Stitch counted the torn pages again. Six. The journal had held forty. Somewhere in those missing pages, a dead woman had written the killer's name. He spread the six scraps across his desk under the lamp. Rain streaked the shadowed windows of his apartment. His tortoiseshell cat watched from the sill, her patchwork coat orange and black in the lamplight. The scraps told him little. A date. A half-sentence about a meeting at the water. One torn edge read "he came by boat." The rest of the sentence was gone. Stitch had dragged these six from the mud the night the woman died. The wind had scattered the others before he arrived. He pressed the edges together and found a match. Two scraps lined up. The woman had written about a place she feared. A shelter on the river where a man kept his boat. Stitch knew only one such building near the spot she was found. He pulled on his coat. The cat followed him to the door and cried once. "Stay," he said, and locked her inside. The river ran high and brown. The boathouse stood on stilts above the dock, its wood siding gray with age. Oars hung in a neat row along the front wall. The doors were shut but not locked. Stitch pushed inside. Damp air met him. Coils of rope hung from pegs. A small boat rocked in the slip. And across the planks, caught against a mooring post, lay a clump of pale paper, soaked and curled. The scattered pages. The current had pushed them under the dock and lodged them here. Stitch knelt and gathered them with both hands. Wet. Fragile. Some had rotted to pulp. But many held. He counted as he worked. Twelve pages. Fifteen. He peeled them apart slowly so the ink would not smear. Then a small orange shape darted past his boot. A kitten, soaked and shivering, had been hiding among the pages. It had been chewing a bundle of green stalks someone left on the dock. Catnip. The kitten had dragged pages loose, scattering them again across the wet planks. Stitch grabbed for the pages before they slid into the water. He saved most. Two floated out of reach and sank. He clutched the rest to his chest and breathed hard. Back under his lamp, he laid them out to dry. He fit the scraps together, edge to edge, hour after hour. The name should have been there. He found the sentence that promised it. "The man who did this is—" The next word was gone. Those were the two pages the kitten had sent into the river. Stitch stared at the gap. He had the whole journal now but one word. The killer's name had sunk beneath the dock where he knelt an hour ago. He would have to go back into that water.

Stitch stood on the boathouse dock at dawn. One word still missing. The killer's name. Two pages had sunk here the day before, swallowed by the brown current. He knew the river would eat the ink soon. He had one chance to pull them out before they turned to pulp. He had come ready. A long-handled net rested against the wall. He gripped the wooden shaft and swept the mesh through the water below the dock. Mud swirled up. He dragged the hoop back and forth, chasing shadows. On the fourth sweep the net snagged something heavy. His heart jumped. He lifted it, water pouring through the mesh. Only a tangle of weed and a rotted board. No pages. He swept again. Nothing. The current ran too deep. The pages had slid under the dock pilings, past the net's reach. Stitch set the net down and stared at the dark water. The net had failed. He needed to go under himself. A diving suit hung on a peg inside the boathouse, left by whoever once kept the boat. The surface was patched in a dozen places, the seams worn soft. Stitch checked the helmet glass and the gloves. The repairs held air. He climbed into the suit, sealed the helmet, and lowered himself off the dock. Cold pressed the patched panels against his skin. The water turned him blind. He felt along the muddy bottom with both gloved hands. His fingers found bottles, a sunken oar, slick stone. Then paper. Two curled sheets wedged against a piling. He closed his hand around them slowly and pushed up toward the light. He broke the surface and hauled himself onto the planks. He peeled the helmet off and gasped. In his glove lay the two pages, soaked and heavy but whole. The ink had smeared but not vanished. He could still see dark letters crowding the torn edge. Stitch carried them home with care. In his apartment he set the pages between the smooth boards of a paper press. His tortoiseshell cat watched from the sill. He turned the handle slow, squeezing the water out drop by drop. He waited. He did not breathe. When he lifted the top board, the pages lay flat and dry enough to read. He bent close over the smeared line. "The man who did this is—" The name followed. The letters had run together in the water. He could read the first part clearly. The rest had blurred into a gray smudge he could not make out. Stitch sat back. He had the pages. He had half a name. A first name, maybe. Not enough to point at one man. But enough to narrow the hunt. He pressed the smudge with his fingertip, as if he could rub the ink back into shape. The river had given up its secret and kept part of it. He would have to find the rest another way.

Stitch returned to the boathouse to read the pages in daylight. He laid them on the dock and bent close. A floorboard creaked behind him in the empty building. He turned. No one. But the latch on the far window hung open, and he had closed it the day before. Someone had been here while he dove. Someone was watching him work. He thought of the dead woman. She had kept a boat here. She had ended in the river. If the killer knew Stitch had her pages, Stitch would follow her down. He could not keep working in the open. He had to vanish and still finish the name. He made a plan. He owned a lantern with a dial on its base. He set the dial to burn for an hour, placed it on the dock, and turned up the glow. Through the window it looked like a man bent over his work. Then he gathered the pages, pocketed a lump of amber sap with iron sealed inside it, and slipped out the river side. Across the water stood an old customs house, shutters loose, no one minding it for years. Stitch crossed to it and climbed inside through a broken shutter. The tall windows let him watch the boathouse while he stayed hidden in shadow. He spread the pages on the dusty sill and worked on the smudged name. An hour passed. The lantern across the water dimmed and died on its timer. The boathouse went dark. Stitch waited. A shape moved along the far bank toward the dark boathouse. The watcher had waited for the light to fade. Stitch gripped the weighted sap and held still. The shape reached the dock, eased the door open, and slipped inside. Stitch saw the man strike a match. The small flame lit a face he knew. The twitchy dockhand. Finn Shakes. His hands shook as he searched the planks where the lantern had sat. He was looking for the pages. Finn found nothing. He kicked the dead lantern into the river and cursed. Then his head snapped up toward the customs house, as if he felt eyes on him. Stitch dropped below the sill. His heart slammed. Finn stared a long moment, then hurried off along the bank and was gone. Stitch let out his breath. The trick had worked. The watcher thought him fled, and now Stitch knew the watcher's face. But knowing changed everything. Finn worked the docks every day. He had seen Stitch dive. He wanted these pages badly enough to hunt them in the dark. Stitch looked at the smudged name on the page. The first part he could read. He whispered it against Finn's full name and felt the match land cold in his gut. He had hidden from the man watching him. Now he carried proof the man would kill to bury, and Finn knew exactly where the river had led.

Stitch stared at the pressed pages by lamplight. The first part of the name fit Finn Shakes. But it fit others too. Three men on the docks shared that start. Accuse the wrong one, and the real killer walked free. He needed more than half a name. He needed proof. At dawn he went to the docks. He kept his cap low and watched the men work the morning haul. He studied their hands, their gear, the way each man moved. The dead woman had written about her killer. He hoped her words matched something he could see. The tables near the fish stalls were crowded. Dockhands set their tools down while they ate. Stitch drifted past the long wooden table and looked without seeming to look. Knives. Hooks. Coiled rope. Then one glove, dropped alone on the planks. He bent and picked it up. Leather, worn soft, covered in bold tattoo-like markings in red and green. He had seen those same markings before. On the last page from the river, the woman had sketched the killer's hand. She had drawn the pattern of a marked glove. Stitch's pulse jumped. Half a name meant nothing. This meant everything. He turned the glove over and matched each loop and swirl to the drawing in his memory. It fit. "That's mine." Finn Shakes stood at the table's end. His eyes twitched to the glove, then to Stitch's face. His hand shook as it reached out. "Give it here." Stitch did not move. "She drew this," he said. "The woman from the river. She drew your hand before you killed her." Finn's face went pale. For one breath he looked ready to run. Then he lunged across the table and grabbed for the glove. Stitch stepped back and held it high. Other dockhands looked up. A fish fell off a crate. "He killed her," Stitch said, loud now. "The pages name him. This proves it." Finn froze. Every man on the dock had stopped. They stared at him, at his shaking hands, at the guilt plain on his face. He could not grab the glove with all of them watching. He could not run without proving the words true. "You've got nothing," Finn said. But his voice cracked. "I've got your hand," Stitch said. He held the glove against the memory of the drawing one last time. The match was perfect. The half name was Finn. The marked glove was Finn. No other man on these docks wore it. Finn backed away. His eyes darted to the river, to the alleys, to the men closing in. Then he turned and ran. He shoved through the crowd and vanished down the waterfront. Stitch let him go. He closed his fist around the glove. He had the name now, and the proof to match it. But Finn was loose and desperate, and he knew Stitch held the thing that would hang him.

Finn was loose. He knew Stitch held the pages, and he knew where Stitch kept them. The dried sheets sat in the customs house, pressed and fragile. Stitch understood Finn would double back to burn them. He had to move the proof somewhere safe, and he could not watch his own back alone. He went to the one man on the waterfront who hunted people for a living. Marcus Reeve had retired years ago, but his hands still rested near his holster out of habit. Stitch found him oiling a pistol on a crate. The old bounty hunter did not look up. "I need eyes on a man who means to kill me," Stitch said. Marcus wiped the barrel slow. "Men who mean to kill you are cheap. What's the job?" "Shadow Finn Shakes. The moment he turns back toward the river, warn me." Marcus studied him. "You've got something he wants." "The thing that hangs him," Stitch said. The old man stood. His knees cracked. "Then don't keep it where he thinks it is." Stitch nodded. He already had a plan. He crossed to the customs house and gathered the pressed pages. He sealed them inside a heavy box, its sides dense and lined, built to keep out water and flame. Then he set a trap in their place. On the empty table he left a small brass pocketwatch, timeworn and loved, the kind a man misses for years. He had found it in the mud near the boathouse. It was Finn's. Finn would see it and believe Stitch had only begun to search here. Stitch carried the sealed box through the streets toward the magistrate's courthouse. Stone steps rose tall before him. Once the pages were in official hands, Finn could not burn his way free. Halfway there, a shape fell into step beside him. Marcus, breathing hard. "He turned," Marcus said. "Headed for the customs house. Fast." Stitch's chest tightened. "Let him. There's nothing left but a decoy." "He'll know he's been played," Marcus said. "Then he'll come for me instead of the pages." Stitch climbed the steps two at a time. He pushed through the heavy doors and set the box on the clerk's counter. He opened the lid. The dried sheets lay flat and whole. He pointed to the name along the top edge, and to the sketch of the marked glove on the last page. "This names a killer," Stitch said. "Finn Shakes. I have the glove to match." The clerk called for the magistrate. Men in dark coats gathered. The pages passed from Stitch's hands into theirs. Outside, Marcus caught his arm. "The customs house is burning," he said. "Finn found the watch. He knows the pages are here now. And he knows you walked them through that door." Stitch looked back at the smoke rising over the river. The proof was safe. But Finn had nothing left to lose, and now he had a name to hate.

The pages sat in official hands now, but they named only half the killer. The water had eaten the rest of the name on the journal sheets. Stitch had delivered them to the magistrate, yet the clerk had frowned. Half a name proved nothing. To tie the pages to Finn Shakes, Stitch needed a sample of Finn's own writing. He had none. So he went looking for a man who kept other people's words. The post office stood by the water, its siding gray from salt. Inside, Morton Peebles sorted letters behind the counter. The old postmaster peered through thick glasses, reading each address before he set it down. He had spied on half the town through its mail. If anyone had touched Finn's handwriting, it was him. "Finn Shakes," Stitch said. "Did he ever send a letter through here?" Morton's eyes lit up. He loved a question with a secret under it. "Finn? That twitchy boy wrote letters for a girl once. Paid me to hold them when she moved upriver. Never came back for them." He leaned close. "Why do you want them?" "They settle a debt," Stitch said. Morton weighed that. Then he bent below the counter and drew out a bundle tied with faded ribbon. Sealed envelopes, stacked and soft at the corners. He set them down but kept one finger on the ribbon. "These stay mine until I hear a good reason," he said. "A woman is dead," Stitch said. "The man who wrote these killed her. The court holds pages with his name, but the name is half gone. His hand on these letters finishes it." Morton's finger lifted. He slid the bundle across the counter. Stitch loosened the ribbon. He opened the top envelope and unfolded the page. The writing crawled across it, cramped and jittery, the letters leaning hard to the left. He drew the journal sheet from his coat and laid it beside the letter. The torn name began with the same crooked F, the same shaking tail. A match. The same hand had written both. He had his proof. He tied the bundle again and turned for the door. A shape blocked the gray light outside. Finn stood on the steps, hat low, hands twitching at his sides. His eyes went to the bundle under Stitch's arm, then to the journal sheet still in his fist. "Those are mine," Finn said. His voice shook like his hands. Stitch backed toward the counter. Morton went still behind him. "The court already has your name," Stitch said. "Now it has your hand to prove it." Finn's face broke. He knew what the letters meant. He lunged for the bundle, caught the ribbon, and tore half the stack free. Then he bolted into the street, letters spilling behind him. Stitch gripped what was left. Enough pages to match the name. But Finn had torn away the rest, and now he knew exactly where the proof lived.