--Two hours after the robbery--

The two were referred to as the Eyes and the Hands.

Deborah Whitefield and Louis Perosa were partners, professional detectives for the Seattle Police Department Special Investigations Department. They were called to action when bizarre cases appeared, or when crimes seemed impossible to solve. To colleagues, they appeared as a step above the regular detectives, but below the FBI.

Louis, wearing his classic shoddy black suit and jacket arrived on the scene about half an hour after his partner had. It was pretty late at night, and when they got the call, Deb asked him to fetch some coffee, which was totally fine with him. The crime scene was pretty far from his house in the first place, and he was just about to go to sleep before the call came in. His presence wouldn’t be missed at first, since Deb handled almost all of the crime scene analytics. Him being there was pointless until she finished seeing all the evidence.

He stopped his car in the parking lot of the convenience store, outside of the yellow tape meant to fence off onlookers. After flashing his badge to the officers blocking the view, he took a casual stroll to the building.

The forensic people directed him to the backroom, where the security cameras fed to.

Sitting on a stool by the CRT televisions was his partner, wearing heavy sweats. She looked dangerously thin, and her messy tangled hair covered the top half of her face. Louis handed her the coffee he picked up and gave her a silent nod.

She didn’t even look at him before starting to explain what she found.

“Exactly when the security system goes to eight twenty-five, the feed freezes for about twenty minutes. As you can see,” Deb said, clicking through and manipulating the keyboard attached to the server. “While the people inside are still moving slightly during those twenty minutes, you can tell that there’s a loop.”

She ran through the recording a few times, tapping places with her pen for Louis to take note of. “The way the headlights from cars passing by are constant. Look...there, there, and there. Always the same lights, the same size, and the same time. I’m certain the loop is about seven seconds long, pulled from when the victims were all stationary or doing simple movements. This old lady, for example, is looking between two cartons of juice. For over twenty minutes. It’s highly unlikely someone would be that indecisive. The cashier also spent the entire time looking at the same images on his phone. You can’t tell what he’s looking at due to the pixelization, but they’re all roughly the same.

“The security system is not very complicated, but still, editing this type of thing on the fly would be incredibly difficult. I don’t see anything that looks like tampering, but it is possible that someone could have come in and gone through the footage to find something that stuck really quickly and were just fortunate to find an almost perfect loop.

“Immediately after the security feed hits eight forty-five, the image breaks into the display outside. Incidentally, about two minutes later, another car pulled into the store’s parking lot, and the witness who called the police entered. We’ve already pulled them for questioning, and I’ve probed them. I don’t think it’s likely they were here beforehand, but we can always bring them back again for you to talk to.”

Deb paused, waiting for Louis to ask questions or make deductions, should he have any. Instead, he was biting on his fingers while his eyes twitched. A sign for her to continue.

“The victims have all been identified. Barbara S. Greenwood, Edward N. Wright, Franklin Mendez, Jacob Reed, Finn Lemon, and Bruce Whitaker. The body of the girl who was captured in the footage was not found, nor were we able to identify her from any angles provided on the security film. We checked the transactions made on the register, but there weren’t any that fit within that twenty minutes time frame.There didn’t seem to be any other evidence of her left behind at the scene, so we’re waiting to see if a missing persons report comes in matching her description.

“Four of them were wearing masks and carrying weapons: Franklin, Jacob, Finn, and Bruce. They were also dressed in heavy sweats and using gloves. It appears they took time to try and cover their appearance to not be caught. We found some basic things in their pockets, but no wallets, however, Jacob has a pair of car keys. Someone went out and tested the electronic unlock function, and found a van with a false license plate parked about a block away. The car is registered to a man who died four years ago. A safe in the back was open, and the contents all seem to be in a bag at Jacob’s side. The store manager confirmed nothing else was missing when we had them look.

“Starting from the top with the victims, Barbara is a local aging widow. She has some family in the state, but none in the city. She seemed to die from internal bleeding, due to multiple interior abrasions; she was probably beaten or clubbed to death. Her body was covered in bruises, particularly her face and back. We also discovered a revolver on the ground near her, which was registered under the name of her late husband. Firearm residue appeared on her palm, indicating she fired the weapon, and we were able to find the bullet lodged in the wall opposite where her body was found.

“Edward was the cashier, and it appears he’s only been working here for two months. There are bruises on his wrists, arms, and body, indicating he was tied up and beaten. He seems to have been stabbed multiple times in the face and chest, resulting in severe blood loss. The murder weapon is suspected to be the bloody knife we found next to him.

“Franklin is a repeat offender, who wore a gorilla mask. He was in juvie when he was younger and spent two years in jail. Recently, he was supposed to be on parole, but has been missing. We’ve identified him as the one who attacked Barbara and killed her. He seemed to have had his neck broken, then his leg was...sawed off at around the knee.

“Jacob, the one wearing a cartoon character mask, was shot once in the chest and almost instantly killed when it punctured his heart. It appears that he was shot by Finn, who was wearing a fish mask. Jacob was not killed fast enough however to take a few shots of his own; he fired twice and blew out Finn’s knee as well as hitting him in the shoulder. The blood loss from that was enough to kill him within a few minutes.

“The final victim was Bruce, a Seattle Native. He had warrants out for his arrest for theft already, and here, he was wearing a golf-ball mask. It looks like someone attacked him with a blunt weapon and cracked the back of his skull, putting his death as blunt force trauma. Due to the scene being in a relatively public location, the forensics team has had an incredibly difficult time finding things like fingerprints or other DNA samples.”

After giving the entire explanation of the crime scene, Deb held her hand out like she was holding a tennis ball, then hefted it into the air. As the imaginary ball fell, she swung, knocking it into Louis’s court. That was a sort of game they played. Because of the vast differences in how their brains functioned, they needed to have strict rules for communication, and this was one of them. When you passed the ball, you could no longer speak. No matter what, you couldn’t say something unless it was returned to you.

Louis caught the ball.

He spoke slowly, as though deliberating every word, because he truly was.

“First, I’m going to speak about the most basic assumptions I have, then work up. These four masked men, from what I can tell, had met and become allies. I’m almost absolutely certain they were working together. With all of the possible avenues for crime in town, I can’t imagine it would be very difficult for them to be part of a gang, or just be independent and brought together. This wasn’t some random situation where they met up and fought each other. If they were all wearing matching clothes and masks, they were allies. It’s possible they got friendly with an employee, or have a friend who worked here in the past, who they asked about the security cameras and store hours. There’s also the possibility these four men were working with another accomplice, but I’ll go over that later as I build up this theory.

“The crime should have gone off without a hitch. They bust into the store, guns forward, and intimidate everyone inside to getting down. They tie them up or keep guns on them. Well, they didn’t tie up the old lady, since she proved them wrong by pulling out a gun and shooting it. It didn’t seem like she hit anyone, right?”

Deb nodded.

“So either she shot and missed, or she pulled the gun out and someone grabbed it and moved the barrel before it could hit anyone. After that, the one guy went into a rage and beat her to death. Or at least close enough. After doing that, the four realized that committing murder would increase the severity of the crime, so they decide to just remove any witnesses, stabbing the cashier to death after. I’m pretty confident that’s what happened so far. But after this point, things become cloudy. Two immediate puzzle pieces appear in my mind.

“The first has to do with the missing woman. It’s possible to suspect that she was just forced into being a hostage like the other two in this situation, but couldn’t it also be the case that she was involved? How would the robbers know when to attack? A possible theory would be that the Jane Doe was a participant in the crime as well. She could have sent them a message and told them when to do it, sitting on the sidelines and giving them advice throughout. It’s impossible to say that she ran away, because if she did, she’d have called the police.

“While there's definitely only a single Jane Doe in our first scenario, the second puzzle piece complicates the ordeal with it being any number of possible John Does. Looking at everything, I can envision a few ways of this playing out. Among them, the most likely is the inclusion of another gang of robbers hit them at the same time. With the amount of gang-related crime currently in the city, I wouldn’t find it unlikely for another group to stalk this one and attack them, though during the middle of a robbery seems extreme. It might explain the leg sawing, which could be torture, perhaps, and it would also make sense that if the Jane Doe was affiliated with another group, she might call them over to attack these guys.

“It could also just be that another person came at roughly the same time, or after everything happened. Because something to consider is: why did these men shoot each other? They were most certainly working together, according to the evidence we have, but in the end, two of them shot each other. Well, that’s not necessarily certain. As easy as it might be to say they had a disagreement and shot each other, there’s also the possibility that someone or some people entered and shot them, then planted the guns in their hands. However, my guess would be we already tested to make sure the firearm residue was on their hands and gloves, since you told me with certainty that they shot each other, but then on the other hand, if someone else came in and was wearing those gloves, couldn’t they have just swapped them out? Ah, hold on, I’m starting to lose myself…”

Deb kept completely quiet as Louis started doing his deep breaths. Each of them were incredibly potent at certain things, and for Louis, it was his incredibly vivid imagination. He could take a single data point and extrapolate an immense amount of information and create insane theories off of it, but as a downside, he often made them over complicated and got lost in the weeds. His intuition was usually pretty good, but there were times when he went too far. Very rarely, Deb would need to step in and calm him, but right now, he seemed to be able to compose himself.

“It feels to me like someone was altering evidence,” Louis said, rubbing his temples. “Things aren’t adding up. This was planned beforehand, evidenced by the missing footage. Unless a manager or someone was waiting until after the crime went down to alter the video evidence, but they weren’t seen leaving. There’s only one way out of this backroom, right? Do the cameras cover it?”

Again, Deb nodded. She clicked twice to display the camera outside of the managers room.

“There’s also the swapped guns, and the missing leg. The missing girl, and the inclusion of whoever came afterwards to alter things. So many questions...too many to work with. We need to take a bigger look. That’s all I’ve got.”

***

--An hour and a half later--

Officer Jake Bambi was sitting at his desk in silence as two detectives were across from him. He knew them both by reputation, but had never seen them before in person, and just by hearing their nicknames, he felt sweat bead up on his back. It was difficult to tell which person unnerved him more. The Hands, Louis Perosa, was tall and lanky with olive skin and a thin beard. His suit was immaculate, something far more expensive than any normal detective would be able to afford to wear on the streets. The man’s eyes were hazy and unfocused, as though he weren’t paying attention to what was in front of him. The Eyes, Deborah Whitefield, on the other hand, was a small woman bundled up in sweats and with her face mostly covered by a scarf. As per her namesake, her bright green eyes were terrifying. Every time Bambi moved an inch, she spotted it. The slightest movement of his finger was picked up by her, and rumors around the precinct claimed that when she saw something, it wasn’t forgotten.

The fact that these two were asking him questions directly about what happened tonight made him worried. He had one job: misleading the police. There were other dirty cops. The force was full of them, though none of them knew each other. It was kept a secret. But these two were definitely not corrupt.

“Yes,” Bambi repeated, doing his best to keep his voice steady. “We received a call that I investigated around eight forty-five. A man was calling from a payphone, saying that he saw what looked like a kidnapping. When we asked for his name and for him to stay on the call, he hung up. We identified that the call came from a payphone in the nearby area, but figured it was probably just a prank. Not really uncommon, these days. I mean, you don’t need to pay for emergency calls, and if you wear a hoodie, it’s almost impossible to catch someone on camera. My guess would be most payphones are only used for police prank calls.

“But still, I went to investigate. I drove around the streets and down the ones he mentioned. I even hopped out of the car to run around a bit and ask some pedestrians if they’d seen anything, but I only got blank stares and no answers. Because we didn’t get any emergency calls until a bit later, I was on my return to the station when I heard about the convenience store. It didn’t seem to me like they were linked, even now, and at the time, even though I was in the area, I didn’t hear or notice anything about the convenience store.”

Hopefully that covered all the bases. He wasn’t sure exactly what the dashcam recorded on his car, but he wasn’t wearing a bodycam at the time, so none of his conversation should have been copied. Playing his ignorance up was the easiest thing to do. All he needed to do was seem incompetent enough that they overlooked him. Was it possible?

Retrospectively, it was a good thing he didn’t ask more questions about what Markus and Ern were doing. There was some relation to the murders at the convenience store, but he didn’t know the exact extent. And when he was set up to guard the perimeter, he didn’t notice anything out of place. The Parci Family must have sent someone to tidy the scene up for the ignorant police. The weight on his shoulders was to direct the investigation away from the unspeakable truth.

The Eyes leant over her chair, beckoning to the Hands, who folded over so she could whisper into his ear. He nodded quickly, taking in her deductions and making his own calculations and opinions. Bambi watched the man’s eyes come into focus.

“A few questions,” Detective Louis Perosa started. “If you don’t mind.”

Bambi did mind, but admitting so would spell his doom. “Go ahead.”

“You said you questioned pedestrians about whether they had seen anything on the streets?”

“Yep. They didn’t see anything.”

“What exactly did they say? You have their statements written down, I presume?”

Bambi gave a timid and awkward smile outwardly while inwardly he was screaming. “No, I didn’t. They were all saying the same thing, so I didn’t bother writing any of it down. Sorry, I’ll admit that it was a mistake on my part, but at the time, I really believed it was just a prank phone call and that I was wasting my time.”

“Did you collect their names and contact information?”

Fuck.

“...”

Bambi thought for what felt like a few moments too long.

“Sorry,” he eventually said, sighing. “Didn’t get those either.”

“Not even their names? You didn’t ask for their names?”

“Er...I got their names,” Bambi said. “They were just some old housewives from the neighborhood walking their dogs. It was...Mary and Erin, I believe. Something like that.”

“Last names?”

“I can’t remember. Again, sorry. I really didn’t want to bother them, you know? It was late, and if some middle-aged women see an officer walking around, they might get worried. I didn’t want to spook them.”

That was probably good.

It had to be good. Fuck. If Bambi had known that the two most impressive detectives on this side of the state were going to be asking him questions, he would’ve come up with a better story. Making things up on the fly was causing his head to spin, and trying to look normal during this was taking a toll on his body.

Louis looked at him for a second as Deb whispered into his ear.

Then frowned.

“They were all housewives you said? And they were all walking their dogs at the same time? Does that mean these two women were walking their dogs together? Or were these separate encounters, both being women walking dogs? And how many dogs per each of them?”

“...well,” Bambi said. Fuck. He felt sweat form on his forehead, but he knew it could look bad if he wiped it off, since the air conditioning was cool inside the building. He tilted his head to the side and raised his eyebrows so hopefully it would roll to the side of his head. “The old ladies were walking together. They knew each other. Just one dog each. I don’t remember what type of dog they had. They seemed like friends.”

“Did they seem like they came from a dog park?”

“Umm...I’m not sure. I didn’t ask. But maybe.”

“Officer, I don’t want you to take offense when I say this,” Louis started, looking away from. “But are you lying to me?”

Ah…

“What?”

“Earlier, you said you spoke to some pedestrians, but now, you’re telling me it was just two women walking their dogs. Does it really make sense to refer to two people as ‘some pedestrians’? Now I’m no mind reader, but with the way you’re speaking and acting, it obviously seems like you’re trying to be evasive with your answers. Honestly, it seems to me like you lied about everything just now. Can you give some kind of defense for yourself?”

That was far too blunt of an accusation. The Hands didn’t even use a bit of tact as he laid out the claim, which caught Bambi like a gut punch.

“Ah...you see…” Bambi had little in the way of defense. At this point, the best thing he could do was to admit it. It was impossible to bluff his way out of this. “Yes, you’re right. I was lying. I faked everything and didn’t talk to anyone.” If he lost his job here, what would happen to him?

Louis nodded.

“You faked everything? Right, that’s because you never actually check the area out, right? I can picture it now: you heard the call, and before even leaving, you decided that it wasn’t worth your time. Before even driving out to take a look, it already seemed like a waste of time. So, you leisurely cruised through the area, then did your best to make it look like you were working hard. You came up with some false claims to back your story up. Once the call came in about the convenience store, it probably sprung into your mind that the emergency call was real, but you couldn’t just admit you weren’t taking your job seriously. To keep yourself from being punished, you kept to your story and continued lying. Please, correct me if I’m wrong about any of this.”

“You’re,” Bambi started. “Not wrong. That’s absolutely correct. Sorry, you saw right through me. I won’t ever do it again. Please, don’t tell anyone.”

“Don’t worry about it, man,” Louis said, standing up and reaching over to clap Bambi on the shoulder. “I get it. Checking on stupid calls at night sucks. I used to be in your spot, and I’d be lying if I said I never did the same. But you gotta keep yourself focused, man. Anyway, clean your report up, just so that nobody else notices.”

“Right…”

“And was there anything else you wanted to say? Anything else you noticed, that might help us out with the investigation?”

Bambi scratched his chin for a few seconds, pretending to be thoughtful.

“No, sorry. I got nothing. But thank you.”

“Have a good night.”

Then the two left.

It was as though he had been underwater the entire time, and Bambi was finally bursting through the surface to breathe. He felt his body shake, and he shivered. Damn. He was cold and covered in sweat. That was far more intimidating than it needed to be. Not as scary as talking to Alfonse Parci, but close. In a different way. To lie to the Parci Boss meant you were going to die. To lie to either of these meant you could spend your life in prison.

Knowing that he was safe, Bambi let out a sigh.

How the hell had that worked?

I guess there are some perks to being seen as a wimp, he thought. And some perks to being seen as a deadbeat. They did most of the work for me, in the end. Jesus Christ.

For once in his life, Bambi felt like he finally caught a break.

***

“He was lying, you know.”

“I know,” Louis said. “I know. Even if I can’t read people like you can, I could guess he wasn’t telling us something. What did you get from him?”

They were driving, slowly, to a nearby twenty-four-seven coffee drive-thru.

“Other than his incredible relief when you gave him an easy out?”

Louis gave her a thumbs up.

“When you asked him to give you the names of the people he was talking to, he put thought into it. A brief moment where he had to come up with names. Inspiration. Then, when he started answering, he dragged on his speech to come up with them. He also tried to stay as vague as possible describing them, bouncing between housewife, middle-aged woman, and just old ladies. It was inconsistent, like he had no clear mental image. Then when you asked him about their last names, he panicked. It’d be obvious protocol to take their full names, so not having any last names to give would make him look suspicious. What do you think?”

“I’m wondering why he even brought up that he talked to anyone at all. Just saying he drove through the area without seeing anyone or anything would’ve done the same job.”

“Oh. Good point. He’s stupid, that’s why.”

“I don’t think that’s the reason.”

Deb raised an eyebrow. Louis didn’t notice, however. He was the one driving, and it took all his attention to do so. Because his mind tended to wander, he’d already been in two accidents so far this year. Deb, on the other hand, was in three. They were both very, very bad drivers.

“I think he really did talk to somebody,” Louis continued. “He was driving around and saw somebody, then talked to them. We don’t have any footage from the car yet, right?”

“Right.”

“If you could check that eventually, it’d be great. But my thoughts so far are this: when he went to go check out the area, he saw someone, or something. But he couldn’t admit it. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“...”

Louis didn’t answer immediately. It was hard to use his hands to form an idea when they were glued to the steering wheel. Before planning out this next tangent, one that felt so nearly formed in his mind, he wanted to breach other ideas.

“If you were making up someone’s name at random,” Louis started. “Trying to call them someone else, how would you do it?”

“Pick letters at random. Utnjlae Qpiac.”

“No,” Louis said. “No. Sorry. The correct answer, or what most people would do, is to pick something similar. If you were trying to disguise someone by calling them a fake name, how could you come up with one and remember it easy? For most people, the easiest way would be to call them something similar. It’d be like if you asked someone who their favorite movie actress is. They’d most likely just answer with the first person they thought of. When it comes to situations like that, especially under duress, the human brain will try to take shortcuts.”

“Makes sense,” Deb said. “In that case, you think that if he actually met someone, they’d have similar names to the ones he gave?”

“If he did…”

They paused the conversation as they came to the drive-thru and ordered. After doing so, they parked to continue talking.

“The transcript of the nine-one-one call claimed they saw an African American man doing the kidnapping, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then later, if you wouldn’t mind, could you check to see if you can find a list of people with names similar to Erin and Mary, that are black dudes?”

Deb gave a thumbs up. Such a task would be impossible for most normal people, but to her, it was just another Tuesday.

“So,” she said, changing the topic. “What were you thinking about earlier?”

“About...?”

Louis had a poor memory. He could grapple with things on an immediate basis, but holding onto that information was difficult for him. There were times where he’d even forget who he was talking to during a conversation. Fortunately, he could usually reconstruct his thinking when it came to complex plots or theories.

“Why Officer Bambi lied to us.”

“Ah! Right! Okay, so, I’m actually not totally sure,” Louis replied. “Do you think he was falling for the bluff I was making? The easy out?”

“Yes. Without a doubt. However, he seemed to be pretty tired. Before we talked to him, I checked his work schedule, and it looks like he’s been working for quite a while. His shift was supposed to be over before we talked to him. Earlier, you were saying you thought he was defending someone. If he was, he’s probably going to be paranoid about talking to us. When he wakes up tomorrow and thinks about it, he might realize you tricked him. Are you really not sure why he lied?”

“I have some suspicions,” Louis said. “But nothing confirmed. Anyway, gimme a sec. I’ve got a missed call here.”

Apparently, they’d found something quite interesting while searching the van used in the convenience store robbery.

***

--A little after one in the morning--

“Where the hell are they?” Ark asked.

He was pacing, swapping between staring at his watch and the rusty metal door to the abandoned warehouse they agreed to meet in. Bundled in a neon colorful windbreaker with pink, light blue and lime, he looked completely out of place with thedirty set of industrial wreckage.

Sitting on one of those dysfunctional pieces of machinery was a semi-translucent girl, wearing a chinese dress. Her actual appearance was inconsistent; one second, she had a frail and soft face with silver hair, then another she was sharp and had a black bob. The only constant were the two black eyes, which were currently watching Ark sweat.

“You’re getting too worked up. What’re you so worried about?”

“Bruce isn’t the type of guy to hang out or do something stupid after a job. Trust me, I know him well enough, and he’s way too uptight,” Ark said. “You know they were supposed to be back at midnight. You know that the job was supposed to be finished way earlier, but at the latest, they were supposed to be here by twelve.”

“And it’s long past twelve,” she said. “If you think something’s wrong, just admit you’re pathetic and give up. Don’t you have confidence in yourself?”

“I do have confidence in myself,” Ark said between gritted teeth. “But just because you have a good plan doesn’t mean everything works out in the end. They aren’t here, and they haven’t even called me. What the hell is happening? I mean, why wouldn’t they just call if something happened?”

“Perhaps they decided to take the money and run?”

“No, I doubt it. We both know that what we were stealing was worth way more than what they’d find in that safe,” Ark said. The job was illogical to him in the first place, but it paid well, and he wasn’t just going to not take it. He needed to climb the ranks somehow, but he didn’t have anything other than a few crook friends. “And Bruce wouldn’t do that. He’s too cool for that.”

“Maybe running was the wrong choice of words,” the woman muttered, then took a second to consider which words might grate against Ark the most. “Betrayal is far more fitting, I think. If they realized how much they could get by auctioning off the goods, or whatever, to one of the other families, or decided they could just turn you in for money, why wouldn’t they just do that instead? Far less risk, plus they get to remove you from the cut. I mean, you’re the only one who didn’t go along with them. Maybe they realized you were exploiting them and decided to take revenge?”

That was a thought Ark didn’t want to consider. Bruce and Jacob were both his friends, and they’d worked together before. “They wouldn’t do that, no matter what you say. I trust them.”

“Still less risky,” she said, shrugging. “Not everyone cares about loyalty as much as you. It’s why you fail constantly. I think they definitely abandoned you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Suit yourself. Pretending it won’t happen will just make it more painful when you end up getting stabbed in the back.”

“If anyone ends up stabbing me in the back,” Ark said. “Won’t it be you?”

Cher smiled.

“Absolutely,” she said. “I told you when we first met, didn’t I?”

The sounds of cars passing outside on the highway was infrequent. Lights flickered through the windows on the roof of the warehouse, filtering down across the various pieces of machinery, causing shadows to dance across the ceiling and walls like fiends at a party. Ark had to force himself to smoke and calm his nerves down; even then, his hands were overcome by incessant twitching he couldn’t abate. The remedy, he found, was shoving them as hard as possible into his jacket pockets.

He noticed that Cher noticed him. She gave him a look of mock disgust and laughed. A guardian angel he had once thought. A guardian angel, he had prayed for. But she was more like a devil in disguise, bringing him success at the cost of happiness. Even with victory, she promised ruin for him in the future.

Like the idiot, he believed when they first met that he was unique. Special. He thought he would be able to carve out a place for himself, and climb the ladder. Cher was supposed to guide him there, or so he thought.

A light flashed a little too close to the warehouse, drawing Ark’s attention. “What was that?”

“Hmm? Do you want me to tell you? Being surprised might be more fun, don’t you think?”

“No,” Ark answered. “Just tell me.”

“Bo~ring,” Cher said, stretching the word out as she did so to her own body, leaning back to recline on the conveyor belt. “Heh. You’re definitely not going to like this.”

“Please, just tell me what it is?”

“Looks like fourteen cop cars. They’re approaching the building with their lights off, and they’re pretty close. I’d say you’ve got about two and a half minutes before they burst in here guns blazing.”

Ark twitched.

“What?”

“I told you that you were gonna get betrayed, didn’t I?”

“No,” he responded. “That doesn’t make sense. This has to be for something else…”

“Yeah,” Cher said. “You might be right. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to hide.”

“Help me?”

She chuckled and vanished into thin air.

***

“This was where the note said they were supposed to meet up,” Louis said, opening the car door for Deb, who had a space blanket wrapped around herself. “Whether that’s something serious or not, I’ve got no idea. It could be planted by anyone, intending on throwing us off their scent.”

“Maybe. But people have been coming in and out recently,” Deb replied, teeth chattering. “This is an abandoned facility, but there are still cigarette butts outside. Someone has been here in the past day..”

“How recent?”

“They look clean, so probably within a few hours. I can’t smell any smoke, so it had to have been before the rain. It stopped raining about an hour ago.”

Louis pondered. “If we were being set up to come here, then wouldn’t it make sense for someone to be waiting? I can think of some reasons why they wouldn’t be...but it still seems strange.”

“Nothing concrete?”

“Nope,” he said. “Let’s go take a better look. I’ll keep thinking.”

The squad of officers who the two detectives had followed to the abandoned construction warehouse had crept up to the building without flashing any lights. They were armed and prepared to enter, waiting on the command.

After getting confirmation from Louis, the commanding officer signaled his underlings to advance, which they did. It was a loud operation, done by kicking down doors and screaming, flashing lights and banging things together with guns drawn and primed. Barbaric and bloody behavior by the police, who were expecting to get in a fight with another gang. It was a good thing no residential areas were nearby, because they would’ve certainly complained about the racket being caused in the middle of the night.

Like roaches, the officers and their dogs scoured the entire building, taking the good portion of an hour to finally complete their rounds. When they were certain the facility was combed to death, Deb and Louis were invited inside to investigate safely. Good timing, as well, because clouds were starting to come together again in the sky.

There was no need for Louis to investigate, so he just took a seat in the manager’s booth, a metal building that overlooked the entire factory from above. It was dusty and filled with broken glass, but a single stool stood in the center of the room, and Louis felt the need to sit. Deb had her own entourage of officers following her around, each hoping to prove their skills by providing assistance, or hoping to glean some insight from her to improve their own skills, as if it were a learned trick. Louis watched and considered the things he knew so far.

They knew there were a few things guaranteed.

Four men held up a convenience store earlier tonight, bringing with them guns and stealing a fat stash of cash from the register and safe in the backroom. However, during the robbery, each of the four men died, either killed by what appeared to be their own guns, or from violent blunt force trauma. There were other victims, who appeared to have been killed by the robbers.

All of the security footage had been tampered with, and the quick reports coming in claimed that the forensic evidence also seemed to have been messed with as well. Some unknown pollutant was mixed in with the blood, making it difficult to send for identification. There must have been more people.

But the question was:

Who?

It was possible that more than four people tried breaking into the store. The dead might’ve been betrayed by their companions, or by someone entering after they did. There was also the mysterious Jane Doe, who seemed to simply float in the scene like an enigmatic phantom. What happened to her? Nobody had come up missing, and nobody like her had called the police. So was she kidnapped by the other unknown visitors? Or was she an accomplice...perhaps even the one who killed those four men? It seemed unlikely, but it could’ve been possible.

And another thing to consider:

Why did they have a note to meet here tucked away in their van?

It was just an address and a time, but the intention seemed obvious. It was a meeting point, or a drop-off. The time was specified as midnight, and they were certainly long past then, but it still seemed strange. Why did they have that? Was it a ruse, meant to throw them off? But if it was, what was the point?

But what if this was an attempt to instill conflict?

Two seperate criminal groups, both competing against each other, got into a scuffle at the convenience store. The girl could’ve been part of it, or just a bystander who got abducted. When Gang A started the robbery, Gang B showed up unannounced and killed everyone in Gang A, cleaning up their mess and framing everything as if Gang A committed the crime. Leaving evidence to meet here could also be another part of the frame; sending the police to an abandoned area where that gang normally met to scare them off and possibly misdirect their thoughts.

If a leader or lookout member of Gang A were to see a bunch of officers swarm their hideout, could it be possible they suspected the betrayal of their robbers? If Gang B wanted Gang A to sweat and destroy themselves from the inside, directing the police here would be a good way to mix everything up.

Louis would need to tell everything about this to Deb soon, lest he forget the threads of ideas he had woven together. He flashed his light towards her, and soon she arrived in the overlooking manager’s room.

He explained his thoughts quickly and concisely while she stood in silence, recording every word. Once he hit the imaginary tennis ball her way, she began her own summary of the investigation.

***

Ark managed to hide himself in a vent that had collapsed long ago. There was no escaping from the police here, and because he didn’t have any idea what was going on, the worry of being caught overrode any idea that they might not’ve been here for him. Upon learning they were surrounding the building, Ark tried to climb to the roof, but only managed to make his way through a crawlspace in the ceiling. The air duct was disgusting and dirty, but it was his best chance at staying hidden. Fortunately for Ark, he was a pretty skinny and lithe dude, so squeezing in wasn’t an issue.

Unfortunately for him, as he kept completely still during the police search, one of them, a slick haired man in a clean suit, decided to take a seat almost directly underneath Ark.

The minutes that passed while Ark held his breath felt like years. Ark couldn’t tell, but he suspected his bleached blond hair was probably going to start falling out due to the stress from this situation. After an eternity of waiting, the man got up and flashed a light down to the first floor, and soon after, a short woman in blankets came up to chat.

Ark heard the entire conversation between them.

They died.

Everyone was killed during the job. Shot down by presumably some unknown perpetrator the detective was calling John Doe. The detective kept going back and forth about the existence of multiple gangs competing with each other, and about the possibility of traitors. His final deduction was that the note to lead them here was meant to pin the blame on someone else, but since it was so late, whoever was here would’ve left already. That the best they could do was swab for DNA.

But the detective had most of it incorrect.

Ark was the one who wrote that note, giving it to Bruce so that he’d be able to remember the address of the warehouse they were supposed to meet at. It was really fucking stupid in hindsight, but none of them ever considered the job would fail. The plan wasn’t foolproof or anything, but it should’ve been really easy to do. At least that was what they were told.

Were...were they set up?

Ark felt himself considering the possibility. The detective talked about another gang coming in and manipulating the crime scene, and that to pull it off, whoever was attacking would need to know what was going to happen.

This wasn’t some heist Ark came up with on his own. He was just the guy who ended up speaking with a member of the Volkov Family, and was introduced to a lucrative job if he could find a team of unaffiliated thugs. All they needed to do was stick up a small convenience store, one only the territory of another gang, and steal some petty cash. The time was predetermined, since it would be when only a single staff member was present and foot traffic would be limited. The entire thing was supposed to be smooth sailing, and they’d get paid a fine amount and get a position in the Volkov Group.

They were betrayed.

Ark’s thoughts naturally drifted to Cher.

His guardian angel and guardian devil. Setting him up with a job like this only to fail was absolutely something that spiteful woman would do. Was this her fault? She had been with him the entire time, but was it possible she was also colluding with other people in Seattle to ruin the plan? Was it possible? Nobody had ever noticed her before, but she could still affect reality in some ways. Ark wasn’t even fully convinced she even existed.

The male detective eventually stopped speaking, and he made a gesture Ark couldn’t see to the woman, who began her talking herself.

“The factory has been abandoned for a few years,” she said. “Everything backs that up. Lots of nasty bugs and decaying infrastructure. Someone should probably either renovate this building or have it torn down. I might even submit a grievance myself for it.

“The only signs of life here were the cigarette butts I found down by the conveyor belts. They were the same type we found outside, however, these were even fresher. As though they were being smoked right before we came in. The area was also clear of dust, and it looked like someone was walking around or cleaning it.” She swung her hand at the detective.

“Someone was waiting,” he said. “How interesting? But not for us, I believe. Whoever this person was, they were set up. But how did they escape? And how many were there?”

“Two,” the woman said. “One looked to be male, who was pacing around. Shuffling his feet a lot. The other appeared to be female, or at least had a feminine silhouette. I believe she was carried by the man, or walked in his footprints perfectly, because the only evidence she was ever here was the outline of where she sat. I’m not sure how they got away. The footprints come and go from where we entered, but I couldn't find anything else. Of course, since we breached aggressively, they could have been sullied.”

“So there’s nothing?”

“It almost appears like they vanished into thin air.”

“Really?”

She nodded.

“Hmm…” The man was rubbing his chin. “There’s no way you wouldn’t notice if they did anything...but then how could they get away like that? I mean, it could be that they were prepared for us, and had an escape plan sorted out, but then it doesn’t really fit with the assumption that they were being framed. Unless they considered that a possibility…”

The two stood in silence for a few minutes, until the metal near Ark’s head creaked. The woman’s eyes immediately shot to that area, and Ark felt his heart stop as their eyes met.

She squinted.

“Do you see something?”

“Maybe,” she replied to her partner. “It looks like there’s something up there, behind the ceiling. In the vents. If I could just get a better look…”

She tossed her blanket to the male detective, then took his chair and set it directly underneath Ark. A bead of sweat formed on his nose, then slowly rolled down to the very tip, and as the female detective started to get onto the stool, the water droplet fell, landing audibly on the ground before her.

Nothing moved as she stared at the drop.

But before she could do anything else, another fell through a different part of the roof. Then another. Heavy rain started pelting the building, causing the sound to echo throughout. Water was spilling down in different places where the waterproofing wasn’t perfect, and the detective grabbed her blanket back.

“My mistake,” she said, and then huddled close to him to whisper into his ear for a second.

Then, they left.

It took about fifteen minutes for the remainder of the cops to leave the building, and Ark waited another half hour after that to escape from his hiding place. His body was freezing from the icy rain, but he needed to be sure they wouldn’t come back. This was his chance to escape. If they came back in the morning, and he was still here, there’d be no way out.

As he crept down the stairs, he couldn’t forget that female detective’s stare. As though it were locked directly onto him.

He took off his jacket, which was soaked, and shoved it underneath his undershirt as he peeked out the building’s door. If anyone stayed behind, they’d see the jacket, even in the rain, and then all his waiting would be for nothing. Right now, he had a mission. His friends were dead, and he needed to figure out why. He couldn’t ask Cher, since she would just lie. Right now, there was only one person he could go to for answers. The person in charge of the Volkov Family. The one who gave him this job directly.

The nightmarish man.

Lawrence Volkov.

***

“You were right,” Louis said, watching the drenched man exit the building from his car.

The two called off all the other officers, but after Deb saw someone hiding in the ceiling watching them talk, Louis’s curiosity had been piqued. They set themselves up in a nearby building, finding a spot where they could watch the most obvious exit.

And like clockwork, someone left, heading south. Deb captured an image of him in her mind, then stored it for later.

“Of course. You were right too.”

The two cautiously tailed him, sticking behind buildings whenever they could.

He was easy to track, leaving footprints in the mud and drenching the dry areas he passed under. Within a few hundred feet of the abandoned building he had been hiding in, they found him pulling a tarp off a small red car before getting inside. He started the car and pulled out, through a side gate, then continued to the highway. Deb managed to see the license plate and recorded it in her mind.

Louis sent out a request for all the data related to it.