Made him think of his dad. Not that his death had been personal. He’d walked into a convenience store robbery, wrong place, wrong time. The shooter had panicked, fired twice, and run. His dad had died before the ambulance arrived.
Carson was nineteen. Old enough to understand death. Too young to understand why.
He pushed the memory away and focused on the scene in front of him. The dead man here deserved justice. Deserved someone who wouldn’t stop until his killer was found.
That’s what Carson did. He didn’t stop.
Even when he should.
***
Captain Marcus Holloway sat behind his desk like a mountain—solid, unmovable, weathered by time and experience. He’d been with Blackridge PD for thirty-five years. He’d worked with Carson’s dad. He’d been at the funeral.
And for the past nineteen years, he’d been more of a father to Carson than his actual father had the chance to be.
Which made it extra annoying when he looked at him with that particular expression—the one that said Carson had crossed a line and he was about to call him on it.
“Close the door, Carson.”
Never good when he used his first name.
Carson closed the door and sat in the chair across from his desk. Waited. Let him start.
He pulled out a file and opened it. “The Mitchum case. You interviewed the suspect’s girlfriend yesterday.”
“Yeah. She confirmed he was home the night of the robbery, but she was lying. Body language was all wrong, and her story had holes you could drive a truck through.”
“So you went back to her apartment at ten PM without backup or a warrant.”
Shit. Someone had seen him. “She’d already talked to me once. I just had a few follow-up questions.”
“Carson.” Holloway leaned forward, his dark eyes sharp. “You can’t do that. You know you can’t do that. If she’d complained, if anything had happened, that whole case could’ve been thrown out.”
“She didn’t complain. And she told me the truth—Mitchum wasn’t home that night. She was covering for him because he threatened her.”
“Which is exactly why you should have brought her in properly, with a victim advocate, in a controlled environment. Not cornered her in her home at night when she was scared.”
Carson bit back his first response—that they’d gotten the truth, hadn’t they? That Mitchum was going away and his girlfriend was safe. That results mattered more than procedure.
But he’d had this argument with Holloway before. Multiple times. He never won.
“You’re right,” Carson said instead. “I should have waited until morning. Brought backup. Done it by the book.”
Holloway studied him for a long moment. “You don’t mean that.”
“I mean I should have. Whether I would have is a different question.”
A smile almost—almost—touched his mouth. Then it was gone. “You’re one of the best detectives I’ve got, Carson. You see things other people miss. You get results. But you take risks that worry me.”
“Calculated risks.”
“Risks nonetheless.” He closed the file and leaned back in his chair. “You can’t save everyone. You can’t solve every case. And you can’t bend the rules every time you think the end justifies the means.”
There it was. The thing he never quite said but they both knew he was thinking.
You can’t bring Lily back.
Carson’s sister’s name hung in the air between them, unspoken but present. Always present.
