“You don’t have to explain,” Erin replied. “We all have people who’d go to bat for us, even if it’s with elbows out.”
Jamie smiled. “I think that’s their love language.”
Erin exhaled a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Fair.”
They reached the coffee shop, a narrow, half-glass storefront with the smell of espresso already curling out the door. Erin ordered a black coffee. Jamie, an oat milk latte.
As they stepped back out into the light chill of the morning, Jamie found her opening.
“I’ve been looking at the Medford case,” she said. “I know it’s messy, but I don’t think Rodriguez is lying.”
Erin’s eyes narrowed slightly, not in judgment but curiosity. “You believe the tox angle?”
Jamie shrugged. “I believe something happened to him. It doesn’t add up. I know everyone wants a clean headline, but—”
“But you’re not everyone,” Erin finished for her, almost gently.
That was the first moment Jamie realized Erin had been listening.
Five
Erin sat alone in the quiet squad room, the only light coming from her monitor and a desk lamp someone had left on across the room. The glow cast long shadows, making the half-empty space feel even lonelier. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, then tilted her head back to stretch the tension in her neck. She had been staring at the same page of her report for over ten minutes, unable to focus.
Her desk was cluttered with folders, half-drunk coffee, and a notepad scribbled with questions from the morning’s press conference. One file lay open in front of her, highlighting six different homicides across four states. On paper, they looked unconnected—different jurisdictions, different circumstances—but Erin had a feeling. Something about the timing and the randomness of each attack gnawed at her.
Still, it was late, and she knew she wasn’t going to make much more progress tonight. Her thoughts had started drifting again, first to the toxicology results she was still waiting on, then to the reporter who had asked about them.
Erin sighed and leaned back in her chair. She could still picture Jamie’s face during the interview with Olivia Turner, the way her expression softened and her voice stayed calm and kind. She hadn’t meant to stay and watch the broadcast, but when one of the younger officers had pulled it up in the break room, she hadn’t looked away. She told herself it was just professional curiosity. Nothing more.
But watching Jamie on screen, Erin felt something shift.
Jamie was calm but commanding, her voice steady as she introduced thesegment. The camera cut to Olivia Turner sitting in one of WCVB’s glass-walled interview rooms, and the tone immediately softened. Jamie’s posture changed, just enough for Erin to notice. She leaned in slightly, her voice dropping just a little as she asked questions. It wasn’t an act. She was listening.
That stood out.
Most reporters rushed grief. They pressed too hard or glossed over the quiet parts. Jamie didn’t. She let Olivia talk about Josh in full color, his love for old buildings, the way he used to invent histories for every brownstone they passed. She let the silences breathe. Erin could tell Olivia trusted her, even if only for a moment.
And then the piece turned.
Jamie didn’t sensationalize it. She didn’t make any wild claims. But she raised the question that Erin had been turning over for days now.
“Edgar Rodriguez has been charged with murder, but questions remain. Sources close to the case say toxicology results could play a larger role than initially expected.”
It was vague enough to avoid trouble. No attribution. No leaks. But the message was clear. Jamie wasn’t just chasing the press conference sound bite. She was doing her own digging.
Erin’s eyes stayed on the screen, even after the segment ended. Jamie had caught something, something that most of the press pool hadn’t bothered to ask about. Erin had spent the week requesting updates on the tox screen herself. It had taken too long to come back, and now the window for explanations was closing.
She tapped her pen against the folder in front of her. Jamie had seen it. That mattered.
And maybe Erin wasn’t grasping at shadows after all.
She looked back down at the six files spread across her desk, each one marked with a different jurisdiction’s case number. They were all too easy to dismiss in isolation—a mugging gone wrong in Providence, a bar fight in Albany, a stabbing near a parking garage in New Haven. But the timelines lined up too cleanly. And more than one of them had mentioned strangebehavior from the suspect. Slurred speech. Disorientation. A blank look in the eyes.
Just like Edgar Rodriguez.
If the toxicology report came back the way Erin suspected, it wouldn’t just change the shape of this case. It could be the thread that connected something much bigger.
She sat back in her chair, running a hand over her face. The station was nearly silent now, the hum of the vending machine and the occasional creak from the HVAC system the only sounds left. It was probably time to go home.
