Ferris had never seen his apartment so clean. Even on the day he had first moved in, when the space held nothing but a piano and a bare mattress, the floor hadn’t been quite so polished. He could nearly see his reflection in the wood, a wide-eyed face staring...

The day peeked in through a set of brown curtains, a halo of white against the murk of the room. The sheets had been torn from the motel bed, spilling over the stiff mattress and onto the floor. Demos pushed himself upright, a ghost rising from a corpse. His...