Free Next of Kin by David Hosp

shouldn’t have to deal with all of this. I’ll be fine, you don’t need to worry.’
    ‘I’m not worried,’ she said. ‘I’d just like to help.’
    ‘How?’
    She shrugged. ‘How about a yogurt?’
    ‘You think that’ll help?’
    ‘It’s got active cultures. Couldn’t hurt.’
    Finn shrugged. ‘I’ll give it a shot.’
    She brought over two containers with two spoons, handed one of each to him. She pulled the tin foil top off hers, licked it, and began stirring the contents with the spoon, bringing the fruit to
the surface. ‘You ever find out anything about your father?’
    ‘Nope.’
    Finn watched her as she stirred her yogurt, her eyebrows crossed in thought like dueling swords. She was looking intently at her yogurt, and she didn’t look up when she spoke next.
‘This isn’t over for you.’ It wasn’t a question, it was an observation.
    ‘What isn’t over?’ he asked. It was foolish; they both knew what she was talking about. He kept forgetting that she’d crammed a lifetime of tragedy into her sixteen
years. It gave her better insight than most people in their sixties.
    ‘Your mother. Her murder,’ she said. ‘You’re not gonna let it drop.’
    ‘You don’t need to worry about it,’ Finn said.
    ‘Like I said, I’m not worried; I want to help. But I also want to know why.’
    Finn considered the question for a moment, and realized he had no good answer. ‘She was my mother,’ he said at last. ‘I never knew who she was. I never knew where I came
from.’
    ‘So what?’ she asked. ‘Who cares who your parents were or where you came from? The only thing that matters is where you are now. Look at my parents: a murdered thief for a
father, and a crack whore for a mother. If people think I’m gonna let them define who I am, they got another goddamned think coming.’
    Finn believed her. ‘Not knowing is different. I’ve lived my entire life with this question mark, and now there’s a chance I can get some answers.’
    ‘What if they aren’t the answers you’re looking for?’
    ‘I’d still rather know,’ he said. ‘Besides, you heard the detective. No one’s gonna lift a finger to find her murderer. He was right, I know how this works;
they’ll do some poking around, but unless something obvious pops up, this case will die before the weekend. She was my mother. I’m going to find out what happened.’
    Sally scraped the last of the yogurt from the bottom of the container and licked the spoon clean. ‘I understand,’ she said.
    He laughed ruefully. ‘That makes one of us.’
    ‘It’s pretty simple,’ she said. ‘You’re a decent guy. You think it’s the right thing to do. End of story.’
    He shook his head. ‘I’m not a decent guy,’ he said.
    She stood up and walked over to the kitchen and threw her yogurt cup into the trash. ‘Yeah, you are,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t mean you’re perfect. But a bad guy
wouldn’t take care of a pain-in-the-ass daughter of a dead client just because it’s the right thing to do.’ He looked up, but she was already headed out of the room, back toward
the hallway. ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ she called back over her shoulder.
    ‘Yeah,’ Finn called. ‘See you in the morning.’
    Coale sat in the dark on the street outside the lawyer’s apartment. He’d watched Long pull away after taking a pull from the empty bottle. That, at least, was a
good sign. The more the detective unraveled, the less dangerous he became. Coale knew from his contacts that Long was barely hanging on in the department. If they discovered he was drinking, the
BPD would have the legitimate grounds they needed to dismiss him. It was what everyone wanted.
    It would solve some of Coale’s problems, too. Drunk or not, Long had put Elizabeth Connor together with the lawyer. It looked as though his skills as an investigator were not as impaired
as Coale might have hoped.
    He frowned. The lawyer added additional challenges to the