“You looked all right yesterday, all things considered.”

“I’m fine, sir.”

“The thing is, something’s come up. I know I shouldn’t be doing this, and you’re entitled to a little time after what happened yesterday – not to mention the strings I’d have to pull to get you cleared for work this soon. But under the circumstances, and knowing how the task force assignment wasn’t what you wanted… I know you’re looking for a way back into the squad, so – ”

“Yes,” I say, sitting up straight. “Whatever it is, yes.”

“You haven’t even heard what I’d like you to do.”

“I don’t need to, sir. I want back in.”

“It’s not exactly what you’re looking for,” he says. “I know you’re tired of these peripheral assignments, but – ”

How much clearer can I be? “I’ll do it, sir.”

He exhales long and hard, either relieved or despondent, I can’t tell which. “Before you say yes, I need you to know it’s a suicide, March.”

“Ah.”

“I know you don’t like the nickname, and I can’t argue with you that the assignment was originally not, well, not very complimentary. But if you’re serious about getting back in…”

“I am serious. And no I don’t like the name, but I realize somebody’s got to do it. We owe something to our people, even when they…”

My voice trails off. When somebody takes a shot at one of us, like what happened yesterday, it doesn’t matter if you like the guy or not, if you think he’s a solid officer or a lightweight, crooked or straight.

When they come after one of us, they come after us all. We hit back quick, and we hit back hard. Because that kind of thing, it could happen to any of us.

When one of us tops himself, though, when a sworn officer sticks a service piece under his chin and lets off a live round, then suddenly we’re all tongue-tied and bashful. It has to be handled, and as with the other, quick and hard is the only way. But woe to the detective who pulls the duty. He’ll get no sympathy or slack. Because this kind of thing, we have to believe, it could never happen to us. We could never sink so low as to eat a bullet. Nobody wants to get close to that.

So it falls to one man, typically the lowest, which over the past few years, ever since I fell off the captain’s good books, has been me. Roland March, the suicide cop. If you wear a badge in the city of Houston and decide to put a gun to your head, the first face you’d see, assuming you could ever open your eyes again, would be mine.

I ease my legs onto the floor, running my hand over the now-familiar bandage. My holstered pistol sits inside the half-open nightstand drawer.

“Where do you need me?” I ask.

“Good,” he says. “Thanks. I really mean it. The body’s in a truck parked over on Wayside, close to where it crosses Harrisburg.”

“Near Buffalo Bayou?”

“Sort of. There’s a bunch of warehouses. Looks like he just pulled over to the side of the road and did it right there. There happens to be a fairly decent golf course not far down the road – I don’t know if you play, but…”

I’m not sure what to say to that, so I don’t say a word.

“I could send a car by for you, if that would be easier.”

“No, just give me the address and I’ll find it.”

I jot down the specifics on the pad next to the phone stand, then go over the obvious details. Patrol has already sealed off the road, redirecting traffic, and the crime scene unit is en route. Even an obvious suicide gets the full treatment. This one sounds pretty straightforward. Officers on the scene say gunshot wound to the head, he’s holding what appears to be his duty weapon, empty bottles kicking around in the foot well.

“All right,” I tell him. “I’m on my way. Just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Who is it? Anybody I know?”

It never has been. I’ve shepherded half a dozen of these things through the process, never anybody I’d worked with or even knew by sight. We’re a big department, so there’s nothing strange in that.

“You might know this guy,” Hedges says. “A narcotics detective, or used to be. Guy by the name of Joseph Thomson – ring any bells?”

“Joe Thomson?”

A pause. “So you did know him. I’m sorry to hear that. Does it change anything?” He listens for an answer, but on my end nothing comes. “March?”

“I’ll handle it, sir. This one’s mine.”

PART 2. WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS

CHAPTER 16

The corpse of Octavio Morales, with its mask of beatific agony, had put me in mind of some martyred Spanish saint, but Joe Thomson’s puckered wince is more pedestrian, the look of a man who’s just smashed his thumb with a hammer, or remembered an errand he’d promised then failed to perform. Rimmed in black, the contact wound over his right ear raised a blood stamp roughly conforming to the muzzle of a sig Sauer P229, the same as the service pistol he still clutches in his right hand. The cavernous exit, blasting out the top left side of the head, sprayed wet tissue over the interior windows, the projectile embedding itself in the door pillar. We have a neat, self-contained scene, one that tells a straightforward, though tragic story.

“What were you thinking?” I ask under my breath, peering at him, willing the lips to move, but of course that’s not going to happen. To my shame, in spite of the spectacle of a man’s death – a man I had met and spoken with, a man whose life I knew a little about – my thoughts are entirely focused on the loss Thomson’s death represents to me. No shooters named in the Morales case, no damning testimony against Reg Keller or Tony Salazar. The fact that my captain sees this as an avenue toward redemption doesn’t comfort me much, since I’d been planning to return in triumph, thoroughly vindicated, and not as a kneeling supplicant.

The smell of burnt gunpowder is still strong, in spite of the open driver’s side door and the post-rain mist. My nostrils twitch, and the sound of the revolver going off in my lap fills my head. A sympathetic ache in my thigh reminds me, that could be you. I step back, glancing at the droplets clinging like dew to the exterior of Thomson’s vehicle, a several-year-old blue gmc Yukon.

“Good to see you again, sir.”

At my elbow, an eager kid in the garb of a crime-scene investigator smiles at me, giving no sign of being affected by the scene. I nod.

“Remember me?” he says. “Edgar Castro. We talked about that other case…?”

“Right. Castro. I remember. Let’s get to work here, okay?”

Overhead, a muddy gray sky threatens a repeat of the shower I drove over in. In spite of the sticky air, the first responder, a squared-away young patrolman named Nguyen, still wears a dripping poncho over his uniform. After Castro’s eagerness, I appreciate the businesslike demeanor of Nguyen. I take him to one side and let him rattle off his satisfyingly precise report. He responded to a call from dispatch at 6:04 a.m., arriving at the scene seven minutes later, where he secured the victim’s vehicle and did a preliminary interview of the security guard who called in the shooting.

“His name is Wendell Cropper,” he says, nodding toward a uniformed security guard having a smoke just outside the perimeter tape. “First thing out of his mouth is, he used to be on hpd back in the mid-nineties, which is funny because he should have known better than to disturb the scene.”

“What did he do?”

Nguyen makes a pistol out of his fingers. “He opened the door and uncocked the pistol, then pushed the victim’s finger out of the trigger guard. Said he was afraid it might go off again. Then he shut the door and called us.”

“The car door was unlocked?”

Nguyen nods.

“Okay, I want to have a talk with Mr. Cropper.”

The security guard flicks his cigarette away at my approach. I lift the tape, letting him duck underneath. He’s about my age, mid-forties, with a lean, smooth face and thick black eyebrows knitted together in the middle. Pale skin, but a charcoal shadow of beard in need of shaving. His uniform consists of fatigue pants and a short-sleeved shirt with epaulets and his name embroidered over the pocket.