Chapter Text
“Everyone has a line. You just haven’t found yours yet.”
— Bad Influence (1990)
The street sprawled wet under a single lamp—yellow-white glow, thin film of rain—and you could sense someone had been here before. Most of the city is built on that exact principle. Things that do not need to stand out because no one is really looking for them. The brick has lost its color from the weather, not from time. A storefront that closed at some point never reopened. The gate is pulled down, as if it is part of the building’s design.
Somebody left a light on upstairs.
The glow stays dim. Not even interesting. Just a dull, bluish square sitting in the window, the kind of thing you would expect if someone fell asleep with something running. Xavier has been sitting here long enough. Something should have happened by now.
He shifts against the worn-vinyl driver’s seat, glances at his watch. Almost one in the morning. Long enough for a break-in. A change. Someone getting up to turn it off—or even just someone passing in front of it the wrong way.
Nothing.
He shifts his weight again, more to check that he can than because he needs to. The cigarette between his fingers has burned down farther than he remembers. He turns it once, watching the ash hold for a second before tapping it out the window. He is not a fan of that.
Three weeks ago, it was a bar. A neon sign flickered in the window—jittery light, cheap glass—and he kept looking away, then back. Before that, it was apartments. They were emptied too fast. Stripped down—bare wood, dead bulbs—in a way that made the whole place feel abandoned before it actually was.
Water dripped—cold, steady—from somewhere up high, striking metal out of sight.
Plink. Plink.
Addresses. Times. Small details that might matter later. The Moleskine on the passenger seat held every last scrap. The same notebook he uses now. Write it down before it slips—that's the rule.
He has kept this ritual for nearly three years. Longer, if he counted the time before he left the department and started taking jobs people preferred not to put on paper. Not very consistently, though. Not in a way he could explain cleanly if someone pressed.
Real investigations have shape: reports. Timelines. A beginning that leads to something else. This never has. Everything is fragmented. Names that do not belong together. Buildings that change too quickly. Men who disappear, leaving too little behind.
This was never his case. He never expected the trail to lead him here—dead ends that only look alike after you stare too long.
Back then he still wore a detective’s shield. An older woman sat across the station table, hands clasped around a chipped coffee cup. Another missing person case. Low priority.
The mother did not wait long before coming in. Her son did not come home. No struggle, he wrote. No reason to suspect anything worse than a deliberate no-show. That is what Xavier believed that day. Just another runaway. A kid old enough to leave home who did not want ties.
Still, as he filled the form, numbers blurred—a bad-luck echo—and the file felt too neat. Not a real gut feeling. Nothing that dramatic. No French Connection. No magic cop instinct. No spotlight-cruise-in. Just paperwork and a missing wallet. The nagging sense that something was askew.
The young man had clocked out of work—the same shift he had held for almost a year. Same time. Same subway route home. The kind of groove you slide into without even noticing. He did not have his wallet. Keys gone. No note. No packed bag. He did not show up anywhere he was supposed to be afterward.
Who leaves their wallet?
Next morning, Xavier slid into the dim corner store where the kid punched the clock and spoke low to the manager. The manager did not remember much, except that he left on time. Good kid. No reason was suspected for him to run away. Typical afterthoughts everyone always had in this situation. Nothing out of the ordinary. That should have been the end of it. It usually is.
Xavier mentioned it to the sergeant anyway. He simply wanted to voice it, a quick toss of the words across the table, so someone would confirm or dismiss and the night could move on. The sergeant never lifted his eyes.
“Then he didn’t run away,” he said, as if that settled it. “He’ll come back when he runs out of money. Happens all the time.”
The conversation was already over.
He stopped when he realized none of it connected in a way he could explain without sounding like he was reaching. That should have been the end of it. It usually is. Another manila folder would disappear into the dim stack. Another eighteen-year-old swallowed by a system built to forget.
A few weeks passed. A call came—late, urgent—and he drove down to the river.
They found a body.
The river did what it always does—blurred the edges, softened the story before the body arrived. By the time they pulled it out, little remained that anyone would care to record. Xavier stood a little away from the others while they worked, close enough to hear and far enough away that no one expected anything from him. He had been down there before. You learn where to stand.
Someone mutters about the current. About how bodies travel. Another voice laughs, as if the joke could lighten the air.
The laugh should have closed the topic. That is what everyone else did. One file was updated from missing to deceased. The case was cleared in the way that matters to paperwork.
Only it didn’t.
Another body appeared four weeks later. Not connected. Not officially, at least. The same kind of nothing. He began to record each detail.
Plink.
The same dull, bluish square. The stillness. Like the last few minutes had not happened. Like the last few years did not either.
He reaches into the cup-holder, pulls out his lighter, and taps a new cigarette loose from the pack. He brings it to his lips. The flame flares briefly, outlines the rim of a coffee cup, and vanishes.
This lead did not come from a report. Private client. Late call. Vague in all the ways that matter.
“He goes in,” the voice said. “He does not come out. Not until morning.”
No name. Just an address. The money arrived first—a blunt, wired promise—before Xavier even accepted the job. He rolled the cigarette between his fingers and watched the smoke drift toward the cracked window.
It could be nothing. It would not be the first time a client paid him to chase a hunch that led nowhere.
But they all looked like that at the start.
He glances toward the passenger seat. The pages of the Moleskine are slightly warped from being handled too often. He does not reach for it. He does not need to. His gaze shifts back up.
The light has not moved.
Xavier draws a slow drag. Ash falls outside.
Plink.