Chapter 1: Memories & Foam
The Rusty Anchor didn’t so much welcome patrons as absorb them. Heather Norris slipped into its dim, beer-scented embrace like it was a second skin, the door sighing shut behind her and cutting off the city’s honking symphony. Flickering neon from a defunct brand of lager painted everything in sickly blues and oranges, highlighting the dust motes dancing above sticky tables. The air was a solid thing, thick with the ghosts of a thousand spilled pints and muttered regrets.
She found her usual spot, a booth in the back corner wedged beside a silent, gutted jukebox. The vinyl seat let out a soft protest as she slid in. She shrugged out of her blazer, the day’s recruitments buzzing in her skull—the over-eager graduate, the pompous tech bro, the endless parade of polished desperation. Here, she didn’t have to be the savvy recruiter with the disarming smile. Here, she could just be Heather, one more shadow in the sticky dark.
A bottle of something local and cold appeared in front of her, delivered by a grizzled bartender with a nod. She wrapped her fingers around the cool glass, taking a long pull.
The beer was bitter, sharp, perfect. She was halfway through it, tracing a water ring on the table with her thumb, when a shift in the light made her look up. A group of college-aged guys had shouldered their way in, all loud laughter and too much cologne. They clustered near the bar, shouting an order.
One of them broke away, angling for the restrooms. He moved with an easy stride, a lean silhouette against the neon haze. As he passed her booth, his shoulder clipped the corner of the jukebox with a dull thud. He stumbled, off-balance, and his hip connected solidly with the edge of her table.
Her bottle jumped, toppled, and poured its remaining contents into her lap.
“Oh, shit!” they both said in unison.
Heather jerked back with a gasp, the cold soaking through her pants instantly. The young man was already grabbing a wad of napkins from the dispenser.
“I am so, so sorry. That thing is a death trap. Here, please—”
He thrust the napkins toward her. She took them automatically, dabbing at the dark stain spreading on the fabric, her focus on the minor disaster. Then she looked up at his face, ready to accept his apology.
Her hands stilled.
The boy—no, the man—froze, napkins still outstretched. His eyes, dark and intelligent, widened. His face had lost its baby fat, the jawline sharp, the features defined. But the shape of his eyes, the arch of his brow… it was all intimately, shockingly familiar. It was like looking at a photo from a dream.
“Heather?” he said, the word tentative, almost disbelieving.
A laugh bubbled out of her, thin and strained.“Richard? Little Ricky Lee?”
A flash of a smile, white and sudden, transformed his face. “Oh my god. I haven’t been called that in… a decade?”
“Try not to sound so proud of it,” she said, the old, easy babysitter cadence slipping back into her voice for a second before reality snapped it away. She was sitting in a dive bar, soaked in beer, and the kid she used to bribe with an extra cookie for going to bed was standing over her, looking… well, grown.Very grown.
“I… what are you doing here?” he asked, gesturing vaguely at the Anchor’s gloom.
“I could ask you the same thing. This isn’t exactly a juice bar.”
“Legal now,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, then pulling them out again, as if unsure what to do with them. “I mean, I am. Legal. To be here.” He winced. “That sounded smoother in my head.”
The awkwardness was a living thing between them. Heather cleared her throat. “Well, since you owe me a dry-cleaning bill, the least you can do is buy me a replacement drink.” She gestured to the empty bottle.“Right. Yes. Of course.” He seemed grateful for the directive. “What are you having?”
She told him. He nodded, that same earnest look he’d get when she’d explain a math problem, and hurried to the bar. She watched him go, her mind reeling. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a scrawny twelve-year-old, all knees and elbows, crying quietly because some kids had made fun of his science project. She’d sat with him on the porch steps until the stars came out, telling him they were all idiots.
He returned with two fresh bottles, sliding into the booth opposite her. The move felt too natural, too comfortable for the seismic shift happening in her head.
“So,” he said, pushing one bottle toward her. “This is surreal.”
“You’re telling me.” She took a long drink. “Your mom. She still in the same house?”
“Yeah. I’m at State, so I’m just home for the summer. Saving up for an apartment.” He spun his bottle slowly. “You used to let me stay up late to watch those terrible monster movies on cable. The ones with the rubber suits.”
She smiled, a real one this time. “You’d get so scared you’d inch closer and closer on the couch until you were practically in my lap.”
“And you’d never tell my mom.”
“A good babysitter’s first rule: selective truth.” The memory was warm, an echo of a simpler time. “You had that dinosaur comforter.T-Rex. You insisted it kept the monsters away.”
“It did,” he said, deadpan, then cracked another smile. “Until you left. Then they’d all come back.”
They lapsed into a silence that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, just heavy with the weight of years folding in on themselves. The jukebox hummed its dead hum beside them.
“You were my favorite,” he said suddenly, his eyes on his hands. “Everyone else treated me like a chore. You talked to me like I was a person. You told me about your boyfriends.”
Heather choked on her beer. “Oh god. I did not.”
“You totally did. The guy with the motorcycle who borrowed money from you. The poet who cried at cereal commercials.”
A hot flush crept up her neck. “Christ. I was sharing life lessons. ‘See, Ricky? Don’t date a man who weeps over Lucky Charms.’” She shook her head, laughing at herself. “My taste hasn’t improved much, for the record.”
The confession hung in the air between them, a strange, intimate offering. Richard didn’t laugh. He just studied her, his head tilted. The nervous energy seemed to have burned off, replaced by a quiet focus.
“Maybe you were looking in the wrong places,” he said finally.
“Aren’t we all?” she countered, taking another sip. “So, a college man. What’s your poison? Pre-med? Engineering?”
“Literature,” he said, and the way he said it, without apology, made her raise her brows.
“A reader.Should have guessed. You always had your nose in a book. Even at the dinner table. Drove your mom nuts.”
“Still does.” He grinned. “She thinks I’m studying to be a professional loafer.”
“And what does a professional loafer plan to do with himself?”
“Write.Maybe. Teach. Figure it out.” He shrugged, but there was a sureness in his eyes that belied the casual gesture. “What about you? Last I knew, you were about to conquer the world. You told me that. I believed you.”
The memory was a physical touch, a gentle hand on her shoulder from the past. She had said that, wearing a cheap waitress uniform, counting tips on their kitchen counter, feeling like her life would never start. “I got a desk, at least.Recruiter. I match people with their futures. Or, you know, a slightly better-paying present.”
“You were good at seeing what people were good at,” he said. “You told me I’d be good at arguing, once. Because I never backed down from a debate about why I should get that extra hour of TV.”
“See? Prophet.” She laughed, and the sound was looser now, warmed by the beer and the strange comfort of being known, even in this fragmented way.
The night deepened around them. The bar’s crowd thinned from a roar to a murmur, then to a few solitary drinkers hunched over their glasses. The bartender started flicking lights, a signal as old as time itself. They talked through it all. He told her about a disastrous freshman year roommate; she recounted the epic saga of a candidate who showed up for a Wall Street interview with a parrot on his shoulder. The years collapsed and re-formed. He wasn’t the kid and she wasn’t the babysitter; they were just two people in a booth, making each other laugh, the broken jukebox a silent witness.
Finally, the main lights came on, harsh and unforgiving, exposing every stain and crack in the Rusty Anchor’s facade. They both blinked, startled back into the present.
“Shit,” Heather said, digging for her wallet. “I think we’ve been evicted.”
Richard was already standing, pulling his jacket on. “My treat. For the laundry. And the trip down memory lane.”
She didn’t argue. She just slid out, the air feeling cooler, sharper, as they walked past the now-empty stools. A murmured thanks to the bartender, and then the heavy door swung shut behind them, sealing off the warmth.
The night air was a slap—cool, damp, smelling of city concrete and distant garbage. The street was quiet, a lone taxi cruising past with its light off. They stood under the buzzing Anchor sign, the sudden silence after hours of talk feeling vast and awkward.
“Well,” Heather said, shifting her purse strap on her shoulder. “This was… unexpected.”
“The best things usually are,” Richard said. He was looking at her, not at the ground. “Can I… walk you to your car?”
“I’m just a block over. You don’t have to—”
A sound cut her off. Not a shout. A wet, guttural gasp, like someone trying to breathe through a clogged drain.
It came from the alley mouth beside the bar, a pool of absolute darkness between two brick walls.
They both turned.Heather squinted. At first, it was just a darker shape against the dark. Then it moved, crumpling, sliding down the wall with a soft, terrible scrape of fabric on brick.
“Hello?” Richard called, his voice tight.
Heather was already moving, her recruiter’s heels clicking sharply on the pavement. “Hey, you okay?”
As they got closer, the details resolved in the weak amber glow of a distant streetlight.A man. Sitting slumped against the wall, legs splayed out. One hand was pressed to his stomach, clenched there. The other hand patted the ground slowly, as if searching for keys he’d dropped.
“Oh, god,” Richard breathed.
Heather knelt, the damp asphalt cold through her pants. The man’s face was waxy, beaded with sweat. His eyes were open wide, but they didn’t seem to see her. They were fixed on something miles away. His breathing was shallow and rapid, little hitched pants.
“Sir? Can you hear me? What happened?”
She gently pulled his hand away from his abdomen. His fingers were slick and dark. The front of his cheap windbreaker was soaked, a black stain that spread and gleamed wetly in the poor light. The coppery, iron-rich smell hit her then, cutting through the alley’s stench of urine and old beer.
Richard fumbled his phone out, his hands shaking so badly the screen light danced over the bricks. “I’m calling 911. Where’s the address? What’s the address here?”
“Rusty Anchor alley, off Seventh,” Heather snapped, her voice surprisingly steady. She pressed the man’s hand back over the wound, applying pressure. The fabric was already saturated. It felt hot. “Stay with me, okay? Look at me. What’s your name?”
The man’s eyes flickered toward her voice. His lips moved. A bubble of blood formed and popped at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t… know,” he whispered, the words thick.
“He’s in shock,” Heather said, more to herself than to Richard. She shrugged out of her blazer, balled it up, and shoved it over his hands, adding more pressure. The silk would be ruined. She didn’t think about it.
Richard was on the phone, his voice rising with panic. “Yes, a man, he’s been stabbed, I think, he’s bleeding a lot… we’re behind the Rusty Anchor… yes, we’re with him… please, hurry!”
Heather kept her eyes locked on the dying man’s face. “You’re going to be okay. Help is coming. Just keep looking at me.” She could feel the life seeping out through her blazer, a warm, relentless tide. His eyelids fluttered.
“Blue car,” the man rasped, his gaze drifting past her, into the void. “Just… a blue… car.”
Then his body went rigid for a second, a tremor running through him, before all the tension melted away into a profound, terrifying stillness.
Then his body went rigid for a second, a tremor running through him, before all the tension melted away into a profound, terrifying stillness.
Heather’s hands were still pressing her balled-up blazer into his stomach. The warmth was already cooling. “Oh no,” she whispered. “No, no, no.”
Richard’s voice, tinny from the phone speaker, cut through. “They said two minutes. Two minutes out. Is he—?”
“Richard.” Heather’s voice was flat. “He’s gone.”
“What? No, they said to keep pressure—”
“He’s gone.” She pulled her hands back. They were sticky and dark, smelling of iron and salt. She stared at them, numb. Sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer. The relief was a physical ache. Someone else would handle this now.Professionals. They could step back into the night, shaken witnesses, and go home.
The first gunshot was a deafening crack that shattered the alley’s quiet. A brick six inches from Heather’s head erupted in a puff of dust.
Instinct yanked her down. She dropped flat beside the dead man, her body slamming onto the wet asphalt. A scream caught in her throat.
“GET DOWN!” Richard roared. He was already moving, not away, but toward her.
A second shot. This one sparked off the dumpster to their left with a metallic shriek. The muzzle flash came from the alley’s far end, a quick orange stab in the darkness behind a parked car.A blue car. The thought connected with cold, sickening clarity.
“They’re shooting at us!” Richard scrambled behind the dumpster, grabbing Heather’s arm and pulling her roughly alongside him. The space was cramped and reeked of rotting garbage. “Why are they shooting at us?”
“They think he talked!” Heather hissed. The sirens were closer, but not close enough. Another shot thudded into the other side of the dumpster. They were trapped. The mouth of the alley was behind the shooter. The brick wall behind them was two stories of sheer, unclimbable nothing.
Her eyes landed on the body. On her blazer, now just a soaked bundle of fabric.
“The car,” Richard gasped, following her look. “He said ‘blue car.’ They heard him. They were waiting to see if he said more.”
A window shattered high above them. The shooter was trying for an angle. They had seconds.
Heather’s mind, usually cluttered with resumes and interview questions, went ice-cold and clear. The sirens were maybe a minute away. The shooter was maybe thirty feet away. They couldn’t stay.
“My car,” she whispered, her voice raw. “It’s around the corner on Elm. The gray Subaru.”
“We can’t make it to Elm!”
“Not us.” She looked at the dead man. “Him.”
Richard’s eyes went wide with pure disbelief. “You want to take the body?”
“What’s your brilliant alternative? Die here with him?” Another shot. This one whined as it ricocheted off the pavement near their feet. The decision was made in the flinch. “Help me!”
She scrambled out from behind the dumpster, grabbed the man under his arms. He was horribly, limply heavy. Richard didn’t hesitate. He hooked his hands under the man’s knees. Together, in a frantic, shuffling crab-walk, they hauled the corpse out from the wall. They were exposed. Completely. Heather’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird trying to escape.
“Go, go, go!” Richard yelled.
They lumbered toward the alley’s opposite end, the one that fed onto a quieter cross-street. Their progress was agonizingly slow. Heather’s back screamed. The man’s head lolled against her thigh. Every second stretched, waiting for the bullet to tear into her own flesh.
They stumbled out of the alley’s mouth onto the sidewalk. Elm Street was one block over. A sane, normal world of parked cars and dark windows. The gunshots had stopped. Maybe the shooter was repositioning. Maybe he was running. It didn’t matter.
“Key fob,” Heather panted. “Front pocket. Get it.”
Richard, still holding the man’s legs, awkwardly fumbled at her jeans. He pulled out the fob and pressed the unlock button. Two parking spots down, her Subaru’s lights flashed with a cheerful, normal beep.
Somehow, they covered the last fifty feet. Heather hit the hatchback release.The trunk door swung up. They hefted the body. It was an awful, graceless struggle. The man’s arm slapped against the bumper. They got his torso in, then shoved his legs in after. Heather slammed the hatch shut just as the first police car, lights flashing silent, skidded around the corner onto the main street behind the Rusty Anchor.
“Drive,” Richard said, already yanking the passenger door open. “Just drive.”
Heather fumbled into the driver’s seat. Her bloody hands slipped on the wheel. The engine coughed to life. She pulled away from the curb, smooth, calm, a model citizen leaving a late evening. In the rearview mirror, she saw the flickering red and blue lights converge on the mouth of the alley. She took the first right, then a left, heading away from the sirens, away from the neon glow of the bar, driving aimlessly into the grid of sleeping neighborhoods.
For ten minutes, nobody spoke. The only sounds were the hum of the engine and the frantic rhythm of their breathing. The interior of the car smelled like copper and sweat.
Richard finally spoke, his voice thin and stretched. “We have a dead guy in your trunk.”
“I’m aware.”
“We stole a dead guy.”
“He wasn’t using it,” Heather said, the words automatic, hollow. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. A flick of her eyes to the rearview mirror, checking the empty street behind them, then dropping to the back seat, as if the body could seep through the upholstery.
“We need to call the police,” he said, but it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a plea.
“And say what? ‘Hi, we found a stabbed man, then someone started shooting at us, so we panicked and put the corpse in my car and drove away?’” She shook her head. “They’ll detain us. They’ll separate us. They’ll find the… my blazer in there, covered in blood. We’ll be suspects. We’ll be all they have.”
“So what’s the plan, then? Keep him in there until he starts to… until…” He couldn’t finish.
“My apartment,” Heather said. The words came out before the thought was fully formed. “We can’t drive around.We need to think. Somewhere… private.”
Richard just stared out the window, nodding slowly, a man in a nightmare accepting the next absurd twist. “Okay.Okay. Your apartment.”
The rest of the drive was a blur of streetlights and silent panic. Heather parked in her building’s underground garage, in her assigned spot. They sat for a full minute, listening.No sirens. No footsteps. Just the concrete hum of the ventilation system.
Getting the body upstairs was an exercise in silent, sweating terror. They used the maintenance stairwell at the back of the garage, a grim, echoing space of concrete and steel. Heather went first, scouting. Richard followed, bearing the horrible weight. The man was wrapped in a moving blanket Heather kept in her trunk, a dusty blue shroud. They looked like two people struggling with a rolled-up carpet. A very heavy, awkwardly shaped carpet.
Her apartment was on the third floor. Every creak of the stairs was a gunshot. Every distant sound from another apartment made them freeze. By the time Heather unlocked her door and they staggered inside, both of them were drenched in a cold sweat, muscles trembling.
They laid the blanket-wrapped bundle on the pristine beige rug of her living room. It looked obscene there, next to her modern sofa and the tasteful abstract art on the walls. The scent of death and the alley began to permeate the clean, lemony air.
Heather went to the sink and scrubbed her hands until they were raw and pink. Richard stood in the middle of the room, just staring at the shape on the floor, his arms hanging limp at his sides.
“We have to call someone,” he said again, but the conviction was gone.
“And say what, Richard?” Heather turned, leaning against the kitchen counter. Her whole body felt electrified and exhausted at once. “We’re in it now. We moved a body. We fled a crime scene. We’re material witnesses to a murder, and the people who did it know we were there. They shot at us. What do you think happens if we walk into a police station?”
“We tell the truth!”
“The truth is we have a dead John Doe on my living room floor! The truth looks like panic and guilt!” She pushed off the counter, running a hand through her hair. It came away smelling of gunpowder and alley. “They were waiting for him to die. Or waiting for him to talk. He said ‘blue car’ to us, and they opened fire. They think he told us more.”
“But he didn’t.”
“They don’t know that!” Her voice rose, bouncing off the quiet walls. She forced it back down to a harsh whisper. “All they know is two people were with him when he died. Two people who then disappeared with the body. We’re not witnesses to them, Richard. We’re a loose end.”
The word hung in the air. Loose end. It had a very specific, very final sound.
Richard finally looked away from the body, his eyes finding hers. The nervous boy from the bar was gone, burned away by adrenaline and fear. What was left was pale, focused, older. “So we’re not calling the police.”
“Not yet.” Heather walked to her window, peered down at the quiet street. Nothing. “We need to know what we’re in the middle of. We need to know who he is.”
“How?” Richard’s gaze drifted back to the blanket. “We search him.”
A thick silence followed. It was the only logical next step, and it was utterly revolting.
Heather took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
“I’ll do it,” he said, the words quiet. “Your hands are clean.”
He knelt on the rug. His own hands shook as he peeled back the blanket’s edge, revealing the man’s waxy, pale face. He worked with a stiff, deliberate care, patting down the man’s jacket, his pants pockets. He pulled out a cheap wallet, a handful of lint, a single key on a plain ring. No phone.
He opened the wallet. A few damp dollars. A photo of a faded-looking woman and a child. And a driver’s license.
“Michael Vickers,” Richard read aloud. He squinted at the address. “It’s local. Over in the Heights.”
He set the license down on the blanket like it was a live insect. He looked inside the wallet again, felt along the lining. His fingers found a slight bulge. From a hidden slot behind the credit card inserts, he pulled out a small, watertight plastic sleeve. Inside was a single, stark-white business card.
There was no name. No company logo.
Just ten digits, printed in simple black ink.
A phone number.
Richard held it up. Heather came closer, looking down at it. It was the only clean, deliberate thing in this whole filthy mess.
“What is that?” Richard whispered.
“I don’t know,” Heather said, her eyes fixed on the ten digits. “But it’s the only thing he tried to hide.”
From the blanket on the floor, Michael Vickers offered no explanation. The sirens were miles away now. In the quiet of her apartment, the only sound was their shared, shallow breathing, and the unspoken question screaming between them.
The phone number on the card stared back, a crisp enigma against the wool blanket.
A low, wet groan cut the silence.
It was a sound that didn’t belong in a room of the living. It came from the floor. Michael Vickers’s head lolled to the side. A fresh bubble of blood, dark and glossy, formed on his lips and popped with his next ragged exhale.
“Holy shit,” Richard whispered, scrambling back on his hands.
Heather dropped to her knees. “He’s breathing. He’s alive this whole damn time.” She pressed two fingers to the man’s throat, finding a weak, rabbit-fast pulse fluttering beneath cold skin. “It’s shallow, but it’s there. He was just out cold.”
“He looked dead! He felt dead!”