The ndlord was first on the scene - presumably he had gotten a call after she was identified. Evidently the most bothersome part of the whole ordeal was his loss of income, otherwise he seemed to remain entirely unphased by the news. Was this common? Tenants faking their own deaths to evade their rent? Not the worst idea if you can get away with it. Luckily for her, it was a much easier story to sell when you’re actually dead. He looked almost annoyed having to take inventory of what was left abandoned in the ft, only mustering up a glint of enthusiasm when he spied the opportunity to swipe some expensive-looking earrings from the sideboard and stuffed them into his shirt pocket. Next came the parents in a for-hire moving van the following morning. They were significantly more emotional; they sobbed, spluttered, ughed, and sobbed some more over practically every belonging they packed away into flimsy cardboard boxes. It hurt more than expected to watch, even from afar. Another day ter the cleaners arrived. How they managed to haul a massive cart of cleaning supplies and an industrial hoover up the many flights of stairs to the ft was unknown, but impressive nonetheless. They got to work scrubbing the floor, the walls, the counters, all whilst giggling and gossiping with one-another. For all they knew, someone just moved out. How were they to know the weight of what they were doing? It was just another job. One of them produced a tub of filler and a small metal scraper and got to work filling various small holes in the walls…
…erasing the st traces of her.
?
It had been three days since Eli did much of anything. He shifts his weight on the unforgiving metal grate of the fire escape, a hiss escaping his lips as a dull ache settles deep into his lower back. As far as stakeout spots go, it was bloody awful - no rain cover, no easy exit, and the view was all wrong - but it was the only pce that didn’t leave him entirely exposed, and he figured that staying hidden was better than staying dry.
His stomach twists, trying to gnaw away at itself from the starvation. Enough time has passed that dehydration blurs the edges of his vision, the image splitting into three whenever he tries to focus on any one thing. “It’ll be empty soon”, he whispers to himself again and again, attempting to convince his body to hang on just a few more hours. The only thing giving him a mere glimmer of encouragement every now and then is the occasional movement from the apartment above. It’s barely seconds at a time, but even still, just a glimpse of that dark, messy hair hits the delete button on Eli’s discomfort.
At some point he must’ve given in to the exhaustion, because the next time Eli opened his eyes, every st ray of sun had been repced with a shimmering white glow. He tips his head fondly toward the moon that hangs, full and magnificent, in the inky void. Inhaling, he closes his eyes once more and takes in the silence and stillness as if he’d been starved of it for decades. He could’ve stayed there forever if it weren’t for the fact he was almost on day four of a pn he couldn’t back out of if he tried, and his body had started to eat itself alive. As if on cue, his stomach groans, bringing his attention back to the apartment windows he had spent so much time peering into. The lights were off - the cleaners had finished and left hours ago. It was finally safe. Eli rises to his feet, wobbles a little, and quickly grips onto the railing - getting down would be harder than he thought with his body weakened. He peers over the edge, calcuting whether or not he can safely jump to the ground from the level he’s on. In any other situation he wouldn’t even hesitate, but right now he feared his legs might snap beneath him. How did he get up in the first pce? Oh yes - he climbed the drainpipe like a monkey. “Great foresight, Eli.” He chews on his bottom lip, contempting his options, before spying a rge open dumpster within jumping reach. He sighs, a pained look on his face, as he shuffles to the edge of the fire escape.
“Something tells me this isn’t going to be as smooth and painless as it is in the movies.” Grimacing, he sits with his legs over the edge of the ptform, dangling above the pile of lumpy garbage bags a few good metres below. Taking a sharp intake of breath, he leaps. It was more like a fil, actually, but seconds ter he tumbles noisily sideways into the dumpster. His brain gs for a mere moment before the pain sets in, alerting him to the damaged bone in his right arm that was crumpled beneath him. Groaning regretfully, he reaches his good arm up, hoists himself over the metal edge, and thuds ungracefully onto the cobblestone. He y face-up on the ground, breathing deeply with his eyes squeezed shut in a mixture of exhaustion and pain. In hindsight, there were probably a hundred easier ways the st three days could’ve been spent, but it was too te to change that. He analyses the damage to his body by moving each of his limbs slowly. Left arm; okay, right arm; fucked. Blood starts to seep through one side of his jeans but it’s not accompanied by any discomfort, so all-in-all the outcome could’ve been much worse. Stumbling to his feet, Eli shuffles mely toward the apartment building, clutching his broken arm with his other, keeping it as still and safe as possible. In all his time without a home, shockingly, he had never once broken a bone before. He didn’t know whether it was the adrenaline or the pure determination, but something was stopping him from freaking out about it. Probably for the best, considering.
As he gets closer to the building, he casts his memory back to the night he spent on the pavement with Arlo, trying to visualise the code he punched into the keypad to open the front door. It takes four attempts before the light flicks from red to green and a buzzer sounds in triumph. Pulling the door open, he steps into the building and immediately there’s a stench of industrial bleach permeating his nostrils, making him inadvertently scrunch his nose and recoil. He scans the lobby, something he was too distracted st time he was here to do, and his gaze nds on a pinboard stacked thick with flyers for various things. There were at least eight old funfair flyers and a handful of lost pet postings, random activities, sales, and private lessons filling the gaps in between. Despite the sheer volume of paper pinned to the wall, the board didn’t look like it was used very often. All the pushpins had a thin yer of dust over each, and some of the paper was discoloured and crumpled. There was, however, one flyer that looked new, pinned on top of three other forgotten ads.
APARTMENT VACANCY: APPLY NOW!
Eli supposed the building manager barely waited for confirmation of death before advertising the vacancy - apparently rent is worth more than respect in this town. Probably many others too. He tore the flyer away from the pin and scrunched it into a ball, stuffing it deep in his pocket. The st thing he needed was somebody to rent the ft before he could get a foot in - hopefully nobody had already seen it. He looks toward the stairs and sighs. This was going to be difficult.
Three flights ter and Eli was just about ready to colpse. Even still, it took all he had to stop himself from climbing another flight and knocking on Arlo’s door, surprising him. Of all those evenings watching the detective through his window, most of them involved him pacing and looking at his phone every five minutes, nervously scratching the back of his hair and chewing on his bottom lip. Eli thought - hoped - that it was because he hadn’t texted in days due to the distinct ck of a plug socket on the street for his phone charger. Maybe, just maybe, Arlo thought about him just as much as he thought about Arlo. True or not, it was a good enough reason to tempt starvation and hypothermia for a handful of days.
Eli roots around in his back pocket and pulls out two twisty bits of thin metal. He had fashioned them days prior from some loose junk he found, shaping them into the closest looking thing to lockpicks as he could manage. Being as they were untested, this was a complete long shot, but in his current state he couldn’t theorise a better pn. He approaches the now-vacant ft and jams the makeshift tools into the lock, wiggling them strategically to find the pins. He’d only had to do this once or twice in the past, so suffice to say it wasn’t his strongest skill, but after a few minutes he felt the mechanism loosen. The lock rotated, clicked open, and the door swung inward to reveal a bnk canvas of a living room. Dull, boring, pin, but none of that mattered - it was a home. Eli hurries to the first plug socket he spies and fishes his phone and charger out of his pocket. Flicking the switch, he waits anxiously for the screen to come alive and reconnect him to the man upstairs. He didn’t expect anything from Arlo - he could tell he wasn’t the type to chase anyone down, even if they had been off the grid for three days - but as the screen turned on, his eyes sparkled in pleasant surprise.
2 UNREAD MESSAGES
1 MISSED CALL
1 VOICEMAIL
?
Arlo sits chewing on the end of his pen at his desk, pretending to pore over paperwork he hasn’t even started. That morning was a whirlwind he had not even begun to process, and worse yet - despite the onsught of building drama - he couldn’t stop thinking about that damn dream he’d had st night. He hadn’t woken up in a sweat like that in a long time, let alone had a dream like that about somebody who wasn’t entirely fictional. He was stuck in a torturous loop of chewing, thinking, unlocking his phone, opening Eli’s contact, hovering over the ‘message’ button, and then swiftly locking his phone and putting it back down again before he could follow through.
Rough hands on his shoulders jolted Arlo out of his spiral. “Maxwell.”
Arlo swallows, instantly nervous. “Yes?”
“Break room. Now.” Arlo watches as Torres weaves back through the crowd and enters the break room, turning back to shoot him a ‘hurry up’ gre before smming the door. Panicked and confused, he turns to Sophie who’s sitting across from him tending to her own stack of unfinished paperwork. The look of confusion was mirrored in her face, but with an added tinge of amusement at the bizarre greeting.
“He’s either about to steal your lunch money or this is the start of a really bad porno.” She giggles, gesturing to the break room with the end of her pen. “Better go find out, if he’s kept waiting more than sixty seconds he’ll flip his shit.”
Arlo sighs, silently contempting whether or not he should make a break for it and just fling himself out of a nearby window. It sounded less painful than whatever conversation was about to happen, anyway.
Weaving through the crowd, he enters the break room and sees Torres leant against the wall, tossing an apple repeatedly with one hand, his other arm crossed over his body impatiently as if Arlo had kept him waiting for hours. He stops tossing the apple and narrows his eyes at the cautious detective’s entrance.
“Close the door.” Arlo obeys silently. “Sit down.”
“Well, this is certainly in the top ten most humiliating moments of my life.” He thinks to himself, immediately regretting his decision to follow Torres at all. There’s a long pause before anybody speaks.
“You know we haven’t had any cases of foul py in this town for decades? People die, ‘course, but it’s always just because some old bat’s clock ran out.”
“...Sorry?” The confusion was growing more and more by the second.
Torres continues as if Arlo hadn’t spoken. “No one’s moved to this town in decades either, you know. Everyone’s born and buried here. We get passers through, but they don’t stay for more than a day. Until you.” He starts to circle the room like a hawk, making the hairs on the back of Arlo’s neck stand straight. He knew exactly what wild accusation was coming, and if he wasn’t so on edge he might’ve even ughed.
“What are you-?”
“You move here from god knows where, and suddenly we have two instances of foul py crop up, one of them being your own neighbour.”
The colour drains from Arlo’s face and his throat dries up. “Hold on - she’s dead?” The look on his face must’ve been convincing, because Torres seems to be taken aback. He stays silent for a brief moment, although his eyes remain narrow and accusatory.
“There’s no way you didn’t hear the ambunces.”
“I heard them, but I fell asleep. There was no commotion or anything, I just figured there was an accident or…” He trails off, but Torres still looks sceptical, so Arlo adds, “You basically said it yourself, there’s no reason to immediately suspect foul py in this town. I got that lecture already when I thought the canal case was fishy.”
He pauses. “Why did you think that?”
Arlo shrugs. “Just a feeling.”
Silence befalls the room for a few minutes. Without a word, Torres turns and leaves the room, clearly deep in thought and determined. Arlo stays, slightly stunned and frozen. How the hell did he miss a murder in his own building??
A quick snoop at the open case files revealed two very important bits of information. Firstly, his neighbour was found dead not in the building, but at the end of the road, body still warm. No immediate evidence of foul py, she could’ve simply colpsed, but Torres clearly wasn’t convinced that was the case. Secondly, she was found mere minutes after Eli had left the pavement and walked away st night. He could be hurt too, dead even, and all because Arlo had refused to invite him inside. “No, don’t go there.” He thinks to himself, coaxing himself out of a spiral he was about to catapult down. But the thought lingers.
Chewing his bottom lip, he pulls out his phone - which was already open on Eli’s contact - taps the message icon, and sends a short message.
Hi. How was your night?
He stares at the message for a while, anxious. Refreshing the chat log a couple times, the read receipt still doesn’t appear. There was that awful feeling in his stomach again. He stuffs the phone back into his pocket and slinks back to his desk, a look of concern painted btantly across his features.
Sophie squints at Arlo as he sits. “Hmm… not the porno then, huh?”
In any normal situation, he would’ve ughed, but his mind was preoccupied. Thankfully, Sophie drops the conversation - he wasn’t particurly in the mood to expin the whole fiasco he’d just endured.
The rest of the workday went slowly. On days where fieldwork was sparse, Arlo sometimes wondered why he bothered going into the precinct at all. Paperwork could be done from home if it weren’t for the pesky problem of taking confidential info out of the archives - but in this small nowhere-town, who would really notice? He didn’t suppose anyone even looked at the security footage in that pce. Lord knows that there’d be a mass firing if anyone did considering just how many detectives he’d seen sneaking into the evidence lockup to fool around.
As the hours trickled by, the precinct emptied until there were only a few detectives and the Captain left. Arlo straightens the papers that he’d been hunched over for far too long, haphazardly stuffing them into a folder and away into his desk drawer. Shrugging on his jacket, he turns to leave but is instead interrupted by a cheery voice calling,
“Detective Maxwell! My office please for a second.”
The prospect of almost escaping but being reeled back at the st second was irritating, but if anyone could get away with it and make you feel okay with missing your cab home, it was Captain Huxley, so Arlo was happy to oblige. Her smile shines genuine and bright as usual as she offers him a seat. How she can still be so optimistic on hour ten of a gruelling shift is beyond his comprehension, but he’s thankful - sometimes the positivity of your Captain is the only thing that pushes you through the day.
“I won’t keep you long, I know you’re off the clock.” She starts, taking her own seat and smiling warmly. “Detective Torres tells me that you have some fresh views that would be beneficial to him on some of his open cases. He’s asked for you personally to be his partner on two of them.”
Arlo’s mouth hangs slightly open and his eyebrows furrow in confusion. Torres regurly made a point of letting him know that he would rather stick a rusty fork in his eye than spend any extra time with Arlo - asking to be partnered on two entire cases just didn’t seem quite right. He remains silent and waits for Huxley to tell him she was joking, but she doesn’t.
“Normally, I wouldn’t entertain such a request. These cases are delicate and not exactly what we’re used to here, so my preference is to have only senior detectives work it. However, Torres made a compelling argument in your favour and - him being one of my best detectives - I trust his judgement.” She eyes Arlo for a moment, giving him a chance to interject, but he stays silent. “Allow me to be candid with you, Arlo. Detective Torres is a very particur, headstrong man. This kind of ask from him will not happen twice, quite frankly I’m shocked it’s happened at all. You have a lot of potential, this would be a real chance for you to prove yourself and you should absolutely agree.”
Arlo was stunned to say the least. He shifts a little in his chair and clears his throat quietly. “What cases did he say he wants me on?”
Huxley produces two slim folders from the drawer beside her and slides them across the desk for Arlo to open. With no hesitation, he grabs them both and flips over the cover of the first file to reveal the case details, confirming his suspicion. The first folder was unmistakably the brief for the canal case.
“I thought this one was ruled a suicide and closed.” Arlo meant it as a question, but it came out as more of a statement.
“Torres seems to think there’s something more. With the amount of cases he’s closed for this precinct, I owe him the chance to trust his gut every now and then.” Arlo nods and moves on to the next folder, recognising it immediately as the same file he took a gnce at earlier in the day.
“The girl from my building?” Arlo looks up from the folder and realises that the Captain’s smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes anymore.
“Yes. Poor girl. This one could be a problem if you knew her. I’ve made it very clear to Detective Torres that I will not allow you access to this particur case if there’s a conflict of interest.”
Shaking his head, Arlo replies quickly, “I didn’t even know her name. I walked past her in the hall a few times going up to my ft, but that’s it.”
She nods slightly and her smile seems to reemerge. “Good. Then it’s settled. Report to Torres in the morning, I’m sure he’ll let you know what he needs you to do.” She gestures toward the door with her head, excusing Arlo.
“Will do. Goodnight, Captain.”
To say the next few days crept would’ve been an understatement. The skin on Arlo’s bottom lip was raw and painful, and his hand may well have been glued to the back of his hair. Still no word from Eli. On the first full day of silence, he spent most of the night pacing the length of the sofa, back and forth, until his legs burned and his head pounded. The next day, he spent three and a half hours drafting and sending another text that began as a paragraph and soon, after a boatload of cutting and editing, ended as three short words. From the outside looking in, this was an entirely disproportionate reaction to someone - almost a complete stranger at that - having not contacted you in a couple of days, but despite having only had a handful of interactions with the man, something just didn’t sit right about Eli’s sudden silence. Work had been an effective distraction, though. If Arlo so much as gnced at his phone, it bumped Torres’ anger level up by 20%, eventually resulting in an onsught of red-faced yelling and what could only be described as ‘pyground insults’, so that prevented him from partaking in his obsessive ritual of checking his notifications every thirty seconds.
It seemed like no one had anything to say about the death of the girl downstairs. Her parents wept their body weight in tears whilst giving their statements, but the content of them was rgely unhelpful - them having been on an anniversary trip to Spain for the best part of the st two months. The ndlord wasn’t much help either, he just shrugged and grumbled in response to most questions. Not the worst outcome, considering he reeked of cigarettes and untreated halitosis. The only solution readily avaible to them was the possibility of an overdose, since the victim had been prescribed Valium two weeks ago, and almost half the bottle was already empty. It was an easy theory, really; if that wasn’t what killed her now, it would’ve eventually.
Arlo jumps as the chair skids across the interrogation room floor with an ear splitting shriek. It was the fifth chair in the space of three days to meet the same unfortunate fate of a steel-toed boot to the backrest. This being precisely why they had been relocated to the dingy, depressing rooms, rather than taking statements at their desks as usual.
“Fucking useless. Everybody’s fucking useless.” Torres mutters, pacing the room, rage simmering beneath every step. Arlo inwardly flinches every time the irate detective approaches the double sided mirror, waiting for his fist to swing from his side and shatter the entire thing into pieces. As, three days of pacing and flinching and the mirror remained, thankfully, intact. Shifting uncomfortably in his seat - something he always did in moments like this - Arlo clears his throat quietly and gives in to the unsettling thought that had been growing over the past three days.
“Maybe we were wrong. Maybe these really are just coincidences-” Arlo is cut off by Torres’ steely gre and instantly regrets speaking. The pacing stops. Torres looms over the desk, eclipsing the overhead light, his presence triggering a fight-or-flight response Arlo was all too familiar with.
“Maybe you’re fucking useless too.” He sneers, baring his teeth like a vicious dog ready to lunge. Typically, this would be Arlo’s cue to shut up and let the tirade run its course. But instead, apathy washes over him, dull and unwavering. He stands and makes his way toward the door, leaving Torres scowling at the chair’s bck leather seat. Resting a hand on the doorknob, he pauses, looking back over his shoulder. A sudden surge of confidence resonates through him and his eyes bore into the back of Torres’ head.
“Maybe I am useless, but you haven’t got anything either, so join the damn club.” Silence hangs in the room for what feels like forever. “I’m frustrated too. I’m sure there’s something wrong with what’s going on, I could bet my life on it, and it sucks that I might be wrong - that we might be wrong - but that doesn’t give you the right to treat me like shit. I’ve done about a month’s worth of overtime in the st couple days - I’m going home.”
Maybe it was his sudden change of demeanour, or the fact that what Arlo said was devastatingly true, but Torres didn’t retaliate. Surging with adrenaline and feeling a lot lighter, Arlo leaves the room.
As Arlo walks back to his desk, the countless clocks scattered across the walls, desks, and computer monitors serve as a stark reminder of the time lost inside the windowless cubes of the interrogation rooms. No wonder they had nothing to go on. ‘If I were stuck in those bloody rooms being questioned by Detective Dipshit when I was just trying to give a statement, I’d be pissed.’, Arlo thinks to himself, ‘I wouldn’t say anything to that guy if I was innocent, let alone guilty’. They had started asking questions no ter than 11am, and yet it was already dark outside. His stomach churns, cruelly reminding him that the only food he had consumed that day was a handful of pistachios and an orange. The realisation that his perpetually-empty fridge will most likely be in the same state when he returns home and not, in fact, have magically replenished itself just because he willed it so encourages a low grumble from his belly. Takeaway it is, then. Whilst grabbing his coat from the back of his chair, Arlo’s eyes flicker over to the two files discarded messily on his desk. Quite pinly, he was sick to death of repeatedly flipping through the neighbour’s case file - so much so that even looking at it made him inwardly grimace. With a sigh, he pushes it aside, his eyes nding on the file beneath it. The canal case. They had ignored it for the st three days, focusing instead on the neighbour, but Arlo couldn’t shake the feeling that their resources would be better spent solving the first death rather than the second. The timing of it all just felt… off. The robbery, Elijah Asher, the suicide, the phone call. For a nowhere-town that nothing ever happened in, it was definitely an overwhelming turn of events. He chews on his bottom lip, and deciding not to peer inside the file, grabs his coat and swiftly walks toward the door, drawing a well-needed line. The canal case would be tomorrow’s conquest.
By the time Arlo finally caught a cab and endured the tedious drive to the fish and chip shop near his ft, it was nearing 11:30pm. Outside, save for the occasional dimly lit mp post, the world was swallowed in darkness. As he steps into the tiny hub of lights and activity, leaving behind the thick, stagnant air outside, a strange sense of dispcement settles over him - as if, by passing beneath the neon sign over the door, reality had shifted ever so slightly, and he’d somehow slipped into an alternate universe. He mumbles his order to the man behind the counter and rests against the cold, metal edge of a small table. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Arlo’s fingers tighten around his phone. Giving in to the temptation, he pulls it out to check his notifications for the hundredth time that day. As expected, nothing - just a low battery warning gring back at him. The screen fades to bck again, and in the gss, his own reflection stares back - exhaustion carved into every line of his face. On one hand, maybe it was a good thing that Eli hadn’t been in contact. Maybe their random encounters had been just that - random. A coincidence. A blip in the timeline. Perhaps Eli had already moved on to another town, another life, another …person?
Maybe.
On the other hand, though… Arlo double taps the phone screen to bring it back to life, and hurriedly finds Eli’s texts. Opening them, he’s met with the only two messages sent in the st three days, both from himself.
Hi. How was your night?
Are you alive?
His eyes linger on the st message as a sinkhole of anxiety begins to crumble open in his stomach. The terrifying thought projected itself onto the back of Arlo’s eyelids; what if he was dead? Surely they would’ve heard about it. There would’ve at least been gossip in the precinct if another resident keeled over on the street, cold. Then again, Eli wasn’t technically a resident. He could’ve skipped town. He could’ve joined a cult and fled north via a series of secret underground tunnels. He could’ve simply lost interest in the nobody-detective of this nowhere-town. The thought almost stops Arlo in his tracks, but instead, he swallows the lump in his throat and clicks on the name at the top of the chat. His thumb hovers over the phone icon on Eli’s contact page, and despite the sinkhole in his stomach getting rger by the second, he taps on it. The moment he presses the phone to his ear, the line dies - silent, empty.
The person you are trying to call is unavaible. Please leave a message after the tone.
Panic rises in Arlo’s throat as the beep fills his ears, and he scrambles to form a sentence.
“Um, hi, Elijah - uh - Eli. It’s Arlo calling. Detective Maxwell.” He clears his throat and pinches the bridge of his nose, already regretting making the call. “I haven’t heard from you in a few days - not that you’re obligated to keep in touch, but, I mean, I guess I’m just a bit worried? I really hope that things are okay, um, just call me back, okay? Or don’t. It’s okay if you don’t. No pressure. Just… let me know you’re alive.” He hesitates for a moment, and quickly adds, “Right, uh, bye.”
Pushing the hang up button, Arlo briefly considers lighting himself on fire. He’s snapped out of his anxious spiral, though, by the man behind the counter waving a greasy paper-wrapped package at him. After an awkward “cheers, mate”, Arlo steps back out into the brisk, cold night. Eyes glued to the pavement, he hurries home, food tucked neatly under his arm and his hands crammed into his pockets to avoid the chill. Three minutes ter he stands at the entrance to his apartment building, fumbling with the keypad at the door. The light fog had made the cool, metal buttons a little slippery, and therefore caused Arlo to enter the code incorrectly multiple times. Finally, the buzz of the keypad allows him access, and in opening the door he lets a wave of warmth and the scent of industrial carpet wash over him. The tter would usually be a tad unpleasant, but after a fifteen hour day - it was heaven. As he traipses up the many flights of stairs, he wills his mind to focus, but the haze of lethargy starts to seep in and cloud his thoughts. Home, food, bed. Home, food, bed. Home, food, bed. His cognition wanes to three singur words and, passing his neighbours ft, he fails to sense the movement lingering just a few feet from him behind the door. He floats up the st flight of stairs and wiggles a key in the door, rattling the frame in his half-hearted attempt to unlock it. Succeeding, he stumbles into his front room and kicks his shoes off, depositing his phone, keys, and coat on the kitchen isnd and swiftly walking straight to the bedroom.
He had barely started undressing before he heard the text tone.
Arlo freezes, hands tightening around his half-unbuttoned shirt that was still hanging off of his frame. The sinkhole in his stomach grows twice the size as his mind suddenly clears and he feels much more awake. Rushing back to the kitchen, he unlocks his phone.
Hi detective :)
