SIX

The precinct was empty. Everyone had left to go home, back to their wives and husbands, their children. Everyone had somewhere to go, someone to meet, something to look forward to, that the precinct couldn’t give them. Finnegan was different. He lived alone in a small apartment in Manhattan. All he had to go back to was an uncomfortable spring bed and a refrigerator with leftover Chinese takeout from last night. So he remained in the dark precinct, a single lamp burning over his desk and an overhead light illuminating the Murder Board.

There had to be something he missed. Some crucial detail that will make everything make sense. The disappearing body, the cryogenics, the blood in the alley, and then the unexplained money. Could it really be as simple as another narcotics case? They were both on the Latin Kings case, they both knew that powerful drug cartels were capable of doing things that stumped the police, making it impossible for them to trace. They also knew that with immense, illegal power, drug lords kept a lot of secrets and enforced them with violence. It would explain Vissicchio’s silence.

But there was also the question of swords and kiwi birds. What were they all about? And then the fight with Heat, their job at The Times, and the broken dagger�"those didn’t fit the narrative of a drug cartel or a revenge story. There was something he was missing, something big…

Perhaps the dead do tell stories…

Finnegan grabbed his keys and headed over to the OCME. A light, fluffy snow was enveloping the night when he arrived. The place should be closed, but perhaps there was something…

He was lucky�"just as he pulled into the parking lot, he saw Dr. Azri step out into the cold winter night. He quickly parked his car in the empty lot and called out, “Dr. Azri!”

She jumped at the sound. Almost in paranoia, she whipped her head this way and that, trying to locate the sound. Finnegan stepped out of his car and waved at her. Her shoulders seemed to relax, but the corners of her eyes cringed in confusion. “Detective,” she greeted him, gathered her coat tighter around her and waiting with her arms crossed as he made his way to her. “What brings you here this late? Shouldn’t you be home?”

“Shouldn’t you be home?” he retorted.

“Fair enough. So what are you doing here?”

“Well, actually…” he started. He licked his lips. This is so embarrassing. “I’ve been spending all night in the precinct, trying to think of anything that we’ve missed, trying to see if there’s any way that we can link all that’s happened together in one cohesive story that we can work with. But I’m out of ideas. I’m out of leads. I need your help.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Detective,” she replied. “I have no new leads to share with you.”

Finnegan ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Fine. Then we’ll just have to get the body. Heat’s body, I mean. That’s the only thing left.”

“First thing in the morning then,” she said. Her car chirped and the door unlocked. Finnegan had started walking back and she had her hand on the door handle, but an idea popped in her head. “Hey, Detective? You wouldn’t want to go out for a drink, would you? You look like you need one.”

Finnegan eyed her. Deciding she wasn’t going to push him into a trap, he replied, “A drink would be fantastic.”

 

 

Finnegan drained his second glass of beer. Azri was only halfway through her first. She had spent the time eyeing the detective as he quickly gulped down his drinks.

“So this is what the city’s best detective is like,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

Finnegan, anger fuelled by the alcohol, swung his head around to face her. “Excuse me?”

“They say you’re the best at your job,” she said mildly. “Top of your class in the Academy, one of the quickest ever to rise to where you are right now in Homicide. First class rating each time. And yet, here you are, stuck at a deadend and gulping down beer.”

“These are extraordinary circumstances,” Finnegan replied coldly. “You can’t judge me. This murder is nothing like anyone has seen before.”

Azri made a noise and rested her elbows on the bar counter. She took a little sip from her glass. “Dr. Patricks,” she said suddenly.

“What about her?”

“She talks about you a lot.”

“Does she?”

“Yes. She would say some wonderful things about you with this gleam in her eyes, but the subject is almost always dropped quickly. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you fancies you.”

“You’re way out of line there, Doctor,” he hissed.

Azri shrugged it off. “I’m just saying. Whenever she looks at a dead body, she gets this look on her face. Just filled with sympathy and pity. The exact same face she makes whenever she talks about you. That just makes me wonder, if she lost you as the dead lost their lives.”

Finnegan bit his lips. “You’re way out of line,” he repeated. But the alcohol loosened his tongue, “Erin’s the kindest, sweetest person you will ever meet, but all this time, to think that she remembers…”

“Remembers what?”

The detective looked up at the ME. Her face was impassive, but there was a certain warmth behind those eyes that made him want to trust her. “Erin and I went to college together at Columbia. I was raised an orphan, did you know that? I never knew my parents, but halfway through college, I’m hit with the news that my parents just didn’t abandon me. They were murdered, and justice was never brought to them. Nobody cared. That’s why I’m a detective. That’s why Erin looks at a body and remembers that one day, it was my parents’ bodies on that metal table. That’s why we’re the best in the city.”

“Because you remember, because you care,” Azri spoke for him. Finnegan nodded and drained the rest of his glass. She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

The two were in no means friends, but there was a certain warmth and confidence that spread through Finnegan when she touched him. Her sympathy was more than enough to build a friendship upon. It calmed him. It told him that he was not alone.

“Do you know why I cut up dead bodies for a living? The job itself doesn’t sound too attractive, does it?” she asked. Finnegan didn’t speak; he just waited for her to continue.

Azri took a gulp from her glass. “All my life I felt like I was doing what everyone else thought I should be doing. I just followed the guidelines. I felt like just another average person in the crowd. But doing this, helping solve crimes, helping bring closure, this is the first time I felt like I was doing something worthwhile. That’s what I admire about you. You had the courage to care.”

“Sometimes,” he sighed, “it’s easier not to.”

 

 

Detective Finnegan slid open his closet. He removed some old, discarded coats and shirts he’s been meaning to give away to charity. Underneath all the mess, he spotted the old case file neatly packaged in a dusty cardboard box. He pulled it out, blew away the dust and set it on his bed. He undid the knot that had kept it closed for years and opened the box. A strong odour of old paper overwhelmed him, just as it had when he first opened it.

He remembered it clearly. Ever since Erin discovered the mystery of Finnegan’s parents, she had been hopping to find out more. He knew she was just trying to help, but sometimes he wished she would stop. He didn’t want to know who they were. All he knew was they had abandoned him in foster care and disappeared off the face of the planet. He held nothing but contempt towards the faceless couple.

But one day, Erin had given Finnegan an urgent call. She had reserved a room in the library and told him to meet her there as soon as he could. He immediately jumped on the bike to the library, thinking it was a mid-essay crisis, but as soon as he got a glimpse of her face, he knew it was much worse. A mid-essay crisis consisted of tears and screams. Her face that day had neither, but her silent watery eyes and mask of impassiveness, her shaking efforts to hold back the tears, hit him harder than a shriek.

Finnegan, still confused as to what was going on, followed his friend into the room, where a single dusty box, the same box that sat on his bed right now, was placed on the desk. It was dated back to 1979, the year of his birth.

Patricks told him how she got it. Her father was a cop in Narcotics. She asked him to look into the name “Finnegan” and get her the results. She thought, after all these year, she would finally solve the mystery with the help of a cop. What she got was more than she had hoped for. She just wanted the names, maybe a phone number, to tell them that their son had grown up beautifully, but the database spat out something she wasn’t expecting.

Finnegan spread the old, yellowed pictures on the bed, one beside the other. They told him almost nothing but the look of the crime scene. Just another street. An old kerosene lamp flickering on and off. Nothing was unusual about this place. If he had found these pictures anywhere else, he wouldn’t have given them a second glance.

But this was the place where his parents once lay dead.

They were stabbed multiple times. Both of them suffered a gruesome, bloody death. Both of them were left on the street to rot. They wouldn’t be noticed until two days after their death. Nobody cared. Nobody missed them.

Even the detectives who worked the case didn’t care. They wrote it off as a robbery gone wrong, even when their wallets and keys were still there. The files just sat there collecting dust because once the trail had gone cold, no one had cared to give it another look, to try again, until someone was brave enough to shelf it in the warehouse, clearing their desk of it.

A baby would be found in the dead couple’s house, crying for his parents. He would be taken into foster case, and grow up to read these files.

Patricks stood with him that day, when Finnegan read over the reports of continuous careless mistakes by the detectives that caused them to lose the trail. Their lack of dedication to the case had lost them a murderer. He stood trembling as the truth sank in. His parents were dead. The first time he got to know them, he realised he could never meet them, not even to tell them what an awful parent they were.

Yes, he cared enough to drop out of college and join the Academy, but sometimes, he still wishes he hadn’t. With every new murder, he was reminded of the one murder that he longed to solve. The one murder that he couldn’t approach in his sleek Crown Vic like any other crime scene. But every time, he reminded himself that he was doing something good. By being a detective, his life was more than just books and chalkboards.

Finnegan put all the files back into the box and brushed the dust off the bed covers. In doing so, he felt a crackle of an old photograph, stuck behind a fold in the covers. He plucked it out. It was a picture of the bodies of his parents.

He had his father’s forehead and strong chin, and his mother’s deep brown eyes, back when they still had their warmth and lively joy.

 

 

Elizabeth plopped down onto her bed. A night with the detective, that was unexpected. She was sure that it was him again when the detective called out her name…

No point feeling paranoid now, she thought. She was still in control of the investigation. Even the detective now admitted that the body held the key. All was going according to plan. The stupid, stupid plan.

Azri tossed and turned. Anger was boiling inside her once again. She ran away from home, from a family that cared about nothing but their own interests in the world politics. They only plotted to shape the world their way. In the meantime, she was neglected. She wanted peace, they wanted war, and she was expected to change her mind to fit theirs.

He wasn’t supposed to be come back. He wasn’t supposed to know where she were. He wasn’t supposed to show up on her doorstep with bloody hands and a nasty plot in mind.

She pummelled her pillow. None of this would’ve happened if she hid herself better. She should’ve faked her own death and disappear completely.

Even she had to shake her head. It wouldn’t have mattered. If they were out looking for her, they would’ve found her on way or the other. Now she found herself in their clutches again with no way out.

Azri sighed. Was it the alcohol or was the detective… attractive?