He started his car and drove four blocks to park in front of Smith’s Food Mart. He stepped through the door and walked toward the register. The familiar smell of coffee and newsprint brought the vision hurtling through Brody’s imagination. He was transported back to another convenience store, when a simple stop for coffee changed Brody’s life forever, the day he learned a few important life lessons: Even a veteran cop can freeze like a rookie when confronted unexpectedly with an armed robber pointing a gun at a hostage’s head. Just because your partner has twenty-five years of experience in law enforcement doesn’t mean he’d ever drawn his gun in the line of duty. When wearing body armor, a bullet to the chest felt like being struck by a baseball bat. PTSD sucked, and having your spouse walk away while you’re dealing with the ugly fallout sucked more. Finally, killing a man, even in a justified shooting necessary to defend innocent lives, leaves a permanent stain on a man’s conscience.

“Excuse me, are you in line?”

Brody startled. His heart was sprinting, and the back of his shirt was damp with sweat under his jacket. A woman with a quart of milk in her hand stood next to him.

“No, you go ahead.” He grabbed a copy of today’s New York Times, tucked it under his arm, and stepped into line behind her.

He hadn’t thought actively about the Boston shooting in a long time. Between the close shave with Jordan Brown and the badly beaten corpse, it was no wonder his brain was revisiting the violence from his past.

At the register, he tossed a few dollars on the counter and picked up his change and small white register receipt. Black ink. Narrow tape. Could he have gotten lucky?

He went back to the car, pulled out his copy of Jane Doe’s receipt, and compared the two. The fonts and spacing were definitely different. He grabbed his list and marked off the two stores. This was pointless. He didn’t even know if the dead woman was a local. She could have bought those cigarettes fifty miles from Scarlet Falls. But what else was he going to do? He tossed the newspaper onto the passenger seat of his car.