Payday at the station arrived with a quiet surprise.
As Foster collected his envelope, the station's payroll clerk nodded toward Captain Hanson's office. "He wants to see you."
Foster's stomach tightened. Had someone seen him? Had the Andrew Garfield facade already been pierced?
He entered the office. Hanson didn't look up from a report, his voice flat as slate.
"Ambrose. I'm approving your request for adjusted hours. Mornings free, report at 1500."
Foster blinked. "Sir, I… thank you. It's just, with my brother, the expenses—"
Hanson held up a hand, silencing him. He still hadn't looked up. "I don't need your life story. Your closure rate on the assault cases was efficient. The initial work on the mill homicide is… thorough."
Finally, his granite eyes lifted, pinning Foster. "Your performance has been adequate. There's a raise reflected in your pay. Don't let the side job interfere with the real one."
Stunned, Foster could only manage a stiff, "No, sir. Thank you, sir."
He left the office, the envelope suddenly heavier in his hand.
A raise. Indifferent, unasked-for approval. It was the most validating and unnerving moment of his tenure as Foster Ambrose.
The captain was a man who measured worth in results, and for reasons Foster couldn't entirely comprehend, he had passed some unspoken test.
The new schedule began the next day. His life became a meticulously timed dance.
Mornings were for Andrew Garfield. He would visit the private restroom, the five pennies buying him a transformation into the slick-haired consultant.
From 9:00 AM to 2:30 PM, he was at the UIAF or visiting properties, his mind navigating the complex, often-venal world of real estate and political influence.
At 2:45 PM, he would reverse the process in the restroom, emerging as Foster Ambrose, slipping into the station just before 3:00 PM.
His afternoons and evenings were now a frantic catch-up on the cases he'd left simmering. The mill homicide was a wall.
He had the "clean" report ready for Hanson—an unresolved robbery-homicide, the "atypical lacerations" noted and sidelined.
But the real investigation, the one in his personal notebook, was stalled. The power drain, the cold, the scratches—they were all facts without a suspect.
The Davidson file was a ghost. The blood-stained notebook in his drawer was a silent scream. And the Elara Vex disappearance was a black hole, with Lily Moses's confused testimony the only flicker of light at its event horizon.
He spent his police hours re-interviewing witnesses from old, cold cases, looking for any hint of similar "anomalies." He found a few:
A 1982 burglary where the family dog was found frozen solid in a warm room.
A 1995 suicide where the note was written in a language the deceased had never studied.
Cases closed, anomalies ignored. He was building a pattern, a history of the city's hidden sickness, but it was a history with no cure.
The whiplash between his two lives was exhausting.
In the morning, he was discussing "sight lines" and "property values" with a wealthy widow.
In the afternoon, he was staring at a crime scene photo of a man with his head caved in by forces that defied physics.
Andrew Garfield dealt in the architecture of power.
Foster Ambrose dealt in the rubble it left behind.
He was becoming a two-faced clock, like the one he'd helped Havelock repair, each face telling a different time for a different world.
He just hoped the mechanism wouldn't break under the strain.