“It’s just… I want to see it,” Kate said, and heard the thinness in her own voice.She was wishing for small, stupid things: for the case to pivot toward the ordinary, for the universe to give back what it had stolen under the name Elijah Cox.
She forced her jaw to unclench and sat on the corner of Torres’s desk.“You said there was something from the subway?”
“Don’t spoil my story arc,” Marcus said, though his eyes softened when they settled on her—one of the few tells he allowed himself.“We build to it.”
“To distract you while we watch the status bars creep along,” Torres said.“And speaking of distraction—did I ever tell you about my first patrol in the Bronx?Rookie me, hair in a bun so tight I had a free facelift, stuffed into blues that still smelled like the academy laundry.They pair me with this walking museum exhibit named Al Frasier.”
Marcus groaned.“I can almost see him.”
Torres's grin widened."Picture a fire hydrant with opinions.Twenty-eight years on the job, arthritis in both knees, and a worldview last updated when disco was king.We meet at Tour Command.He looks me up and down, up again, and goes, 'They send me a girl?They send me a baby?They send me a Puerto Rican baby?'I say, 'Morning, Officer Frasier.'He says—swear to God' OK, Chiquita, get the coffees.’”
“And did you?”Kate asked, because the idea of Torres being cowed by anything was so improbable it might as well be a fairy tale.
“Oh, I got coffees,” Torres said.“I accidentally spilled some on his shoes.Twice.He said it was the universe telling him to retire.I said the universe was bilingual and it agreed.”
Kate laughed, surprising herself.
“So midway through the morning, we get a nineteen—domestic—on 156th,” Torres continued.“Thin walls, big voices.We’re walking the stairwell when a toaster comes sailing out of apartment 3B and skims Big Al’s forehead.He goes down like a sack of potatoes, bless him, badge clattering, old-man curses echoing off the drywall.Out comes Mr.3B with a frying pan, and suddenly it’s me and a pepper spray can, versus a guy in just his shorts, wielding a weaponized skillet.”
“Let me guess, you sprayed yourself,” Marcus said.
“I sprayedeveryone,” Torres said, tickled by the memory now that it didn’t taste like pain.“Me, the perp, the wife, the neighbor who opened her door to film it.We’re all cryin’ like it’s a telenovela finale.Backup finally turns up, sees me snotty and blind, and I hear one of ’em go, ‘They gave Al a rookie again, didn’t they?’”
Kate laughed louder then, a small, honest bark of sound that cracked the casing around her chest.She could picture the scene all too easily: the tears, the sting, the absurdity of violence with kitchen utensils.The whole bullpen seemed to lean in toward the story, grateful.She understood what they were doing—whatTorreswas doing—understood it and appreciated the kindness.Small things like that could stop you from going under.
“Al was mostly fine,” Torres added.“Scar made him look rugged.He told everyone he got it breaking up a bar fight.I never corrected him.”
Marcus’s laptop pinged.
The three of them straightened in the same instant, like soldiers when the flag is raised.Marcus slid the machine toward the center of his desk and tapped the trackpad.A player window opened.Along the bottom, a progress bar bloomed a slow, gray-pale line.
“Okay,” Marcus said, voice dipping.Playtime over.“First clip is a storefront cam across from Brennan’s bank.They’ve scrubbed for motion in this zone.”He pulled a thumb and forefinger in a rectangle around a dark seam between buildings.“Our alleyway.”
He clicked.The picture jumped to life—monochrome, high angle.In the sparsely-populated Sunday street, pedestrians moved like smudges with umbrellas.The alley sat like a throat, narrow and unlikely.Thirty seconds passed with nothing but foot traffic and a bike messenger bent low over his bars.And then—
“Stop there,” Kate said.
Marcus froze the frame.A figure was just emerging from the alley: tall, in jeans, dark jacket, baseball cap pulled down and angled so the brim turned his face into a wedge of shadow.Carrying a bundle, something dark that hung in folds, like fabric.He paused a beat—half a glance over his shoulder—then slotted himself into the flow of sidewalk bodies and was gone.
“Can we enhance it further?”Kate asked, hopeful out of habit.
“CSI: Miami lied to you,” Marcus said, but he dragged two fingers anyway, zooming until the pixels turned to gravel.“He’s tall.Lean.Something awkward about the way he moves.”
Kate leaned closer without realizing it, her body drawn toward the ghost of a man skipping across a low-res field.Her mind tried to make him into Cox, the way minds do—find the familiar, fit it to the frame.She did not give into it.“You can’t see the face,” she said.“Not enough to ID.”
“Run it on,” Torres said.
Marcus let the clip roll.The figure became a pedestrian, then a corner, then nothing.He clicked into the next file.“This one’s from the bank’s side entrance.Different angle on the alley.Same guy.Same cap and bundle.Same ‘I don’t want a camera to love me’ vibe.”The same frustration, too.Again the face stayed stubbornly out of the light, the camera making its little electric decisions about contrast and saturation and losing what mattered.
They watched another clip, then another—each one offering the same crumbs: a ghost emerging, a shadow crossing, a tall, thin man who could be any tall, thin man.Each time, Kate felt the magnetic tug and forced herself back.Her job was to save certainty for when it had earned it.
Marcus swallowed.“Okay,” he said.“Next one’s the one Richie flagged.MTA platform entrance, 103rd Street.”
The player window swapped to a different world: fluorescent glare, a concrete stairwell zigging downward, the metal rail snaking through.Commuters poured past, coats wicking rain onto the floor, faces gray in the camera’s eye.A timestamp burned in the top corner: SUNDAY.15.07.
And then he was there.
Not a blur now.Not a shadow.A man at the top of the frame, stepping onto the first stair.
