Chicago, 1994.
Elena opened the door three inches and stopped when Kane showed his badge. Her attention passed from him to Mercer, then towards the street.
“We need to talk.”
“No.”
“Elena—”
“I already spoke to police.”
“You ran from a murder scene.”
“I found a dead woman.”
“And then you disappeared.”
“My children were downstairs.”
Kane watched the hand gripping the door, the weight on her back foot and the small movements of her eyes whenever he mentioned the hotel. She was frightened, but her fear did not fit what he had expected.
“You went into Room 417. Your trolley hit the chair.”
She waited.
“The chair moved into the bedside table. There was something on that table. A silver figure.”
He looked for recognition and found none.
“You took it.”
“No.”
“It was there before you entered.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You took something from that room.”
“No.”
The force of her answer made him lean closer.
“Elena, listen to me. Whatever happened in that room, if you took something—”
“I took my children. That is all I took.”
He stopped. Mercer shifted beside him as she continued.
“I opened the door. I saw her. I backed away. My cart moved. Something fell. I don’t know what. I hit the telephone, maybe the chair. I don’t know. I ran.”
“What?”
“I said something fell.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where?”
She gestured behind her, trying to recall the room.
“Near the bed. Maybe the table.”
“What is it?” Mercer asked, but Kane continued questioning her.
“Elena. When you left the room, did you see anybody? Anyone in the corridor?”
“No.”
“Did anyone speak to you?”
“No.”
“And you haven’t been back?”
“Why would I go back?”
Through the narrow opening, he noticed the boy standing farther along the hall. Seven or eight, the same child he had seen at the school. Pressure returned behind his eyes, bringing every crack in the plaster, every loose screw in the hinge and every thread of the boy’s jumper into sharp relief.
He looked away and the sensation faded.
“Kane?” Mercer said.
“Stay here,” he told Elena, stepping back. “Stay inside. Lock the door.”
“You just accused me of murder evidence—”
“I didn’t accuse you of murder.”
“You said I took—”
“Lock the door.”
His tone stopped her. He turned towards Mercer.
“We’re going back.”
Room 417 had been released from active processing but remained sealed. Kane ducked beneath the tape with Mercer behind him.
“You’re going to tell me what we’re doing?”
Kane considered the chair, the telephone and the bedside table. He closed his eyes and followed Elena into the room again. She saw the body and stepped back as the trolley rolled into the chair. The chair turned against the table.
Something fell.
He knelt beside the bed and lowered himself until he could see beneath its frame. Silver caught the light.
“Kane?”
He reached under the bed and brought out a small animal figure. Mercer exhaled.
“Christ.”
Kane remained on one knee. He had been wrong. No witness had lied to him, no evidence had changed. He had looked at the scene and reconstructed something that had never happened.
“She didn’t take it,” Mercer said, crouching beside him.
“No.”
“So our killer lost it.”
“No. He doesn’t know he lost it.”
“What?”
Kane rose and approached the table.
“The room was staged. Everything had its place. He leaves this every time. He comes back mentally. Checks the scene in his head. He knows exactly where he put everything.”
“But it fell.”
“After he left.”
“So he thinks Elena took it.”
Kane began to nod, then stopped. He recalled the forensic cases and evidence markers, the photographer and the uniforms moving around him while he announced what had happened.
She took it.
“He didn’t think she took it.”
Mercer understood.
“He heard you.”
“I said it here. Before we knew about the children. Before we spoke to Elena. Before anything went into a report.”
“Jesus.”
Mercer moved towards the door.
“Who was in the room?”
“Everyone who signed onto the scene.”
“You want the register?”
“I want every name.”
“And you?”
Kane looked at the figure.
“He thinks Elena has something that matters to him. He’s going to her house.”
Mercer drove to the district office. Kane went back towards Elena, using the radio twice on the journey. The plainclothes unit near her house failed to answer.
“Unit Twelve, confirm position.”
Static gave way to silence. He pressed harder on the accelerator.
Elena’s street looked ordinary. Bicycles stood outside houses, a television flickered behind curtains, and somewhere a dog barked. There were no marked cars and no movement near the unmarked vehicle, where one officer should have been waiting.
Kane parked half a block away and took out his revolver. His radio crackled.
“Kane.”
“Go.”
“I’ve got the scene log.”
“Read it.”
“Twenty-three names.”
“Skip hotel staff.”
“Four detectives. Two uniforms. Medical examiner. Photographer. Six forensic personnel.”
Kane began walking towards the house.
“Names.”
Mercer read them. Kane reached Elena’s driveway before one stopped him.
“Daniel Mills. Crime Scene Unit.”
He remembered a thin, quiet man carrying an evidence case, a camera bag or a clipboard. Mills had been in Room 417, and in other rooms before it. Always present, he had somehow failed to become part of Kane’s memory of the scene.
“Mills.”
“What?”
“Run him.”
Paper moved at Mercer’s end.
“Already doing it.”
An upstairs curtain shifted. The person behind it stood at the wrong height to be Elena.
“Put an APB out on Daniel Mills. Crime Scene Unit.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Something moved inside the house.
“Kane—”
“Do it now.”
He lowered the radio and checked the parked sedan across the street. It was empty. The driver’s door of the unmarked police car stood slightly open.
The officer sat behind the wheel with his head at an unnatural angle. Kane touched his neck and found no pulse. The death was recent.
He drew his weapon fully as the radio on the officer’s belt spoke.
“All units. Be advised. APB requested on Daniel Mills, Chicago Crime Scene Unit. White male, thirty-eight—”
Movement ceased inside the house. Then Kane heard a small sound from the front hallway, a foot changing direction.
He ran.
Elena heard the back door close. Her daughter was upstairs, and her son sat at the kitchen table among his pencils.
“Elena?”
She turned to find a man in a dark jacket. He looked unremarkable, as he intended to.
“Police.”
“I know the detective.”
“Detective Kane sent me.”
The boy looked up. Mills smiled at him, but a radio beneath his coat spoke the name Daniel Mills, and the smile disappeared.
Elena understood as he reached inside his jacket.
The front door burst inward.
“KANE!”
Mills fired, striking the wall beside Kane’s head. Kane returned fire as he retreated into the kitchen.
“Upstairs!” Elena told her son, catching his arm.
Mills struck her across the face with the pistol. She fell and the boy screamed.
Kane entered the hallway as Mills fired twice through the doorway. One round missed. The other struck Kane high in the side, throwing him against the wall. His revolver fell from his hand.
The house became strangely quiet. Blood spread across his shirt. He reached towards his weapon, but Mills stepped into the hall and kicked it away.
“You.”
He sounded almost disappointed.
“You should have left the room alone.”
Kane pressed a hand against his wound.
“The trophies.”
“You found it.”
“Behind the bed.”
Mills’s expression changed.
“You moved it.”
“No. Elena’s trolley did.”
He looked towards Elena, who was crawling to her son. For the first time, Kane saw confusion in his face.
“She didn’t take it?”
“No.”
A small laugh escaped him. Kane understood what his own mistake had set in motion: the surveillance, the hunt and the dead officer outside.
“You sent me to her,” Mills said. “You said she took it.”
There was the confirmation. He had been in Room 417, listening while Kane failed to notice him.
Kane’s vision blurred.
“I’m going to correct your mistake.”
Mills raised the pistol, then turned at a movement from the rear of the house.
The man in the grey jacket stood in the kitchen doorway.
Mills swung his weapon towards him. The stranger fired once, staggering him. His pistol discharged into the ceiling. When he tried to raise it again, the stranger fired a second time.
Mills fell.
The man lowered his weapon. Kane recognised the face he had followed outside the school.
“You.”
The stranger glanced towards the child.
“You were watching him,” Kane said.
His expression changed slightly.
“Who are you?”
There was no answer. Kane tried to stand, but pain folded him onto one knee.
The boy broke free of Elena and ran towards him.
“No!” she called, reaching after him.
The stranger moved.
“Stop him.”
The boy was already beside Kane, gripping his hand.
Kane’s breath stopped. The room remained around him, but thousands of connections seemed to occupy it: between people, objects and moments, between what had happened and what would follow.
He saw the bullet’s path through his body and blood vessels constricting around torn tissue. The boy’s hands held his, and warmth moved through them with a pressure he could feel beneath his palm.
The child gasped. His eyes became silver as the pain in Kane’s side surged, then disappeared. The wound burned and the bleeding slowed. Damaged tissue was changing, closing enough to hold together without fully healing.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” the boy said.
Every light in the house flickered. The stranger crossed the room and separated their hands, ending the effect at once.
Kane collapsed backwards, breathing hard. Elena pulled her son close.
“What did you do to him?”
The stranger did not answer. Something close to fear had entered his expression, and Kane understood that neither Mills nor his own presence accounted for it.
Sirens approached outside.
“You’re not police,” Kane said.
“No.”
“Military?”
The man checked the window.
“The boy. What is he?”
The question held his attention. He studied Kane, then looked towards the child.
“He doesn’t know.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
The sirens grew louder and the stranger stepped back.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“You’ve been following him. You were at the school.”
The man remained silent.
“You saved us.”
“I prevented another death.”
“No. You saved him.”
Kane could still sense the distinction despite the damage and confusion. Mills had been hunting Elena. This man’s attention had remained on her son.
Blue light filled the front of the house as the stranger turned towards the rear door.
“Who are you?” Kane called.
He paused for a second, then disappeared into the darkness.
By the time the first officers entered, there was no sign of him. Daniel Mills lay dead on the floor, Kane was alive when he should not have been, and a frightened seven-year-old boy stared at his hands as though they belonged to someone else.