“Thanks.” His gaze drifted to the clock that sat above the row of narrow windows. It was ten after six. If he went home now, he could get about seven hours of sleep before having to get ready for work again. That was, barring any disasters or breakthroughs with the case. So far, he’d heard no updates from Wesson PD.

“Any updates?” he asked. Miserelli had just come from roll call. Perhaps there’d been news to share.

She shook her head, stared blankly at Garrison. Her eyes appeared to land on the same smudge on his collar. “I haven’t heard any.”

The disappointment didn’t sting. It scraped at his insides, made the hollowness inside him more vast. He raised the cup to his mouth again. The coffee was already lukewarm. Nothing was ever insulated from Black Harbor’s bitter cold. He’d be willing to bet the police department had more reports of pipes bursting than any other jurisdiction in the world. A crumbling, crescent-shaped city, Black Harbor was the punching bag of its sister, Lake Michigan, who butted right up against it. The winds she hurled carried freezing precipitation, careening over the bluffs and slamming into brick walls of houses and vacant businesses. There were no lengths you could go to get away from it, and every year, the lake swallowed up more and more of the city, packing cops, civilians, and criminals tighter together.

“Heard you got handed a big case.”

Hudson winced. He didn’t like the way she said it. Got handed, as though he hadn’t earned the Reynolds case. Perhaps he was sensitive because it was true; he hadn’t earned it. What had he done in his brief stint as investigator to deserve a shot at solving Black Harbor’s most notorious cold case?

Nothing.

And what was he doing, currently, to unearth new leads?

Nothing.

But how could he start anything until Garrison was laid to rest?

Excuses.

“You know Devine’s gonna be on your ass now, right?”

He sighed. He knew that. Devine had made it no secret that he deserved the Reynolds case more than anybody, and “certainly more than this clown,” when Hudson had emerged from Sergeant Kole’s office yesterday afternoon. Hudson had said nothing, just sat back down at his desk and started forwarding his Sensitive Crimes cases to Investigator Meyer. Devine kicked his chair on his way out of the bureau and threw his leather portfolio against the wall. Papers scattered in his wake, settled to the floor like snowflakes. When he’d returned sometime later, he reeked of cigarette smoke.

Now, Hudson’s phone vibrated with a message from Sergeant Kole: Getting the search warrant signed for the Porsche. See you at the impound lot at 1315 hrs. But Hudson didn’t want to be late.

He sighed and felt himself being tugged in two different directions. Kole pulling on one arm to solve the Clive Reynolds case, and Miserelli yanking on the other to find out who killed Garrison. How could his world have imploded so completely in the past day and a half?