Rain hammered the city like it had a grudge on it.
Mira sprinted the three blocks from her apartment to her car, not bothering with an umbrella, she’d stopped owning one back in her second year on the force, around the same time she’d given up on a lot of other things. She hit ninety on the bridge and didn't slow until the station's floodlights swallowed her windshield whole.
Central station at 4 a.m. was a different show than central station at noon, the grand arched ceilings that tourists photographed became something cathedral and cold, every footstep were swallowed by marble silence.
The night staff had corralled the few insomniacs and late arrivals behind a police tape line near the east entrance. Some of them were on their phones, one old man in a yellow raincoat was just staring in blank.
Mira badged through and followed the sound of radios. Platform nine was the last one before the maintenance tunnels, a dead-end spur that hadn't seen regular service since they rerouted the coastal line eighteen months ago, it was the kind of place you ended up only if you meant to or if someone meant it for you.
The woman was arranged, that was the first thing Mira clocked, not collapsed at the crime scene, but deliberately arranged. She was lying flat on her back, arms at her sides, palms up, dressed in a charcoal blazer and dark slacks, business clothes, a single heel still on her right foot, the other gone. Her face was composed, almost serene except for the bruising around her throat and the thin red line drawn from ear to ear.
"Tell me something useful." Mira said to no one in particular.
Officer Chen appeared next to her; young, alert and always caffeinated, "No wallet, no phone, no transit card. We're pulling the camera footage now, but nine's been on a reduced maintenance loop, coverage is spotty at best, there's forty-minute window."
"Of course there is, who found her?" Mira crouched beside the body and pulled on gloves.
"Janitor." Chen checked his notes, "Mr. Delacroix, been with the station for eleven years. He said he came down to swap out a mop bucket and noticed the shoe first; he's in the supervisor's office, pretty shaken up."
"Get me the footage window, whatever you have and find other shoe."
Mira leaned in close, the woman's makeup was still intact, unstained, not smudged by the rain or the struggle. Either she had been killed elsewhere and brought here, or it had all happened so quickly and cleanly that she hadn't had time to fight. Meera examined her hands; her nails were unbroken; there were no signs of defense.
There was something else, too. On the collar of the blazer, just below the left shoulder, was a small, round hole where a pin had been. Whatever had been pinned there was missing. Marks around the hole showed that the pin had been inserted with such force that the fabric had been micro-ruptured, as if someone had tried to retrieve it.
Mira's phone buzzed with an unknown number, she answered immediately.
"You're looking at Diane Collier; she worked for the Aldric group." Man's voice came after brief silence.
"Who are you?' Mira's jaw tightened.
"Not important, are you going to find out who did this or are you going to hand it off to someone with worse instincts and a better clearance level?"
"Where are you?" She turned slowly and scanned the platform, the archway, the maintenance door at the far end, the camera with its blinking red standby light.
"Somewhere safe for now." He pauses once more, then starts speaking again, "Check under the platform edge near the third drainage grate, she kicked it when they grabbed her, she was trying to leave a marker." His voice shifted, something tightening in it, "She was smart, that's why she's dead."
Mira was already walking; she signaled Chen with two fingers to follow her and moved to the platform edge. She crouched down and spotted the shoe wedged in the gap between the concrete edge and the track bed.
Inside the shoe, tucked into the toe box, was a small brass key wrapped in a paper band, with 'Locker B-12' neatly written in small, precise red ink.
"Smart." Mira said quietly, more to Diane Collier than to anyone else.
"She had forty seconds." The man on the phone said, "She used them well, now it’s your turn, Detective Cooper."
"How do you know my name?"
"Again, not important."
Mira handed the shoe to Chen without breaking stride and headed for the east concourse at something that was not quite a run. The station held its breath around her, the floodlights cast long theatrical shadows, her footsteps sharp against marble that had heard a hundred thousand stories, most of them ordinary, this one wasn't going to be.
Locker B-12 was at the far end of the row; she slid the key in, the lock gave with a clean click. She came across a manila envelope, a burner phone and a photograph, she reached for the photo first and held it up beneath the flickering glow of the concourse's fluorescent lights.
Three men on a rooftop she didn't recognize, one had his arm around a fourth figure, someone whose face had been neatly cut from the photo with scissors. Beneath it, in the same red ink as the key band, were four words written.
"They own the investigators."
Mira put the photo back in the envelope, tucked it under her arm and asked, "Where do we meet?"
A sound that might have been a tired, exhaled, "I was hoping you'd ask that."
The burner phone in the locker lit up with one address. Mira locked it in her mind in four seconds, slipped the phone into her pocket and headed back toward Platform Nine, passing the coroner's van rolling in through the service entrance and Chen, who was waving her over with a look that said the footage was back and it was bad, she kept walking.
Diane Collier had used her last forty seconds well; the least Mira could do was make them count.
To be continued...