Dear Ansel. My name is Blue Harrison. Before my father was adopted from a hospital near Essex, New York, he had an older brother. I think that brother might be you.
You staggered to the kitchen, let the letter float to the scratched oak table. It seemed, then, that the universe was both cruel and miraculous. Spiteful and forgiving. Baby Packer had not been screaming all those years to punish you. He had been screaming like all babies did: to tell you something.
The very next weekend, you went to the Blue House. You had driven through Tupper Lake on furniture deliveries, but your arrival felt alive this time, buoyed with meaning. The sky unfurled, a canopy over the lake, the sun sparkled the water a lustrous blue. The restaurant sat a few blocks up from the beach, a house perched on a small plot of land. It winked at you, beckoning.
The bell at the entrance tinkled when you walked in.
You recognized her immediately. Blue Harrison was waiting at a table in the corner, hunched and self-conscious, so very sixteen as she fiddled with a plastic straw. The sight of her was visceral, astounding. Until you saw Blue Harrison, you did not realize how constant that sound had been. A silence settled in the darkest cave of your head, the place where the baby had been softly mewling for years—the relief was nearly crippling in its totality.
Blue Harrison looked almost exactly like your mother.
In that instant, Baby Packer seemed to look up. Calm now, sweet and blinking. As if to say: Finally. You found me.
Saffy
2012
Saffy knew how to solve a mystery.
She knew that itch. The restless tingling at the tips of her fingers—the hunt and the capture, the rush and release. She knew how to twist and fray each morsel of information, tugging tiny threads until the whole thing dissolved. A mystery, Saffy could unravel then study, an exact and unequivocal science. But some cases evolved beyond mystery, into something more crooked, more complex; the worst kind of mystery transcended its own body, transformed into a brand-new sort of monster. Some cases turned cannibal, devouring themselves until there was nothing left but gristle.
*
Saffy stood at the front of the chattering crowd, her hands steady on the podium. The fluorescent backroom was packed full, the troopers rowdy in plastic chairs, the investigators slouching coolly along the far wall. Lieutenant Kensington leaned against the door, half inside the room, like he was planning his imminent escape.
Saffy cleared her throat, authoritative. She threw her shoulders back, let her voice boom low.
“As many of you know, we have received a date for the Lawson retrial,” she said. The room quieted. “Two weeks from Monday. Considering the high profile of this case, the DA is asking for our help—they want our eyes, our ears, our best efforts. Until the trial date, I want you all breathing, sleeping, and shitting this case.”
She had them now. How little it took: the brash, familiar cadence of their own machismo, gruff for the sake of it. In the months since her promotion to captain, Saffy had been careful to pepper her orders with these phrases—she needed their trust. She had been practicing some version of this speech for years, in the six she’d served as sergeant, then four as lieutenant. Saffy was forty years old now, the only female captain in the history of Troop B, and she had long ago accepted that to lead them, she’d have to speak like them.
“Sergeant Caldwell, why don’t you handle the briefing.”
Corinne leaned against the backroom wall, arms crossed over her beat leather jacket, her voice rasping soft and even.
“Marjorie Lawson was murdered two years ago in her own kitchen. Bashed in the back of the head with a frying pan. Her husband, Greg Lawson, assistant butcher at Painter and Sons, was the only suspect, and by every standard, it looks like he did it. But thanks to a leak in our own department, the defense filed for a mistrial.”
With this, Saffy gazed pointedly at Lieutenant Kensington, who was studying his expensive Italian shoes. Years before, Kensington had been careless at the local tavern, talking drunkenly to a juror about Lawson’s obvious guilt, and now it was Saffy who would pay the price. Saffy had inherited this shitshow from their old captain, nudged into retirement by this very case, and now she would have to find an untouched piece of evidence, a new investigative angle. She would need to build something fresh from a pile of dust.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Saffy said. “Lewis and Taminsky, I want you on the witnesses. Interview everyone again, push them hard. Hartford, you take the victim’s family, find anything you can about the Lawsons’ marriage. Benny and Mugs, you’re on forensics. And, Kensington, you get to deal with the DA and the attorneys. The verdict is on the prosecution, but for the next two weeks we put everything we have into helping them make a case. Let’s get to work.”