Marco Garcia had been eighteen years old when he was pushed onto the tracks in front of an incoming Q train. The case had been cold for nearly two decades, left unsolved once the assigned detective got tunnel vision, convinced that Marco had been rubbed out over a drug deal gone wrong. After the detective had retired—Florida, Larkin recalled—the case found its way to his desk, and Larkin had quickly deduced that drugs had never been part of the narrative.

Marco had no drugs on him.

Marco sold no drugs.

Marco did no drugs.

No drugs.

The mother, after being fed this line of bullshit for over twenty years, no longer wanted anything to do with the police. So when Larkin had reopened the case and reached out to her, she had refused to return his calls. He’d driven to her home last week—he heard the television, heard the clatter of pots on a stovetop, heard life, but she wouldn’t answer his knocks—so Larkin called through the door that he understood his presence wasn’t welcome, but he needed her to know that her son’s case was now his, he knew there were no drugs involved, and he’d bring Marco some justice, no matter how long it took. He slipped his card under the door and left.

Sometimes people like Marco’s mother eventually called back.

And sometimes they’d rather not open a blistering wound again. Those were the cases that Larkin chased away with pharmaceuticals. Because when people like Marco’s mother, a shell of who they once were, looked him in the eye and asked, “What’s it matter? It won’t bring my baby back,” Larkin struggled not to agree. Struggled not to say, “At best, it’ll break your heart again. At best, the trial will haunt you. At best, the justice will taste like ash in your mouth. And for what. He’ll still be dead.”

It won’t rewind life to a more innocent time.

It won’t fix what’s wrong with your brain.

It won’t bring him back.

—the sun-bleached dock, rivulets of cold water running down every vertebrae, their entwined fingers hot with the fires of first love—

But it was Larkin’s job.

He reread the Garcia file, even though the details had already imprinted themselves on his bones, placed some calls, left some messages, and was reworking the timeline of Marco’s final days when an email popped in his inbox. Larkin raised his eyes at the quiet ding and saw L. Baxter, MD, in the sender column and John Doe’s case number in the subject. He closed the Garcia file and clicked the email. Attached was the autopsy report and one sentence: Come by the office before 5:00 for your cast. -Baxter