Angel Devine does not ask for help unless the room is already burning.

When she walks into Frank Mercer’s office with a severed ear wrapped in newspaper, Frank knows the case is already rotten.

The scar on the lobe gives the dead man a name.

Lou Vescari.

A bookkeeper who once worked for Marcy.
Then Angel.
Then vanished.

Before Frank can make sense of the ear, Murph calls him to the docks. A body has been pulled from the river. Waterlogged. Cut apart. Wrapped in a woman’s crimson coat.

Lou Vescari.

But the body has not been in the river long. It has been stored somewhere else, then dumped where Frank would find it.

The message carved into the coat makes the case personal.

You let the devil in.

Then another piece appears at Frank’s door.

Lou’s hand.

On the palm, written in black marker:

You let her in.

Frank knows who “her” means.

Angel.

And the deeper he digs, the more the case circles back to Marcy, the Ember Room, and the night Angel Devine stopped being a singer and became something far more dangerous.