Chapter 4
Chapter 4 — The Weight of Small Doors
Silas travels to Daniel Webb's last known residence, a rundown apartment building in the East End. He speaks with Webb's former neighbor, Mrs. Klein, who reveals that Daniel left suddenly eight months ago after a visit from two men in suits, and that he had been anxious and paranoid in the weeks before his disappearance. Silas finds Webb's apartment mostly cleared but discovers a hidden note behind a loose baseboard containing an access code and the name 'Patricia Okafor.' Meanwhile, Detective Rossi independently reviews Eleanor Blackwood's case file after her encounter with Silas at the diner, noticing inconsistencies she'd previously overlooked. Julian Vance receives an update from his surveillance team about Silas's movements and orders increased monitoring, while also contacting someone to ensure Daniel Webb remains unreachable. Dr. Evelyn Reed, increasingly frightened by the anonymous call's implications, considers whether she can still trust Silas or whether her involvement has already doomed them both. Silas returns home to find a second anonymous note slipped under his door—a photograph of himself taken from across the street that morning, with no message on the back.
The bus to the East End ran every forty minutes after midnight and every twenty during daylight hours, but Silas didn't take the bus. He walked. The distance was roughly four miles—far enough to discourage casual pursuit, close enough to manage on foot if the routes between here and there were being watched. Walking also meant he could vary his path, double back, cut through alleyways and parking structures, use the city's geometry the way a rabbit uses hedgerows: not to disappear entirely but to make the act of following expensive in time and attention. He'd learned this from a case years ago, tracking a bail jumper through the industrial corridors south of the river. The man had never taken the same route twice. It took Silas eleven days to catch him, and the lesson had stayed: predictability was the first link in any chain that ended with a closed casket.
The morning was overcast, the sky a flat pewter lid pressed low over the rooftops. Air quality advisories had been issued twice that week, and the atmosphere carried a metallic taste that coated the tongue and made each breath feel slightly borrowed. Silas walked north along Carmine, then east through the narrow residential streets where the row houses leaned toward each other like neighbors sharing gossip. His jacket was zipped against the chill. The flashlight pressed against his hip through the lining, a small hard shape he was conscious of with each step. In his right pocket, the prepaid phone. In his left, a folded printout of the map he'd sketched from Evelyn's directions: Daniel Webb, Apartment 3C, 1847 Harker Street.
The address sat in a part of the East End that real estate listings described as 'transitional,' which meant it was transitioning from neglected to abandoned. The buildings were old, their facades stained with water damage and the slow mineral weeping of decades of bad plumbing. Some had been rehabbed—fresh paint, new windows, the occasional window box with geraniums standing at attention. Others hadn't. 1847 Harker fell firmly into the latter category. Five stories of brown brick, its entrance flanked by a shuttered laundromat and a storefront church whose sign read ALL ARE WELCOME in letters that had been rearranged so many times the 'W' had migrated permanently to the wrong angle.
Keep reading "Chapter 4 — The Weight of Small Doors"
Open the same story in AIBookCraft. Later chapters may require an active subscription.
Free on iOS & Android · No signup to read