Chapter Three

Morrisey parked his faded blue RAV4 between white lines too worn to tell if they marked a parking spot. He released a tired, smoke-filled sigh. To get to the entrance he’d have to pass the place where Will took a final breath and stopped living. There was also the matter of a department-issued car Morrisey would never go near again.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn”t force the image from his mind. Maybe a shot of tequila… No. Not right before a meeting with the captain.

No avoiding the inevitable any longer. Morrisey snubbed out his smoke in the overfilled ashtray, sending a generous sprinkling of ash to the floorboards, and opened the creaky door. Keep moving. One, two… Don’t look at the spot. Don’t look. Don’t…

Damn it! He looked, then forcibly wrenched his gaze from the site. Carving his heart out with regret wouldn’t bring Will back.

Considering the pain he”d felt from Will, would bringing him back even be right?

Several officers mumbled to Morrisey as he climbed the cracked cement steps, well worn by time and foot traffic. Most saw the storm clouds in his expression and glanced away, knowing not to waste their niceties. Morrisey had run into negative numbers for fucks left to give.

Some cops had just ended their late evening shifts and were now on their way home to their families like Will used to do, and Morrisey would likely never do again. The sun hadn’t set yet but appeared to be considering the matter, sinking farther behind the nearby buildings.

The purr of car engines starting reverberated against the building, and horns honked out on the road as drivers took out their frustrations.

Morrisey strode to his office, not looking right or left until he got to the office door bearing a plaque that said “James.” The other plate stood empty, the “Murphy” plaque missing. A fist squeezed Morrisey’s heart. Someone wasted no time making Will’s passing official.

He entered and shut the door, leaning against the hard surface—the only support he’d likely get here. His messy desk sat to the right, loaded with file folders, random papers, and a chipped coffee cup he wouldn’t dare throw out—a gift from Craig that said, “Feel safe. Sleep with a cop.”

So, what are you and Craig doing this weekend?Will”s ghost asked.

We’re going to dinner and dancing,Morrisey’s memory supplied.

How long ago they’d said those words—Morrisey telling Will about Craig, culminating in Craig leaving, and Will talking about the new woman he’d met named Linda, to their dating, engagement, and marriage.

Morrisey had been a groomsman.

Gradually, he shifted his gaze toward the far side of the office. No more photos of Will and his smiling family. No more miniature basketball hoop Morrisey and Will had lobbed balls at during odd moments. No ever-present can of root beer. Not even the never-ending bowl of jelly beans remained.

Nothing left. Someone cleaned out the remnants of Will’s life as though he’d never been there. Except for one item. Their jackets hung on three silver hooks on the wall. Two were Morrisey’s, the other Will’s.

Morrisey crossed the office in three long strides and snatched the gray hoodie from the hook. Tiny spots of white paint marred one sleeve from where Will had helped his oldest boy with some kind of school project. The shamrock pin on the jacket’s front came from Will’s daughter, who’d found the button at some flea market and wanted it to keep Daddy safe.

It hadn’t worked.

Morrisey slipped his hand into the hoodie’s right pocket. Something crinkled against his fingers. He pulled out the cigarette pack Will had confiscated when Morrisey backslid after three weeks with no smokes.

He should report the jacket and let someone take it to Will’s wife. Instead, Morrisey immersed himself in the warm fabric, inhaling the cheap cologne he’d complained about many times.

Linda Murphy likely had her hands full right now. She’d been surrounded by family at the funeral, barely glancing at Morrisey. Who could blame her for turning her back on the man who”d been mere feet away and hadn”t prevented Will”s death? No. She wouldn’t want to hear from him. Not now. Maybe never.

Would Morrisey ever stop seeing the ghost of Will in this office? He shuddered, recalling an accidental touch that revealed too much. Pain. Misery. Hopelessness. Morrisey had felt every agonizing self-doubt and fear filling Will’s mind at the end.

Nearly too much to bear.

Something else he’d never forget. He glanced at the clock on the bookcase, only to find it gone, too. Right. The clock had been Will’s. Morrisey checked his phone instead. Fuck. Past time for his meeting with the captain.

He took one long, heart-wrenching look and left the room.

Morrisey tapped twice on the wavy glass insert of the captain’s door, opaque enough to see blurry shapes but not make out details.

“Come in.”

Morrisey entered the office and firmly closed the door. No one needed to hear their conversation.

Captain Paul Gaskins’s pristine office, with bookshelves neatly lined and nothing out of place, was the polar opposite of Morrisey’s disaster of an apartment. Even the papers on the desk appeared to be carefully arranged using a ruler. What did they call that again? A place for everything and everything in its place.

One of those papers was Morrisey’s drawing of the mass murder. His final case with Will. He blinked hard a few times, swallowing against the lump in his throat.

Gaskins raised his gaze from his laptop, removing wire-rimmed glasses with one hand while rubbing his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of the other.

“I don’t look that bad, do I?” Morrisey caused many headaches in his day, but eye aches?

Yeah. Probably.

Gaskins popped the glasses back on his nose with a pensive expression, regarding Morrisey with enough scrutiny to make Morrisey squirm before announcing his verdict. “Honestly, you look like warmed-over shit. I’ve seen livelier three-day-old roadkill. Sit your ass down before you fall down.”

Damn. Morrisey had missed Gaskins’s deep baritone. And the captain speaking his mind.

Morrisey felt like shit, too, with the taste of old whiskey and ash coating his tongue that no amount of coffee or mouthwash improved. At least he’d found reasonably clean clothes to put on. Some days, getting a shower and shaving was a minor miracle, especially with a bass drum pounding his temples.

Drinking let Morrisey tune out the impressions he’d gotten from victims: from moments of joy to sheer terror, to others who’d seemed caught in terror for hours before their deaths. Let him push aside promises he’d made the living. But he owed the dead to use every method at his disposal to solve their cases. So, he touched them, experienced the horror of their last moments, and drank.

He lost sleep some nights, wondering if he could have done more for Craig if he’d gotten there soon enough to read him.

Morrisey tried for humor and took a seat. “Road kill wasn’t quite what I was going for. I hear ‘casually disheveled’ is in this year.” He blinked bleary eyes. The view didn’t improve. Same scowling face. Captain Gaskins somehow managed to be drop-dead gorgeous, even with his unwillingness to smile. Somewhere in his fifties, with specks of white showing in his otherwise black hair and a dark 80s porn ‘stache shot through with gray, he could’ve been a poster boy on officer recruitment ads. Rumor said he had been once upon a time.

The ad would’ve gotten lots of attention—including Morrisey’s.

Captain Gaskins wasn’t built like a Mack truck. Mack trucks were built like Captain Gaskins. Solid as a tank. A thin scar marred the deep tones of his face, from his eyebrow down to his square jaw and generous lips. He’d terrorized many a college football player as a defensive lineman for the Georgia Bulldogs In his younger days.

A framed poster of the team’s mascot hung on the wall.

Rumors said Gaskins had been quite the ladies’ man, too. And damned if his cologne didn’t make Morrisey want to tackle him for different reasons than sports. No unavailable man should smell so damned good.

Gorgeous, sure. Morrisey knew all these things superficially. Though the captain turned many heads, Morrisey would never pursue any interest. Sleeping with someone who could accidentally break him in half didn’t appeal to him much. Besides, the captain was straight and the boss.

Ogling out-of-reach guys, however, was so much safer than someone with the bad taste to return Morrisey’s interest.

Gaskins relaxed back into his chair, turning at an angle with the desk to stretch his long legs out in front of him. He spoke with a quiet voice, a nearly unheard-of feat. Maybe he’d strained his vocal cords yelling at someone earlier, necessitating a rest. “You could take more time off if you need.”

Hell, even losing a family member was only worth a week. Besides, sitting around the apartment with no company other than his own wasn’t doing Morrisey any favors. No one had ever accused him of being good company. “My time’s up. I’m back.”

Gaskins wrinkled his nose and gave a decisive head shake. “Oh, hell no, you’re not. You reek of old booze. Go home and get yourself cleaned up. Don’t return to this office until you’re no longer a disgrace to your badge.” He hushed his voice even more. “Look, Morse, losing a partner sucks. You and Murphy were tight. I get that. You worked so well together. But you can’t blame yourself for what happened. Hell, we all saw the guy every day. None of us had any idea what he planned. Even his wife didn’t know.”

Therein lay the problem. Will didn’t plan to off himself. The decision came spur-of-the-moment after one spectacularly lousy day. One minute fine, the next not—regardless of what anyone else said.

“I knew something was wrong. He’d been acting strange all afternoon. That last scene…” Will’s widow and kids didn’t deserve losing their husband and father, especially not in so gruesome a way. “I don’t get it. Things have been bad lately, but he should have said something to me.”

Instead, he went quiet, so out of character that Morrisey should have paid attention.

Bad case, return to the precinct, sit in your car.

End your life.

“He could have come to me for that matter,” Gaskins muttered. “But the fact is, he didn’t. We can sit around wondering all day long about what happened and why, and we’ll never know. Life sometimes just throws a little more at us than we can handle.”

Yeah, but Morrisey had been sitting with Will inside the vehicle not thirty seconds before.

Gaskins abruptly changed the subject. “We want you back. We need you back, but not if it means you being next.”

Nodding seemed easier than trying to answer with words. The world kept turning around them in the lagging silence: voices from outside the door, the tinkle of laughter. Who on earth would laugh at a time like this? Morrisey nearly flung the door wide open and screamed, Shut the fuck up! Ain’t you got no respect?

A public meltdown wouldn’t help him return to work. But if he returned, he’d have to sit in the damned office staring at a Will-shaped void until someone else filled the space. Then he’d see someone else where Will belonged.

Good thing Morrisey already drank, or recent events would have made him start.

Gaskins finally broke the uncomfortable silence. “I expect you to keep going to counseling.”

“But—” Will had attended counseling for all the good it did him.

“But nothing. You”re not alone. And Morse?”

The captain’s use of “Morse” meant an attempt at coming across as a friend, not a boss. Despite his better judgment, Morrisey ventured, “Yeah?”

The pause before Gaskins”s next word wasn”t a good sign. “If the situation ever gets too bad for you to handle alone, you come to me, okay? If not me, one of your brothers or sisters on the force, or your counselor. Promise me?”

“Yeah,” Morrisey lied. He’d never dump his problems on anyone else. They had their own fucked-up shit to deal with. ”Can you explain to me why the caseloads have gotten so bad?” Are the other precincts seeing this much increase?”

Gaskins ran a hand over his head that once easily palmed a football. “It’s city-wide. Violent crimes increased by fifty-four percent over the last year. So did prostitution, petty crimes, and even parking tickets. No one can say why.”

“That’s what I figured.” The world just one day went to shit. Soon, it would be sitting on a couch hitting shots with Morrisey, wondering where the hell it went wrong.

“Now, you go on home, get some rest. Call me when you’re ready to come back—really ready.” Gaskins’s fiery glare made Morrisey squirm. Of course, what could anyone expect from someone whose superpower was making others feel like a bug under a microscope?

“I will.” Eventually.