I WAKE up Thursday morning with the familiar sickening sensation in my stomach and the lump of Sam’s badge under my back. There won’t be a knock on my door from Katrina, ready to put back together what the night has shattered. She’s gone back to work. Life, as I’ve been told dozens of times over the past week, goes on. Well, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it to me.

In the kitchen, Ed hands me the newspaper. I see a close-up of a woman’s face I scarcely recognize but the hat, coat and falling snow are familiar.

After breakfast, I get a call from Nick, asking me if I’d like to go with him to Sam’s work today. It’s Sam’s team’s first shift back and Nick, Angela and I have been invited to join parade—the meeting at the beginning of a shift. I figure I may as well go to Sam’s work; I’m certainly not going to mine. Typing up break and enter reports doesn’t seem overly conducive to my mental health.

Just after lunch, Nick picks me up. During the drive, I tell him about the phone call for Sam the night before.

“Are these weird things just coincidences?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I still think the letter in the clouds was a sign.”

I think about this. “It was backward, right?”

“Yeah.”

“When Sam wrote his name upside down at the airport restaurant before we left for LA, he’d gotten the first letter backward, too.”

Nick doesn’t say anything.

What am I implying? That Sam is capable of writing his name in the clouds, from the other side of the sky—the heaven side—and he’d got the damn letter backward again? Or maybe we’re in a movie like The Truman Show and Sam, remembering how I complained that Universal Studios didn’t show any real behind the scenes action, found the director’s workstation and thought he’d have some fun with the sky-set.

“How are your mom and dad?” I ask.

“Awful. The only thing giving them comfort is knowing Sam is in a better place.”

I shift in my seat. “Do you believe that?”

He nods. “I have to, Adri.”

Angela meets us at the police station and we’re directed to the parade room. When Sam’s team is all seated, Tom goes around the room and introduces each officer. Then he requests that each person share a story about Sam. This surprises me—I expected business as usual.

“He always liked the car so damn hot,” jokes one guy. “It was like a sauna inside.”

“His favorite phrase,” says another, “was: let’s go catch some bad guys!”

Whoops—false alarm! No bad guy here; sorry for the mix-up.

“I called him the energizer bunny,” Amanda says, breaking the tense silence, “because he always had so much damn energy.”

I lean forward. I’ve never heard Sam described as energetic before. But I also notice, for the first time, that Amanda looks and sounds kinda like me.

“We were partners that night,” she continues from across the table. “He had all the equipment signed out and the car ready to roll by the time I got here.”

Sam had always been an hour early for his shift.

“He told me all about your vacation, Adri. He said you guys had a riot.”

Since Sam couldn’t be with me on the last night of his life, maybe he spent it with the nearest approximation: a female friend similar to me in age, personality, character and appearance? I share the contents of my thought balloon with the group. Sam’s teammates shift uncomfortably in their seats. Some stare at the table. One person coughs. You’d think I’d have learned to keep my obscure observations to myself.

Tom then informs his team that the detective in charge of investigating Sam’s death will now give another debriefing.

“And you’re welcome to stay for that,” he tells Nick, Angela and me.

“Sure,” I reply, before thinking the decision through.

As the detective begins to explain the sequence of events, I am aware of my body posture. I’m leaning back in my chair, with my left arm folded across my ribs. With my right hand, I’m resting my chin on my thumb, my forefinger on my cheek and my middle finger beneath my nose. I listen carefully to a replay of the last few minutes of Sam’s life, complete with diagrams on a flipchart.

It started with a funny sounding alarm when the first employee of the day entered the building. The employee got suspicious and called police. The K-9 officer and Sam went into the warehouse together. There was a ladder the police dog could not climb so Sam did. It was dark. Sam stepped over some wiring and through a false ceiling: one fatal step from a solid surface to an unsafe one because there was no railing in place to mark the difference. The nine-foot fall. The dent in the drywall caused by Sam’s flashlight. The black marks left behind on the wall from his boots. Sam’s legs hit the back of a chair, projecting his upper body toward the lunchroom floor. The force and angle at which the back of his head struck the concrete caused a massive brain injury. The K-9 officer found Sam and immediately began CPR. Chaos ensued.

“Any questions?” asks the detective.

Sitting around listening to anecdotes about Sam is one matter; hearing the factual details of his death is quite another. It takes every ounce of strength I have to not disintegrate.

My hand goes up.

All chairs swivel to face me.

“What was funny sounding about the alarm?” I ask.

“That’s a good question,” replies the detective, “although we don’t yet have an answer. So far, we think that when the employee arrived that morning, he heard—or thought he heard—several slow beep, beep, beeps, followed by a series of rapid beeps.”

I lean back and fold my arms across my chest.

“The alarm sound he heard was one you’d usually hear right after an alarm has been set,” the detective continues. “This confused him, so he called 911. What we do know for sure is that there was no intruder in the building.”

I hold my hands out, palms up, and shrug.

“We’ll be reinterviewing the employee. We will do everything we can to get all the answers.”

Since criminals don’t tend to reset alarms after they’ve broken into a place, somebody had to have set it—or was it malfunctioning?

And what about Sam? Did he suffer as he lay dying on the lunchroom floor? Why don’t I ask this?

Because I already know the answer.

“And now,” the detective says, “I have something special for all of you.”

He pops a video into the VCR, explaining this is a clip is from one of Sam’s courses.

Surprise! A living, breathing, laughing Sam appears on the TV monitor and I nearly fall off my chair at the shock of seeing him. He and his buddy have stuffed their clothes to make themselves look ridiculously muscular and, between fits of laughter, are instructing the group on how to work out. Sam points at the camera—at us. “Ve want to pump,” he yells in a lousy Austrian accent, “you up!”

Thank Christ I remember Sam showing me this video a couple of years ago, otherwise I’d be in cardiac arrest by now. I just buried him yesterday, for God’s sakes, and not five minutes ago, heard confirmation that he gave his life protecting a premise that didn’t need protection. I don’t want to be pumped up. I want some fucking answers.

As the video drags on, I become increasingly impatient and irritated. All I can think of is Sam’s catch-phrase: let’s go catch some bad guys. I have an overwhelming urge to stand up and tell everyone to stop slacking off and get back to work—myself included.

Tom finally releases his team back to the street and I am returned home to find my living room has been transformed into a flower shop. The funeral home dropped off all the bouquets from Sam’s funeral so several of my girlfriends are over, sprucing up arrangements and relabeling the tags so that some bouquets can be redirected for others to enjoy. How many flowers can one girl smell?

After Sam’s former partner, Matt, and Anthony leave to deliver the flowers to various locations around the city, I sit on the couch with a cup of tea and a brownie. I stare at Tom’s basket of autumn flowers on the coffee table and think to myself how beautiful they are…the ones left behind.

After tea, I head into my bedroom to start some serious grieving. I’m curled up in the fetal position, with Sasha at the foot of my bed, when my mom comes in the room.

She sits beside Sasha and squeezes my foot. “Oh, Bigoo…”

This is the long-form version of my nickname.

“I just came up to tell you that I’m going home,” she says. “But I don’t have to.”

“No, Mom, that’s OK.”

“I can stay overnight. Harry will be here, but I can stay, too, if you like.”

I still haven’t uncurled myself from the ball I’m in. “Nah, I’m fine.”

She gets up, walks over and touches my cheek with the back of her hand. “I love you very much, Adri. I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”

My tears spill over my nose onto the pillow. “I know.”

“I’ll help you any way I can, OK?”

I nod. “I’m gonna be all right…someday.”

“I know you will.” She leans over and kisses me then walks out, softly shutting the door behind her.

The house is still. I stare at Sam’s shrine and I ask myself: why did he die? The police are conducting their investigation; perhaps I shall conduct one of my own…of the spiritual sort.