The city kept its small cruelties to itself; Brendon had learned to pry them open like seams. The list given by Sofie felt heavier in his pocket than the actual paper it was printed on: five locations, time stamps, the terse notes she always stapled to the margins — bagged, evidence collected; no prints; camouflage burn. The list read like a map of absence. He moved through the town with it more than he held it, letting the names sit under his tongue as if they might yield a taste.
First stop was the lane by the old police-forest, the place that had once held Whitney's concentrated pieces. He expected to find the ghost of a perimeter: a flattened patch of ground, a long-ago marker, the faint trade of other people's fear. Instead the area had been mowed and the low fence repaired; toddlers played near the edge, dragged by parents who had no idea a map of severed parts had once lain under the leaves. The city liked to domesticate horror into calm so that it could be sold back to its citizens as stability.
Brendon crouched where the officers had bagged evidence, as though proximity might pull something out of the ground that paperwork could not. The soil had been turned; little pebbles had been shifted. He ran a gloved finger along the grass and found nothing but dirt and the scent of dog piss. Forensics had been thorough. They had moved the obvious. If the killer had left anything forgotten, it was small and deliberate.
He made notes in his mind, the kind of tally he'd learned to keep when the world offered him fragments instead of stories. Concentrated dumps: last time — near the station. Pattern: clustered, clean, message-like. He let himself replay the night in his head: crowds, cameras, outrage. Whitney's murder had lit up a week; the city had burned through its anger and left a stain that would not clean. He had both sympathy and a nagging skepticism about theatrical violence. The concentrated disposal had been a signal — a message shot from a loud, visible place. Someone wanted people to watch it. But who? And why?
The second point on Sofie's list was a dustbin alley behind a grocery on Merchant Row. On the way he walked past a butcher stall that still bore the name Flim & Flam on a sagging sign; he let the sight sit for a moment. The name on Sofie's list kept cropping up like a persistent bruise. It meant something. Somewhere. The place where the crate had been stamped. That brand burned into wood.
He slipped through the alley and passed police tape that had been re-installed in the dawn. Evidence tents were gone, but there were still signs of indignity: discarded bags, the flattened black shape where someone had kicked a bin to check the contents, a smear of dry, brownish stain that had been carefully swabbed and then sealed. The scene had been swept. Forensic markers have been removed. It was as though someone had arrived and taken the paint off a mural.
He squatted and watched the angle from which a courier might have thrown a package into a bin. He looked for tire tracks, scuff marks, the kind of small things you miss when you think in headlines and not in habits. The pattern here was intimate and public at once — a trash bin at night was the city's private theater where messages could be left and ignored. Whoever had placed pieces here wanted them to be found by people who never looked twice.
Brendon's head sketched possibilities. Two disposal methods: concentrated cluster versus scattered discard. Two killings separated by six months. The same signature of facial obliteration: burning or deliberate crushing so that identifying the deceased would be difficult but for the second case ID was found quite quickly where the first one was not like that. He felt a cold little click in his chest. Patterns are sometimes doors. They might open, or they might hide a pivot. But the important question here was:
Is it a work of a criminal gang? Where ever he goes it turns out something with Flim & Flam Enterprise has to do with it? Or is is another case of a copycat killer?
Bit for some reason this time he felt the second possibility could be less probable.
He moved down the list, stopping at a run of locations that formed a ragged halo around the industrial quarter — a tram-stop dumpster, a back alley behind a laundromat, a vacant lot where teenagers smoked and kept their secrets. Each place had been thoroughly swept. The police were fast and tidy, making the visual of a clean town. The more he saw, the more convinced he became that the city's cleanliness had been curated, not accidental. If the killer was leaving things to be found, the city had been given time to collect them. If the killer wanted things hidden, they succeeded in part because the town wanted the horror out of sight.
He tried to push his reasoning forward like a chess player.
If the killings came from the same hand, why change disposal methods? A first thought: the killer adapted, learning to hide in newer ways after the first murder attracted heat. That is not uncommon. Predators evolve. They get sloppy, or they get clever. But in Brendon's calculation a six-month gap that moves from loud to quiet suggested something else: the second sequence might not be the same killer at all. Or, more worrying, the second set of disposals might have been deliberately rearranged to scatter suspicion — an attempt to bury proof across many jurisdictions so no single investigation could assemble a narrative strong enough for indictment.
He thought of trade logistics: the docks, crates, shipping routes. The brand had been on crates; the brand was associated with Flim & Flam in almost every time he encountered. Maybe the wooden tubes, the carved pins, the birch-wrapped evidence all moved along legitimate routes that masked their cargo. Consider shipping: one concentrated dump can be staged when you want the world to see you; scattered discards are better when you are dispatching things you want to hide from a concentrated inquiry. Could it be that someone had been producing parts for a buyer network and that during the first case they'd had to make a statement? Or perhaps the buyers demanded anonymity, so the suppliers changed their methods to minimize attention.
He made the notes invisible — they lived in his mind now. He needed a way to connect the dots that weren't there: who would have motive and means to orchestrate both kinds of disposal? Who would profit if only parts — untraceable, burned faces, severed dignity— reached buyers?
By the time he reached the last location on the list, a parking lot near the south docks, Brendon's shoes had collected grime and his patience had contracted into something like a plan. The lot smelled of diesel and salt and the small minerals of a city that ships everything that can be traded. He squinted into the distance and let his mind trace the shipping lanes like arteries. Something about a schedule hummed in his thoughts: rhythms of cranes, nights when trucks left with tighted tails, men who worked until the sun found them in a different place.
He made a decision. The police were thorough, but thorough in their way — they worked to keep the city's machinery moving, not to break it. He would need to take a different approach to this case.
He flicked his cigarette into the gutter and felt the brand's echo in his mouth. The brand, he remembers now. He remembers who is belongs to. Someone who is pretty infamous for horrible deeds in folklore. It was a small fire he could feed.
—
While Brendon worked the ground, the room above Ridgecliff's town hall was designed to hide deeds with good manners. Mayor Guerieo's office had a reputation for being unapologetically tasteful: oak panels, a globe that might have once been lit, a framed map with the city's arterial roads in gold varnish. Tonight, though, the room hummed with a differently ordered electricity. It was business done in the private kind of collusion that smelled faintly of polished leather and resentments.
Guerieo sat behind his desk like an actor who had memorized a thousand lies until they felt like practiced enough. Across from him, in a suit that did not quite match his accent, a man with a foreign cadence — neat hair, a barrel of a hand that spoke without flinching — laid down a ledger. His eyes were small and hungry.
"My shipments," Guerieo was saying in the pleasant hush of someone securing favors. "Forty crates in eleven days. You understand my concerns about timing? The council meets in two weeks. Development plans need to be pushed through."
The man across the desk smiled like a man who'd been given a map to a bank. "Forty crates. Clean manifests. Our contractors will make sure the outward paperwork matches the outward theater. You supply the necessary cooperation on the municipal end — permits, the odd late-night gate clearance — and we will continue to ensure your projects run without interruption." His accent clipped the last syllable. "We need cooperation, Mr. Mayor. With Flim & Flam Enterprise, logistics will be smoother if they are allowed to operate without undue interference."
Guerieo nodded once, an artful gesture. "Discretion is mutual. We both benefit from stability. And if you can help with the south mill's necessary shifts, that would be... appreciated. My constituents like progress."
"Of course." The other man set the ledger down. "Cooperate with our subordinates. We will do our part. We will make sure the containers leave with no fuss. The clients... they wait for their goods. Timing is key. Eleven days gives us the space to clear customs and route the final batch. Our men in the freight yards will take care of the rest."
Devina Foxingnton listened from the corridor outside the mayor's private room, a shadow that most would have passed over without recognition. In the high, ironic light of a town that loves its officials, she cut the figure of someone who belonged there: assistant mayor, neat coat, the sort of posture that said boardrooms and committee seats. She had the mask of civility on — gloves, a scarf, a folder of notes. While the two men spoke in polished circles, she kept a small recorder in her hand. Her thumb moved like a metronome on the device, capturing the syllables that might later be used as proof.
She had learned the room's cadence over the years: who bowed, who demanded, who paid with whispers. She had watched Guerieo smile and had felt the old hunger in the mayor's eyes — not for progress, but for power. She had not been planted at his shoulder for nothing; she had been inside his mind as well as his calendar. Tonight, the ledger and the man across it fit a pattern she had sat up nights tracing: crates, mills, shell names, Flim & Flam Enterprise.
When the foreign man mentioned cooperation with Flim & Flam, Devina's jaw tightened. She had known of Flim & Flam's shipments in the administrative sense: permits, permit-weasels, small notes in the corner of project files. She had not known the scale at which those handoffs were being arranged — forty crates was not delivery; it was a small fleet. She recorded because she had the cunning of a person who lives in two worlds: the public and the underground, the mask and the shadow.
Guerieo's hands moved as if he were rearranging the globe. "We will be extremely discreet," he said. "My record is clean. The council will never even know."
"You will be compensated," the man said. "And our clients appreciate subtlety." He rose, smoothing the sleeves of his suit. "We look forward to working with you, Mr. Mayor. The north accounts will be in good order. Make sure Flim & Flam Enterprise has the required access and we close this with minimal noise."
Guerieo rose to his feet and offered the foreign man a smile that spoke of handshakes. Devina, in shadow, let her thumb leave the recorder as soon as the door closed. The corridor outside the office felt cooler than the room inside. She exhaled as if unwrapping something and folded the device into her palm like a candle still warm.
She had choices: the power of the facts in that small device, the reach of her official mandate, or a return to the street mask she had worn before she'd learned the taste of municipal tea. Ninja Fox would have taken the recorder and used it as a threat, as leverage.
For now she kept the recorder pressed to her chest and walked quietly back to her office, the city unfolding its heavy, secret heart behind her.