The first message came through at 8:47 PM on a Tuesday while Keisha was sorting Marcus's pills into the weekly organizer, each compartment labeled with days he increasingly couldn't remember. The phone buzzed against the kitchen table's scarred surface, that old Samsung he refused to upgrade because the buttons were bigger.
"Take your Aricept, Dad," Keisha said without looking up, her scrubs still damp with other people's miseries from her twelve-hour shift at Henry Ford Hospital.
Marcus stared at the screen, his thick fingers trembling not from the disease but from something else, something that made his detective instincts fire across synapses that the doctors said were supposed to be dying.
"Eddie?" he whispered.
"What?" Keisha's head snapped up, the Thursday PM compartment spilling yellow and white pills across the table. "Dad, no. We've talked about this. Eddie's gone."
The message glowed: *Marcus. The Brennan girl. You were right. Check the basement on Gratiot. - E.K.*
"He's texting me." Marcus showed her the phone, his hand steady now, that cop steadiness that thirty-two years on the force had carved into his bones.
Keisha's face did that thing it always did now—that careful arrangement of patience and pity that made him want to throw something. She took the phone, studied it with the same expression she probably used on confused patients who thought it was 1975.
"Dad, this is spam. See? The number's all weird. Probably some scammer."
But Marcus saw her thumb hesitate over the delete button. Sarah Brennan. Even Keisha knew that name, had grown up hearing him and her mother argue about it over Sunday dinners. The sixteen-year-old who'd vanished from a house party in Corktown back in '98, leaving behind only a single Air Jordan and enough blood in the alley to make it homicide's case, not missing persons.
"Eddie's dead, Dad. Three years now. Car accident on I-94, remember? We went to the funeral. You gave the eulogy."
The funeral. Yes. Rain like God was trying to wash Detroit clean, an impossible task. Eddie's widow Marie in that black dress, her eyes avoiding Marcus's because they both knew Eddie had been drinking again, had been ever since the Brennan case went cold. But the car accident—the car accident had been wrong. No skid marks. Eddie's seatbelt still buckled when they found him wrapped around that concrete pillar.
"I need my files," Marcus said.
"Dad—"
"My files, Keisha. In the basement."
She sighed, that bone-deep exhaustion that made him feel guilty and angry in equal measure. "After your pills. And after Trevor gets here. He's bringing dinner."
Trevor. Right. The boyfriend with the too-white teeth and the handshake that tried too hard. Real estate developer, Keisha said. Buying up half of dying Detroit to turn it into craft breweries and yoga studios for white kids from the suburbs.
Another buzz. Marcus grabbed the phone before Keisha could.
*She's not the only one. Check 2003. 2009. 2015. Same house. - E.K.*
"Dad, give me the phone."
"Same house," Marcus muttered, his mind trying to navigate through the fog that seemed thicker each day. "What house?"
The doorbell rang—three short bursts, Trevor's signature. Keisha's face relaxed into something almost like happiness, and Marcus felt that familiar pang. His daughter deserved better than coming home to care for a father whose mind was being eaten alive from the inside. She was thirty-four, should have been married with kids by now, not measuring out his medications and cleaning up when he forgot where the bathroom was.
"I'll get it," she said, taking his phone with her.
Marcus waited until he heard her voice mixing with Trevor's in the foyer, then stood. His knees protested, but his body remembered the movements. He'd made it to the basement door before the vertigo hit, that spinning sensation like the world was trying to shrug him off.
"Mr. Washington?" Trevor's voice, right behind him. How did he move so quiet? "You okay there?"
Marcus turned. Trevor stood there in his expensive suit, concern painted across his catalog-model face. But there was something else in his eyes, something Marcus had seen in interrogation rooms a thousand times. Fear. Not of Marcus, not of an old man with a failing brain. Fear of something Marcus might remember.
"Just needed something from the basement," Marcus said.
"Let me help you. Those stairs are pretty steep."
"I managed them for thirty years."
"Sure, but Keisha would kill me if you fell on my watch." That smile, all those white teeth. "Besides, dinner's getting cold. Chinese from that place you like. Kung Pao chicken, extra spicy."
Marcus let himself be led back to the kitchen, but his mind was working, grinding through the rust and fog. The Brennan house had been on Gratiot. He remembered now—a Victorian that had been converted to apartments. The party had been in the basement unit. Who owned it now?
During dinner, while Trevor told some story about a property he was flipping in Midtown, Marcus watched him. Noticed how he cut his food into precise, equal pieces. How he kept touching Keisha's hand, not affectionate but possessive, like checking she was still there. How his eyes would flick to Marcus whenever the old detective stayed quiet too long.
"Trevor," Marcus said suddenly, his mouth working before his brain could stop it. "You ever develop anything on Gratiot?"
The younger man's chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth. "Gratiot's a long street, Mr. Washington. Got a few properties there. Why?"
"Dad's been thinking about his old cases," Keisha said quickly. "The doctor said it's normal. Long-term memories often stay while recent ones fade."
"Must have been tough, all those unsolved ones," Trevor said, his voice casual but his knuckles white around the chopsticks. "They eat at you?"
"Every damn day."
"Dad was the best detective in the city," Keisha said, pride creeping into her exhaustion. "Highest solve rate in the department."
"Except for the ones that mattered," Marcus said, and didn't miss how Trevor's shoulders relaxed slightly.
After dinner, after Trevor had kissed Keisha goodbye (lingering too long, hands too tight on her waist), after the dishes were done and the pills taken and the locks checked twice because Marcus kept forgetting he'd already done it, he sat in his old recliner and pretended to watch the Tigers lose to Cleveland.
Keisha was in the shower. Her phone lay on the coffee table.
Marcus picked it up. His fingers remembered her passcode—her mother's birthday. The text thread was there, those messages from Eddie's number. But there were more now. How was that possible? He hadn't heard the phone buzz.
*Marcus. I tried to tell you before I died. The developer. The one buying up Corktown. He was at the party. He was seventeen then. - E.K.*
*Check the property records. Shell companies. But the signature's the same. - E.K.*
*He's done it again. And again. Every few years. Young girls. Runaways mostly. Nobody misses them. - E.K.*
*Except cops who can't let go. - E.K.*
*Even dead ones. - E.K.*
Marcus's hands were shaking again, but not from disease. Trevor would have been seventeen in '98. The math worked. But how could Eddie be texting? His rational mind, what was left of it, said this was impossible. Hallucination. Disease eating away at reality.
But the cop in him, the part that had solved a hundred cases on hunches and half-glimpses, knew different. In Detroit, a city built on ruins, where whole neighborhoods disappeared into urban prairie and houses stood empty as skulls, stranger things than messages from the dead had turned out to be true.
He needed those files.
The basement stairs were treacherous in the dark, but Marcus didn't dare turn on the lights. Keisha would hear, would come down, would give him that look. His hip screamed as he descended, one hand on the wall, feeling the dampness that had been seeping through the foundation since before he'd bought the place in '89.
The files were in banker's boxes, labeled in his careful handwriting that had grown shakier over the years. 1998 was near the bottom, of course. His fingers found the Brennan file by touch—thicker than the others, swollen with dead-end leads and witness statements that went nowhere.
The beam of his phone's flashlight made the crime scene photos look like something from another century. That young face, smiling at the DMV. The Jordan shoe, spotted with blood that had looked black under the alley's sodium lights. The basement apartment where the party had been, mattresses on the floor, empty 40s, the detritus of teenage rebellion.
But there—in the corner of one photo. A young man, face turned away from the camera but his profile visible. Tall, lean, wearing a letterman jacket from Brother Rice, the Catholic school in the suburbs where rich kids went.
Marcus pulled out his phone, compared the profile to the real estate photo on Trevor's company website. The nose was the same. The jaw, stronger now but the same basic architecture.
"Dad?"
Keisha stood at the top of the stairs, silhouetted against the kitchen light. "What are you doing down there?"
"Couldn't sleep."
"Come back up. It's not safe."
He climbed the stairs, each step an effort, the file clutched against his chest. Keisha's eyes went to it, her face tightening.
"Dad, no. Not tonight."
"I need to show you something."
"Tomorrow. Please. I'm so tired."
She was crying, he realized. When had she started crying?
"Keish—"
"I can't do this every night. The confusion, the paranoia. I know you think someone's texting you, but Dad, it's your mind playing tricks. The doctor said—"
"Look at the photo."
He thrust it at her, and she took it just to stop him. Her eyes scanned it, dismissive at first, then focusing. The change in her expression was subtle, but Marcus had interrogated too many suspects not to recognize it. She saw something.
"Is that—no. That's impossible."
"What?"
She was staring at the young man in the corner. "He looks like... but Trevor went to Cranbrook. He told me. And he's from Grosse Pointe, not Detroit."
"People lie, Keish."
"Not Trevor." But doubt had crept into her voice. "He's been nothing but good to me. To us. He helped me get the home healthcare aid, found that adult daycare program for you—"
"To get me out of the house."
"To give me a break!" She was really crying now, ugly crying, the kind that came from exhaustion so deep it lived in the bones. "I'm drowning here, Dad. I'm thirty-four years old and I'm drowning. Trevor's the only good thing—"
Another buzz. Both their phones this time.
Marcus looked at his. A photo. Dark, grainy, but unmistakably the basement of a house. A girl's leg visible in the corner, wearing one pink Converse.
The message: *He took another one. Tonight. While he was here. She's still alive. - E.K.*
Keisha was staring at her phone, face pale. "This is sick. Someone's playing a sick joke."
But Marcus was already moving, muscle memory taking over. Check the locks. Get his piece from the safe—no, Keisha had made him give that up. Call for backup—no phone, Keisha had taken his phone.
"Dad, where are you going?"
"The Gratiot house."
"You don't even know which house! There are hundreds—"
"1847 Gratiot. The Brennan house." The address came to him suddenly, clear as day through the fog. "Trevor owns it now. Doesn't he?"
Keisha's silence was answer enough.
"Call 911," Marcus said.
"And tell them what? That my father with Alzheimer's thinks my boyfriend is a serial killer because he's getting texts from a dead man?"
"Tell them to check the basement at 1847 Gratiot. Tell them—" He stopped. She was right. They'd think he was crazy. Hell, maybe he was crazy. Maybe this was all the disease, his mind creating one last case to solve before it went dark forever.
But what if it wasn't?
"I'm going," he said.
"Dad, no. You can't drive. You don't even know where your car keys are."
She was right about that too. But the 67 bus ran all night, and he still had his senior pass.
"Then drive me."
"To an abandoned house in the middle of the night? Based on text messages that are probably spam?"
"Based on thirty-two years of being a cop. Of knowing when something's wrong." He grabbed her hands, noticed how his looked like his father's now, all veins and liver spots. "Keish, please. I know my mind's going. I know most days I don't even remember your mother's gone. But right now, in this moment, I'm clear. And I'm telling you, something's wrong."
She looked at him for a long moment. Then: "I'm calling Trevor first."
"No—"
But she was already dialing. Marcus heard it ring once, twice. Then Trevor's voice, alert despite the late hour.
"Hey baby. Everything okay?"
"Trevor, this is going to sound crazy, but do you own a property at 1847 Gratiot?"
Pause. Too long a pause.
"Why are you asking?"
"Just answer me."
"I own several properties on Gratiot through my company. I'd have to check the exact addresses. What's this about?"
Keisha looked at Marcus. He shook his head, mouthed 'lie.'
"Nothing. Dad was just asking about old cases. The Brennan girl. That house was involved."
"Oh." Relief in Trevor's voice? "Well, I can check tomorrow if you want. But baby, you sound upset. Is your dad having an episode?"
"Something like that."
"I can come back over. You shouldn't have to deal with this alone."
"No, it's fine. We're fine."
"You sure? It's no trouble."
"I'm sure. Good night."
She hung up, looked at Marcus. "He offered to come back."
"To help or to stop us from going to Gratiot?"
"Dad—"
"Get your keys."
"This is insane."
"Maybe. But if there's even a chance there's a girl in that basement, and we do nothing..."
She closed her eyes, and Marcus saw his daughter make a decision. "I'm driving. And if this is nothing, you're going to that daycare program Trevor found. Deal?"
"Deal."
The drive through nighttime Detroit was like traveling through time. Streets Marcus had patrolled as a rookie were now empty lots. Others had sprouted coffee shops and boutique stores, trying to grow something new from the city's corpse. Keisha drove in silence, her hands tight on the wheel of her Honda.
1847 Gratiot sat dark between a liquor store and an empty lot where three houses had been demolished. The Victorian's bones were still good, but the windows were boarded, the porch sagging like a broken smile. A construction company sign stood in the overgrown yard: "Future Site of Gratiot Commons - Luxury Apartments by Hendricks Development."
"This is it?" Keisha asked.
"Yeah." Marcus remembered it now, remembered standing on this same curb twenty-three years ago while the crime scene techs worked. Marie Kowalski bringing him coffee because she knew he'd stand there all night if she didn't make him go home.
"There's Trevor's car."
The white BMW sat in the alley beside the house, trying to hide in the shadows but too clean, too expensive to belong here.
"Keisha, get back in the car."
But she was already out, walking toward the house with the determined stride she'd inherited from her mother. Marcus followed, his knees protesting, his heart hammering in a rhythm that couldn't be healthy.
The front door was new, steel, with a modern lock that didn't match the house's vintage. But the basement window on the side was old, the board over it loose. Marcus pulled it free, the wood crumbling in his hands.
"Dad, we should call the police."
"We are the police. I am." He corrected himself. "Was."
The window opened into blackness that smelled of mold and something else, something copper and afraid. Marcus went first, his body remembering how to move through dark spaces toward danger. The basement was unfinished, dirt floor, stone walls sweating condensation. Their phone lights swept the space, catching an old furnace, stacks of lumber, construction equipment.
And in the corner, barely visible behind a plastic tarp, a pink Converse.
"Oh God," Keisha whispered.
Marcus pulled the tarp aside. A girl, maybe fifteen, unconscious but breathing, hands zip-tied, duct tape over her mouth. Alive. Thank God, alive.
"Call 911," Marcus said, but Keisha was already dialing.
"Well, shit."
They turned. Trevor stood at the bottom of the stairs they hadn't noticed, a gun in his hand. Not pointed at them yet, just held casually, like he was deciding what to do with it.
"You couldn't just let it go, could you, old man?"
"Let her go, Trevor." Keisha's voice was steady, but Marcus heard the betrayal underneath. "Whatever this is, let her go."
"Can't do that, baby. She's seen my face. Just like the others saw my face." He smiled, those perfect teeth catching their phone lights. "Do you know how easy it is? These girls nobody's looking for, nobody cares about. They disappear all the time in this city."
"Sarah Brennan wasn't a runaway," Marcus said, his mind clear now, clearer than it had been in months. "She had a family."
"Sarah Brennan was a mistake. My first. I was seventeen, drunk, didn't think it through. But I learned. I got better at choosing them. Better at making them disappear."
"Eddie knew."
Trevor's smile widened. "Eddie suspected. Started sniffing around after another girl went missing in 2015. Had to have an accident. Just like you're about to have an accident. Old man with dementia wanders into abandoned building, falls down stairs. Tragic."
"I already called 911," Keisha said.
"No, you didn't. You're too smart for that. You wanted to see for yourself first, make sure daddy wasn't completely crazy." He raised the gun, pointed it at Marcus. "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to have a fall. Keisha's going to be devastated. I'm going to comfort her. In a few months, we'll get married. She'll inherit this house, everything you own. We'll be happy."
"You're insane," Keisha said.
"I'm practical. I love you, baby. This doesn't change that."
Marcus stepped forward, putting himself between the gun and his daughter. His knee gave out, and he stumbled, falling to one knee in the dirt. Trevor laughed.
"Look at you. Can't even stand up straight. Some detective."
Marcus's hand found something in the dirt. A brick, rough and solid. His fingers closed around it.
"You know what the sad part is?" Trevor was saying. "In a week, you won't even remember this happened. Your brain will delete it like it's deleted everything else. You'll be drooling in some home while I'm—"
Marcus threw the brick with the same motion he'd used to pitch for the department softball team thirty years ago. It caught Trevor in the temple, dropping him like a bag of cement. The gun went off, the sound enormous in the enclosed space, the bullet hitting somewhere in the dark.
"Dad!" Keisha was there, helping him up, and then they were both at the girl's side, cutting the zip ties with Trevor's dropped pocket knife, pulling the tape gently from her mouth.
Sirens in the distance. Getting closer.
"You did call," Marcus said.
"When I saw his car. I'm not stupid." She was crying again, but different tears now. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you."
"I don't believe me half the time."
Trevor groaned from the floor, blood running from his temple. Not dead. Good. Death was too easy.
The girl's eyes fluttered open, focused on Marcus. "Are you police?"
"Yeah," he said. "We're police."
Later, after the real cops had come, after the girl had been taken to the hospital and Trevor arrested and the basement photographed and catalogued, Marcus and Keisha sat on the hood of her Honda watching the sun come up over Detroit's broken skyline.
"The texts," Keisha said. "How do you explain the texts?"
Marcus pulled out his phone. The thread was gone. No messages from Eddie, no photos, nothing. Like they'd never existed.
"I don't," he said.
"Maybe... maybe some part of your mind, the detective part, it put things together subconsciously. About Trevor, about the houses, about the pattern. And it expressed itself as messages from Eddie because that's who you'd want to tell you."
"Maybe."
"Or maybe Eddie's ghost was texting you from beyond the grave."
"Maybe that too."
They sat in comfortable silence, father and daughter, while the city woke up around them. Marcus knew the clarity wouldn't last. Tomorrow or the next day or next week, the fog would roll back in, thicker than before. He'd forget this night, forget Trevor, maybe forget Sarah Brennan all over again.
But right now, in this moment, he remembered everything. He was Detective Marcus Washington, and he'd solved one last case. He'd saved a girl. He'd protected his daughter.
"Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"Mom would be proud of you."
"Your mom was always proud of me. Even when I didn't deserve it."
"Especially then."
His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number. Marcus almost didn't look, but cop habits died hard, even when the cop's mind was dying too.
*Good work, partner. - E.K.*
He showed it to Keisha. She stared at it for a long moment, then took the phone and deleted the message.
"Come on," she said. "Let's go home."
As they drove away, Marcus looked back at the Gratiot house one last time. For just a second, he could have sworn he saw someone in the upper window. A stocky figure, Polish features, raising a hand in farewell.
Or maybe it was just the morning light playing tricks.
In Detroit, in a city where the past never quite stayed buried and the dead never quite stayed gone, either was possible. Both were probably true.
Marcus closed his eyes and let his daughter drive him home through streets he'd protected for thirty-two years, streets that would go on without him, keeping their secrets and their ghosts and occasionally, when the world lined up just right, delivering justice through the fog of forgetting.
The Brennan girl was going home too, finally.
And somewhere in whatever comes after, Eddie Kowalski was smiling.