He crossed the room to the body slumped in the chair and looked at the TV. An image paused on the screen of another man chained to a white plastic shower chair. Naked but for stainless-steel dog tags on a chain about his neck and the blood-splashed pet-cone that hid his entire head. On the floor beside him lay his amputated leg flensed to the bone. It took Dolan a moment to realize that the leg was in fact prosthetic.

He went through the piled clothes that had been scissored off the body of the grey-headed man and found a leather wallet. 196He opened it. A police warrant card. Detective Chief Inspector Carlin. He lifted the head of the sitting corpse and compared its face to the photo. Same man. He looked at the metal badge, touched it, pocketed it. Back at the desk he opened the orange case and looked at the money.

1

In later months Lynch sat on the edge of his bed in the concrete tomb of his single cell. Single for his protection. They still got to him. He looked through beaten eyes at the photo of his mother and him, remembering the time she’d held him in her arms in the small back room of their old house and how together they’d watched snow flow silently out of the night. His earliest memory. Lifetimes ago. He put the photo in its envelope and slid it under his pillow with the letters from friends on the force and from Kat. He pulsed with a motherless ache.