Molly leans sideways to see the wall beneath the framed photo, face pinched with a mix of anger and fear she’s trying to convert into commentary.
No one speaks for two seconds.
That’s all I allow.
“Don’t touch the frame,” I say.
Molly freezes with one hand halfway up. “I was pointing.”
“Point from your side of the emotional crime wall.”
“That’s not a technical term.”
“It is tonight.”
Clara looks at me then.
Not grateful. Not annoyed.
Present in a way that hits too hard.
The mark on the wall is small enough to pass as vandalism if you don’t know better: Laurel’s crooked door, drawn in black marker, and below it, the fresh ink of SHE SAT HERE. The letters shine a little under the diner light.
Fresh. Recent. Not from memory. Not old.
Someone came here after knowing we would come here.
Or before, confident Clara would find her way back.
Both options are bad.
I stand and reach for my phone. My shoulder sends a hot line of pain down my arm from the earlier pull. I keep my face still. Clara already saw enough. If she decides my pain belongs in the conversation, she’ll use it to avoid hers.
“Molly,” I say, “move your laptop back.”
She slides it toward herself with both hands. “Do I get a sticker for not arguing?”
“No.”
“Hostile work environment.”
Clara’s voice is quiet. “This isn’t a work environment.”
Molly softens by one degree. “It is if we bill creatively.”
Clara does not smile.
That scares me more than the sandbag.
I photograph the wall from three angles, then the booth, the table, the napkin wedged beneath the uneven leg, the sugar caddy, the framed photo above the mark.
Old Hollywood extras in black and white, grinning beside a fake saloon.
The frame sits crooked. Dust gathered along the top edge, except for one clean thumb drag on the right side.
I angle my phone closer.
“What?” Clara asks.
“Frame moved recently.”
She leans forward, then stops herself before touching the table.
Good.
Better than good.
She’s scared enough to be precise.
Molly lowers her voice. “Could it be staff? Cleaning?”
“In this place?” Clara says. “That frame has survived earthquakes, three owners, and whatever that smell is near the pie case.”
“It’s dishwasher steam,” Molly says.
“It’s not.”
“It might be emotional cheese.”
I glance toward the counter. The server with silver eyeliner is pretending not to watch us, which means she is watching us with professional skill. Alvarez is still outside near Diana, phone pressed to his ear. He sees my posture through the window and ends the call.
“Everybody stay seated,” I say.
Clara’s eyes narrow. “Did you mean everybody or me?”
“Everybody.”
“Convenient.”
“Accurate.”
Molly raises one finger. “I’m everybody-adjacent and willing to comply.”
Clara doesn’t move. That counts as a win I am not stupid enough to celebrate.
Alvarez enters with cold air and road noise, scans the booth, then follows my gaze to the wall. His expression turns flat. Detective flat. The version of tired that sits above anger.
“Well,” he says. “That’s unfriendly.”
Molly lifts a hand. “Can I say I hate it, or does that contaminate the vibes?”
“The vibes are already dead.”
“I like you more each minute.”
“Try to pace yourself.”
Clara still stares at the wall.
Not the words now.
The little door.
I remember Laurel drawing it on call sheets, takeout bags, even the inside of Clara’s wrist once with a pen that bled purple because Laurel said every final girl deserved an exit. Clara had rolled her eyes and left it there through three setups.
That memory has no right to hurt.
I keep my voice controlled. “This needs to be treated as linked evidence.”
Alvarez nods. “I’ll call a unit. Staff stays. Customers too, if they haven’t already bolted.”
“There are four exits,” I say. “Front door, kitchen, alley, bathroom window if it opens.”
Alvarez looks at me. “You checked the bathroom window?”
“No.”
Clara says, “He checks exits emotionally.”
I look at her.
A flicker. There and gone.
Humor, but badly bruised.
Molly reaches for a fry, then stops. “Can I still eat these or are they evidence?”
Alvarez looks at the plate. “Did the killer write on them?”
“Not yet.”
“Then live your life.”
She takes two. “Law enforcement supports fries.”
Clara finally lets go of the sugar caddy. The packets remain aligned. She tucks her hand under the table, maybe because she noticed me noticing. Maybe because the wall knows too much.
“Who knew we’d come here?” she asks.
“Us,” I say. “Alvarez. Diana saw us leave. Anyone watching the lot could follow.”
“Not enough,” she says.
“No.”
“Someone knew this booth.”
“Yes.”
Molly swallows. “Could Laurel have posted about it? Old social media? Fan thing? Behind-the-scenes interview?”
Clara shakes her head once. “We weren’t supposed to leave the lot that night. We did anyway. Laurel wanted coffee that didn’t taste like set despair. Malcolm had a car.”
I feel the memory in the back of my knees.
Laurel in the passenger seat, talking with both hands.
Clara in the back, quiet for once, wrapped in a hoodie two sizes too big because the rain machines had soaked through costume and pride.
Me driving with one hand because the other kept wanting to reach back and check if Clara had stopped shaking.
I had said nothing useful.
I was twenty-six and thought silence could be respect if you stood close enough.
Clara looks at the table. “We sat here because that booth near the window had a couple fighting about a screenplay and Laurel said she refused to die near amateur dialogue.”
Molly’s face does something tender and painful. “She sounds terrible.”
“She was.”
Clara’s mouth almost bends. “In the right ways.”
I look at the booth.
This booth.
The napkin under the table leg.
The old scar along the vinyl seat.
The place where I sat opposite Clara, with Laurel beside me, making jokes about death because the door had stuck and she had screamed herself hoarse and everyone else had called it a great take.
I look at the wall again.
The killer is not only recreating scenes.
They are recreating aftermath.
That is worse.
“Marla’s security cameras?” Alvarez asks the server.
The server appears at the end of the booth like she was summoned by dread and underpayment. Her name tag says KIKI. Her eyeliner is steadier than most of the professionals I work with.
“Front register, kitchen door, parking lot,” she says. “Back booth camera’s been fake since before I started.”
“Fake?” Molly says.
Kiki shrugs. “Owner says it deters people. It mostly deters tips.”
“When did you start shift?” Alvarez asks.
“Ten.”
“Anyone sit here before us?”
“Two rideshare guys. A woman with a dog in a stroller. One man alone.”
I straighten. “Describe him.”
Kiki’s eyes go to me, then Clara, then the wall. “Baseball cap. Gray jacket. Average everything. Which sounds useless, but he looked designed by a witness protection brochure.”
“Age?”
“Forty? Fifty? White. Maybe. He kept his head down.”
“Paid cash?”
“He left cash. Didn’t order food. Black coffee.”
“When?”
“Maybe eleven-thirty. Before you all came in by twenty minutes.”
Clara’s gaze cuts to mine.
Twenty minutes.
Before we came in.
Someone knew where Alvarez would send us, or someone followed faster than we noticed, or someone was already laying paths and waiting for us to choose one.
I hate every option.
Alvarez writes in his notebook. “You see where he went?”
“Out front. I was refilling ranch for table six, living my nightmare.”
“Parking lot camera?”
Kiki nods. “If it works.”
Molly mutters, “Inspirational.”
Alvarez gives Kiki his card. “I need footage, register records, and the owner.”
“The owner’s in Palm Springs with a woman who is not his wife.”
“Then wake him romantically.”
Kiki’s mouth twitches. “Gladly.”
She leaves.
Molly watches her go. “I respect her journey.”
Clara pushes the coffee away. “We need the archive.”
I turn back to her. “No.”
Her eyes come up.
Wrong word.
I know it as it leaves my mouth.
Molly quietly picks up a fry and eats it like she’s watching tennis.
Clara’s voice goes very polite. “Try again.”
I lean one hand on the table, feel the sticky surface under my palm, and force the instinct down. “The archive matters. Going there without checking access first is giving whoever this is another room to rig.”
“We check access on the way.”
“No.”
Her expression sharpens.
I correct, faster this time. “I mean, we don’t go blind. We bring someone who knows the old storage layout and isn’t Victor’s person.”
“Diana?”
“She knows director-facing layout. I want rigging and props.”
Clara studies me. “You have a name.”
“Yes.”
“Say it like you’re not already deciding for me.”
I sit back down because standing over this conversation is a mistake. “Rowan Pike.”
The name shifts something in her face.
Recognition, but not warmth.
“Stunt safety?” she asks.
“Rigging then. Safety now. He worked second unit on the original. He knows old builds, storage cages, prop access.”
“Does he know about Scene 17?”
“If he does, he never said.”
“That is not comforting.”
“No.”
“Is he loyal to you?”
That question is better than does he trust you.
Trust is too clean for this room.
“He was,” I say.
Clara hears the past tense. “What happened?”
“I signed the report.”
There it is.
No gloss.
No noble little coat over the ugly thing.
Molly stops eating.
Clara holds my gaze for a long second. “Will he come?”
“If I ask.”
“Then ask.”