The town thrummed under everything now — in the idle barbs of the morning radio, in the stitched-up opinion pieces, in the comments that smelled of vinegar and fear. They had spun him into a symbol every outlet could sharpen: the dangerous anthro, the sheriff who became the thing he was supposed to be protecting, a protector or a villain? He had expected to be hated for it but he never expected to be exhausted by it.
A week had slipped by since the lobby incident. The clips multiplied like mold. Some edits were crude and mean: a looped snap of him baring teeth that played beneath someone's laugh track. Others were strange, arty remixes that put a cinematic score under the roar and made him look mythic, as if the town had been waiting to mythologize something all along. Neither version felt like the truth. Neither version was him.
He is a practitioner of small things — cuffing, scribbling reports, walking into the wrong neighborhoods until people told them their secrets. The loud, public-speaking theatre was not his grail. Still, the mayor had wanted a statement, the council wanted reassurance, and cameras were paid to collect tears. Next morning he had learned the sharp, humiliating lesson of being a private man in a public crisis: you can do it, but you will be bad at it, and they will film the worst parts.
He had stood on a tile platform beneath sodium lights, his badge heavy on his chest like a paperweight. The mayor had arranged his posture and his talking points. Brendon had spoken three sentences, all the while feeling like a stranger wearing his face. The cameras had devoured the slurred edges and later, at lunch, someone had mixed the press clip with footage from a kids' cartoon and called it a "beastly PSA." He had found the video later when a follower-less account sent it to the station with a note: "For the archives." He just ignored it.
Work kept reality tethered. Chief Tyson, despite his bluster and occasional theatrical distaste, had not let the case slide into fog. The men and women who gathered around the board in the homicide room were the same ones who still did the small, steady things — the paperwork, the tedious follow-up calls, the fingerprint plates. Tyson had rerouted resources as quietly as a surgeon. He kept his voice low when he spoke, and the team moved under him like fishes in a river current: steady and efficient.
Robert was a constant in that flow. He had been at the desk when Brendon returned from the press. He had the tired, grateful expression of a man who had not slept well but who considered sleep a practical luxury. He moved with the ease of someone who knew how to hold a world together out of coffee and small, decisive acts.
"Mark's here," Robert said the afternoon the ex-boyfriend arrived.
Brendon was at the wall map, sliding pins over places they had searched. He straightened. "Mark?"
"Yeah." Robert rubbed a patch of stubble at his jaw. "Came in this morning in clean clothes. Quiet at first, all that. He — he knows a lot. Not just the stage name. He knows her real name. He gave us details only someone who'd been close would have."
Brendon felt his palms go a little cold. "Is it confirmed yet? Does he told us anything about her appearance?"
Robert shook his head. "Sofie's still digging. She's building a digital skeleton. She won't announce until she's confident. But Mark's — and listen — Mark's grief tracked. I'm not gonna tell you the name until Sofie and the legal say go. This place is already a circus and we don't need another ringmaster for that."
Brendon let out a short breath, half relief, half frustration. "Good. Keep him here. I want a full debrief. I'll take the first shift."
Robert nodded. "He's been cooperative, though… tense. Says she'd been secretive about a shoot but excited. Gave names, approximate dates, photographers. She'd booked a location up near Ashwood. Said it was a limited crew."
"How reliable is it actually?" Brendon asked.
"As reliable as grief gets." Robert said. He had the patience, the voice for it. "But Sofie's already pulling their digital paper trail. She thinks there are financial links to Richardson's shell companies. She's got a subpoena in motion."
Sofie — the small, fierce woman who could make servers cough up answers — had become something like a private oracle. Brendon had watched her flex through systems he could not see: scraping archives, untangling the wildstrings of pseudonyms and burner accounts. It was almost beautiful to him: somebody finding order where he felt only ash.