Evan was home by eight o’clock. Clay circled around the block before positioning himself outside for continued observation. Evan lived on the top floor of a duplex. It looked like he lived alone, judging by the quiet darkness of his flat upon returning. It was a beaten little home, in dire need of a coat of paint and a replacement for one cracked window. Evan had no visitors. Clay waited and watched, observing the shifting shadows of Evan moving about his flat. The emerald ring was quite possibly between those walls, but Clay knew not to rush these things. He would take his time before taking action.

At eleven o’clock, Evan emerged from his flat, cloaked in dark garbs and cautiously glancing over his shoulder. He took the road that led further away from town, and Clay pursued him from the shadows. Clay considered taking this opportunity to let himself into Evan’s flat and snoop around, but he decided to follow Evan on his nocturnal outing instead—he would have a chance to return to the flat tomorrow. Cold drops of rain began to fall, and the two moved through a nighttime drizzle. Clay was grateful for the rain, and the lack of visibility that came with it. He was practiced in city shadowing, where he could blend in with crowds and duck down alleyways, but in this rural setting Clay was careful to keep a greater distance to make up for the low population density, staying to the edges of the trees out of earshot and sight, just close enough to make out the movement of Evan’s silhouette in the clouded moonlight. Evan walked further from Liltsburgh proper, down the woodsy road, where the distance between homes continued to grow, along with the chirping of nocturnal insects.

At eleven forty, Evan stopped outside a house on Welville Road. The house had a long drive through the trees, with no neighbors in sight. Clay melted fully into the wet shadows, and Evan began moving stealthily as well, crouching low and making his way down the drive. The stalker was being stalked.

After twenty minutes of watching the house and quietly making his way closer, Evan began to whistle. At first, Clay thought it was merely the sound of the wind. It was a soft whistle, barely audible over the drizzling rain, and easily confused with the sounds of a bird or insect. He studied the house, half-expecting to see a window illuminate, assuming that Evan’s whistling was a signal to someone indoors, but the windows remained dark, and there was no observable motion. Evan stalked around the house for another thirty minutes, Clay in undetected tow, before returning to the main road and venturing back to his flat. He made no other stops.

A pickpocket and a Peeping Tom. Clay watched Evan’s flat until morning, the rain clearing with the rising sun. His attention was so wholly focused on Evan’s movements and abode that he was not struck with the cumulative exhaustion and discomfort of sneaking about all night in the rainy woods until after dawn, when the morning folk of Liltsburgh began emerging from their homes.

Clay broke from his ongoing observation to change clothes at the hotel down the street. The hotel was an old, converted manor with ivy crawling up its sides, a few vacant rooms upstairs, and one hungover employee manning the front desk. He raised an eyebrow at Clay’s appearance, including damp, muddy clothing, and bloodshot eyes, but he made no comment. Clay donned a fresh pair of clothing, and poured himself a cup of coffee from the self-serve station in the lobby, mentally ranking it above yesterday’s train-coffee but below Seymour’s brew. The coffee helped to perk him up—he could sleep later.

When Clay returned to Evan’s flat, he spotted Evan heading in the direction of Campbell’s Cuts, dressed in his butcher shop attire. This was the moment of solitude that Clay had been anticipating. He made his way to the door of Evan’s flat, and worked the cheap lock with two thin, metal picks. After a minute of gliding the picks back and forth, feeling out the innards of the lock and adjusting the tension and angle, the door popped open with a swift click. Clay let himself inside.

The disordered exterior of the flat matched the interior. Clay stepped over discarded clothing and food scraps, focused on locating Seymour Thompkins’ emerald ring. He started in the bedroom, going through the desk and dresser, sifting through loose papers and clothing. He checked on and under the bed, under the pillows and sheets, and between the mattress and frame. He felt for loosened floorboards and hollowed sections of the walls, and checked behind the few hanging picture frames and mirrors for hidden compartments.

Every cabinet and drawer was thrown open. Every page of every book was fanned out, and the bindings examined. He pulled back the stained rug, the moth-eaten curtains, and inspected all of Evan’s furniture, examining the floor for traces of fresh sawdust or glue in case a chair, shelf or table had been tampered with and repurposed as a vessel for the ring. Every cushion and article of clothing was probed in case the ring had been sewn within. Clay sifted through the food in Evan’s kitchen, running fine instruments through containers of salt, sugar, flour and spices. All pots and pans were taken from the shelves and turned over in the light.

Clay studied every square foot of the flat before setting Evan’s things back in their original places.

The emerald is not here. Clay was only confident with this conclusion after several hours of methodical searching. He sat on the floor at the center of the flat, trying to imagine some unexplored hiding spot that he had overlooked. He had gathered details about Evan by going through his possessions, including his surname (Hislop), his age (twenty years and four months), and the fact that he had resided in Liltsburgh for most of his life. The location of the ring remained elusive. Clay began to wonder if Evan was the pickpocket at all—did the red jacket and flat cap from the fish market even belong to Evan? Clay had little doubt that Evan was the man he was looking for, but the ring was not being kept at his flat. Perhaps it was on Evan’s body, or it was being held by another party.

Clay opted to return to Campbell’s Cuts, to ensure that Evan was still occupied there. The last thing that he wanted was for Evan to skip town without him noticing. Clay ordered a cup of coffee on the same street as the butcher shop, and he took a moment to rest and reflect on the outdoor bench. Eyes closed and posture reclined, Clay planned his next move, considering the pros and cons of returning to the house on Welville Road from last night, digging up the soil around Evan’s flat in case the ring had been buried, or seeking out Evan’s local friends and family.

Clay nearly dozed off in the warm sun when Alec Burke appeared beside him.