Free End of Watch by Baxter Clare

Annie winked at her. “First thing this morning. Much better than the Post.” Annie turned back to the squat detective. “Billy found the little girl’s backpack last night, ripped open and dumped into a trash can three blocks south. I was gonna run it over to the lab with the lieutenant’s things while he and Vince track down our mopes. There’s a couple places we want to check today. While I do that”—she turned to Frank again—“the file’s over on my desk if you want to look through it. Maybe something fresh’ll come to you, huh?”
    Frank doubted she’d have a sudden brainstorm after thirty-six years but answered, “Sure. Thanks.”
    As the rest of the detectives sauntered in they fell on the bialys like crackheads on a loose rock. One of the detectives, who turned out to be Vince, came up to her and said around a mouthful, “I got a sister in LA. She works for Fox Studios. Says you couldn’t pay her enough to come back to New York. When she visits—you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas—all she says is LA this and LA that. Me? You couldn’t pay me to leave the city. Best place on earth. You can’t get a bialy like this in LA.”
    “You can’t,” Frank agreed. “Or the right hard rolls or bagels either. Must be something to do with the weather because San Francisco’s got sourdough bread that doesn’t taste right anywhere else. Everyplace has got something, I guess.”
    “Yeah. LA’s got earthquakes, floods and fires.”
    “Don’t forget the mudslides,” a Hispanic detective chimed.
    Vince waved him down. “That goes with floods.”
    “They’re totally different,” the other detective argued.
    Leaving them to it, Frank wandered over to Annie’s desk. She saw the file marked “Franco,” the case number. She returned to the coffeepot and poured a cup. After making such a big deal about getting the file, she was suddenly reluctant to touch it. She sipped her coffee and listened in on the squad room chatter.
    Annie was conferring with Meyers, her partner. One of the detectives was reading aloud from a newspaper to a cop ignoring him, while Vince and the Hispanic swapped natural disaster lore. Maybe if she was alone, or if it was quiet, she could have picked up the folder, but the room was too noisy and distracting.
    It was a good story, Frank decided, but she felt that even if the room were empty she’d still hesitate to open the folder. She groped for the bottom line and the bottom line was dread. It was one thing to describe that night to another cop, but something else entirely to relive the details.
    She debated the wisdom of picking at the scab of her father’s death. After all, it was her mother she’d come to make peace with, not her father. The man had been dead nearly four decades with no resolution in all that time. Was the sudden urge to find one now just because she was a cop? And where would these leads go anyway, besides straight into the circular file like most leads? Why was she wasting Silvester’s time on some wild-ass goose chase?
    Frank’s arguments sounded hollow even as they occurred to her.
    There was no statute of limitation on murder. If she had a possible lead in a case, no matter how old and forgotten, it should be checked out. That was the law. That’s how justice supposedly worked. She couldn’t ignore the evidence because it made her uncomfortable. She had to see it through. She was a cop. That was what cops did. Not only was she a cop, she was witness to a homicide. She had a moral duty to cooperate with solving a man’s death.
    Cop and witness. Frank was fine with both roles. It was a third role that kept her from the folder. She stared at the floor, not wanting to go through with it. She heard Mary’s words from the night before, telling her to have faith that tomorrow would bring what she needed. Not necessarily what she wanted, but what she needed.
    Frank walked back to Annie and asked, “Is there somewhere quiet I could read the file? An