Blades of lamplight leaked in through the row of skinny rectangular windows. They cast pearlish-white bars over Garrison’s body, washed him in a strange, ethereal glow. He didn’t look real. Dead bodies never did. Seated in the hard metal chair next to the casket, Hudson had stopped waiting for Garrison to wake up, to swing his legs over the edge, and lean over to land a punch into his biceps. Jesus, Hudson, he’d say. You weren’t cryin’ over me, were you?
The imagined scenario made his breath hitch. Hudson took off his glasses, scrubbed the lenses with his tie as fresh teardrops fell and stained his pants. His blurred gaze caught the edge of the American flag that stood at the foot of the coffin. It rippled slightly, as though someone were behind it, breathing, but he knew better: it was only the current from the heating vent above.
He stood, his joints snapping and popping, and began to pace. He’d been at the funeral home since just after 10:00 P.M., when his shift ended in the bureau and he’d come to relieve the young patrolman who was guarding Garrison’s body. Garrison had watched their backs for over thirty years. They owed it to him to watch his now, as he ventured somewhere they could not follow. Not yet.
Hudson paused and faced the casket, his hands clasped in front of him. “I should have been there.” He finally said it out loud. His voice was rough. He hadn’t spoken for hours, not since he’d met with Sergeant Kole the afternoon prior.
There could mean a number of places, from sitting in the passenger seat of Squad #23 as they cruised along the vacant streets of Area 1, to being present in roll call when Lieutenant Breaker agreed to let Garrison ride out the rest of his career alone. But Hudson knew which critical there was haunting him. It was the Fast Mart at Sixth and Lincoln, where Garrison had been shot. Twice in the chest. Once in the neck. Three bullets. Six holes.
“Red dreads.” Those were the two words the witness muttered as she rocked back and forth against the candy rack when Devine took down her information. She said them over and over, like a record with a scratch. The description did more than jog Hudson’s memory; it ignited it.
Over the course of the last year, the convenience store had fallen victim to multiple armed robberies. Garrison and Hudson had worked the case hard, sitting in the busted-up lot of the abandoned furniture store across the street, waiting, watching for patterns to indicate when the perpetrators might hit next. They had suspects. Hudson scrolled through the camera roll on his phone now, and held on a screenshot of two teenagers who’d posted a “haul” on social media, fanning themselves with dollar bills and feasting on Swedish Fish. They wore hiking boots and hoodies that were too big for them. The one with Ronald McDonald–red dreadlocks had a gun tucked into his waistband.
Kai Steele. He was a frequent flyer around the police department; a career juvenile delinquent now old enough to buy guns and alcohol and hookers. It was only a matter of time until he cracked his threshold of petty thievery. Hudson wasn’t surprised he’d taken it to the next level. But, did Kai Steele have a tattoo on his neck according to the cashier’s statement?
Hudson zoomed in on the photo. He didn’t see a mark, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t gotten one since.
Garrison had been on a mission to put him away before retiring in March. He’d have turned fifty-three. Time to hang up the duty belt. “I know it’s not the sexiest coup de grâce,” he’d told Hudson a few weeks ago when they’d sat in Garrison’s basement bar with a couple of brandy old-fashioneds. “But I want to finish what I started. Give José some peace of mind.”
Hudson had known he’d been referring to José Guerrera, the owner of the Fast Mart. He owned a few other local stops in Black Harbor as well. “Until the next thug comes around,” noted Hudson. He couldn’t help it.
But Garrison just flashed his signature smile, the one that could have charmed the habit off a nun. A puerile glint shone in his eyes. Dark-haired with a salt-and-pepper stubble, he was a Black Harbor Idris Elba, albeit a little worse for wear. “I’ll be long gone by then.” He set his lowball glass on the corkboard coaster. “Me and the Mrs. will be enjoying some sex on the beach. And I don’t just mean the drink, son.”
Hudson had shuddered theatrically. Thinking about Garrison and Noelle rolling around in the sand was the equivalent of imagining his parents doing the same thing. If his parents had ever been together. His mom was around; she lived on the other side of town. But his dad had never been in the picture. Perhaps that was why he’d gravitated so naturally toward Brix Garrison, the veteran patrolman who’d taken him under his wing when Hudson had been a yearling, fresh out of the academy, his legs not solid beneath him yet.
“What will you do?” Hudson had asked. While the question seemed to have come out of nowhere, it had been swirling around in his brain for some time, ever since Garrison had announced his intent to retire. He knew a lot of retired law enforcement officers who worked as school resource officers or mall security. But the only mall within fifty miles of Black Harbor had just closed its doors. Regardless of what his plans were, Hudson knew better than to believe Garrison would spend his retirement actually retired.
Garrison leaned back so his forearms were straight, his palms pressing into the edge of the bar. “I think I’m gonna take the bike back out to Washington for a bit.”
Hudson furrowed his brows. There could only have been one thing out west calling Garrison’s name, or so he thought at the time. Hart’s Pass. It was the treacherous stretch of road on which, three years prior, Garrison had eaten asphalt, not to mention totaled his Harley-Davidson. He’d been transported via helicopter to the nearest hospital, where he’d been treated for a concussion, broken tibia, cracked ribs, and severe road rash on his right side. Hudson doubted this plan had Mrs. Garrison’s seal of approval.
“You know me and unfinished business.” Garrison said it as though it were ample reasoning for a return trip.
“You go together like peanut butter and shoe polish,” Hudson offered, completing one of Garrison’s signature sentiments.
“That’s right.” He took a drink and then stared forward at the glass bottles that lined the counter. Hudson couldn’t tell if he was trying to read a label or staring at their reflection in the mirror, or neither. The pause was unusually drawn out. “And after that, who knows, I might start my own business. Just a small thing.”
“Like what?” Hudson considered Garrison’s interests: motorcycles, practical jokes, craft cocktails … Was that it?
Garrison shrugged as though the idea were hardly more than a fleeting thought. “A PI.”
Hudson coughed and sputtered, choking on his drink. “PI? As in private investigator? You despise PIs.”
“Only when they get in my way. If I’m the PI … well, I can’t hardly get in my own way, can I?”
Hudson eyed him suspiciously. “What’s bringing this on? You got some unfinished business I don’t know about?”
“Let’s just say I have an offer.” He fixed Hudson with a look that said to leave it at that. And they had. There had been no more talk of Garrison’s PI venture. He’d been so silent on the subject in the days and weeks that ensued, in fact, that Hudson had wondered if he’d abandoned the idea. Until now.
A smudge of makeup stained Garrison’s starched collar. His skin looked to be caked with the stuff––foundation, or whatever it was called. His lips were too plum-colored; it looked like he’d borrowed his daughter’s lip gloss, while around his eyes, the greyness of death crept in. Hudson hoped they would touch up his makeup before the funeral on Wednesday.
Jesus, Garrison, he thought. What did you get yourself into?
At the far end of the hall, the doors opened. The winter air stole inside, and the parlor felt more tomb-like than it had even a minute ago, when it had been just him and Garrison’s corpse. Miserelli handed him a coffee from the gas station up the street and assumed the stance of a patrol officer––feet planted shoulder-width apart, left hand resting on the face of her flashlight that stood upright in her duty belt. “It’s decaf,” she said when he lifted the paper cup to his mouth. He lowered it, though, when the smell nauseated him. It triggered a memory of Garrison’s coffee, spilled on the Fast Mart’s tiled floor. The warmth was welcome, though.
“Thanks.”
“When was the last time you slept?” She had to tip her head back to look him in the eye. At five foot two, Miserelli was the personification of a firecracker: small, compact, and explosive. Some people joked that she’d stand taller and walk straighter if it weren’t for the chip on her shoulder weighing her down. Hudson didn’t necessarily disagree. Miserelli was perpetually out to prove herself, but then, it wasn’t a bad quality for a cop to have. Especially when the men on the force outnumbered the women twenty to one.
“Ryan.”
“Huh?”
“I said, when was the last time you slept?”
Hudson thought, but the fog in his mind prevented him from coming up with an answer. He couldn’t remember beyond the other night when he’d gotten the call that Garrison had been shot. He’d been in his bed then, hadn’t he?
“I can tell,” Miserelli said as though he’d given her a response. “You should get a nap in before your shift this afternoon. You look like shit.”
“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?
He looked out the window. Frost climbed up the glass, the way it had Garrison’s eyes last night. Silence fell over them like a weighted blanket. But there was nothing comforting about it. It was a silence that intended to crush them––deflate their lungs, pulverize their bones to particles more minuscule than the powder cocaine that littered the streets and back alleys. Hudson was suddenly so tired he could barely stand.
He grabbed his coat off the back of the metal chair. “I have to let Pip out.”
Miserelli nodded. A spring of titian hair came loose from her low bun. “Go on. You know Garrison always preferred my company over yours anyway.” A corner of her mouth twitched, creating the faintest arrow-shaped dimple. He tried and failed to smile back.
She took over then, guarding Garrison’s body as he had done for the past eight hours. It wasn’t until he’d made it down the hall, his fingers gripping the door handle, that Hudson heard a small whimper escape from her.
He sat in his SUV, waiting for the engine to warm up before driving the few miles home. He should have started it ten minutes ago, while he was still inside, but he knew better. Luxuries such as remote-starting your vehicle were not afforded to residents of Black Harbor. A running vehicle was an invitation; it might as well have a “Free” sign slapped on the windshield. Look at what had happened to the woman at the gas station. The perp had driven off with her car. It was long gone by now, dumped somewhere across state lines and burned to a crisp, probably. But maybe not. If they found it, the case would become a lot more solvable.
Hudson unlocked his phone and studied the picture of Kai Steele again. The red dreadlocks behind the money fan. The gun in his waistband had a black grip, but he couldn’t identify it beyond that. Not that it mattered. This wasn’t his case.
And yet, he knew that if he was the one in the casket, Garrison would be on a manhunt right now. Slowly, his windshield began to thaw. He watched as the fractals of frost cleared away, white, wraithlike fingers receding. Perhaps it wasn’t a manhunt at all, he thought, but a hunt for the woman who had witnessed everything.