Chapter 6
Emmett stared at the screen, his jaw set hard. He wasn't taking the explanation at face value; he was weighing it against the physical realities of the alley.
“Then where is that paper, Pierce?” Emmett asked. His voice was dangerously soft. “Miller and I bagged his personal effects at the scene. He had forty-two cents, a wet book of matches, and an empty pint of vodka. There was no linen legal folio in his coat.”
The question hung in the air, heavy and sharp.
Pierce let a slow, exasperated breath escape his nostrils. “The killer took it. If Arthur was confronted in the alley by whoever put him in that van, the first thing the assailant would do after swinging the bar is search his pockets. The killer saw the address, took the folio, and ran.”
Emmett’s gaze remained fixed on Pierce for two long, measuring seconds. He didn't nod. He didn't drop his guard.
Hargrove cleared his throat from the console. “Detective Vance? Look at the three-minute mark before the victim enters the alley.”
Hargrove dragged the timeline slider back.
The screen showed the mouth of the alley where it met Canal Street. At *14:08:22*, a beat-up white cargo van—an old Ford Econoline with a faded blue stripe and a rusted side panel—pulled up to the curb. The side cargo door slid open.
The drifter was pushed out onto the wet asphalt.
He fell to his hands and knees, scrambled up, and stumbled into the alley. The van didn't wait; it accelerated hard, throwing up a spray of grey water from the gutter, and turned sharply onto Canal Street.
“Get a plate,” Emmett ordered.
“No rear tag,” Hargrove said, clicking through the raw frames. “Front bracket is empty. But look at the driver’s door under the streetlamp.”
Hargrove brought up the side angle.
Beneath a coat of peeling white primer, a faded commercial logo was legible along the door seam: *ST. JUDE MEDICAL SURPLUS & REPAIR — 144 INDUSTRIAL WAY*.
Emmett grabbed his trench coat from the back of the chair, his movements abrupt and tense. “Industrial Way. That’s the old dock district behind the rail yards. Half those warehouses were condemned after the river flooded in ’18.”
“It’s a chop shop for black-market medical scrap,” Pierce said, his mind racing three chess moves ahead.
*Not scrap,* Pierce knew with terrifying clarity.
Industrial Way was where Dr. Aris Kroll had relocated his domestic operation after the Canadian authorities closed in on his Montreal clinic five years ago. Kroll had stayed in touch through dead-drop email boxes, demanding annual retainers to keep the backup surgical logs buried in an encrypted partition. Pierce had paid every cent from an offshore trust.
If the drifter had been pushed out of Kroll’s van, the system wasn't just failing.
It was collapsing.
“I’m calling a tactical stack,” Emmett said, his hand already reaching for the portable radio on his shoulder. “If that’s where the van came from, the guy who swung that iron bar is probably burning his clothes in a barrel right now.”
“No,” Pierce said sharply.
Emmett stopped, his thumb resting flat on the radio’s push-to-talk toggle. He looked directly at Pierce, his eyes cold and unyielding. “Why not, counselor?”
“Because the moment you key that radio, dispatch broadcasts the code across the district net,” Pierce said, keeping his cadence strictly professional. “Industrial Way sits in a hollow right next to the water. Sirens and patrol chatter will carry two miles over the canal. If whoever runs that chop shop hears an entry team rolling in, they will throw every hard drive and paper ledger into an incinerator before your first cruiser hits the rail crossing.”
Emmett didn't move. He kept his hand on the radio, his gaze boring into Pierce. The suspicion from the missing document had not dissipated; it had formed a hard crust over the detective’s instincts.
“You’re telling me to bypass departmental entry protocols on a homicide lead?” Emmett asked.
“I’m telling you we invoke exigent pursuit,” Pierce replied evenly. “We take your unmarked sedan. No sirens, no lightbars. We pull up two blocks south, confirm the van is on the property, and establish a perimeter. If the premises are active, I sign an emergency on-site prosecutorial entry authorization. That protects the evidence from a defense suppression motion, and it guarantees we seize the records before they burn.”
Emmett stared at Pierce for several agonizing seconds. The cop’s procedural caution was battling his investigative urgency.
“All right,” Emmett said, though his tone was distinctly guarded. He did not smile. He did not offer the easy camaraderie of their past nine years. “We take my car. But you stay at my six, Pierce. You don't wander off, and you don't touch a damn thing until I clear the room.”
“Understood,” Pierce said.
He felt the stiff edges of the stolen folio pressed against his ribs under his tailored overcoat, cold and heavy as a sheet of lead.
***
The rain had turned to freezing sleet by the time the unmarked sedan turned off the elevated expressway onto Industrial Way.
The district was a desolate expanse of rusted corrugated iron, abandoned gravel yards, and collapsed wooden piers jutting into the dark chop of the Northfall River. There were no streetlights; the only illumination came from the sickly orange flare of a distant chemical plant across the channel.
Number 144 was a low, single-story cinderblock warehouse flanked by a weed-choked chain-link fence and a disused rail spur.
The white Econoline was parked in the muddy drive beside the loading dock.
The engine was off, but a faint haze of vapor still rose from the radiator grille into the sleet.
Emmett cut his headlights fifty yards out and let the car roll to a stop behind a stack of rusted shipping containers. He slipped his Glock 17 from its holster, racked the slide with a clean, metallic *clack*, and engaged the thumb safety.
“Radio’s off,” Emmett muttered. He turned to Pierce, his face dark in the shadowed cabin. “I told you at the precinct: you don't clear rooms. You stand right behind my left shoulder. If anyone moves, you drop to the asphalt.”
“I’m right with you,” Pierce said.
They stepped out into the freezing sleet. The wind off the river smelled of creosote and rotting vegetation.
They moved along the cinderblock wall, keeping low. The white van was empty; a quick glance through the side glass revealed an unbolted bench, two rolls of heavy plastic sheeting, and an empty metal basin sliding across the floorboards.
At the side of the warehouse, an industrial steel fire door hung open an inch, wedged on a piece of broken lumber.
A dim, yellow light filtered through the opening, cutting across the wet gravel.
From inside, there was no sound of machinery, no voices. Only the dry, rhythmic hum of an ancient ventilation blower and the steady *tick-tick-tick* of freezing rain striking the corrugated tin roof.
Emmett reached the threshold first. He flattened his back against the wet concrete, gun held in a two-handed low-ready grip. He didn't wave Pierce forward; he kept his left arm barred across the doorway, holding Pierce firmly behind him.
