Room 12 smelled of damp carpet, ozone, and the cheap bleach he had bought himself. It was a far cry from the pristine, sterile environments of Vanguard Capital, but to Paul Lais, it was the perfect war room.
He had spent the last four hours pacing the cramped space, staring at the photographs and notes he had pinned to the peeling floral wallpaper. He was doing exactly what he had promised himself he would do: he was looking at the negative space.
He stared at the blank area on the wall between the photo of Julian Ashcroft and the notes about the young girl in the red dress.
How did she know about the poison?
He closed his eyes, replaying that night at the Fifth & Fifty-Nine pub. The way she had barked insults at her green-looking companion—what had he called her? Chloe. The immediate shift in demeanour when she noticed the tired presence of the detective. The perfectly timed revelation about Arthur Brown just as Lais was about to hit a dead end.
He had assumed she was just collateral damage—a nosy rich girl who had probably overheard a slip of the tongue from a careless Vanguard executive. But billionaires like Ashcroft didn't frequent such pubs in Midtown, and the Atlas Security Group didn't make sloppy mistakes.
Lais stopped pacing. The pieces of the puzzle suddenly shifted in his mind, forming a terrifying, brilliant picture.
If the girl knew about the poison, she wasn't Brown's or Ashcroft's victim. She was connected to the phantom killer. But if she was connected to the killer, why did she point the police directly towards Vanguard Capital?
The answer hit Lais like a physical blow.
A shield. A meat shield for the Madison Avenue killer.
She wasn't trying to expose Ashcroft. She was using his billions as a weapon against the NYPD.
If the phantom killer needed the investigation shut down when Lais started sniffing around the bodies, was there some sort of organisation around this ghost, or did Lais talk to the killer herself? The latter seemed unlikely. A killer so immaculate, so precise as to leave absolutely no trace, wouldn't orchestrate a sloppy, public scene. Was she mocking the NYPD? And what about an organisation? Criminal syndicates don't usually employ sloppy liabilities like her.
Lais kept walking in that foul-smelling room, trying to wrap his head around it, until the terrifying truth clicked into place: the sloppiness was an act.
Completely exhausted from walking in circles, Lais dropped his whole weight onto the bed, its rusted springs protesting loudly. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples, practising the grounding breathing techniques Patricia had taught him.
The girl fed him the Vanguard connection. She threw him deliberately into the hornet's nest, knowing exactly what would happen. She knew Ashcroft would panic, deploy his lawyers, bribe the FBI, and send his Atlas mercenaries to threaten Lais and, inevitably, his wife.
Ashcroft had successfully killed the police investigation to protect his own empire, completely unaware that he was simultaneously protecting the true assassin, whoever they were. It was a flawless, double-blind trap.
And Lais had swallowed the bait whole.
Lais grabbed his coat. He didn't bother putting on a tie, and he left his NYPD badge locked inside the motel room's cheap, faulty safe. He took only his service weapon, sliding it into the holster at his belt and hiding it beneath his long, dark trench coat.
Exactly thirty-five minutes later, he pushed through the heavy wooden doors of the Fifth & Fifty-Nine.
It was 2:50 PM. The afternoon crowd hadn't arrived yet. The pub was mostly empty, still smelling of spilt beer and fried food from the lunch break. The bartender—a burly man with a thick black beard and tattooed forearms—was lazily wiping down the mahogany counter with a rag.
Lais walked down to the far end of the counter, sitting on the exact same stool he had occupied that day.
"We don't serve food until five, buddy," the bartender grunted, not looking up from his rag.
"I'm not hungry," Lais said. His voice was completely devoid of its usual authoritative police cadence. It was flat, quiet, and dangerous. "A few days ago, I was sitting right here. There was a girl next to me. Mid-twenties. Loud. Wearing an obnoxiously bright red dress. She was mocking a visibly ill guy. You poured her a drink."
The bartender stopped wiping and looked at him, his expression utterly blank and almost amused. "I pour drinks for a lot of obnoxious girls, pal. New York is full of 'em."
Lais stiffened into a firmer posture. "Bright red dress, loud, and strikingly beautiful. Hard to miss. Did she pay with a card?"
The bartender crossed his arms. "Cash," he replied, shrugging. "Left a twenty on the counter and walked out. Haven't seen her before, haven't seen her since. Look, man, unless she stole your wallet, I can't help you. People come in, they drink, and they leave. That's how it works."
Lais stared directly at the man. The bartender's eyes weren't lying; his detective instincts told him that much. There should have been signs of anxiety or distress if he was hiding something. To the bartender, that girl in the red dress was just another face fading into the chaotic, blurry background of Manhattan.
Lais walked out of the pub, temporarily blinded by the afternoon sun. The frustration had manifested into a physical weight, now pressing heavily against his chest. He pulled out his prepaid phone and dialled Donna.
She picked up halfway through the first ring, almost as if she'd been expecting his call. "Please tell me you're not doing anything stupid, Paul," she hissed.
"I was stupid weeks ago. Now I'm just catching up," Lais said, ignoring her reprimand. "Vanguard Capital is just a tool, Donna. Ashcroft didn't engineer these murders. The killer used his mercenaries to bury our investigation and cover their own tracks."
"What? Who did, then?"
"I need you to run a covert search through the precinct's databases," Lais continued, his eyes scanning the bustling Manhattan street. "Look for a girl. Mid-twenties. Goes by the name Chloe. See if there are any CCTV hits around Midtown from that Tuesday night. Look for a bright red dress covering half her calves."
"A red dress? Paul, it's New York. I'm going to get ten thousand hits for a first name and a piece of clothing. What is her last name? Does she have a record?"
"I don't know," Lais admitted, the bitter taste of defeat coating his tongue. "I don't even know if 'Chloe' is her real name. Just run the facial recognition from the pub's street corner."
There was a pause on the line. The sound of rapid typing echoed through the speaker.
"Paul..." Donna's voice was tense. "The street cameras for that specific block of the Fifth & Fifty-Nine? They were down for routine maintenance that entire week. The Department of Transportation logs confirm it."
Lais stopped walking. The busy street around him seemed to blur into white noise.
The cameras were down. She paid in cash. The bartender didn't remember her.
She was a ghost. Just like the killer.
"Paul, who is this girl?" Donna asked, her voice tinged with genuine concern. "What does she have to do with Vanguard?"
"Nothing," Lais whispered, the realisation finally solidifying in his mind. "Vanguard Capital didn't invent the silence, Donna. They just bought it. The hit squad, the lawyers, the mercenaries... they are just Ashcroft's muscle. But the poison? That's someone else."
"Who?"
"I don't know yet," Lais said, staring into the crowded street, realising for the first time how entirely outmatched he was. "It might be her, or there might be a criminal organisation behind her. I don't know. But whoever they are, they don't leave footprints."
He hung up the phone, the ghost of a predatory smile touching his lips. The cage Ashcroft had put him in was useless now, because Lais was no longer hunting the billionaire.
He was hunting the artist of that macabre office exhibition.