Chapter 2
The smell hit him first. It always did.
Blood. Copper and iron, thick in the cold air. Mixed with the sharper scent of fear-sweat and the staleness of a house that had been closed up too long.
Carson stood in the doorway of the bedroom, taking it all in before he stepped inside. Old habit. His dad had taught him that—look first, process second, act third. Don’t contaminate the scene with your assumptions.
The victim was male, early sixties, lying face-down near the bed. Single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Execution style. No signs of struggle in the immediate area, which meant he either knew his killer or never saw them coming.
“Detective Black.” One of the uniforms—Patterson, young guy, maybe six months on the job—approached with his notebook out. His face had a greenish tinge. First body. “We got the call at oh-six-hundred from the daughter. She came by to check on him when he didn’t answer his phone.”
“Where is she now?”
“Ambulance took her. She was pretty shaken up.”
Carson nodded, still scanning the room. Nightstand drawer open. Empty. “Anything missing?”
“Daughter says his gun is gone. Kept a .38 Special in that drawer.”
So the killer took the murder weapon. Smart. Made his job harder.
Carson pulled on latex gloves and stepped carefully into the room, staying close to the wall to avoid the blood spatter pattern. The techs would map all of this later, but he needed to see it fresh. Needed to feel what had happened here.
The victim wore pajamas. Slippers on his feet. He’d been getting ready for bed, or just waking up. The alarm clock on the nightstand read 6:47 AM—probably when the daughter had unplugged it to call 911.
“Time of death estimate?” Carson asked.
“ME says sometime between ten PM and two AM.”
Night kill. The shooter had come in dark, either through the unlocked door or a window. He’d check the entry points after he finished in here.
He crouched next to the body, careful not to touch anything. The angle of the wound suggested the shooter was taller than the victim, or the victim was already kneeling. No defensive wounds on the visible hand. He’d been taken by surprise.
Something nagged at Carson. Something wrong about the scene beyond the obvious.
He stood and looked around again. Bedroom was neat—bed made, clothes hung in the closet, nothing out of place except that open drawer. No signs of a search. If this was a robbery, the killer had known exactly what they wanted.
The gun.
“Patterson, did the daughter say if her father had any enemies? Anyone threatening him?”
“She said he was retired, kept to himself mostly. Widower for the past eight years.”
Retired from what? He made a mental note to run a full background. Could be a grudge from his working years come back to haunt him.
Carson’s phone buzzed. Text from Captain Holloway: My office when you’re done. Need to talk.
Great. That tone meant he’d done something he didn’t like. Again.
He spent another twenty minutes processing the scene, talking to the techs, making sure every detail was documented. The crime scene photographer, Kim, was thorough as always. She’d have three hundred shots by the time she was done.
“Get me close-ups of the entry wound,” Carson told her. “And the empty drawer. Something about this feels personal.”
“You got it, Detective.”
Personal murders were usually the easiest to solve—lover, family member, business partner. Follow the emotion and you find the killer. But they were also the hardest to stomach. All that rage and betrayal, turned into violence.
Made him think of his dad. Not that his death had been personal. He’d walked into a convenience store robbery, wrong place, wrong time. The shooter had panicked, fired twice, and run. His dad had died before the ambulance arrived.
Carson was nineteen. Old enough to understand death. Too young to understand why.
He pushed the memory away and focused on the scene in front of him. The dead man here deserved justice. Deserved someone who wouldn’t stop until his killer was found.
That’s what Carson did. He didn’t stop.
Even when he should.
***
Captain Marcus Holloway sat behind his desk like a mountain—solid, unmovable, weathered by time and experience. He’d been with Blackridge PD for thirty-five years. He’d worked with Carson’s dad. He’d been at the funeral.
And for the past nineteen years, he’d been more of a father to Carson than his actual father had the chance to be.
Which made it extra annoying when he looked at him with that particular expression—the one that said Carson had crossed a line and he was about to call him on it.
“Close the door, Carson.”
Never good when he used his first name.
Carson closed the door and sat in the chair across from his desk. Waited. Let him start.
He pulled out a file and opened it. “The Mitchum case. You interviewed the suspect’s girlfriend yesterday.”
“Yeah. She confirmed he was home the night of the robbery, but she was lying. Body language was all wrong, and her story had holes you could drive a truck through.”
“So you went back to her apartment at ten PM without backup or a warrant.”
Shit. Someone had seen him. “She’d already talked to me once. I just had a few follow-up questions.”
“Carson.” Holloway leaned forward, his dark eyes sharp. “You can’t do that. You know you can’t do that. If she’d complained, if anything had happened, that whole case could’ve been thrown out.”
“She didn’t complain. And she told me the truth—Mitchum wasn’t home that night. She was covering for him because he threatened her.”
“Which is exactly why you should have brought her in properly, with a victim advocate, in a controlled environment. Not cornered her in her home at night when she was scared.”
Carson bit back his first response—that they’d gotten the truth, hadn’t they? That Mitchum was going away and his girlfriend was safe. That results mattered more than procedure.
But he’d had this argument with Holloway before. Multiple times. He never won.
“You’re right,” Carson said instead. “I should have waited until morning. Brought backup. Done it by the book.”
Holloway studied him for a long moment. “You don’t mean that.”
“I mean I should have. Whether I would have is a different question.”
A smile almost—almost—touched his mouth. Then it was gone. “You’re one of the best detectives I’ve got, Carson. You see things other people miss. You get results. But you take risks that worry me.”
“Calculated risks.”
“Risks nonetheless.” He closed the file and leaned back in his chair. “You can’t save everyone. You can’t solve every case. And you can’t bend the rules every time you think the end justifies the means.”
There it was. The thing he never quite said but they both knew he was thinking.
You can’t bring Lily back.
Carson’s sister’s name hung in the air between them, unspoken but present. Always present.
She’d been seven years old when she disappeared. Carson had been seventeen, home from school, supposed to be watching her. But he’d been on the phone with a girl, distracted, and Lily had gone outside to play.
Five minutes. That’s all it took. Five minutes of not paying attention, and she was gone.
Twenty-seven years later, and he still saw her face every time he closed his eyes. Still heard her laugh. Still felt the crushing weight of failure that said he should have protected her.
That’s why Carson became a cop. That’s why he didn’t stop. That’s why he bent rules and took risks and pushed harder than anyone else.
Because someone else’s sister might not have to disappear. Someone else’s daughter might come home safe. Someone else might get the justice his family never did.
“The Hutchins scene,” Carson said, changing the subject. “Looks like a revenge killing. Execution style. I’ll need to dig into his background, see who he pissed off.”
Holloway let him change the subject. That was the thing about him—he knew when to push and when to let things breathe. “Keep me updated. And, Carson?”
“Yeah?”
“By the book this time. Please.”
“By the book,” he agreed.
They both knew he was lying.
***
Carson spent the rest of the morning running down leads on the Hutchins case. Turned out the victim had been a bail bondsman before he retired, which meant he’d made plenty of enemies. People who’d lost their money when someone skipped bail. People who’d gone to jail because he’d tracked them down.
The list of suspects was going to be long.
By noon, Carson’s eyes were crossing from staring at case files and computer screens. He needed food and coffee, in that order.
The Brew & View was packed with the lunch crowd, but Maggie Reeves behind the counter spotted him and waved. “Usual, Detective?”
“Please. And a turkey sandwich.”
“You got it, hon.”
Carson found a table in the corner and pulled out his phone, scanning through emails. Most of it was administrative stuff—reports to file, court dates to remember, interdepartmental memos he’d ignore.
One email caught his attention. From the state crime lab. DNA results on the Sullivan case from three months ago.
He opened it, read through the technical jargon. Then read it again.
No match in the system. The DNA they’d pulled from the crime scene didn’t match anyone in the database.
Dead end.
Carson closed his eyes and breathed through the frustration. The Sullivan case was going cold. Young woman attacked in her home, barely survived, gave them a description of her attacker but not a name. They’d found evidence, done everything right, and still they had nothing.
Another case he couldn’t solve. Another victim waiting for justice.
“Carson Black?”
He looked up. A woman stood next to his table, maybe late twenties, with auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail and dark circles under her eyes like she hadn’t slept in a week. She clutched a purse against her stomach like a shield. Even terrified, she was stunningly beautiful.
“Can I help you?” Carson asked, forcing himself to focus.