an episodic Vivian Locke noir

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

Stillwater Moorings was a cruel, dark joke. The water in this part of The Choke was a chemical soup, a shipyard graveyard littered with rusted hulls and skeletal docks. The air hung thick with the metallic miasma of decay and industrial waste—the signature scent of a forgotten port.

I tracked Boyle to the end of Pier 4. His office was a miserable shack of grimy, corrugated tin that rattled in the cold breeze. Inside, the gloom was barely pierced by the sickly yellow flicker of a sputtering kerosene heater. Boyle himself, a heavy man with a slump, wasn’t counting money; he was hunched over a crumpled racing form, poring over the odds with the grim focus of a man searching for one final win.

He didn’t look up when I kicked the door shut behind me.