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was to read this book at the statue on her birthday every year,” Mark said.
    “But … how could I know that? She wouldn’t talk to me.”
    “Is that supposed to justify killing her?”
    “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Jane said. “But she got so angry with me. I couldn’t make her understand. When she tried to get away, I lost my temper. I only meant to stop her long enough to listen.”
    “You stopped her, all right.”
    “I never would have hurt my Samantha,” Jane cried. “It was an accident.”
    The older man faced her with bared teeth and red eyes. “Let’s go.”
    “But
he
promised me a chance to tell her how I felt.” Jane’s voice was thin and shrill as she spun to face Mark. “You promised. What about my closure?”
    “Her name was Laura,” the cop said. “And you’ll get your closure in court.” He tugged Jane by her handcuffs. “Today, we have ours.”
    Mark gripped the older man’s shoulder. “Good to have you back, Dad.”
    JULIE HYZY
is a New York Times best-selling author who has won the Anthony, Barry, and Derringer Awards for her crime fiction. She currently writes two amateur-sleuth mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime: the White House Chef Mysteries and the Manor House Mysteries. Her favorite pastimes include traveling with her husband and hanging out with her kids. She lives in the Chicago area.



THE PICTURE OF THE LONELY DINER

Lee Child
    Jack Reacher got out of the R train at Twenty-Third Street and found the nearest stairway blocked off with plastic police tape. It was striped blue and white, tied between one handrail and the other, and it was moving in the subway wind. It said: POLICE DO NOT ENTER . Which, technically, Reacher didn’t want to do anyway. He wanted to exit. Although to exit, he would need to enter the stairwell. Which was a linguistic complexity. In which context, he sympathized with the cops. They didn’t have different kinds of tape for different kinds of situations. POLICE DO NOT ENTER IN ORDER TO EXIT was not in their inventory.
    So Reacher turned around and hiked half the length of the platform to the next stairway. Which was also taped off. POLICE DO NOT ENTER .Blue and white, fluttering gently in the last of the departing train’s slipstream. Which was odd. He was prepared to believe the first stairway might have been the site of a singular peril, maybe a chunk of fallen concrete, or a buckled nose on a crucial step, or some other hazard to life and limb. But not both stairways. Not both at once. What were the odds? So maybe the sidewalk above was the problem. A whole block’s length. Maybe there had been a car wreck. Or a bus wreck. Or a suicide from a high window above. Or a drive-by shooting. Or a bomb. Maybe the sidewalk was slick with blood and littered with body parts. Or auto parts. Or both.
    Reacher half-turned and looked across the track. The exit directly opposite was taped off, too. And the next, and the next. All the exits were taped off. Blue and white, POLICE DO NOT ENTER . No way out. Which was an issue. The Broadway Local was a fine line, and the Twenty-Third Street station was a fine example of its type, and Reacher had slept in far worse places many times, but he had things to do and not much time to do them in.
    He walked back to the first stairway he had tried, and he ducked under the tape.
    He was cautious going up the stairs, craning his neck, looking ahead, and especially looking upward, but seeing nothing untoward. No loose rebar, no fallen concrete, no damaged steps, no thin rivulets of blood, no spattered fragments of flesh on the tile.
    Nothing.
    He stopped on the stairs with his nose level with the Twenty-Third Street sidewalk and he scanned left and right.
    Nothing.
    He stepped up one stair and turned around and looked across Broadway’s humped blacktop at the Flatiron Building. His destination. He looked left and right. He saw nothing.
    He saw less than nothing.
    No cars. No taxis. No buses, no trucks, no