The sun, as if it were anxious for winter to arrive, was crouched low against the late-morning skyline, and cold shadows draped along the north side of the gravestones.

Our team checked Jon Murray’s phone but found no indication that he was planning to meet anyone on the night he died. None of his friends knew of any plans he had to see anyone either. Over the summer he’d worked as an intern for a nearby office of the social networking and search engine giant Krazle, but no one from work was aware of him being depressed or suicidal. We were still looking into filmed suicides and homicides—ones he might have heard about or viewed online.

Bill Greer was fifty-two, but most people would’ve probably pegged him as a decade younger. With his bushy mustache and stocky frame, he’d always reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of boxers in the early twentieth century.

As we were getting our earpieces situated, he said, “You know how they sometimes talk about it being a cat-and-mouse game? Cops and criminals?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a misnomer.”

“Why do you say that?”

“To the mouse, it’s never just a game. If he loses, he dies. If he escapes, he’s been traumatized.”

“But if the cat loses, well, no big deal.”

Greer nodded. “Exactly. He just walks away. Maybe hungry, maybe not—maybe he never even intended to eat the mouse anyway. Just terrorize it.”

“You’re saying it’s really just a cat game.”

“Yeah.”

“So are we the cat here,” I said, “or are we looking for him?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?”

Because of who the victim was and since there’d been only a private viewing at the funeral home, a crowd of at least a hundred people, including the press, had already gathered near the gravesite, and more cars from the funeral procession were still arriving, pulling slowly and reverently to the curb so the mourners wouldn’t have to walk far on the muddy ground, which was still recovering from this week’s storms.

On a planet where death is a certainty, where it’s never more than a heartbeat away, a person’s passing might come to us as a surprise, but I don’t think we should ever claim that it came out of the blue.

We’re all on the train to the grave, and there’s no getting off until that final stop. The timing of our death might be unexpected, but its inevitability is never in doubt. There’s never a question mark there.

Only a period.

Or, perhaps, when it’s a brutal or tragic end, as in this case, an exclamation point.

But it’s never out of the blue.

They don’t call this world a vale of tears for nothing.

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