CHAPTER 23
Several more days slipped by almost unnoticed for Rick. The whole town was buzzing in anticipation of the charity gala. Storefronts were being decorated, posters hung along the streets, people discussed outfits and guest lists. But he had no time for any of it.
Again and again, he found himself standing before his wall. Pins, photographs, strings—they all blurred before his eyes, coming together into a single picture, yet something still seemed to be missing. He didn't even know why anymore, but he kept pushing himself to the limit, hoping that just one more hour of work would finally bring the breakthrough. Instead, his eyes burned with exhaustion, his temples throbbed, and his head rang with emptiness.
Parker's gaze drifted aimlessly from one photograph to another until the names and dates began to blur together. He could feel that he was overlooking something obvious, and that gnawed at him more relentlessly than lack of sleep or coffee on an empty stomach.
The silence of the apartment was suddenly broken by three calm, measured knocks.
Rick flinched so violently it was as though someone had yanked him awake from a deep sleep. His heart slammed against his ribs.
He didn't have to guess who was standing outside the door.
He already knew.
And yet, as he opened it, Rick suddenly found himself thinking that the photographs could probably have waited until tomorrow.
Lake stood on the threshold — composed, serious, with the familiar crease of concentration between his brows.
Rick caught himself choosing far too carefully where to look. In the end, his gaze stubbornly settled on that crease.
It was easier that way.
There was something in Aaron's composure—that quiet inner balance—that Rick himself was so desperately lacking.
"Did you bring them?" His voice came out quieter than he'd intended, but the impatience still gave him away completely.
"Mhm." Lake gave a short nod, lifting the wrapped bundle slightly.
"Great." Rick let out a relieved breath and immediately reached for it.
But Aaron effortlessly moved his hand aside.
"What do you need them for?" he asked, narrowing his eyes slightly.
"I need them."
"For what?"
Rick didn't answer. He only looked impatiently at the envelope in Aaron's hands, as though it mattered far more at that moment than any explanation.
Following his gaze, Lake turned his head ever so slightly toward the wall.
"Does this have something to do with what's behind you?"
He nodded toward the photographs densely woven together with red string.
Rick remained stubbornly silent.
He didn't want to explain. Not because he didn't trust Aaron. It simply didn't seem important right now. He needed to finish the picture, to see it whole. After that, they could talk about everything else.
"...Yeah," he answered at last.
Lake studied him for a few more seconds before silently holding out the bundle.
Parker snatched it from his hand almost immediately.
"Thanks." A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Come in."
Aaron stepped quietly into the apartment. While Rick hurriedly tore open the envelope, Lake unbuttoned his coat with the familiar ease of long habit, slipped it off, and hung it on the hook by the door, right over Rick's jacket.
Only the edge of one dark sleeve remained visible beneath the fabric.
The thick paper rustled softly as the photographs emerged one by one — faces they both knew all too well.
Lake had brought everything Rick had asked for. Now, at last, the picture could finally be completed.
Meanwhile, Aaron wandered farther into the room, and as Rick continued sorting through the photographs, he suddenly became acutely aware of Aaron's presence inside his apartment.
Until recently, there had been nothing here except silence, cold coffee, and endless thoughts that left his head pounding by morning. Now there were footsteps behind him, the faint rustle of clothing, and the familiar voice that might break the silence at any moment.
Lake stopped in front of the wall.
This time, he didn't merely glance over it. Slowly, he examined each photograph in turn, read the brief notes in the margins, and traced the red and blue strings stretched between faces and dates. And the longer he remained silent, the more Rick wanted to turn around. Instead, he stubbornly kept sorting through the photographs, listening to the silence behind him.
"You've done a lot of work," Lake finally said.
Rick looked up at last.
Aaron leaned slightly toward the wall. His fingertips slowly followed one of the taut strands, barely brushing the coarse red yarn before coming to rest beside the photographs of Katie, Sarah, and Caroline.
Rick's eyes instinctively followed the movement of his hand, lingering on those long fingers a moment longer than they should have.
Catching himself, he forced his gaze higher.
To the wall.
The wall, specifically.
"Well... I tried," he muttered.
Aaron studied the arrangement Rick had built for another moment before tilting his head ever so slightly.
"You really do have good instincts."
Rick froze.
Something warm — and absurdly boyish — unfurled beneath his ribs. The corners of his mouth lifted before he could stop them. He remembered perfectly that many years ago, Aaron had told him almost the same thing. That he had talent. Real detective's instincts.
Back then, Rick had pretended it meant nothing.
But judging by the way his back straightened all by itself, ten years hadn't taught him to take Aaron's praise any more calmly.
"Really?" slipped out before he could think of something less pathetic to say.
Aaron finally looked away from the wall and turned toward him, raising an eyebrow slightly.
"I can say it again."
Rick blinked and hurriedly dropped his eyes back to the photographs.
For some reason, looking Aaron in the face was hardest at moments like this.
"Could you be a little less sarcastic?" he muttered, sorting through the photographs with far more diligence than the task required.
Lake stepped away from the wall and stopped nearby.
"Do you really want that?"
Rick's fingers faltered for a moment, nearly dropping one of the photographs.
Damn.
"For God's sake, I was just asking..."
Aaron gave a quiet huff of amusement but said nothing more.
And perhaps that was for the best. Rick was already beginning to regret opening his mouth at all, so he seized the chance to return to work with unexpected relief.
He immediately set about filling the last empty spaces.
Stanley.
John King.
Detective Young.
One by one, the photographs found their places, and the board he had struggled over for the past several days was finally beginning to look complete.
Rick was about to pin up the next photograph when his hand suddenly stopped.
"Lucas?"
He turned toward Aaron.
Lake was standing very close now, his arms folded across his chest.
"Mhm."
"Why is he on here?"
Aaron gave a slight shrug.
"For the same reason as everyone else. If we're going to understand what happened back then—and what's happening now—we have to account for everyone who was involved in one way or another."
Rick looked at the photograph again. Nothing unusual — a familiar profile, an unflattering angle, the edge of the frame slightly blurred. Just Lucas.
“Fine,” he finally agreed, pressing the pin into the wall.
Once he was done with the last photograph, Rick stepped back toward the table and looked over the result.
There were even more people now.
Faces, dates, brief notes on yellow sticky notes — everything was finally there in front of him, but somehow it still didn’t make any more sense. Rick frowned and absently crumpled the empty envelope in his hand. Then he smoothed it out, ran his thumb along the fold, and crumpled it again.
“What are you doing?” Aaron asked.
Rick looked down at the wrinkled paper in his hand.
“Trying to figure out what connects to what.”
“Any luck?”
“Not much so far.”
He smoothed the envelope out again, barely noticing.
“Can I help?”
“You already did.” Rick nodded toward the photographs.
Aaron looked at him in silence but didn’t insist. He moved away at an unhurried pace and stopped by the window.
Outside, everything looked as it usually did: a few scattered pedestrians, wet asphalt, cars parked along the curb. Lake’s gaze moved over them with little interest, but for some reason lingered on a dark car across the street.
He thought he had seen it before.
Aaron frowned slightly, trying to remember where.
“Can you pass me the marker?”
Rick’s voice made him turn around. He had already pulled a fresh sticky note from the stack and was now impatiently turning it between his fingers, still looking at the wall.
“It’s on the table,” he added.
Lake glanced out the window once more, then stepped away and headed toward the table. He found the marker almost immediately.
“Here.”
Rick reached out distractedly and took it. The cap clicked softly, and a moment later the black tip was already moving quickly across the yellow paper.
Aaron remained beside the table.
In front of him lay neatly sorted newspaper clippings and photographs. Yellow sticky notes covered in familiar handwriting showed between them. In some places Rick had limited himself to a single question mark; in others he had somehow managed to squeeze several lines onto a tiny scrap of paper, forcing the final words almost all the way to the edge.
Lake found himself lingering over the notes. They were just like Rick himself: hurried, slightly disorganized, but surprisingly easy to understand for someone who had long since learned to decipher his handwriting.
Only then did his gaze catch on a small box sitting near the edge. Among the pins, scissors, and scraps of red thread, the corner of a photograph was sticking out.
Aaron recognized it immediately.
He carefully pulled the picture from the box.
Steve on the left, Rick in the middle, and beside him — Aaron himself. Arms around one another’s shoulders, hair tousled, laughing so openly as though they still had an endless amount of time ahead of them.
Ten years ago.
His thumb moved unconsciously along the edge of the photograph, and only then did Aaron notice how worn the paper had become. The corners were slightly bent, the surface marked with tiny scuffs, and in places the white border had nearly rubbed away.
The picture clearly hadn’t simply spent all those years lying in a box.
Something painfully warm tightened beneath his ribs.
As Aaron returned the photograph, he accidentally brushed the notebook lying on top. It shifted slightly, revealing the corner of another picture.
He carefully drew it out of the box and recognized the place almost at once.
Three Maples Lake. Cold rain, dark water, and the red-and-blue flashes of sirens cutting through the night.
He was the one in the photograph.
Lake frowned, his gaze lingering involuntarily on his own face. Rick had caught him somewhere between work and another thought — tired, focused, his brows drawn tightly together, wet strands of hair coming loose from his bun. It clearly wasn’t a photograph for the case. The framing was too close. Too personal.
“Was this taken that day at the lake?”
“What day?” Rick frowned without looking away from the sticky note. “What are you talking about…?”
He turned around and froze.
Damn it.
The box.
He had meant to put it away before Aaron arrived. Meant to — and of course, had completely forgotten.
Now Lake was standing by the table with the photograph in his hand, calmly studying something he was never supposed to find.
“Give me that,” Rick blurted in almost a whisper, shoving the marker into his pocket and quickly crossing the room.
He pulled the picture from Aaron’s fingers before he could say anything.
“When did you take it?”
Rick stubbornly stared somewhere at his shoulder.
“If you don’t like it, I’ll throw it away.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what?”
Aaron reached out and took the photograph back with perfect calm. So calmly that Rick didn’t immediately understand what had happened, and when he did, his head snapped up.
“Hey.”
The corner of Lake’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
“But admit it, this isn’t fair.”
“What isn’t?”
“You have a picture of me. I don’t have one of you.”
Rick stared at him for several seconds, trying to decide whether he was joking or serious, but Lake’s utterly composed expression made it impossible to tell.
“Weren’t you the one who said you could get any photograph of me?” he finally reminded him, folding his arms across his chest.
“I can.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Aaron turned the picture slightly between his fingers, examining it again in the lamplight.
“I don’t have one this beautiful.”
The meaning of the words didn’t reach Rick immediately.
“Beautiful?”
“Mhm.”
Lake said it so calmly that Parker was thrown off for a second.
Then he narrowed his eyes.
“Second compliment of the evening? Careful, I might get used to it.”
“Do you want to?”
Rick froze, and when Aaron slowly lifted his eyes to him, he saw the amusement flicker in them quite clearly.
“You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”
“Doing what?”
Rick only snorted and finally looked at him directly, too caught up in the exchange to remember his own embarrassment in time.
“Nothing. Give me the photograph.”
He held out his hand expectantly.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Instead of answering, Aaron lowered his eyes to the picture, as though Rick weren’t standing directly in front of him with his hand outstretched, and the last of Rick’s embarrassment finally gave way to irritation.
“Because it’s good,” he said at last.
“You already said that.”
“No.” The corner of his mouth twitched again. “I said it was beautiful.”
Rick had already opened his mouth, ready to snap back, but for some reason no suitable reply came.
The amusement gradually faded from Aaron’s face, while his finger continued to drift absently along the white edge of the photograph.
“You know how to see people in ways they don’t see themselves.”
Rick faltered. For some reason, he hadn’t expected to hear that in such a tone, and for a while he simply stood there in silence, feeling the tension inside him slowly ease.
Aaron added nothing more and held out the photograph without a word.
Rick didn’t take it immediately. After a brief hesitation, he carefully grasped it by the edge, his fingers brushing Lake’s for a fleeting moment. Aaron loosened his hold, and the paper slid softly into Rick’s palm.
Parker held the photograph for a little longer before silently returning it to its former place — between the pages of a small, worn notebook.
For some time, he simply stood there with his head lowered. He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and only then turned back toward the wall.
His gaze didn’t settle on the photographs right away. For several seconds it wandered meaninglessly among the faces, dates, and taut strings, until suddenly it stopped.
Aaron noticed Rick frown.
“See something?”
Rick moved closer.
“I don’t know. But I have a strange feeling.”
Parker took the marker from his pocket and tapped the cap first against Young’s photograph, then moved it toward King’s.
“It’s just… why is he here again?”
Aaron said nothing.
“Ten years ago, Young closed Katie’s case,” Rick continued, more slowly now. “I still remember them during my questioning. He and King were standing in the hallway, talking, then they shook hands. A few days later, the investigation was shut down.”
“A handshake proves nothing.”
“I know.”
Rick gave him a brief look.
“I’m not saying King did anything. But now bodies have been found. You reopen the old case — and suddenly he starts funding the department.”
“That doesn’t prove anything either.”
“I know that!”
Rick rubbed the bridge of his nose in irritation and looked back at the wall. The marker moved from King to Young, paused near Coop.
Then suddenly stopped.
“Wait.”
Aaron tilted his head slightly.
“Riley told Coop back then,” Rick continued, “that he’d oversee the shipment because he was going to be busy with his own business.”
Lake frowned.
“Fox.”
“Yeah, Fox.” Rick thought for a moment. “What is he going to be busy with?”
Aaron didn’t answer.
Rick looked back at the photographs.
“For some reason, we keep focusing on the shipment. Coop, the money, the product… But if Fox isn’t even involved in it himself, then that means he has something more important going on at the same time.”
“Or he simply doesn’t handle shipments personally anymore.”
Lake stepped away from the table and stopped beside him, studying the photographs too.
“Or that,” Rick conceded reluctantly, but almost immediately tapped King’s photograph again with the marker. “Except then I still don’t understand why he’s here again.”
“You’re talking about King again?”
“Are you suggesting we just remove him?”
“I’m suggesting we don’t draw conclusions from a single handshake.”
“It isn’t just the handshake.”
Rick hooked a finger beneath the string leading to the mayor’s photograph and pulled it taut.
For a while, he simply looked at it.
“Would Hayes shut down the investigation if he asked her to?”
Aaron slipped his hands into his pockets, accidentally brushing Rick’s forearm with his elbow.
“No.”
Rick slowly turned his head toward him.
“Even if he offered a lot of money?”
“Even then.”
Rick remained silent for a little while longer. His fingers still held the taut string, as though he were trying to feel the answer in it.
“Not directly,” he muttered.
“Parker.”
“What?”
“I know that tone.”
Rick only glanced sideways at him.
“He doesn’t need to offer her anything. He’s funding the gala.”
Aaron didn’t answer.
“And the department,” Rick added more quietly. “New equipment, cars… Everything Hayes has been trying to get for the past few years.”
