“A homicide. A woman was suffocated on the southeastern side. It’ll be on the eleven p.m. news.” The media rush had begun about 4:00 p.m. with a couple of reporters, and by the time she’d left the scene an hour ago, there were three news vans and several other journalists.

“How did she suffocate?” Avery asked.

Jordan allowed a breath to leak out over her lips. “Someone put a plastic bag over her head.”

“Shit.” Avery pressed her fingertips to her temple, against the vein that pulsed when she was tired. “Wasn’t there another woman like her about two weeks ago?”

Jordan stared up at the bright stars. “Yeah. How did you hear about her? There wasn’t much media coverage.”

“I heard about it at the café. We get a lot of cops there. And don’t worry, nothing sensitive was discussed. It was just the basic facts found in a press release.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a horrible way to die,” Avery said. “That feeling of needing air and not being able to get it is terrible.”

Jordan had learned she had been less than a few minutes behind the man who had shoved the plastic into Avery’s mouth. Avery always said she did not remember much about the man or why he had done it.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jordan asked.

Moonlight caught the curls framing Avery’s face. “I’m not as fragile as I look.”

Jordan always listened with two sets of ears. One as a sister, the other as a cop. “When is your lease up?”

“Next month, but we’ve been through this.” Avery now sounded exasperated.

“Okay. I won’t push. But know the door is always open.”

“I know. Thanks.”

They both got out of the car. Thick clouds now covered up the full moon, and if not for the lights in the remembrance hallway, it would have been pitch black.

Like with all visits to Ma, they talked about the good times and sidestepped the bad. Neither of them mentioned the accident. Jordan had always known some of the truth behind it, but when she’d become a cop, she’d pulled the accident report and learned that their mother’s blood alcohol had been three times the legal limit. The lack of skid marks at the scene showed their mother had never braked before she’d run her car into Lake Austin. She was either too drunk or it was intentional. The autopsy revealed she had been alive when she’d hit the water and had drowned.

Maybe that was why Jordan hated confined spaces and kept her car windows cracked when she drove.

“This is a hell of a way to spend a birthday,” Avery said.

The sound of her sister’s voice brought Jordan back to the moment and the echo of their footsteps over the stone floor.

“I know.”

“Mama would have hated it. Why are we here?”