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she’s regularly late, which makes me regularly late, which makes Sergeant Ahearn more and more unfriendly each time we cross paths at the station.
    Now, I thank Bethany and pay her. Silently, she leaves. And instantly the house feels lighter.
    Thomas looks at me.
    —When can I go back to my school, he says.
    —Thomas, I say. You know your old school is too far away. And you start kindergarten next September, remember?
    He sighs.
    —Just a little longer, I say. Less than a year.
    Another sigh.
    —Is it so bad, I say to him.
    But of course I feel guilty. Every evening after A-shift, and often in the mornings, too, I try to make it up to him: I settle right down on the floor next to him and play with him until he’s tired of playing, trying to teach him everything he needs to know about the world, trying to stuff him so full of knowledge and fortitude and curiosity that these qualitieswill sustain him even during my long stretches away from him, the endless B-shift weeks, during which I’m not even able to put him to bed.
    Now, he shows me excitedly what he’s constructed in my absence: a whole city of train tracks, wooden ones I bought secondhand, with construction-paper balls meant to represent boulders and mountains and houses, and cans and bottles that he’s fished out of the recycling bin to stand in for trees.
    —Did Bethany help you with this? I ask him, hopefully.
    —No, he says. I did it all by myself.
    There is pride in his voice. He doesn’t realize—how could he—that I wish the answer had been yes.
    Thomas, at almost five, is tall and strong and barreling, and already too smart for his own good. He’s handsome, too. As smart and as handsome as Simon. But unlike his father, so far, he is kind.

Homicide doesn’t contact us the next day, or the next day, or the next.
    Two weeks go by. Ahearn keeps partnering me with Eddie Lafferty. I miss Truman. I even miss the solo duty that succeeded his leave. It’s unusual, these days, to be partnered long-term—the budget is tight, and one-man cars are becoming increasingly common—but Truman and I made a compelling case as a pair. We worked so well together that our responses were practically choreographed, and our productivity was unmatched in the district. I doubt very much that Eddie Lafferty and I will be able to duplicate that rapport. Every day, now, I listen to him tell me about his food preferences, his music preferences, his political affiliations. I listen to him rant about ex-wife number three, and then about millennials, and then about the elderly. I am, if it is possible, even quieter than I was to begin with.
    We switch over to B-shift, working four p.m. to midnight, tired all the time.
    I miss my son.
    Several times—possibly too many—I ask Sergeant Ahearn about the woman we found on the Tracks. Has she been IDed, I want to know. Has a cause of death been declared? Does Homicide want to speak to us further?
    Again and again, he shakes me off.
----
    —
    One Monday, mid-November—it’s been nearly a month since we discovered the body—I walk up to Ahearn at the start of my shift. He’sinserting paper into the copy machine. Before I can say anything, he whirls on me and says, No.
    —I’m sorry? I say.
    —No news.
    I pause. No autopsy results? I say. Nothing?
    —Why are you so interested? he says.
    He is looking at me with an odd expression, almost a smile. As if he’s teasing me, as if he has something on me. It’s very unsettling. Except with Truman, I never talk about Kacey at work, and I have no intention of starting today.
    —I just think it’s strange, I say. It’s been so long since we found the body. Just very strange that there’s nothing on her, don’t you think?
    Ahearn lets out a long breath. He places his hand on the copy machine.
    —Look, Mickey, he says. This is Homicide’s territory, not mine. But I did hear that the autopsy results came back inconclusive. And since the vic is still unidentified, I imagine