I raise the house a notch, just enough so the badge on Elena’s collar throws a thin gleam across Lyle’s cheekbone. Dust climbs my tongue like ash. The stage feels both too big and not big enough for the words that have to be said with absolute clarity.
Elena squares herself so the bodycams and the balcony camera get every angle. “Lyle Corcoran,” she says, voice steady and unhurried, “you’re under arrest.” She reads his rights under the cherubs’ cracked faces, each line a metronome click that pins him to the bolted chair more tightly than the cuffs will.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney…”
I grip the dimmer rack, ridges printing my palm, and breathe through the shake that tries to turn my fingers into tuning forks. Wood ticks as the room cools. The Orpheum smells like old varnish and the city’s burnt-sugar air drifting in from the factory down the block. Beyond the lobby doors, the tidal creek has climbed just enough to mirror neon letters upside down into a language I can’t read but understand anyway: don’t hurry the next sentence.
Lyle watches the dark house, not Elena. He drinks emptiness like a man who ordered applause and received water. I note the way his eyes rake the mezzanine for a camera red-dot that isn’t lit. Denied.
Elena finishes, waits the beat that says she respects the ritual, then nods. “Cuff him.”
The officers move with the choreography we rehearsed: wrists, click, double-lock. He doesn’t resist. He angles his chin toward the balcony like it houses a better audience and then toward me. His lips barely move. “You’ll miss me.”
The whisper grazes my ear like a stage draft. I let it pass into the dust instead of catching it. “No encore,” I say, quiet enough that my mic won’t bother to remember it.
Micro-hook: Rights read, cuffs on—so why does the air still taste like a trap sprung somewhere else?
Elena pivots to the ledger on the music stand we dragged down earlier, and I step into my job: document what can’t be argued with. “Timecode: twenty-three forty-two,” I say into the recorder, the small red eye steady. “Evidence inventory begins.”
“Copy,” an officer says, already pulling a clean bag.
I snap photos of the chipped silicone mold first. Under hard light, the ring indentation is unmistakable—an oval bruise in the material. I remember the ring imprint in the balcony ledger and the way we matched it with that photo from a panel he thought was harmless. The mold’s outer edge shows a hairline fracture where someone pried it too fast.
“Item A,” I narrate, “mask mold recovered from Proscenium boat locker, chip at nine o’clock, ring indentation verified against balcony ledger photo.” I give the date, the time, the officer’s badge number, the bag’s seal ID. “Chain of custody: Keene to Park.”
Elena’s pen moves like a surgeon’s, not pressing hard, just precise. “Item A logged,” she says. “Miranda read prior to inventory. Subject declined to speak.”
Lyle smiles at the empty chairs anyway.
I reach for the router next—the one flashed with the custom firmware we found in locker 318, a match to the van’s bug that has kept me inventing new ways to forgive myself. “Item B,” I say, “router with modified firmware, casing scored with gaffer adhesive residue, SSID fragments seen on packet sniff, hash string consistent with device recovered in locker evidence—hash printed here.” I read the digits twice, then again. Jonah had written them on a card for me with block letters, his way of apologizing for not being here tonight; his absence hums beside me anyway, a missing channel I still reach for.
Elena nods to the forensics officer, who holds the bag open like a glassmaker catching air. “Item B sealed,” the officer says. Bag zip sings, pen scratches. The tiny sounds feel huge in the quarter house, each one a nail tapping into a board we need to hold.
Lyle turns his head toward the wing where the remotes were bagged last chapter, the little black pebbles that didn’t fire. “Item C1 and C2,” I say, “two handheld remotes recovered from seat and subject. No observable effect on press. Battery levels to be checked. Video of recovery on bodycam two and balcony cam one.”
“Logged,” Elena says.
I pick up the ledger we found in the balcony weeks ago and the duplicate copy from the rehearsal space—the one with “LC Arts” stitched between donations like a wink. “Item D: rental ledger with entries in ‘L.C.’ initials and cash payments mapped to fringe venues—page flagged with ring imprint.”
“D logged,” Elena says. “We’ll hit bank cameras on the withdrawal days. Maybe he likes a particular branch.”
“He likes a particular mirror,” I say, then wince at my own commentary. I stick to sentences that won’t curdle under cross.
An officer brings over a plastic sleeve with SD cards from the theater boat, each labeled in block letters that try to look professional: “Angel Rehearsal A,” “Half-Light,” “Van Test.” The handwriting tilts just enough toward flourish to be his.
“Item E1 through E9,” I say, “recovered SD cards labeled with scene titles consistent with staged events we documented. To be imaged; originals preserved.”
Elena doesn’t nod this time; she looks up and through me. “This is enough for conspiracy to commit fraud and extortion,” she says, low. “Tampering with evidence, too. Felony coercion. We’ll argue kidnapping conspiracy depending on how the boathouse shakes out.”
The word boathouse hits the back of my mouth like copper. “Murder?”
“He might want us to overcharge,” she says. “We’ll charge what holds.”
Lyle watches her, hungry. The empty seats give him nothing, and the nothing cracks him a millimeter. He tries for theatrical nonchalance and lands on bored substitute teacher. I file the image: small man on a too-large stage, naked without his lights.
The cherubs above him keep their chipped smiles. Corrupted innocence and staged salvation—he fed on the symbol until it couldn’t feed him back.
Micro-hook: The ledger, the hash, the mold—our chain is taut. But where does it lead if not toward a body? Toward a door.
“Timecode: twenty-three fifty-five,” I say. “Inventory complete.” My voice shivers once; the recorder will hear it. I let it. I’m done scrubbing my tremor out of the tape.
“Transport,” Elena says. Two officers take his arms. The seat’s bolts complain. Lyle turns his head—not to the doors, to the deep rows. He scans for faces that aren’t there, mouth twitching for a cue line he can’t land.
“We’ll go out the side,” Elena tells me. “No lobby parade.”
“I wasn’t going to gift him a crowd,” I say. “He feeds on deference. We’re out of that.”
He leans toward me within the allowed inch. “I gave your city a plot,” he whispers. “You took their cliffhangers away. They’ll make you bring them back.”
“They chose a rest,” I say. “You should have listened.”
He laughs in his throat, tiny and mean. “They chose it once. Appetite comes back.”
Elena tips her head to move him. He doesn’t step. For a breath he fixes on a single seat in the front row—row C, seat 12, one of the ones we marked for plainclothes. The officer sitting there stares back, face blank, hand on a folded program we planted as a prop. Lyle flinches. He wasn’t the only one who learned blocking.
We move. The backstage hallway smells like damp canvas and hand cleaner. I hear the city through the stage door: tires slicking through creek water, a horn too far away to reach us. My hands want a mug of hot tea and a lock that can also lock my skull for a night.
“One more thing,” Elena says, slowing. “Mara, the hash from Item B—send Jonah the photo from the bag. If it matches the locker router and the van bug on byte-level, we can paint a single author across three scenes. That’s glue.”
“He’ll pick up,” I say. “He tracks the safe line like a jealous cat.”
I text the photo to the encrypted thread we keep off every cloud. A minute later, Jonah replies with three blocks of numbers and one line: Perfect match. 1:1 Then a second text, because he can’t not: I’m bringing dumplings to the precinct. Not on email.
I smile without losing the jitter. “Jonah confirms the match,” I tell Elena.
“Good,” she says. “That’s conspiracy and tampering with devices that intercepted communication. Extortion’s clean from the threat voicemails. We’ll keep murder where it belongs: in the box until we have a body or a survivor’s sworn statement.”
The backstage door opens to wet cold. The tidal creek has turned the gutter into a moving mirror that eats boots one step at a time. A neon sign across the street spells out a diner’s name; the reflection backward reads something like REVE. Revelation, reversed.
The transport van idles with a low diesel thrum that vibrates my throat. Lyle blinks into the sodium light and flexes his fingers like they miss switches. He glances at the Night Choir pins glittering on a pole near the barricade—vinyl cherubs, enamel microphones, a candle emoji turned metal. They don’t move; the fans stayed home, honoring a pledge to keep the house dim. I want to hug the air.
“Turn him,” Elena says.
They do. He watches me while the cuffs reflect a lick of orange streetlight, eyes hungry like the empty rows filled him with salt. “They’ll come back for climax,” he says, now at a volume the bodycam can enjoy. “You’ll come back to give it.”
“I’m coming back for a door,” I say. “One that opens where she is.”
He smiles, tight and private, and says it loud enough for the record: “You’ll miss me.”
Elena’s expression doesn’t change; her hand does. It lands feather-light on my forearm—permission to let the line pass without answer. I nod.
The van door closes with a padded thud. The sound is both too soft and exactly right. I step away from the exhaust and taste diesel behind my teeth like pennies. Relief walks up my spine, stands there, and decides not to sit.
Micro-hook: He’s in the van, the chain is strong, and the audience stayed dim—so why won’t my body believe the show is over?
Back onstage, the evidence sits in a neat parade along the foots: mold, router, remotes, ledger, cards. I stand over them like a greeter at a funeral, introducing one absence at a time. The cherubs watch, ridiculous and devotional. I lift the recorder once more.
“Timecode: zero-zero fifteen,” I say. “Arrest executed without incident. Evidence E1 through E9 secured. Chain-of-custody complete to this point.”
Elena joins me, shaking water from her cuffs. “We’ll book him at the Sixth,” she says. “I want those devices imaged before dawn. You and Jonah send us your airgap notes for the firmware story.”
“Done,” I say. “And Elena—thank you for letting me cut his mic.”
She snorts softly. “You cut it for the right reasons. That’s rare in rooms like this.” She looks at the chair, still bolted, now empty as it should be. “You know this isn’t over.”
“I know,” I say. My voice drops to the auditorium like a coin into a well that returns whatever you won’t admit out loud. “The charges hold, but holding him isn’t the same as finding her.”
She nods, mouth set. “We’ll work the boat GPS harder. He likes stagecraft; stagecraft leaves load-in logs.”
“He likes creeks,” I say, eyes drifting to the neon-puddled street. “Places that ripple mirrors so you can watch yourself and call it God.”
The Orpheum hums at quarter—my aquarium now, not his. I send the Night Choir a single captioned update on the delay we promised, no footage: Arrest made. Evidence secured. No locations. We keep the lights low. Hearts flick silently somewhere I can’t hear, and I’m glad for the mute.
I bag the recorder. “Elena,” I say, “I keep thinking about the chipped mold. Chips happen when you rush.”
“He rushed tonight,” she says. “He needed the myth more than the finish.”
“Good,” I say, but the word tastes like sugar left too long near heat: black at the edges.
We move the evidence to the cases, each latch a click that shaves a sliver off my shake. I run my thumb over the router bag; the numbers on the hash feel like a prayer you don’t have to believe to say.
When the last latch closes, I look at the empty seat he stared at like it owed him. I give it nothing. I give the floor the question I’m going to have to live in until the next door opens, voice low so it doesn’t recruit a crowd:
When we pull his travel logs and the GPS prints a breadcrumb off the river, will the path that brought him here lead past a boathouse with a locked room and Alina’s breath still moving in the dark—before whatever else he planted outside this stage finds power and turns on?