Ash narrowed his eyes. “How bad?”
Roscoe swallowed. Rain dripped from his hood. “Big debt. Took a hitter from a Yakuza runner named Kondo. Old-school, quiet type. Smiles while he breaks your fingers. Now she can’t pay him back. And you don’t cross those guys. Not unless you want to lose more than money.”
“Where can I find ’em?”
Roscoe hesitated, rocking on his heels.
Ash leaned in, close enough to taste the fear. His voice went silk and venom. “You don’t talk, I’ll make sure every push from here to the Shades thinks you’re a rat. You’ll be lucky to sell aspirin by dawn.”
That did it. Roscoe cracked like wet drywall. “There’s a stash warehouse in Bridgeport, tucked under the pier struts by DockNine,” he rasped. “Ex-boxer named Tanaka runs it. If she’s still breathing, they probably keep her there.”
Ash gave him a slow nod, cool and final. “Good man.”
He turned and walked away, boots silent in the mist, leaving Roscoe sagging like a stringless puppet. Thunder cracked overhead, sharp and sudden, as if the sky itself was preparing for Judgment Day.
Chapter Eighteen
(2:14 p.m.)
The convent stood atop a gentle rise, nearly devoured by the midday fog.
They had left Mokasset behind like a fading dream, its gilded towers distant in the pale horizon. The tenebrous parks and quiet residential blocks of Brookheim melted into mist as Wapanoak unfurled before them. Rostburg’s smokestacks bled into low-hanging haze, giving way at last to the derelict outskirts of Ebonridge, where cracked streets groaned beneath the weight of rot and ruin.
Here, the buildings hunched low to the ground, squat and anonymous, their humble façades scarred with age and grime. Houses sagged toward each other like drunks clinging for balance. Everything felt half-condemned, yet stubbornly alive. A district forgotten by city planners, poor and festering, where shadows clung to your boots and the air reeked of mildew and wet wood.
The wrought-iron gates creaked open, hinges shrieking under decades of rust. Beyond them stretched an uneven cobblestone path, half-sunken and slick with moss, winding through a grove of cadaverous trees bowed inward by wind and time. Tangled brambles clutched at the lane’s edge, and blackbirds scattered from the crooked fence posts like startled omens.
At its end loomed the convent—a grim, timeworn structure, its outline jagged against the colorless sky. Ivy and lichen clawed up the walls, nearly swallowing scores of arched windows and jutting chimneys. Rain-darkened granite bore the scarsof weather and neglect, the once-sharp lines of its medieval architecture softened by erosion and decay. The central bell tower was a blackened fang soaring up, its spire sharp and defiant, the bell within hanging dormant.
Rick parked the car beside a crumbling fountain choked with dead leaves. No one came to greet them. The only sounds were the wind rattling the branches and the soft tick of the cooling engine.
Frank glanced around. “Charming locale.”
Rick stepped out without comment. The place was creepy, all right, but he wasn’t in the business of flinching, and he didn’t come to feel things. He came to find the truth. Shoes crunching damp shingle, he crossed to the heavy oak doors and hit the lion’s-head knocker three times, hard enough to wake the dead.
The crucifix above the vaulted portico had worn to near abstraction, Christ’s face smoothed away, arms pitted and flaking, more relic than redeemer. Empty window panes stared out like blind eyes, and behind the mighty, bolted doors, silence pressed dense and unmoving, as if the building itself slumbered under some ancient spell.
At last, the door creaked open, revealing a lone nun, slight and still, her black habit stark against the fog. Her face lay mostly hidden beneath the veil, her eyes unreadable hollows in the washed-out light.
“Good day, Sister,” Rick said, holding up his badge. “Detectives Slade and Burton. We’d like a word with the Mother Superior.”
“What is this about?” she asked, her voice dry as old paper.
“We’re looking into something that happened a long time ago,” Frank said, vague but polite, standing beside Rick at the threshold.
The nun studied them for a breath, then stepped aside in silence and granted them entry. The heavy door thudded shut behind them, sealing off the world.
The entrance hall seemed colder than the air outside. The slabs under Rick’s shoes felt clammy, as if they hoarded the chill of centuries. A gloomier sort of afternoon waited here, caught in the Gothic vault and narrow slits of light that barely pierced the murk. Countless columns lined the walls, their bases wrapped in shadow, their capitals spurting pointed arches that unfurled across the ceiling like the ribs of a fossilized dragon.
Rick noted the details without lingering. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but the air had the stillness of a place used to them. A brittle hush clung to everything, broken only by the soft tap of their soles on the flagstone floor and the occasional whimper of old doors somewhere in the distance. Dusty sconces still bore slender wax stubs, a few flames shivering in the draft as they passed. Someone tended them. Someone cared.
They followed the nun down a long corridor. Rick kept his pace steady, eyes alert, footsteps echoing loud enough to irritate his ears. Every sound here felt magnified, as though the walls themselves were listening. The scent of frankincense rode on top of something less pleasant: mold and decades-old dank, the breath of a tomb sealed too long.
The nun halted at a narrow door set into the stone. A brass plaque marked it, the letters too worn for Rick to read. She turned, her tone soft but firm: “Wait here.” She knocked once and slipped inside, vanishing in a rustle of black and white robes.
They waited outside the chamber, the cloister’s chill seeping under Rick’s coat and into his clothes. Across from them, a weathered niche held a statue of Saint Dymphna, her features softened by age, her eyes cast downward in eternal clemency. Someone had left a fresh white lily at her feet.
Frank let out a quiet breath, calm as ever. “It’s kind of peaceful, once you get past all the cold and judgment.”
