Adam returned home three hours early from his business trip to surprise his pregnant wife, Lily.
The morning light felt harsh after the cellar’s gloom. Lily was awake, sipping herbal tea, her face pale but resolute. I told her about Julian’s fraudulent filings, careful to omit the chilling whispers from the wall. Her eyes widened, a flicker of comprehension.
“He wants the house,” she murmured, clutching the teacup. “But why? What’s so special about it?”
I didn’t have an answer yet. My priority was finding the doctor. Lily’s description was vague: average height, cold eyes, a faint scar near his left ear. Not much to go on. But her memory of his bag was more specific: a worn leather satchel, a faint, sweet smell of formaldehyde and something metallic.
I called my contact, Marcus Thorne, a retired city planner with an encyclopedic knowledge of Boston’s underbelly and its professional licenses. He’d helped me before with forgotten tunnel maps.
“I need to find an unlicensed doctor,” I explained, “operating in the shadow economy. Maybe a disgraced one. Came through a basement access point. Scar on his ear, old leather bag.”
Marcus hummed, a low, thoughtful sound. “Sounds like an Aris to me. Dr. Aris Finch. Or at least, that’s what he’s calling himself these days.”
He gave me a location: a rundown clinic above a laundromat in South Boston, a place no reputable doctor would ever set foot in. “He owed a lot of people money,” Marcus added, his voice dropping. “Especially ‘The Syndicate.’ He wouldn’t be doing anything this messy unless someone had a heavy hand on him.”
The laundromat was noisy, the air thick with detergent and stale cigarette smoke. I pushed open the door to the clinic upstairs. It was sparse, clinical, and smelled faintly of antiseptic. A weary-looking receptionist barely looked up.
“Dr. Finch?” I asked.
She pointed to a closed door. I knocked. No answer. I pushed it open.
A man sat hunched over a desk, rifling through papers. He was mid-fifties, with tired eyes and a distinctive, jagged scar just below his left earlobe. He froze when he saw me, his hand tightening on a cheap ballpoint pen.
“Dr. Finch?” I said, stepping inside, letting the door click shut behind me. “I believe you visited my wife last night.”
His face paled. He didn’t deny it. “Look, I… I was told it was an emergency. A routine procedure. Mr. Kincaid assured me.” His voice was thin, reedy.
“A routine procedure that involved entering through my basement wall and assaulting my pregnant wife?” I took another step, my hands clenching at my sides. “Who is Julian Kincaid to you, Doctor?”
He swallowed hard, his gaze darting around the room as if searching for an escape. “He… he owns a share in a game.”
“A game?”
“A poker game. Deep beneath the city. He covers the house’s action sometimes. Big stakes.” Finch wrung his hands. “I had a run of bad luck. Lost eighty-five thousand. Not cash, mind you. Markers.”
An $85,000 poker debt. My mind reeled. This wasn’t about money for Kincaid. This was about leverage.
“Julian Kincaid offered to erase your debt,” I pressed, “if you did his dirty work. If you illegally terminated my wife’s pregnancy.”
Finch’s shoulders slumped. He looked up at me, his eyes wide and terrified. “He said it was about an ancient curse. A bloodline. He was raving, but he holds my markers. If those get called in, I’m ruined. Permanently.”
He gestured vaguely. “I have no license, Mr. Montgomery. My career was already in tatters. I needed those markers erased. He promised it would be a simple, quiet procedure. He never said anything about…” He trailed off, gesturing to the fresh bandage on his arm, a dark stain already seeping through.
“He said the baby carried a debt,” I repeated Lily’s words, “that would ruin him. What kind of debt?”
Finch shook his head. “I don’t know, Mr. Montgomery. I swear. He spoke of old contracts, of a family pact, of a ‘Shadow’ that would be freed if the debt wasn’t cleared. He was utterly convinced.”
He was convinced. And he was using a man in deep debt to act on that conviction. The thought of Julian Kincaid, the wealthy antiquarian, involved in an underground poker syndicate and holding a doctor’s markers was jarring. It was a level of cunning and desperation I hadn’t expected.
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