Dead writes first
Rain runs down the office window in long crooked lines, throwing the neon from across the street across your desk in red and blue. Half past midnight. The bottle in the drawer is calling and you’re ignoring it, mostly.
The door opens without a knock. She comes in on a gust of wet air, red coat, good shoes, the kind of composure people wear over something cracked. She sits before you offer the chair.
“You’re the one who finds things.” She sets a photograph face-down on the blotter and slides it across. “My brother. They’re calling it a suicide. It wasn’t. I can prove the where and the when. I need you for the who.”
Her hands are steady. Her story, when you turn the photo over, has a hole in it already, the time on the clock in the picture doesn’t match what she just told you.
She watches you notice. “Well? Do you take the case, turn over the photograph and start asking questions, or throw me back out into the rain?”
