Laura Swanson

Chapter 4: Echoes in Ceramic

The precinct never smelled like justice. It smelled like burnt coffee, wet wool, and the kind of paper that already regretted being asked to hold the truth. I sat in Interview Two because it had the best sightline to the bullpen and the worst heating. People revealed more when they were slightly uncomfortable. Comfort made liars lazy; discomfort made them inventive.

  Across the table, the barista from Mercer Street twisted a napkin into increasingly abstract shapes. Close up, the tremor in her fingers had rhythm: not panic, not yet, just adrenaline looking for a hobby.

  “State your name for the record,” the detective with the poorly knotted tie said, his voice flattening the room.

  “Marissa Cole,” she answered. “Do I really need to be recorded? I just make coffee.”

  “No,” I said. “You make habits. You deliver them to people who think routine is the same thing as safety.” I nodded at the little red light on the recorder. “The machine is for posterity. We’re here for the parts it misses.”

  Tie cleared his throat, already irritated. “Ms. Cole, did you notice anything unusual about Mr. Holt this morning?”

  She glanced at me instead of him. Interesting choice.

  “He was quiet,” she said. “But a lot of people are quiet before eight. He tipped well last time he was in. People who tip well get remembered.”

  “Last time?” I asked. “How many times have you seen him?”

  She thought, teeth catching the inside of her cheek.

  “Four? Maybe five. Always early. Always alone. Always the same order.”

  “Black coffee,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yeah. Like he was trying to prove something to someone. No pastry, no nonsense. Just caffeine and penance.”

  “Did he ever change his routine?” I asked. “Sit somewhere else. Order something different. Look less like he’d ironed his conscience.”

  That almost made her smile. Almost.

  “This morning,” she said. “He sat closer to the door. And he kept looking at the window, like he was waiting for the weather to decide whose side it was on.”

  Tie scribbled something down that would later look decisive but feel hollow. “What about the other man?” he asked. “The one who sat with him.”

  At that, the napkin in her hands tore.

  “I’ve never seen him before,” she said too quickly. “He paid cash, didn’t want a receipt, didn’t look at me long enough to remember I exist. Just… there and then gone.”

  “Describe him,” I said.

  She shut her eyes, not for drama but for access.

  “Dark coat,” she began. “Not new, not cheap. The kind someone keeps because it’s familiar, not because it’s flattering. Hair longer on top than the sides. Hands that looked like they used to do real work and then forgot how. He stirred his coffee wrong.”

  Tie looked up. “Wrong?”

  “Counterclockwise,” she said, opening her eyes again. “Most people go clockwise without thinking. You only fight muscle memory when you’re trying to think about something else.”

  I liked her. The world rarely trained its observers; it just punished them. “Did he touch anything besides his cup?” I asked. “Table, chair, napkin dispenser, your soul?”

  She exhaled a short, humorless laugh.

  “The handle of the cup,” she said. “The back of the chair when he stood. And his pocket. He kept checking his left pocket.”

  Pocket. Not jacket, not phone. Pocket. Small enough for a vial, large enough for guilt.

  “Any jewelry?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No ring. But there was a line on his finger where one used to be.”

  Loss left tan lines long after it stopped leaving messages.

  Tie shifted in his seat. “Ms. Cole, did you see him put anything in the coffee?”

  “No,” she said. “But I wasn’t looking for that. I was looking at you.”

  He blinked. “Me?”

  “You came in for a latte fifteen minutes before they did,” she said. “You ordered oat milk and then pretended not to care what kind of milk it was.” She shrugged. “People who pretend not to care usually care a lot.”

  Tie’s ears went pink. I smiled, slowly.

  “You notice a great many things,” I said. “Has anyone ever told you that’s dangerous in this city?”

  “Not in those words,” she said. “Mostly they just say I’m nosy.”

  “They’re right,” I said. “Don’t stop.”

  I slid my card across the table. “If you remember anything else—and you will—call me before you talk yourself out of it.”

  Tie cut in. “Ms. Cole, you can also contact the department—”

  “Which will be delighted to file your memory in triplicate,” I said. “I, on the other hand, am capable of responding before the heat death of the universe.”

  He shot me a look. Marissa hid a smirk behind the shredded napkin.

  When she left, the room felt bigger but less useful.

  “You can’t poach witnesses, Swanson,” Tie said as the door clicked shut.

  “I don’t poach,” I said. “I curate. There’s a difference. One gets you breakfast. The other gets you answers.”

  He sank into the chair she’d vacated, the knot of his tie migrating farther from his throat like it, too, wanted a lawyer.

  “Look,” he said, rubbing his temples, “the ME will give us a tox screen in a week. If something’s there, we follow that. If not, we call it a heart attack and go back to pretending paperwork is progress.”

  “A week is a long time for fear to evaporate,” I said. “Longer, even, for evidence.”

  “You think this is poison,” he said.

  “I think,” I replied, “that men who are genuinely surprised by death do not schedule a meeting to greet it. Holt rehearsed a conversation, chose a table facing the door, and died seventeen minutes after his partner arrived. Coincidence is statistically lazy.”

  He stared at me, weighing the cost of agreeing.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “His notebook,” I said. “And Holt’s financials. You don’t hire a ‘consultant’ without paying him to lie cheerfully on your behalf.”

  “That’s all sealed until we get a warrant,” he said.

  “Then get one.”

  “And if the DA says no?”

  “Then,” I said, standing, “you can tell your oat milk barista you did everything you could, and I will continue being useful elsewhere.”

  He swore under his breath, then shoved his chair back.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, don’t—”

  “Interfere?” I supplied. “Perish the thought.”

  Outside the interview room, the precinct buzzed with the low-level chaos of a system that had learned to walk without ever learning to run. Phones rang. Printers complained. A suspect laughed too loudly at a joke no one told.

  I stepped into the corridor just as a uniform hurried past, a clear evidence bag in hand. Inside, Holt’s notebook pressed against the plastic, its elastic band stretched thin with obligation.

  “Where’s that going?” I asked.

  “Property,” he said. “Pending inventory.”

  “Detour,” I suggested, relieving him of the bag with a smile that implied higher authorization than I possessed.

  By the time he realized his mistake, I was through another door, the one that led onto the fire escape. The city’s December air slapped my face with all the subtlety of a confession. I sat on the metal steps, the notebook heavy in my lap.

  Holt’s handwriting was the kind that believed legibility was a moral duty. Pages of meetings, numbers, phrases underlined twice: “exposure,” “mitigation,” “liquidity event.” Nothing illegal on its face. Nothing ever was. That was what faces were for.

  Halfway through, the tone shifted. The dates stopped matching the careful pattern of fiscal quarters and began clustering around early mornings, Mercer Street, initials instead of full names.

  E.H. + “J” – 7:14, 7:22, 7:39.

  Underneath, in smaller letters: “Clockwise vs. counterclockwise. He insisted. Said I owed him that much.”

  Debt again. The world had only ever mastered two dialects: what was owed and what was feared.

  A folded sheet tucked into the back cover bore an address in the margins, written sideways as though added in haste: a storage facility near the river, Unit 314. Beneath it, one word: “Insurance.”

  People who planned to die did not bother with insurance for afterward. They arranged it for before, as leverage.

  The fire escape vibrated under a new weight. Tie stepped out, holding the door with his foot as though it might testify against him.

  “Taking evidence out for a walk now?” he asked.

  “Fresh air is good for credibility,” I said, closing the notebook but not giving it back. “Holt was keeping something off-site. Unit 314 at Riverfront Storage. Ring any bells?”

  He frowned. “No. But that doesn’t mean it’s relevant.”

  “Nothing ‘means’ anything in isolation,” I said. “That’s why context exists. Holt didn’t trust a banking system he helped design. Whatever scared him was physical enough to rent space for.”

  He leaned against the railing, tie flapping in the wind.

  “You can’t just waltz in there and open it,” he said.

  “Of course not,” I agreed. “That would be illegal.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Swanson.”

  “Yes?”

  “Wait for the warrant,” he said. “I’ll push it through. But if you set foot in that storage unit before me, and this blows up, I’m not shielding you.”

  “That implies you ever could,” I said.

  He didn’t smile, but the corner of his mouth acknowledged the possibility.

  “Give me the notebook,” he said.

  I weighed it in my hand, then placed it in his. “Don’t lose it.”

  He snorted. “It’s going in the safe.”

  “The safe is where cases go to die of boredom,” I said, descending the stairs. “Call me when you remember that.”

  By late afternoon, the sky had given up on color. The city dimmed into that gray pretense it liked to call early evening, when offices exhaled and bars inhaled. Riverfront Storage hunched between a discount mattress outlet and a gym that only ever seemed to be advertising new memberships, never stamina.

  I waited in my car across the street, engine off, coat collar up, watching the entrance. Warrants took time. People with something to hide rarely extended the same courtesy.

  At 5:17, a dark sedan pulled in. Not new, not cheap. Familiar, not flattering. The description sat in my mind like déjà vu stretching its limbs.

  The driver stepped out, coat longer than the one from the café but cut in the same indifference to fashion. Hair longer on top. Hands with old calluses. Left hand darting to his pocket before he even locked the car.

  Some patterns didn’t need lab work.

  He keyed in a code at the gate, forced himself not to look around, and failed. Eyes swept the lot, skimming past my car without interest. People only saw what they were prepared to find. No one was ever prepared to find me until it was too late.

  I waited a beat, then slid out of my car, falling in step with the shadows. The gate had not fully closed. I caught it with a gloved hand, slipping through on the echo of his presence.

  Inside, the corridor of units stretched in two directions, fluorescent lights buzzing like nervous witnesses. The man walked with the posture of someone who used to be sure of himself and now rented confidence by the hour. He stopped at 314.

  Insurance.

  He glanced over his shoulder. I leaned into the angle of a junction, becoming absence. He opened the unit, stepped inside, and left the door half-closed.

  Half-closed doors are invitations. Or warnings. Occasionally both.

  From inside, the faint scrape of cardboard, the rustle of paper, the small clink of glass. He was either destroying something or deciding not to. I let him wrestle with morality for a full thirty seconds, then raised my phone, dialed, and kept my voice just above a whisper.

  “Tie,” I said when he answered. “Your warrant’s about to become retroactively necessary.”

  “Swanson, where are you?”

  “Standing between what a dead man was afraid of and the person who wants to make sure he stays quiet.”

  A pause. “Riverfront?”

  “Unit 314,” I confirmed. “Bring your oat milk.”

  “Do not go in there,” he said. “You hear me?”

  The door of 314 stuttered, as if offended by the implication that I would listen.

  “Loud and clear,” I said, ending the call.

  Then I stepped forward, laid my palm flat against the cold metal, and pushed.