Coraline slept surprisingly well in the big leather chair—a gift from her father when he and her mother decided Florida suited them better than Canada. Curled into the warm hide, she’d finally found a pocket of real rest.
Abrupt knocking yanked her back. Arthur MacLeod’s voice boomed through the door. “Up, kid. I’m taking you to lunch. That’s an executive decision.”
She blinked, smoothed the line the chair had pressed into her cheek, and sat up. “I object.”
“Overruled,” he said, already turning the knob. “You look like a closing argument that ran two days long. Come on.”
Coraline grabbed her blazer, tucked her notepad into the inner pocket, and followed him out, the promise of coffee almost as persuasive as the order.
“I’m fine—just a bit overworked,” she grumbled, meeting Arthur at the door.
He folded his arms, tipped his head. “I remember when you were born, kid. I can read you like a book.”
For a beat, an alarm went off in the back of her mind—does he know?—but he kept talking.
“And I know this Alice Little case is bringing out the best in you and running you ragged. That’s the trouble with taking a case for a friend. It gets personal, and when it gets personal, it pulls things out of you you didn’t know were there.”
Coraline blew out a breath. “Comes with the territory.”
“Sure,” he said, softer now. “But it doesn’t have to come with low blood sugar. Lunch. Now.”
“Fine,” she said—in that tone Coraline reserved for exactly three people: Arthur, her father, and, if she was feeling brave, her mother. “Where to?”
“A little deli I know just off Bloor,” Arthur said, smirking. “Next to a butcher shop. Best pastrami you’ve ever had, or I’ll eat my hat.”
“You don’t wear hats,” she said, falling in beside him.
“Nope. Make my head look big. Real shame. Always fancied a nice trilby, but the finer points of haberdashery never suited my cranium diameter.”
Coraline kept her face straight and failed by half a millimeter. “Tragic.”
They started for the elevator. She tried not to smile at his eccentricities; she knew better. Off the clock, when the suit gave way to flannel and slacks, Arthur was worse. Her father always said Arthur had the money for tailored suits but dressed like he shopped at K-Mart.
They reached the doors. Arthur stabbed the call button with a knuckle. “Come on, kid. Food before martyrdom.”
“Working on both,” she said, and when he’d turned away, the word butcher nicked her thoughts—Bloor, a shop, an apron, a name. She smoothed her blazer, let the doors part, and stepped in. Lunch first. Then the hunt.
“I’m fine—just a bit overworked,” she muttered as the elevator started down.
Arthur—rarely one to tolerate silence when his own voice could fill it—went first. “Listen, kid. I almost didn’t let you put yourself on Alice’s case. It’s rough when the media’s circling, rougher when it’s a friend.”
Coraline nodded, then let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding. “I can count the people who didn’t give up on her on one and a half hands.”
Arthur set a hand on her shoulder. “Believe me, I get it. My first real case? My younger brother. I charged in headfirst, blinders on.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Dad mentioned that once or twice.”
A pensive crease tugged his brow. “I put everything into his defense and then some.”
The elevator slid open into the lobby and they stepped out, passing a row of rubber trees in marble planters.
“And you lost,” she said.
“Yeah.” He kept walking. “I can live with losing fair and square. What gutted me was that he was guilty—grand larceny. He lied to me. Told me he was innocent, and I believed him right up until the evidence said otherwise.”
They moved through security and out into the daylight of Toronto Streets.
“Can’t imagine that was easy,” Coraline said.
“Part of the job,” Arthur answered. “You stay professional, even when the client turns out… less than you hoped. The fact it was my brother—that’s what hurt. It’s not like we were hard up. Felt like he stole the car just to joyride.”
They paused at the curb. Arthur tipped his chin toward the deli. “So. Pastrami before philosophy?”
Coraline managed a small smile. “Overruled and sustained.”
Arthur snorted. “Your legal jokes are almost as bad as your old man’s.”
They crossed to a narrow storefront with a hand-painted sign: Sal’s Sandwiches. No pretenses, no trendy décor—just scuffed tile, a chalkboard menu, and a bell that jingled like it meant it.
“Salvador’s been making sandwiches since the sixties,” Arthur said as they reached the counter. “Magician with meat and cheese.”
A heavyset older man with a warm, indeterminate Mediterranean lilt waved a towel. “Eh, Arthur! How’s my favourite customer?”
Arthur chuckled. “Favourite? Sal, you say that to everyone.”
“Because it’s true,” Sal said, delighted. “Now what for you and the young lady?”
Arthur leaned on the glass, conspiratorial. “The usual. Make it a double—one for me, one for my colleague.”
Sal nodded and went to work with surprising speed, hands sure as blades. “Got it—two Reubens. Pastrami, Swiss, sauerkraut, Russian dressing—coming right up!”
Coraline watched the dance: the steam off the meat, the rye shaved thin, the squeak of the slicer. Through the window she caught the butcher shop next door—the glint of a boning knife on a hook—and filed the word butcher away like a pin on a map. Lunch first. Then names.
“You get your meat next door?” Coraline asked, casual as small talk while she watched Sal work.
He snorted without looking up. “Me? No. I do it in back. Brine my own briskets, steam ‘em slow. That new butcher’s a nice place, sure, but they’ve got a racket—‘farm to table,’ ‘artisanal cuts,’ certified this, certified that, then charge extra for the experience.”
Coraline smiled like a customer and not a hunter. “New owners local?”
“Out of town originally,” Sal said, laying down rye like cards. “Country—Guelph way, if I had to guess; sideroad this, co-op that. A nice young lady runs the counter most days—polite, always smiling. Their cutter’s a quiet one. Doesn’t own the place, just works there. Keeps odd hours; I’m here at five and his lights are still on from the night before. Smells like bleach when the door swings.”
“Clean shop’s a good shop,” she said lightly.
He shrugged. “Funny thing—I’ve seen him work. The guy cuts both right- and left-handed. Goes back and forth without missing a beat. On a boning knife, you don’t see that much.”
Coraline let the fact settle. Ambidextrous. Odd hours. Bleach. “Must make for pretty work.”
“Sharp work,” Sal said, with a craftsman’s respect. He wrapped the stack in wax paper and slid it across. “Two Reubens—and pickles, because I’m a generous man. Tell your friend he still owes me a hat.”
Arthur made a show of tipping an imaginary brim. “Put it on my tab.”
Coraline took the sandwiches, the detail already filed where it needed to live. Another stitch in the pattern.
She sat and eyed the Reuben—generously portioned, rye stacked like architecture. Arthur grinned. “Sal gives you your money’s worth. You eat at Sal’s, you eat a proper lunch.”
Coraline nodded and took a bite. Warm pastrami, tang of sauerkraut, the soft punch of dressing. “I may have to save half for after work,” she said around a smile, eyeing the heft.
“Wise,” Arthur said, unwrapping his. “Second acts are important.”
Through the window, the butcher shop’s OPEN sign rocked on its suction cup. Coraline let her gaze pass over it like any other customer, filed the detail, and went back to the sandwich. Fuel first. Then names.
They ate in companionable quiet. When Arthur neared the last bite and Coraline asked for the rest of hers to go, she glanced across the window at the butcher’s sign.
“Think we’ve got time to swing by the butcher before lunch is over?” she asked, casual.
Arthur rolled his eyes. “My name and your father’s are on the door. Lunch is as long as we damn well want it to be.”
She shook her head, smiling. “You are the most unprofessional professional lawyer I’ve ever met. Thanks. I want to check the merchandise before we head back.”
Arthur crumpled his wax paper, dropped a few bills on the counter for Sal, and tipped an imaginary hat. “Field trip it is.”
They stepped into the street and crossed. The butcher’s bell gave a clean, high jangle as they entered. Cold air, metal, and bleach—sharp enough to taste. A chalkboard listed the day’s cuts in tidy block letters. Behind the counter, the young woman Sal had mentioned looked up with a practiced smile.
“Afternoon. What can I get you?” she asked.
“Just having a look,” Arthur said, already eyeing the pastrami’s spiritual cousins in the case. “Maybe something for the weekend.”
Coraline let him play customer and took in the room: hooks empty but polished, a narrow drain cut into the tile, a certificate clipped by the register—Butcher’s Guild, the ink still new. In the prep window beyond, a shadow moved—tall, intent, hands quick and sure. She watched for the smallest tell.
Ambidextrous, Sal had said.
“Take your time,” the young woman said, friendly, unhurried.
Coraline nodded, stepping closer to the glass. “We will.”
She had a feeling Arthur would later scoff at the markup—surprisingly frugal for a man whose salary had enough zeros to inspire envy. She pretended to compare prices while stealing glances at the prep window. The butcher moved in profile; measured against the doorframe, he was six feet and a little change, broad through the shoulders, the kind of “farm arms” that come from work, not gyms.
The young woman at the counter smiled and spoke the line the shop rode on. “All our meat is fresh from the farm—minimal processing, cut by an expert butcher.”
Arthur was eyeing up some peameal bacon. Coraline feigned interest in stuffed pork chops. “He certainly does good work,” she said, letting admiration pass for curiosity.
Her gaze slid to a framed certificate by the register—ink still new. Recipient: Callum Campbell. The name clicked down through her notes like dominoes.
In the back, steel kissed steel. The butcher’s blade flashed, then—almost casually—he switched hands mid-stroke and cleaned a seam without losing the line. Ambidextrous. Bleach rode the cold air when the door swung. Coraline kept her face pleasant, her pulse steady, and tucked the detail away where it belonged.
She was already planning for the Vulpes to pay the butcher shop a visit after hours. She wasn’t going to assume Campbell’s guilt—not without evidence—but this was the strongest lead she’d had, and the fox didn’t back down once she caught a scent.
She and Arthur left with a paper parcel or two. On the sidewalk, Arthur huffed about the markup the word artisanal seemed to justify these days. Coraline nodded, half listening. Back across Bloor, her mind kept shuffling pieces into a picture: ambidextrous cuts, bleach, odd hours, a hog-farm childhood, a certificate on the wall. The probability rose like a tide.
If Callum Campbell wasn’t the Bloodletter, he was close enough to hear the heartbeat.
Either way, she’d be waiting when those lights stayed on too late.
Back at the office, Coraline sat, pulled her notepad close, and woke the laptop. Vulpes had another note to send. She drafted a short, untraceable email to Detective Benoit—parish dates, the locker plant, ambidextrous cutter, the name that kept surfacing—and hit send. She expected Liv to move when it landed, but procedure moved at its own pace, and the forty-eight-hour window she’d thrown in the Bloodletter’s face was already closing.
She finished the work that wore her real name. The fax machine chattered—Dr. White’s intake. She signed where Arthur had flagged, stacked the forms, and set a reminder for the filing run.
Vows to keep, on both sides of the skin. Justice as Coraline; the hunt as Vulpes. Promises to a friend, and a vow to her grandfather's memory that sometimes pulled her lives apart and sometimes pressed them together. Maybe other masked crime fighters wrestled with the same math.The thought, It didn’t comfort her. She’d chosen this knowing exactly how hard it would be to be the woman behind the mask.
She checked the clock. Dusk would be a better hour for questions that didn’t belong on letterhead. She opened the bottom drawer, touched the soft weight of a black duffel, and let the day narrow to a line.
Tonight, the fox was going to pay the butcher a visit
