The hallway outside the Ninth Avenue studio smells like laundry starch and hot dust. A seamstress downstairs is pressing something with a hiss that rides the stairwell; every lift of the iron sends up a ghost of steam and cloth glue. Floodwater freckles the lobby tiles—the creek has crawled this far again—and the reflection of the EXIT sign pulses on the puddle like a metronome trying to keep me honest.
Elena meets me on the landing with a nod and a clipboard I know hides the real teeth. “Be precise,” she murmurs, and I pocket my phone like it could betray us.
The office door sticks, then releases with a rubbery sigh. I step into order so tight it reads like an alibi. White desk. Chrome pen cup. A label maker squared to the corner. Three file boxes stacked shoulder-high along the wall, corrugation still stiff, printed arrows crisp enough to cut. The smell is new paper and tape adhesive—not the lived-in funk of a class where bodies work breath into sweat.
“Coach Lafferty?” I say. My voice threads through the low fluorescent buzz and the faint hum of the building’s vents. The room holds a quiet I’d call “performance neutral” if I hadn’t spent years learning how much manipulation lives in that phrase.
She rises from a chair that looks like it has never held anyone for more than a meeting. Her jaw is warm with blush, hair pinned in a purposeful knot. “You’re the radio one,” she says. “I don’t participate in content economy theatrics.”
The city answers with a distant horn and the sweet-burnt sugar that rides the air on days the factory fires too hot. I keep my hands visible. “I’m here off air,” I say. “Detective Park requested records of space rentals. We’ll keep this narrow.”
Elena moves like a stage manager who’s secretly the director. “Receipts for the Ninth Avenue studio for the last twelve months,” she says, voice flat. “Cash and check. Bank statements if you have them. If counsel wants to be here, call now. We’ll wait.”
Coach Lafferty tilts her chin toward the boxes. “I run clean books,” she says. “Help yourself. We have nothing to hide.”
The first lid lifts with a papery groan. Inside: color-coded folders, edges unfrayed. Too new. My fingertips pick up the grain of cardstock as I flip. RENTALS—REHEARSAL—DONATIONS. Cherub watermark in the corner of each tab, faint and kitschy, a joke I don’t want to share with the Orpheum’s cracked angels.
I slide the RECEIPTS sleeve out. The paper edges whisper against each other, a book’s worth of small truths. Elena stands at my shoulder, her pen a percussion cue. I read dates and sums aloud. “Two hours, four hours, ‘after-hours lockout’ with security deposit return.” Then: “Payor: LC Arts Holdings LLC. Memo: rehearsal space.”
Elena taps the name once, ink to paper. “LC. Here we are.”
Coach Lafferty crosses her arms, shoulder muscles bunching under a soft denim jacket that cost more than the monthly rent here. “I rent to dozens of groups,” she says. “LC could be ‘Little Chorus,’ ‘Lyric Company.’ I’m not responsible for acronyms.”
“You’re responsible for your due diligence,” Elena says. “And for when a pattern becomes a predicate.”
I pull a second receipt. The handwriting leans precise, just shy of print; the signature loops with a flourish that performs respectability. The memo line repeats like a chorus: rehearsal space, rehearsal space, rehearsal space. Cash counted in hundred-dollar stacks, deposits returned in crisp twenties “for convenience.” I taste copper under my tongue.
“Do you remember who booked these?” I ask.
“My assistant handles scheduling,” Coach says, cool now. “Kira? She’s in early.”
The door at the back opens a nervous inch. A pair of small gold hoops appears first, then a face I recognize from late-night emails the Night Choir forwarded—polite, brief answers, the grammar of someone who lives in inboxes. Kira steps in with a paper cut blooming on her thumb. She notices me noticing and tucks her hand under the other arm.
Elena’s tone bends a degree. “Kira, thanks for coming. We’re looking at rentals paid by LC Arts Holdings. We’d like to know who brought those payments, and whether anyone in those sessions used the phrase ‘truth beats’ or tapped a ring to count time.”
Kira’s mouth parts, then shuts like a file drawer. “We—We rent space,” she says. The middle of the sentence smears. Her eyes ping from Coach to me to the boxes like she could climb the labels and escape.
I set the receipts on the desk and lean halfway on the edge, letting the lacquer seep cold through my jeans. “I played a clip last night,” I say. “Twelve seconds. You heard it?”
She nods once. “The breath on ‘ask.’ She had intention.”
“She has a name,” I say gently. “Alina. She’s not a monologue prompt.”
Kira’s throat works around a dry swallow. She touches her thumb to her ring finger and taps a tiny private rhythm on her own skin. The sound is skin on skin, but my body hears metal on wood—the ring imprint we found in the balcony ledger, the click I grew up with in the background of industry panels where Lyle sold story as salvation.
Elena notices too; her pen stops. “Who taught you that count?”
Kira shakes her head once, fast. “I can’t—Look, I like my job.”
Coach lifts a hand. “Detective, my staff aren’t your informants. We rent space to producers, nonprofits, and working actors. We don’t vet scripts unless there’s a safety risk. I don’t run a morality tribunal.”
“I do,” Elena says, calm enough to sting. “It’s called court.”
—micro-hook— I ask to see the ledger. Coach sighs like generosity costs her rent and opens the second box herself, nails clicking against the tab labeled ACCOUNTS. The ledger is digital—of course it is—but the printouts dating back six months rest in a folder titled MISC PRIVATE. I catch the smell of hot toner and new ink and think of how evidence has a temperature.
“Here,” she says. “Cash in, cash out. We provide receipts. We prefer Zelle but we live in reality.”
Elena scans until the LLC repeats into a spine. “LC Arts Holdings. Two rentals per week for three weeks, then a break, then one late-night lockout. Notes?”
Coach pinches the bridge of her nose. “They were—what did they call it—workshopping ‘voice truth.’ They said they were building a docu-theater piece about accountability.”
I can’t help it; my laugh cracks. “Immersive accountability,” I say. “Lyle’s phrase.”
Kira flinches. The fine hairs along her forearms lift. She presses her thumb hard into her ring finger knuckle until the pad blanches. Tap. Tap. Tap. Three counts, a catch, a breath.
“Did they ever tap a ring?” I ask, eyes on her hand.
Her gaze drifts to the desk corner where the lacquer bears a crescent of tiny dents. She reaches out and touches the marks like a rosary. “Sometimes he’d… keep time,” she whispers. “He said it anchored the breath to intention.”
Elena’s pen clicks. “He who?”
Kira’s eyes do the calculation—the boss, the cops, the radio host who has already set the city on fire twice. She chooses not to say a name. She says a description. “Broad-shouldered, mid-forties, careful with words until he wasn’t. Smiled without showing teeth. Carried a small theater case. Paid in cash from an envelope with a bank rubber band. He called actors ‘voice talent.’”
Coach’s jaw ticks. “Kira.”
“We need the truth,” I say, softer than I feel. “It can live here or in a subpoena, but it’s walking in either way.”
Kira exhales. “He said our space had the right bones for a choir. He said the city was finally ready to listen if we made the listening a scene. He asked about students who could do cold reads with ‘clean moral affect.’ He brought his own scripts on ivory cardstock.” Her voice thins. “Cherub watermark.”
Coach doesn’t hide the wince fast enough. Her face says she knows kitsch when it indicts her.
Elena looks to me and back to the ledger. “This is enough to link the studio to the LLC. Not guilt. Not conspiracy. But the bridge between Lyle’s shell and this room is no longer rumor.”
Coach drops into the chair with a controlled exhale. “I didn’t know,” she says, but the sentence is a costume. It fits, but it’s not skin. “We rent space. People do terrible things in rented space and in churches and in their kitchens, Detective.”
“They do,” Elena agrees. “And we still ask who handed them the keys and counted the cash.”
I pull one of the LC receipts and hold it to the light. The pen grooves catch shadow. A thumbprint darkens the margin. I don’t name it as evidence; I name it as a presence. “Was this him?” I ask Kira.
She nods, a slow pivot like a door afraid of its own hinges. “He wore a ring that clicked like a tiny gavel when he signed. He told me the sound made people honest.”
My mouth tastes of pennies again. I lick dry lips and feel chalk in the creases—my body storing rehearsal dust like it belongs to me.
“Did he mention my show?” I ask.
“Not by name,” she says. “He said ‘live confession dramaturgy’ and laughed quietly. He asked if our students listened to ‘the big mic in the glass.’ I said everyone does.” Her hands begin a silent applause that doesn’t land. “He offered to comp blocks for anyone who would try a ‘moral monologue’ with ‘documentary cadence.’ He said it was practice for justice. He said the city only hears if you stage it.”
Coach lifts her chin. “I didn’t see scripts,” she says, but her voice has lost a millimeter of confidence. “We posted boundaries. No impersonations, no hate, no guns.”
“No guns,” Elena repeats, jotting. “Add to that: no hoaxes that taint real tips and hurt real families. We’ll need your class rosters, contact info for anyone present during those rentals, and your camera footage if you have any. Do you record?”
Coach straightens like she’s found one high ground to plant a flag. “We don’t record classes,” she says. “Safe space, Detective.”
I don’t let the irony knock me off balance. “Safe for whom?” I ask.
—micro-hook— Elena pivots to the boxes with a measured patience I’ve learned means “we’re about to move.” “Kira, do you consent to a quick look at your email for LC communications?” she asks. “Voluntary. If not, we’ll route formal.”
Kira looks at Coach; Coach gives a small, tight nod meant to be permission and warning. “Use mine,” Kira says, reaching for the keyboard. The fan kicks on with a plasticky whine; the monitor wakes in a rectangle of blue. Her fingers hover, then type LC into the search bar.
The results populate with the efficiency of a guiltless server. Subject: REHEARSAL SPACE INQUIRY—DOCU-THEATER. Subject: CASH READY—TONIGHT? Subject: VOICE TALENT SCOUT—PRIVATE. Dates migrate down the screen like an illness chart.
“Open the scout email,” Elena says.
Kira clicks. The body reads like a sales deck in human clothes: ‘Looking for performers with neutral affect for moral monologues. Pay for rehearsal time. Must follow verbal score and breath counts. Seeking authenticity of tone rather than fact claims.’
I feel the chair edge under my hand like a rail on bad stairs. “Authenticity of tone rather than fact claims,” I repeat. The sentence is a thesis and a confession, both.
Elena’s pen moves. “This language plus the receipts plus your identification of his tapping habit gives me probable cause,” she says quietly. “We widen the search. We look for drafts, rosters, any scripts left behind. We loop in the DA.”
Coach rises, palms out. “Hold on,” she says. “You can’t criminalize rehearsal. You’ll blow up a whole ecosystem of training and community.”
“We won’t,” I say, and I gesture to the door, to the floodlight-laced hallway, to the city that gapes when the creek rises. “But if an ecosystem feeds on faked confession to sell catharsis, it already blew itself up. We’re just mapping the shrapnel.”
Kira’s hands tremble now. She’s staring at the email like it might bite. “He called them truth beats,” she whispers, then swallows. “And he said he was casting an understudy. He said the lead had gotten… difficult.”
The word lodges. Understudy. The DM from last night pulses in my pocket—UNDERSTUDY ALREADY BLOCKED—and the air in the room gets a new grain, fine as sawdust: fear ground to powder.
Elena closes the folder and caps her pen. “Here’s what happens next,” she says, calm. “You preserve everything. You send me a full list of anyone who attended sessions paid by LC Arts. You do not contact those people first. We will. If you delete so much as a calendar invite, I will treat this as obstruction.”
Coach breathes in like she’s swallowing chalk. “I’ll comply,” she says. She doesn’t sound like she believes in the verb.
I tuck a copy of one receipt into an evidence sleeve Elena offers me without looking. The plastic wrinkles with a polite crackle. The smell of adhesive rises again—new tape, new box, new story.
We step into the hall. The seamstress downstairs releases a cloud of steam that carries up in a damp exhale; it mixes with the sugar tang until my tongue can’t tell city from factory from sweat. Floodwater gleams at the threshold like a stage waiting to be set.
“You got what you came for,” Elena says, low.
“We did,” I answer, and the victory feels like a stone in my pocket—weight with no shine. “I have to thread this needle without slicing the callers who weren’t lying.”
“Then thread it,” she says. “With evidence.”
Kira steps into the doorway, voice small but urgent. “Wait,” she says. “There’s a name you need before you go. He trusted her. He said she could sell any remorse.” She whispers it, and the pebbled paint of the hallway takes the syllables like a bruise.
I don’t write it down. I repeat it once, letting the shape hit my teeth. The creek slaps the curb in a three-count I can’t unhear.
“Elena,” I manage, “if that’s true, we won’t have enough hands for the spill.”
She nods once and reaches for her radio. “Then we call more hands,” she says, and the channel crackles alive, and the door to the tidy office eases closed behind us like a mouth reluctant to admit what it’s eaten.