This is a serialized story. Start here for the first episode.

Kogan threw a heavy velvet cloth over the retort, a gesture that strangled the light and the visual connection. “Dredge wasn’t moving ordinary stolen goods for the Johnson who hired him, Locke. Not by a long shot.”

He walked to the door and worked the locks with the practiced care of a man who didn’t want unexpected company. The deadbolt slid home with a weary sigh. The second lock clicked like a rat trap. Then the heavy iron bar dropped into place with a definitive, bone-jarring clank. He flipped the sign in the grime-stained, chickenwire-reinforced shop window to “Closed,” turning the world outside into a dull rumor, and dimmed the lights, making the room a cave of shadows and secrets.

This is a serialized story. Start here for the first episode.

The walk away from a fresh corpse is always longer than the walk toward one.

The rain spat its static-kissed venom onto my trench coat, a thousand tiny drumbeats dancing off my shoulders before dissolving into the crackling cobalt-spark of the alley puddles at my feet. I slipped from the streetlight to shadow, leaving the spreading chalk outline of a problem for the boys in blue. That’s when it caught my eye — a sickly green stain creeping across my glove. The corrosion from the dead man’s identification coin had left its signature, thin, poisonous tendrils still foaming where they’d kissed the laminated identification papers. A dirty reminder of a dirtier business.