So he started from the beginning, from the moment he was assigned the Riley McKay case. He took his time, filling in all the details, as he knew she was comforted by the company. It also benefited him, because hashing the case out aloud helped him identify weaknesses and potential opportunities.

She said nothing, and Colin briefly wondered if she thought she was listening to her husband speak about his day at work and why on earth he was investigating a potential murder. Or maybe she was already lost in some other world, one Colin would someday know but couldn’t comprehend now, a world of spiderwebs and smoke, a mind lost.

All he knew was he was talking to himself, and that was okay. Colin finished his beer and grabbed another. His mother was still nursing her last drink, a good sign she was done for the night.

Sitting back down, he said, “Truth is, I don’t have enough to warrant extradition back to Wisconsin. And no, I don’t really believe she’d be so bold as to directly mimic a murder scene from one of her books. I’m not even as convinced as I was before that she did it. But the amount of Ambien and Valium in Riley McKay’s system was clearly enough to put someone at the very least in a coma, even without alcohol. And I’m having a hard time seeing this as suicide. Especially given that he confirmed weekend plans with a friend that same night.”

Her voice jolted Colin from his thoughts. “Only idiots and junkies mix alcohol and medications.” She sipped her gin.

“And murderers,” Colin added.

She fell silent for a good thirty seconds before remarking, “It’s the Day of the Dead.”

“What?”

His mother finally looked over at him, her eyes now only half-open. “Today. It’s Day of the Dead. November 1.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“The dead all rise today.”

He took her creepy statement in stride. “Well, there’re just a few hours left in the day. They better get to it.”

“Cheers to that,” she said, taking another sip of her drink.

The idea of the rising dead made Colin think of Caleb Benner, the sixteen-year-old who went missing in Bury over twenty years ago. Caleb was certainly dead, Colin figured. There’d been no trace of him, no real leads, and it had been so long. Caleb Benner was surely one of the rising dead today.

Colin began telling his mother about that case and how it was the only unsolved missing-persons case in the past half century in Bury.

“High-school senior. Jock. Popular kid, a bit of a reputation, but sounds like he was well liked overall. Went to a party on a Friday night and left early. He was never seen again.” He rubbed the back of his neck, easing the tension that’d been building up more and more over the past few weeks. “All the kids who had been at the party were interviewed, but no one remembered much of anything. The police thought maybe he left early with someone else, but no one could say for sure. Or maybe he left alone and just ran into the wrong person on his way home. But Caleb didn’t sound like the kind of kid just to leave a party early.”