“Do what you can,” Rick said, his tone softer, carrying weight. “I owe you.”
Her mouth twitched. “Honey, your tab with me is already sky-high.” Then, with a glance at Ash that left her a little flustered again, she spun toward her monitor. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, sugar,” Rick said, tapping her desk affectionately as he straightened. “By the way—any word from Gloria on that cigarette butt from Ravenholt?”
Kitty glanced up from her screen. “Oh, right. The results came this morning. She pulled a partial print off it. Clean lift, no smudging.” Her mouth tightened. “I’ve run it through AFIS, local and federal. No matches.”
“I see.” Rick tapped the desk once more, a sharp punctuation. “Keep it flagged. If we get a suspect, we’ll need it for comparison.”
“Already archived and cross-referenced,” Kitty said, swiveling to her screen.
Rick’s mouth curved, almost a smile, but he said nothing. “C’mon,” he murmured to Ash, guiding him toward the farthest office. He pushed open the door and flicked on the overhead light.
The smell hit Ash: paper gone musty with age, old coffee, the faint tang of tobacco clinging to fabric. The room wasn’t much—four walls and two battered desks, blinds half-drawn over a glass pane that looked onto the bullpen—but compared to the chaos outside, it was private enough.
Rick crossed to the desk, switched on the lamp, and amber light spilled across the clutter—files stacked unevenly, case folders cracked open mid-thought, the glow catching on the metal edge of a cabinet. A couch slouched in the corner, cushions pressed flat by use. In the wastebasket, cigarette packs lay crumpled on top of balled-up notes. A spare shirt was draped over the chair, waiting for another night.
Ash leaned on the doorframe, arms folded, gaze traveling across the messy space. “Your own office, huh? Fancy.”
Rick shrugged off his coat and fedora, hanging them on the hatstand in the corner. “Captain gave it to us this spring. Me and Frank were working a trafficking ring. Took six months to unravel.” He moved to the desk, fingers trailing the edge of a stacked file. “Then the Sculptor started killing, and we stayed. Easier to work without everyone breathing down our necks.” He paused, mouth tightening. “And I was going through a divorce. Some nights I crashed here.”
Ash glanced at the couch, the shirt, the open files. “Yeah,” he said. “I can tell.”
Rick reached into a drawer, pulled out a fresh bottle of bourbon and two glasses. The rain outside ticked against the window. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, pouring. “It’s gonna be a long night.”
Ash tossed his jacket across the couch and perched on the armrest. When Rick handed him a glass, their eyes caught for a beat too long before Rick looked away. He set his own drink aside, slipped out of his suit jacket, and rolled his shirtsleeves up past thick forearms. Ash remembered the first night they met, when Rick had him in the interrogation room and went through the same ritual. He still looked delicious in his loosened tie and suspenders, but it wasn’t just the view; it was the way Rick seemed to fill the room, sliding into command in a space that carried his mark everywhere. Ash hid a smirk behind his drink.All right, then.
Rick turned to the corkboard that dominated the wall: photographs, maps, hand-scribbled notes, lines of red string stretched taut in obsessive diagonals. Pushpins glinted under the harsh bulb, each one tethered to a face. A chaotic order, the fragments of the Sculptor’s trail laid bare.
“Here,” he said, his tone turning intense. “Six victims so far. All men, early to late twenties. Every one of them good-looking. A couple confirmed gay, the rest likely ran in the same circles. Could be coincidence, but it seems like a type.”
Ash stepped closer. The faces stared out from their photographs, caught mid-smile, leaning on cars, framed in nightlife. A handful of lives paused before the end. He saw the pattern plain: young, attractive, visible enough to catch a predator’s eye. “Walk me through it.”
Rick tapped the first photo. “Elliot Price, twenty-eight. Found in a street off Crescent, Financial District, September twenty-ninth.” His finger slid to the next. “David Morales, twenty-five. Behind the Cineplex on Bancroft, the Lantern Quarter, October fourth.” He moved up the line. “Myles Kent, twenty-four. Under the overpass in Rostburg, October eight. Travis Hall, twenty-seven. Train yards in Cranleigh, October thirteenth.” He slowed at the fifth. “James Cole, twenty-six. Cobb Alley in Duskhaven. October twentieth.”
Ash’s chest pulled tight. Jimmy’s grin beamed back, too bright, too full of careless promise. He remembered the cold alley, the way his stomach turned when he saw what had been carved away. He forced his eyes to stay on the picture.
“I never got to thank you for that lead,” Rick said, quieter.
Ash swallowed a sip of his drink. “You’re welcome.”
Rick left it there. He touched the last pinned photo: a boy still soft around the jaw, trying to look older than he was. “And our latest, Sean Burns, twenty-three. Found in Ravenholt Park, October twenty-fifth.”
Ash’s breath caught. The face rang with memory, not from the city streets but from the dark corners of his mind. Sean stretched against a wooden saltire, wrists locked in iron bars, damp air pressing close, the taste of rust in his throat.
Rick noticed the shift. “What is it?”
Ash’s throat worked. “I’ve seen him. In my dream.”
Rick’s expression sharpened. “You’re sure?”
“As sure as I get.” He tried to drag the images out of the haze. “He was bound. Shackled. Stone walls, water dripping somewhere. A basement, maybe. That’s all I could hold onto before it blurred out.”
Silence settled in the room, broken only by the steady rain and the muffled hum of the bullpen beyond the glass. The board loomed before them, a wall of faces waiting for resolution.
Rick exhaled through his nose, wrote something quick beneath Sean’s photo, and stepped back. “It’s something. Means he was held before he died.”
Ash rubbed at his arms, restless. “Yeah. But where?” His voice was tight with frustration. His gaze slid over the office again, the leaning stacks of files, the coffee rings seared into the wood, the folders spilling from open drawers. All of it spoke of long nights and slow work, not quick answers. He felt the weight of it pressing in: six boys gone, a monster still at large. And him stuck in the middle, trapped between blood-soaked memory and torn scraps of a dream he couldn’t stitch together.
