The city coughed up another drizzly morning, heavy with diesel smoke and remorse.
I hadn't slept. Didn't even bother. You don't get into bed after watching a man's face reduced to pulp and expect dreams to let you sleep. My apartment was a shoebox over a closed pawnshop in Redwick. Nobody ended up in this section of Argonne unless they owed someone money or had something to hide.
I preferred it that way.
But Langston's face—or what remained of it—kept creeping back behind my eyes. And worse, so did that message: HE DESERVED WORSE. It wasn't anger. It was personal. Surgical. As if someone had waited a long time to finally say something.
And now they were screaming in blood.
By 9:00 a.m., I was back at precinct headquarters—District Three, a block of decaying concrete with a coffee machine older than half the employees and a hallway that smelled of cheap bleach and lost causes.
Captain Gregor Nash stood in his office like a man about to storm a beach—shoulders braced, mouth a straight line. The blinds were half-drawn, casting stripes across his desk like prison bars.
"You get anything yet?" he asked without glancing up.
"Still going through the forensics," I said. "We need time."
"You don't have it," Nash snapped. "Langston donated to four reelection campaigns. He played tennis with the mayor. You think the brass wants the media sniffing around that?"
He leaned forward, voice falling to a murmur.
"You've got one shot at this, Kane. Get a suspect, feed the press a name, and close the file. Understand?"
I glared at him. "You already know how it turns out, don't you?"
That gave him pause. His jaw hardened just enough to give away the truth. He wasn't afraid so much. He was frightened.
"Some fall harder than others," he growled. "You bury this neat, or you get buried with it."
I left before he could finish. If Nash had this wrapped up, it was not just for PR. Somebody was pulling the strings. And he was dancing to their song.
I located Dr. Lillian Poe in the morgue, crouched over the cold table as if interrogating the deceased. The fluorescent lights hummed, giving her lab coat a ghostly aura.
"You didn't call me in for breakfast," I stated.
She did not look up. "You're not funny before noon, Kane."
I drew nearer, eyes to the body. Even in the clean light of the morgue, Langston did not seem right—less like a man and more like a warning.
"What do you see?" I said.
"Everything and nothing," she said with her chin down. "There's trauma, yes—gigantic blunt force to the head, deliberate facial mutilation, you saw it. But. look at this."
She gestured to a neat incision along the breastbone. Clean. Surgical.
"This was done before the beating."
"What's that mean?"
She locked her eyes onto mine. "It means somebody operated on him as if they were searching for something." She took a breath. "And failed to find."
That chilled me more than anything the autopsy room had to offer. The killing had not just been revenge or fury. It was deliberate. Measured.
Pre-planned.
"And you're positive it wasn't postmortem?"
"Positive. He was alive. Sedated, perhaps. But alive."
We stood there, gazing at the body, in silence.
"How do you set up a murder like this," I whispered, "in a locked penthouse, with no evidence of forced entry or struggle?"
"You don't," she replied. "Unless the victim knew the murderer. Or worse—trusted him."
I departed with that in mind, it burning in my brain.
Sylvie Mercer stood waiting by the station steps like a cat with a secret. Rain stuck to her coat, her notebook clutched under one arm, but she didn't appear cold. She appeared lit up with adrenaline.
"You look like hell," she said.
"You keep appearing like this, people are going to think we're dating."
"Then they'll think I have bad taste in men," she retorted, moving closer. "What did Poe discover?"
I stared at her for a long time. "You're going to end up dead."
"I've already had three confidential sources call me about Langston," she continued, not even looking at me. "One told me he was blackmailing officials. One told me he was laundering money through development grants. The third?"
She leaned in, dropping her voice.
"Mentioned Darius Wolfe."
That name again.
Wolfe wasn't a man. He was a myth with teeth. No photographs. No prints. Just rumors—and corpses. You didn't say his name unless you had a death wish or a deal.
"I want you to back off," I said, almost kindly.
"Then you're underestimating how deep this goes," she said, pushing past me.
I hated that she was right.
The burner phone vibrated around sundown.
Jax: meet me off Deacon Alley, back of the old glass factory. Don't bring company.
Deacon Alley. Just perfect. Rats, busted lights, and tales no one lived long enough to share. Still, I went. I always did.
Jax Holloway was waiting in the shadows, his face obscured under a ripped hoodie, his eyes scanning the darkness like they anticipated monsters. They probably did.
"This isn't about Langston," he said softly. "It's what he was protecting."
"What?"
"Records. Evidence. Wolfe's network—names, transactions, dirt that runs deep."
"You've seen it?"
"No. Heard, though. Langston kept it off-grid. Paper only. No digital. That's why they opened him up."
I gazed at him. "You're positive Wolfe's the one?"
"Wolfe don't kill in this manner except when he's cleaning house. Or being provoked."
He patted down his coat and produced a slip of paper. An address. No name.
"Somebody who knew Langston. Somebody he paid to make things go away."
I grabbed it, pounding heart.
But as I moved to walk out, Jax caught my arm.
"No matter what you're thinking this is, Kane—it's larger. They're moving pieces you don't see yet."
He was right. I could feel it.
At home in my apartment, I filled a chipped glass with whiskey and gazed out the window. The city flashed below me, all neon deceptions and wailing sirens in the distance. The address Jax had given me seared in my pocket.
Langston was merely the first fissure in the dam.
Someone was making a move.
But to what?
I didn't have the full picture. Just silhouettes on the wall.
And someone was damn sure it remained that way.