#watkinshemlock

“Why do you think they took so long to skip town? When we got to the house, the chief had already been dead for at least an hour. They probably could’ve crossed the border in the time it took for anyone to even get back to us about the APB,” I mused aloud as Hemlock, Ramirez, and I stood in the bullpen of the nearest SAPD station watching a flurry of GPS blips on a monitor. 

“The report said the boy has a backpack and some toys, not to mention an age-appropriate car seat,” Hemlock said, hands propped on his hips, jacket pushed back. His waist looked especially slim with his high-waisted trousers and cinched belt, almost out of time. He could’ve been a 1900s noir detective in that moment with his tousled hair, scruffy jaw, and perfect figure, all tucked into the gritty reality of a modern police station. “Maybe the kidnapper stayed to pack. They clearly care for the child.”

Before I could reply, a ringtone cut through the silence and Ramirez scrambled for her pockets. She answered with a terse greeting and then was silent for a long moment. Then, without saying another word, she turned on her heel and walked into the captain’s office. She shut the door, then pulled the blinds closed. 

I met Hemlock’s eyes and he raised an eyebrow in question. I jerked my head at the side door out of the station—it was marked Emergency Exit, but I had watched a few officers slip in and out while we had been standing there, and no alarm had sounded yet. 

I left first, slipping out into a back parking lot, and by the time Hemlock joined me a minute later, I already had a cigarette in one hand and was flicking my dying Zippo with the other. I finally got it to catch and made a mental note to pick up lighter fluid when I got back to D.C. as I curled my hand around the end to shield it from the breeze. Hemlock closed the door and leaned against the wall beside me. 

“Bum one?” he asked, and I offered him the pack. He wasn’t wearing his leather gloves, and I found myself watching his slim fingers slide a cigarette out of the pack, raise it to his lips, mirroring all the familiar motions I knew so well: the crisp flick of the Zippo, the careful palm around the small flame. He passed the pack back to me, lighter tucked back inside, and I pocketed it. 

“You were lookin’ like you had somethin’ to say in there,” I said.

Hemlock took a moment to inhale deeply on the cigarette, then exhaled the smoke into the muggy air. I did the same, but I didn’t take my eyes off him. 

“What did Goodrich’s breath smell of?” he said at last.

“Pepper,” I answered easily. 

“As did Drebson’s. Did you notice anything similar about the two crime scenes, otherwise?”

I frowned—I thought it was a trick question. They were nearly identical. 

“No sign of trauma but plenty of blood we’re still waiting for lab results on,” I began, watching Hemlock’s face. “Both men were positioned similarly as if reaching out for their killer. Both were fully dressed, both scenes had German words written in blood. The thing I still don’t understand is why Drebson was so far out of the city.”

“You’re missing one more similarity,” Hemlock said, smoke dripping from his lower lip. “Maybe the most crucial one of all.”

I racked my brain, walking back through each crime scene. I suppose I was quiet for too long, because Hemlock finally turned to look at me, eyes sharp. 

“Each had a glass and a decanter.”

I frowned, not remembering. “Drebson didn’t—”

“He did,” Hemlock corrected before I could finish. “A small decanter and a glass on the table, the one surface not covered in blood, which, if I had to guess, is pig’s. I took the liberty of inspecting these items before you arrived, Agent Watkins, and found traces of moisture in the bottom of each. Both smelled faintly of…”

“Pepper,” I filled in, and he smiled. 

“Good lad,” he said. I didn’t hear what he said next, distracted by the way the smoke danced from his mouth, but he looked at me expectantly. 

“Sorry, what?”

“Doesn’t that sound like our method of killing?” he repeated, eyebrow raised, and I nodded.

“Poison, surely,” I agreed, “but it was so faint, and such an ordinary smell, I never would’ve picked it out if you hadn’t asked me to. And who knows how long it could take for a tox report to come back. The blood was a good distraction, though. Despite the lack of visible C.O.D., it made us want to find one, rather than investigating any sort of poisoning—and added extra time, calling in an expert. We should ask the forensics team to swab the glass.”

“No need,” Hemlock said and took a drag of his cigarette, almost down to the filter. He held it like a lifeline, like each puff was the only oxygen he would get for an indeterminate amount of time after. “I already know what killed these men.”

“...You gonna share with the class, Poirot?” I asked, and Hemlock’s brow furrowed. 

“Poirot?” he asked.

“Agatha Christie?”

Hemlock looked at me blankly. 

“One of the most famous fictional detectives of all time? Hercule Poirot? The blueprint for basically every modern piece of detective fiction?”

Hemlock shook his head. If you’ll recall my list from earlier, his understanding of pop culture is worse than a newborn’s, and that started to dawn on me at the time.

“It doesn’t matter.” I waved it away. “Just tell me what poison was used.”

“Are you familiar with Aconitum?” he asked. I blinked, so he continued. “Aconite, wolfsbane, monkshood?”

“I’ve probably heard of it,” I said with a vague shrug. “I’ve never spent much time studying poisons. I was a trauma doctor, a field surgeon. Not anything specialized like that.”

Hemlock nodded and stubbed the butt of his cigarette on the cinderblock exterior of the building. He held it pinched between two long fingers and let his hand fall back to his side. 

“Don’t discount yourself, Doctor,” he said and offered me a small, pleased smile. “You’ve been far more competent in this investigation than the vast majority of American law enforcement I’ve engaged with.”

I chuckled back the warmth in my chest. “I won’t tell Hanford you said that.”

“You can,” Hemlock retorted, his smile growing wider, less censored. “He’s heard it all before. He’s a good enough man, but as far as his investigative prowess goes, I fear the best thing he’s done for the Bureau is bring me on as his consultant.”

I laughed full-chested, not even mourning how my cigarette dislodged from my fingertips and fell to the cement beneath us. “That’s awful,” I laughed. His smile went crooked and conspiratory, and he leaned down a little closer to me, as if sharing a secret. 

“Is it untrue?”

“...Probably not,” I acquiesced and watched smoke curl up from the pile of ash my dropped cigarette had become. “Tell me about this poison, then.”

“Aconite,” Hemlock said and tipped his head back, squinting up at the cloudless Texas sky. “Native to North America, Europe, parts of Asia. One of the most poisonous plants you can find relatively easily, and as little as a single gram of the plant can be fatal. It also”—he turned to look at me—“isn’t screened for in any basic toxicology panels. It appears as if the victim either asphyxiated, or succumbed to heart failure.”

I rolled that over in my head for a moment. 

“Okay, so our two victims from today were likely poisoned with aconite by…what, spiking whatever they drank?”

“Almost certainly. Only a few milligrams are needed to cause symptoms, barely more to lead to almost instant death. Most tinctures I’ve interacted with were a brownish yellow, almost amber color—if the men were offered whiskey, for example, it’s likely enough the tincture could’ve hidden in the liquid long enough to kill them before they noticed,” Hemlock said. 

“So that gives us the how,” I replied and crossed my arms over my chest. “What about the who, or the why?”

“Talk through it. You have all the pieces,” Hemlock said, and watched me. I felt like I was back in med school again, the senior resident asking me for my differential diagnosis. 

“We have two men in high positions of political power poisoned, doused in blood—likely pig’s—and left behind with cryptic German code phrases: revenge at one, and penance at the other. We also have a missing boy, kidnapped by somebody that he seemingly trusts, and who doesn’t intend to kill him,” I began.

“And Sophia?”

I blinked a few times as more puzzle pieces slotted together.

“She was also poisoned,” I realized aloud. “Peripartum cardiomyopathy is just postpartum heart failure due to weakened muscle tissue. If the cause was poison, but nobody knew to look for it, it’s likely they would call it a tragic, unexpected death—which also makes sense when the echo before the boy’s birth was entirely normal.”

“Poisoned why?” Hemlock prompted, eyes shining with excitement.

“She was in a relationship with another woman, her friend Hope. Do you think…did Brigham have something to do with it?”

“Rache, Watkins.”

“Revenge—Drebson killed her. He killed his own daughter.”

“Most likely the case. I would have to look more into the investigation data in order to find any recorded instance in which he, or some combination of him and Robert Goodrich, were alone with her after the birth.”

“Why? Why would they…”

Hemlock’s face went a little stormy. I’ve always thought that he wears his emotions plainly on his face, unlike most of the other people I’ve spoken to about him. They all claim he’s difficult to read, but I can see right through him. I’ve always been able to. In that moment, he looked…devastated. 

“You said it before. Right-wing, Christian family. Tell me, what about Sophia’s relationship doesn’t add up? You’re from here, you should understand the culture.” Hemlock sounded tired and bitter. 

I thought for a moment, and then recalled something that had flickered through my mind briefly, but I had discarded as too old-fashioned. “They weren’t married,” I said. “She was pregnant, but they weren’t married yet.”

“Brigham had some interesting things to say about Sophia, when I spoke to him earlier,” Hemlock said quietly. I felt drawn to reach out to him, to reassure him. I didn’t. “They were on the verge of splitting up just under a year before she died. Then, miraculously, she became pregnant. He asked her to marry him—for propriety, of course—and she said yes, after the baby was born. She didn’t want to be pregnant on her wedding day, is what he said.”

“Do you think he—do you think it was rape? Was he trying to ‘fix her,’ or keep her there with a child?” Nausea rose up in my throat. 

Hemlock swallowed, and I thought that he felt the same. “I don’t know. Either way, she was pregnant, and Brigham knew, so she couldn’t terminate.”

“Not that you can in Texas, anyways,” I added, and Hemlock nodded, mouth twisted in a grim line. “So why kill her?”

“They weren’t married when the boy was born,” Hemlock said simply. “She was going to run.”

“Brigham said this?”

“He didn’t have to.”

“So instead of losing her and her son, they poisoned her with—what, an obscure plant tincture? How would they have even gotten it?”

“They could’ve grown it, or bought it from a folk medicine store—there are plenty of ways to source it, as it isn’t illegal in the United States. I think the more interesting question, personally, is how did today’s killer acquire it, and what is the connection with our bloody German words. Actually, while you were so kindly driving me back from the dump site, I took it upon myself to do a little research as to where aconite is commonly grown, and found that monkshood is quite common in Bavaria,” Hemlock explained and made a small flick of his long, elegant fingers, the distress from earlier carefully masked behind the vague, unconcerned gesture. “German is, in fact, the most commonly spoken language in Germany, so between the poison of choice and the gruesome epitaphs, it feels like a good direction to go.”

“...Who’s German, in all this?” I asked, feeling like I was losing the plot.

“The third major character, Doctor. We’ve discussed Sophia, and her fiancé, but who was she going to run away with?”

Oh. 

“Hope.”

“Excellent, my friend,” Hemlock said warmly, and then barreled right back into it. “Hope Jefferson-Webber, who came to America when she was eight with her mother and, after Sophia’s death, returned to Bavaria to stay with her grandmother. Hope Jefferson-Webber, who was forcibly removed from the family, who lost everybody she cared about in a single violent act, and was never allowed to see the boy her beloved gave her life for, the heir to a bloody, corrupt dynasty. 

“Hope, who has been given no love from the family of her partner. Hope who, when she tried to speak up, was legally barred from going anywhere near the boy Sophia wanted her to care for. Hope, who kept Sophia’s engagement ring, the only thing she could keep of her. Hope, who is an immigrant, whose mother died years ago, who had nowhere else to go after Sophia died but home, all the way back to the home of the exact poison that killed her lover. Hope, who is refusing to let Theodore—her son—be brought up wholly by the families who killed his mother.”

“She took him,” I exhaled, and Hemlock nodded. “How do you know all of this?”

Hemlock’s eyes glistened as he caught his breath. He had gotten so into the reveal of it all, the big ‘red string’ moment coming to life, that he hadn’t breathed the entire time he was speaking. 

“The thing about solving a murder in the modern era, my dear doctor, is that everybody has an Instagram.”

I couldn’t help it—I broke out laughing, loud and boisterous and entirely inappropriate for two men trying to solve a double homicide. I laughed until Hemlock’s mouth turned up at the corners into a smile as well, and he laughed along with me. I laughed until my stomach hurt, and then I lowered myself to the curb and sat, holding my gut with one hand and stretching my bad leg out in front of me. 

Hemlock didn’t sit beside me at first, choosing instead to continue leaning against the wall, but I could see the smile on his lips from my perch on the cement. 

“I think I like workin’ with you, Dr. Hemlock,” I said when I’d caught my breath, and the look on his face went from amused to something impossibly softer at once. It was almost vulnerable, like he was cut open by my words.

I realize now that I was likely the first person in the FBI to say something like that—Hanford has reiterated how much he struggled with handling Hemlock multiple times since this first case, and I can’t say I don’t understand.

Sterling Hemlock is one of the most infuriating, complicated, cocky, self-obsessed, self-destructive men I’ve ever met. Anyone who works alongside him deserves some significant compensation, and probably some psychiatric help. 

That being said, I think that this was the moment that made up my mind that he was going to be one of those people whose lives tangled with mine inextricably and permanently. Looking up at him, seeing his skin turn pinkish-brown in the Texas sun, watching him smooth the cuffs of his shirt. 

I don’t entirely remember how much time passed while we were out there, but we went back inside soon after that to break down our understanding of the case to not only Ramirez, but also the local PD. Hemlock explained everything about the poison and the boy, shared our theories about Hope, and laid out the evidence. By the time we had finished—or, more accurately, Hemlock finished, since all I did was interject a clarification here and there—the police had sent out photos of Hope Jefferson-Webber to any uniform within a hundred miles. 

Ramirez thought that it was likely that she had already made it across the border, or to the airport, or whatever it was she was doing, by the time it got out, but Hemlock and I had done our part, and I considered the case solved. Locating Hope—regardless of how either of us personally felt about the case, or her motives—was up to the locals. 

When Ramirez relieved us, I made Hemlock come with me to a small coffee shop down the block. It was barely 2 p.m. but I was already starting to feel dead on my feet. The fact that I’d woken up in my apartment in D.C. before the sun was even out and it was still only midafternoon by the time I’d helped solve a double murder and a kidnapping—it made my brain hurt a little bit. 

I texted Hanford where we went and offered to buy Hemlock whatever he wanted to celebrate a job well done. He ordered a London fog with soy milk and spent the whole time I was ordering my red eye staring longingly at a chocolate croissant, so I got two of those too. We sat at a secluded booth in the back and I watched him methodically pick the layers of the croissant apart and eat them individually. 

“I let Hanford know we’re here,” I said, and then tested my coffee to see if it was cool enough to sip. It wasn’t, so all I did was burn my tongue, which was just great. “He said he’s comin’ by to pick you up.”

Hemlock nodded, mouth full of pastry. There was a little fleck of crust on his chin, and my fingers itched to brush it off. He was otherwise so put together with his button up and coat—which I was still amazed he hadn’t sweat through—that any little mess felt deeply out of place. 

“One thing still bugs me,” I said after a minute, hands folded around my cup. “The blood, I kind of get—it was a red herring, to throw us off of the poison scent for a little bit, and it being pig’s is a statement about the police, I’m sure—but why did Hope kill Drebson so far out of the city, if she was going to kill Goodrich in his own home?”

Hemlock chewed and swallowed and then looked at me. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted, and despite the frustration I could see in his face at the fact, the fact that he’d said it at all solidified something that had been bouncing around in my head for an hour or so at that point. 

“Hemlock, where are you based out of?”

If he was bothered by the sudden conversational shift, he didn’t show it. 

“Washington, D.C., currently.”

“How convenient, I am too.” I licked my lips to wet them, suddenly nervous, as if I was asking someone out on a date instead of if they’d like to continue working together. “I was thinkin’ I could ask Hanford if he wants a break from handling you.”

Hemlock’s eyes went incrementally wider in surprise, and then immediately narrowed in suspicion. “You want me? Why?”

“I liked working with you today,” I said with a shrug. “I think there’s a lot I could learn from you. Plus, it ain’t like they’re sending me on very much, not right now. Keepin’ an eye on you and helping with some poisoning cases would keep me busy, I bet.”

Hemlock studied my face, presumably looking for any sort of ulterior motive, or dishonesty. I let him, even though his gaze was piercing. 

“I also don’t think Hanford has much patience for being beholden to the whims of whichever supervisor asks for you,” I added. “He’d much rather stay at his desk, but I’ve always been a good flier.”

“Air Force, not Army,” Hemlock murmured, and I smiled. 

“Exactly.”

He was quiet for a long moment, working on another bite of croissant, and I took the opportunity to glance at my phone. There wasn’t much—a text from Strand telling me not to overdo it, another from Mary saying ‘break a leg, again,’ which I did laugh at. Other than that, it was my conversation with Hanford giving him the address of the coffee shop and a whole lot of nothing. 

“Alright,” Hemlock said right as I started to open my email. “But I’m difficult to work with. I always have been. I have a myriad of diagnoses that make me unreliable and unstable. That being said, I won’t be offended when you’re done with me.”

“Did you forget that I was blown up less than a year ago, and I still barely sleep through the night? I’m not exactly the picture of productivity, here,” I retorted. We sat there for a second, analyzing each other, trying to pick out anything else we should know. 

Then, Hemlock nodded, and the spell was broken. 

“Excellent,” he said and reached across the table for my untouched croissant, which he began picking apart just as methodically as the first. “Consider it settled, then.” 

I shook my head in amusement and watched him consume the rest of my makeshift lunch, but I didn’t stop him. I just finished my coffee and, when Hanford showed up, I asked, and he seemed more grateful to get Hemlock out of his hair than he had any right to be, considering the bona fide genius he had in his pocket. 

We left separately, as we weren’t on the same flight back to the East Coast, but I made sure to have Hemlock put himself in my phone contacts before we parted. I texted him my name back, and that was that.

That was the first case I ever worked with Dr. Sterling Hemlock. A pair of poisonings, a tragic queer love story, and a race that law enforcement was never going to win. 

Odd, how only six hours of time spent together, even less of investigation, ignited the intense partnership that we’ve continued for as long as we have. But that tends to be how kismet works, doesn’t it? A single instance, a single handshake, and a person is changed forever. 

Or, in our case, two people, twined tightly together for the rest of our lives. 

“Do we think it’s a ransom situation?”

“With two bodies? Very, very unlikely.”

I knew she was right, and I also knew what that meant. We were on the clock. The longer it took for any of us to find Theodore Goodrich, the more likely it was that he was dead.

I glanced back at Hemlock where he was seated behind Ramirez. His eyes were sharp and his brow furrowed, focused on something I couldn’t make heads or tails of. It would be a while still before I started being able to reliably make sense of his expressions, and even now, I find myself wondering what’s going on inside his head more often than I can piece it together. 

Chief Robert Goodrich lived in the middle of the city in an expensive stucco and shingle-roof townhome squeezed between a dozen other equally expensive homes. The whole block was already solid police tape and blinking lights brighter and more blinding than the rabid Texas sun, even as we crawled closer to noon.

There was a woman and a man—younger than both her and I but still fully grown—sitting on the curb outside. She had her arm around him, hugging him close, and his face was red with tear tracks. 

Hemlock darted off toward the open front door, the tail of his long coat flipping in the barely there breeze, and I hurried after him even though my bad leg was actually starting to hurt. 

“Hemlock,” I hissed, but the police officer standing in the doorway had already stopped him.

“Hey, you can’t go in there,” the man said. He was a short, pudgy white man with a crooked nose and sweat rolling down his temple. Hemlock’s face went stormy, and I quickly stepped forward to intervene. 

“Special Agent Jim Watkins,” I said and offered him my badge. My other hand went to rest on Hemlock’s arm, all but holding him back. “This is my colleague, one of our very best civilian consultants, Dr. Sterling Hemlock. SSA Ramirez brought us here to take a look at the body.”

The officer—Miller, as his shiny, unblemished metal nametag proclaimed him to be—squinted at my badge, then narrowed his eyes over my shoulder at Ramirez.

“Let me see some ID,” he huffed and held his hand up, snapping in Hemlock’s face. I was immediately infuriated, and I could tell Hemlock was barely holding it in.

It’s such a played out trope. Local PD who struggle to work with the Feds, fighting for their jurisdiction in a desperate power struggle that hurts far more people than it helps. 

Still, it happens all the goddamn time. We show up, tell them we’re there to help, and they prickle worse than the cacti in the miles of desert that surround this city. They push and prod, insist on our compliance, and get pissier when we don’t budge. Not to mention the fact that this case was the murder of their boss. A distinctly police issue. I imagine Ramirez gets shit from them even worse, being a woman of color in a position of power. Miller had also side-eyed Hemlock plenty then.

I stepped forward and leaned into my old, mostly forgotten Texan accent, and smiled. “Officer Miller, is it?” I asked, as polite as I could manage. “I appreciate your due diligence with the safety of the crime scene. It’s everybody’s highest priority to find out what happened to the chief, ours and yours. We just want to make sure we get the whole picture so we can find who did this and bring little Theodore back home.”

Miller squinted at me, but I just maintained my polite smile. 

“If you want to wait until the body gets cold for anyone who might know a thing about his death to get inside for a look, be my guest, but I promise you, Hemlock is the best we’ve got,” I said firmly, still holding that pleasant smile—with just a hint of bite, the way I know best—on my face. I’ve been told plenty of times that I can be scary if I need to be. I’ve never entirely understood. I’m a soft-faced man with more smile lines than visible scars, even after both of my careers. 

I still use it to my advantage when I need to, though. 

Miller studied me for a moment more, anger broiling behind his face, and then stepped aside to allow Hemlock and I to enter. My companion lifted the yellow tape, I ducked under, and it was as easy as that. We were inside. 

We followed the obvious trail of plastic sheeting covering the ground in a direct line back from the entryway, around the staircase, and then into a large office. 

Right away, I could tell why they had connected this crime scene to the district attorney’s.

A body, fully dressed, flat on its stomach, a single hand outstretched. Gallons of blood covered the office: splattered across books in an antique wooden cabinet, the glass panes of the shelves, and soaked dark and wet into the carpet. A painting hung just behind the desk, right behind a large, leather swivel chair, and I thought it might’ve depicted a fight from the Texas Revolution, as I could see the vague shape of the Alamo behind all of the blood. 

All of that, yes. But also the carefully scripted letters, shaped in bold uppercase, scrawled in crimson on the wallpaper. 

REUE.

“Reue,” I said aloud, like roo, but Hemlock shook his head before the word had even finished leaving my mouth. 

“Die Reue,” he said, pronouncing it like dee roy-eugh with a guttural, throaty sound.

“Rache,” I recalled. “It means revenge, right?”

“Reue,” Hemlock repeated and turned his stony expression from the wall to me. “Penance.”

“Why German?” I asked, but Hemlock was already crouching and pushing at the man’s fingers. They came open easily—Goodrich hadn’t yet gone rigid with death, and I said as much aloud.

“How recent,” Hemlock replied absently, barely a question. I carefully lowered myself into a crouch beside him and reached out to touch the man’s pallid face. I pulled at his eyelids and felt the tension in his jaw. Stiff, but barely.

“Definitely less than six hours, probably less than three,” I answered confidently. “The blood hasn’t dried yet, either.”

“Excellent,” Hemlock murmured and looked sideways at me over the corpse. A small, private smile tugged at his lips, and I couldn’t help but offer one in turn. “Dr. Watkins, why did you vouch for me with Officer Miller?”

I scoffed, but continued to examine the body, checking both his hands—nothing was clutched in them, unlike Drebson’s mysterious golden ring—and pressing lightly at his clothes to look for a cause of death. “Because Miller is the latest in a long line of local PD that have looked at me or my colleagues and decided we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing,” I said, voice low, and glanced over my shoulder. “Their chief is dead. That’s gonna make ’em pricklier than ever, and it doesn’t help that they’re already known for being racist assholes. God forbid anyone involved in this”—I gestured to the body, then nebulously up in the air—“isn’t white, or it’s gonna be a talking point for years.”

Hemlock’s expression was unreadable. He examined my face and I felt pulled apart. 

“I’m from here, remember?” I added. “I know I’m one degree removed from being a beat cop, and I also know I’m a goddamn hypocrite, but there ain’t any police department in this goddamn country that knows how to handle its biases. Miller is just a cog in a rusty, violent machine, and I’m not lettin’ it run either of us over because of the color of our skin.”

Hemlock was quiet for a long moment, looking at me, and then his eyes slid past me and refocused over my shoulder. In an instant, he was distracted, and he darted off behind me. I tottered on my bad leg but found my way to my feet, huffing in mild irritation.

At least, until I saw the look on Hemlock’s face, staring down at a small table with a decanter of whiskey and a single crystal glass, untouched by crimson blood.

“Watkins,” he said, voice quiet, distant. “Smell his breath.”

I looked at him for a moment, but he seemed so far away, in another of those hazy states I still don’t entirely know what to do with. I couldn’t find a reason not to comply. 

So, I found my way to my knees—again, much to my leg’s chagrin—and carefully tilted the man’s head to the side. Then, I leaned in close and inhaled.

I grimaced. “At eight in the goddamn morning?” I muttered.

“Not the crap whiskey,” Hemlock said and spun around in an unexpected flash of energy, crouching across from me. “Under that. Can you smell it?”

“Hemlock, I—”

“Do you trust me?”

I looked up and his cool grey eyes met mine. I remember thinking those first few months that Hemlock’s gaze always had the same static as a thunderstorm, as the hairs on the back of your neck right before a lightning strike. The desperate, yearning tension between the earth and the sky, only ever palliated by split-second zaps of energy that allowed the two to touch by proxy for a single, deadly heartbeat.

I remember, even as early as then, that I did trust him, implicitly and instinctively, like I had known him all my life, I just hadn’t met him until that fateful day in Texas.

“I do.”

“One more try, then,” he said in that smooth voice, and I never had a chance at not listening to him. I leaned in close and inhaled, eyes shut, searching for anything underneath the fervent scent of sleep-sour breath and cheap whiskey. I breathed, flipping through a mental rolodex, and after a moment, I leaned back on my haunches.

“Something…sharp,” I murmured, searching for the right word. “Bitter?”

“What comes to mind, first and foremost, Watkins?” Hemlock asked, earnest, watching my face intently. 

“Is this a test?” I asked, and the ghost of a smile passed over his face.

“Everything’s a test.”

“...Pepper,” I decided, and his face lit up. His mouth spread into a wide smile that made his mustache flip up at the ends and his eyes crinkle in the corners. It was the warmest I had seen him so far, and even back then, I wanted to make that smile stick around. 

“Precisely.” He rose to his feet, moving much faster than I could. He was out the door before I even stood up, long gone by the time I caught my breath.

“Hemlock,” I called after him, but all I could hear were sneakers on plastic, hurrying away. “Hemlock! What about the kid?”

That was the first instance of another of Hemlock’s bad habits: running off. He doesn’t do it on purpose—most of the time—but instead out of, I believe, a deep excitement he doesn’t know how to stave off. He gets an idea, or fits two puzzle pieces together, and has to physically move fast enough to catch up with the thought before it fizzles away.

He still hasn’t kicked the habit, but I’ve taken to smacking at his ankles with my cane when he tries it, and that’s helped a bit, like disciplining an overeager puppy. 

That day, though, as the sun crept higher into the sky and the scent of blood grew stronger throughout the SAPD chief of police’s exorbitant home, I just followed, slow and steady, like the dogged companion I was destined to be.

When I got outside, Hemlock was already deep in conversation with Ramirez, so I walked over to the car and leaned against the driver’s side door to get some shade. I opened my phone and found the email that Strand had forwarded me last night, before I even stepped foot in Texas.

It was almost exclusively information about Drebson, such as past threats, and groups that might have disagreed with cases he’d prosecuted. Aside from the brief mention of the online conspiracy after Sophia’s death, none of it stood out as either interesting or a solid motive. But Hemlock and Ramirez both seemed insistent that Sophia Drebson’s death had been more than an accident, so I scrolled on the small screen until I found the brief on her death. 

Daughter Sophia Drebson (26) died after postpartum complications on August 5, 202⸺. Her son, Theodore Goodrich, was safely delivered. The coroner cited peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) as the cause of death. All witness accounts lined up in the forty-eight hours between son’s birth and mother’s death.

Witnesses include: David Drebson, son Declan Drebson; Chief of Police Robert Goodrich, son Brigham Goodrich (fiancé of Sophia Drebson and father of Theodore Goodrich); Doctor Joseph Rance, RN Sylvia McKay; and family friend/godmother Hope Jefferson-Webber. 

Two of the main witnesses of Sophia’s death were now dead, murdered by almost certainly the same hand, and the only connections were a blip of a paragraph in a fourteen page file and a missing boy. I still didn’t know how Hemlock had drawn the connection, how he had seen through the barely there details enough to drag the red yarn between Sophia’s passing and these murders, and I wouldn’t for a while. 

“Are you Brigham Goodrich, Theodore’s father?”

Hemlock’s voice carried across the burning pavement and I looked up at once. He stood in the blazing sun, leaning over the curb where the two sagging witnesses still sat. I pushed myself off of the car and headed over, lingering just outside of Hemlock’s periphery, just in case.

“I—I am, yes,” the young man said and sniffed aggressively, wiping the back of his hand across his face. “The chief was my father.”

“Mr. Goodrich, did your father have any substance abuse issues?”

I could see the young man’s face begin to turn red with anger, so I sighed and stepped between them before anything could get worse.

“Dr. Hemlock,” I greeted, and then turned to the young man and the woman I presumed to be his mother. “I’m Special Agent Jim Watkins. Hemlock and I are working on your father’s case, and that of the attorney general. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

Hemlock, thankfully, stayed quiet as Brigham looked between the two of us. 

“My father was a good, God-fearing man,” he said, voice thick and definitive. “He never used drugs. He drank sometimes, sure, but—”

“Mrs. Goodrich,” Hemlock interrupted sharply, and I flicked my gaze to the woman beside Brigham. “Do you have anything to say?”

I don’t know what made Hemlock call her out in particular, but her eyes went wide and her face flushed. She had brown hair streaked thickly with grey and white, and the pale skin of her face sagged with a life long-lived. She couldn’t be much older than fifty or so, but she looked…weathered.

“No, sir,” she said and averted her eyes. I glanced at Hemlock, only to find him looking back. Our eyes met for just a moment, and somehow, I knew we were on the same page. 

“Mr. Goodrich, how about you and Dr. Hemlock check in with our supervisor, SSA Ramirez,” I suggested, and Hemlock inclined his head just slightly. I saw it for what it was—acquiescence and understanding. 

That silent communication is something that has only ever come naturally for me with Hemlock, and maybe a few others. Mary, maybe my sister Lily. The types of people who are once in a lifetime. I will never meet someone like them again, their puzzle piece edges fitting against mine in a way that can only be matched between the two of us. 

An ex, a sister, and a partner…or whatever it is Hemlock has come to be to me, these days.

I watched him go, and then slowly sank to the curb beside the woman. It took me a moment, stretching my bad leg out to keep from putting too much excess weight on it, and by the time I was seated next to her, she seemed a little more at ease than she had been with Hemlock towering over her.

“You’re Robert Goodrich’s wife?” I asked quietly. When she nodded, I hummed in sympathy. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

She shook a little as she breathed in and out, and I put my hand on my knee, palm up. A silent offer for comfort, entirely optional. 

“They’re saying the same man killed him and David,” she rasped, and I nodded slowly.

“We can’t be sure of anything just yet,” I said gently, “but after seeing both of the crime scenes, I do believe that the same person was responsible, yes.”

She swallowed hard and averted her eyes, choosing instead to stare at my badge, my shoulder, behind me—anywhere but my eyes.

Now, I had been in law enforcement for a long time by then. I went off to the Air Force right after med school, then the Feds ever since 2010. I’ve spent every second of those careers picking out lies and diversions, spotting defenses, breaking them down. Even when I was simply an on-base physician, my job relied on reading people. 

I’ve realized in the time since Chamberlain that one of the things I contribute to balancing out Hemlock’s genius is my people skills. He can pick out each minute detail—eyes twitching, pupils dilating, hands fidgeting—but he places them like puzzle pieces, assuming they have a perfect spot to fit in. I take all these little pieces of evidence, mix them with the circumstances, and pull out an imperfect conclusion, though all the more perfect for advising me on my next moves. 

In that moment, I knew Mrs. Goodrich was hiding something, if not outright lying to me, and I also knew that if Hemlock was in that situation, he would just ask. He would push until he found the breaking point. 

I just needed to figure out how to proceed.

“Is there anything you can tell me about your husband that might offer me some…clarity, into the case?” I asked her, soft as I could manage. “Or about your son?”

“My son,” she exhaled and pressed her fingers to her mouth, closing her eyes. “That poor boy. He lost his fiancée, his best friend, and then his father-in-law, and now—” She was racked with another sob, and I took the chance to wrap an arm around her. She quickly buried her face in my shoulder and just shook there, trembling and gasping for breath. 

I’m not sure how long it was before she came back to herself, but when she pulled away, tear tracks glimmered in her soft crow’s-feet.

“I thought,” she whispered, “that this day would come. That Robert’s sins would catch up with him, and the Devil would come knocking. I just thought we had more time, but that girl—” She cut herself off with a violent, audible snap of her jaw. I stayed calm and didn’t press, just focused on offering comfort. 

But there was something digging into my hip, and I used my free hand to reach into my pocket to find the offending item: that golden ring with the small diamond, picked up at the Drebson scene.

It took me a moment to realize that Brigham’s mom’s quiet sobs had gone silent beside me, and when I looked at her, she was staring at the ring like she had seen a ghost. 

“...Have you seen this ring before, ma’am?” I asked, but she just shook her head, face pale, and leaned away. 

“Where did you get that,” she whispered. 

“David Drebson was holding it when he died,” I said and watched her reaction. She seemed almost…angry. Terrified, but furious. Then, her gaze was drawn by something over my shoulder, and I glanced up to see the tall, lithe frame of Sterling Hemlock making his way over to us. Brigham was leaning against the house with a sweating bottle of water clutched in his hands. I turned back. “Whose ring is this?” I asked, and despite seeming nearly catatonic, the woman replied, breathless:

“That’s Sophia’s engagement ring. It was stolen when she died.”

Then, Hemlock was upon us. 

“Agent Watkins, a word?” he snapped, so I squeezed the mother’s hand before excusing myself to follow the consultant. He led us across the street to where Ramirez had parked her car and slid into the passenger seat. I climbed up into the driver’s seat and he slid the keys across the center console.

“You lift those off Ramirez?” I asked and he shrugged, leaning the seat back a little. 

“Needed the aircon,” he replied, and then we sat in strange, tense quiet while I started the car and turned up the AC until I could barely hear myself think over the whoosh of chilled air. I didn’t say what I wanted to, which was then why are you wearing a wool suit in Texas in the middle of the summer?

“So,” I said and turned to face him. “Get anything out of the kid?”

“Brigham? Yes, very much,” he answered vaguely. “The mother?”

“Not anything concrete, but I think she knows a lot more about Robert’s past sins than she’s letting on,” I replied.

“Remind me, Watkins. Who were the witnesses of Sophia Drebson’s death, or at least, the forty-eight hours leading up to it?”

I thought back. “Drebson, both the Goodrich men, a doctor, a nurse, and the godmother, Hope,” I said. 

“Hope Jefferson-Webber,” Hemlock murmured. “And you forgot the third Drebson—Sophia’s brother, Declan—but as far as I can figure, he no longer lives in the state, and based on a Facebook post by his wife, he’s been in Cancun for the past three weeks.”

“So he isn’t our guy, got it.”

“Brigham had some interesting things to say about his father once he was away from his mother,” Hemlock said and turned in the seat to look at me. His piercing gaze, always too much or not enough, drilled into me, and I couldn’t help but look back. Storm cloud grey, sharp with intelligence and bright with endless cogs turning inside his skull. I swore I could almost hear them tick. “Apparently, Robert and the attorney general were quite close—like brothers, even—and they all but arranged the marriage between Brigham and Sophia.”

“Christ.”

“They knew each other growing up. Brigham, Sophia, and Hope, at least. They all were quite close but from what he said, he and Sophia never had any true romantic intentions toward one another. But, I have a theory.”

He looked at me expectantly, and I wagered a guess. 

“Brigham and…Hope?” I offered, and Hemlock’s eyes crinkled with a self-satisfied sort of pleasure. But, he shook his head. 

“No, I don’t believe so. The way Brigham spoke of this Hope character—she’s a tomboy, a radical. She left the church in college and Brigham hated her for it, said she ‘strayed from God,’ and was tempting Sophia to do the same. I do not believe he harbored any positive feelings toward her whatsoever, romantic or familial.”

Something settled leaden in my chest. 

“Sophia and Hope.”

“I believe so, yes.”

I exhaled and leaned back in the seat. “Shit. And her father—attorney general, registered Republican, best friends with the chief of goddamn police—wasn’t gonna let that happen, so he set her up with Brigham,” I said, watching Hemlock’s face for any corrections. All I saw was pride, which warmed in my chest as I spoke, so I continued. “So—what, they pushed Hope away during the birth and Sophia died of heartbreak?”

Hemlock was quiet for a minute, eyes darting across my face, before he spoke again.

“Sophia gives birth and dies within forty-eight hours. Her closest friend—and possible lover—is barred from the hospital after the birth, despite being the godmother. Yet, somehow, Hope is sure that Sophia was killed, and starts spreading it online. What did she know? How was she so positive?”

“And why did the family of her godson file a restraining order against her, if her accusations were false?” I added, and then held up the baggie containing the ring. “And how did our killer end up with Sophia Drebson’s engagement ring, when it was stolen from the hospital after she died?”

Hemlock’s face contorted into something else, something almost but not quite like that self-satisfied puzzle-solving expression, but before he could speak, my phone began to ring. I fumbled to pull it out—Hanford was calling. I flashed the screen at Hemlock and then answered, holding the phone to my ear. 

“Hanford?”

“Jim—we got a hit on the APB on Theodore Goodrich.”

Hemlock was out of the car before I even ended the call.

“You’re familiar with this drive,” Hemlock began immediately, stretching out his gloved hand to begin counting on his fingers. “You haven’t used the GPS since we left the house with the body. You took a side road to get around a busy intersection, and you’ve been gazing longingly at every Tex-Mex restaurant we’ve passed, which tells me you have a fondness for the cuisine. Both of those points—not to mention the fact that, even after decades of no longer living here, you still have a bit of a twang—tell me you’ve spent a good deal of time in the area.

“You’ve also reached for your cell phone a few times unconsciously, almost as if you’re awaiting, or even dreading, some kind of message or call. You told me you’re lodging at the same motel as I am, courtesy of the Bureau, which means you don’t have a flat here. I also know you currently reside in Washington, D.C., so that makes sense, but if the option of staying with family was offered, why not accept? Or, I suppose, you could stay with a friend, but I don’t believe you have very many of those, hm?”

I remember that, even all the way back then, my first instinct with Hemlock was almost never to anger. He said rude things, sometimes even cruel things, but deep inside I knew he meant them factually, not judgementally. It would make him a massive hypocrite—at least, for things like loneliness. 

I don’t know exactly what made me pick up on it at the time, but knowing what I do about the man now, I was right. Sterling Hemlock is—and has been, for a very long time—a deeply lonely person, both out of a bizarre instinct to self-isolate, and from the way the world tends to treat men like him. 

Or, really, anybody like him. Anybody a little bit strange, or unique. Anyone with a talent, habit, or skill that people don’t understand, so they fear it instead. 

“...No, I don’t,” I agreed, and Hemlock turned to face forward with a self-satisfied little smile on his lips. “You’re right, on almost every count.”

I liked how his face twitched when I said ‘almost.’ It was like cracking the facade. That would come to be a through line in our working relationship—most people were so impressed with his deductive skills that they didn’t dare to correct his minor mistakes. I didn’t have such holdbacks then, and I have even fewer now. 

“Explain,” Hemlock demanded, and the small, satisfied smile was on my lips then. 

“My sisters are very compassionate women,” I began, then hesitated, and switched gears. “I assume you’re familiar with the Chamberlain case.”

Hemlock’s sharp, inquisitive eyes raked over me again, and I knew, just from those few words, that he’d pieced it together. 

The Chamberlain case was massive, even before what I had, back then, believed to be our final showdown in California. A mysterious man blackmailed high-ranking members of the public, anyone from politicians, to performers, to military leaders, and when he wasn’t given what he wanted, sent a bomb as a gruesome followup. I have no doubts as to why it blew up, no pun intended. It’s especially hard to cover up when one of the most beloved singers on the planet disappears for a week, only to resurface when her Hollywood mansion blows up, taking her with it. 

And then there was the media circus around that final confrontation, one that left two agents dead and one badly injured. 

There was no way Hemlock hadn’t heard about it.

“You were the agent in Los Angeles,” he said. I remember this so clearly, because the way his mouth made the words, how his accent shaped around them…it made the place of my semi-recent near-death sound less like a coffin, and a lot more like a baptistry. 

“I was the agent in Los Angeles,” I agreed, but it didn’t sound nearly as lovely coming from my mouth as it had his. “I’m the one who survived.”

“Your leg,” Hemlock extrapolated. “The more recent injury.”

“Correct.”

“...I must admit, I’m surprised you’re back in the field already.”

I remember scoffing, which, I think, told him more than any words could’ve. It felt like a given to me at the time—of course I was back. Of course I returned to work the moment I was able. I did the same thing when I was injured in Afghanistan. Those intent on harming others don’t tend to wait for you to heal before they return to their usual malicious actions. 

“I only mean that, from my understanding of the bombing itself, your injuries were quite severe,” Hemlock added, and I curled my fingers even tighter around the steering wheel.

“They were,” I said, voice terse, “but I’m back now. That’s all there is to it.”

Hemlock was quiet for a while after that, and by the time he spoke again, we were almost to the headquarters. 

“I’m missing one thing,” he said, and even back then I was struck by the admission. I had already gotten the impression that Sterling Hemlock didn’t like to admit to not knowing things, and he proved me right by the shielded expression on his face. “Your family clearly cares about you. Why are you so insistent on avoiding them?”

I pulled into a parking spot and shifted the car into park. Then, I remember, I turned and looked at him. The sun was higher in the sky and the light made his skin look warmer and the circles under his eyes darker. He looked like he had been awake for a long time. 

“Do you have a family, Doctor?” I asked him, and for a split second, more emotion than I had seen him show so far flickered over his face. His eyes unfocused, and he stared over my shoulder, just past my ear. 

“No.”

It rang false in my ears, even then.

“Then I’m not sure how to explain,” I said. I chewed my lip for a moment—an old habit, one I have yet to break—and then continued. “Seeing them right now can only remind me of the worst shit that’s ever happened to me. They all want to ask if I’m okay, if my leg still hurts—I just want to move on. I love them, of course I do, but I don’t want to be fawned over anymore. I just want to get back to work.”

Hemlock watched me, eyes like a microscope as they skimmed across my face. After a moment, he seemed satisfied, and unbuckled his seatbelt. 

“Okay,” he said and pushed the car door open. “Then let’s get back to work.”

“I need the file on the death of Sophia Drebson,” Hemlock declared as soon as we got through the security line. A few men and women—some in suits and ties and some in regular clothes, looking like they just came back from one undercover investigation or another—looked up curiously at him, but nobody made a move to follow his demand. 

“Dr. Hemlock,” I said quietly and stepped past him, ignoring the twinge in my leg. “Let me handle this.” I walked over to the nearest desk and braced my hand on the wood. “Hello,” I greeted the man there, and he looked up at me with his brow furrowed. 

“Hello,” he said, and then looked me over. When his eyes landed on the badge hanging around my neck, he added, “Agent.”

“Special Agent Jim Watkins, I flew in this morning from D.C.” I offered my hand. “This is Dr. Sterling Hemlock, he’s consulting on the Drebson case.”

The man shook my hand and his eyes came alight with understanding. 

“Special Agent Adam Scanlon,” he said, then held a hand out to Hemlock, who just stared at it. 

“We’d like to see the file on Drebson’s daughter. I know this office led the official investigation years ago, after all of that fuss online,” I said smoothly, glancing at Hemlock for confirmation. To be honest, I had no idea what he wanted with Sophia’s file, but I figured it wasn’t a bad thing to look over. 

“You’ll have to talk to SSA Ramirez for access to case files,” Scanlon said apologetically and jerked his thumb at a closed office door. “Especially that one.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked, and his face twitched. 

“It never sat right with her. As soon as we heard that Drebson—David Drebson—was dead, she pulled all of the archived files on Sophia and started going over ’em. You’re welcome to go ask, but in my opinion, she’s barking up the wrong tree.”

“You don’t think it’s related?” 

“No, I don’t,” he said and shrugged. “She died from birth complications. It’s tragic, but it happens. David and the Drebsons took her son in after, and the godmother got pissed she was overrode, so she made up some shit online. It wasn’t some big conspiracy, just an angry, grieving friend. There wasn’t even any evidence.”

“No evidence pointing to murder?”

“Yeah. They brought us in after the accusations gained traction, and his political opponents tried to hop on them for leverage, but we never found a single thing that led us to consider foul play. Her heart stopped. It was entirely above board, just…”

“Tragic.”

“Mmhmm.” Scanlon looked between us again and this time, he lingered longer on Hemlock. “What do you think is correlated, Doctor?”

Smoothly, Hemlock replied, “We’re just looking for any connected persons to speak with.” I remember being confused at that—he had been in such a rush to come here after he found…whatever it was he had been looking for on the body. He’d demanded access to these files immediately, and then claimed he was just witness hunting? It didn’t track, but I kept quiet. 

“Well,” Scanlon said and kicked his feet out, leaning back in his swivel chair. His voice got quieter, eyes darting to glance at the drawn blinds of Ramirez’s office window. “You’re welcome to take that up with Ramirez. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled anyone’s willing to consider a connection.”

“Thank you for your help, Agent Scanlon,” I said and shook his hand again, even as Hemlock turned and immediately marched right up to Ramirez’s personal office. I watched him knock, and then an exhausted-sounding woman’s voice called out.

“Come in.”

Hemlock pushed open the door without a moment’s hesitation. I followed him inside, which didn’t strike me as anything then, but looking back, I clock it as the first threshold I truly crossed while following in the eager footsteps of Dr. Sterling Hemlock. The first time I willingly trailed behind him as he investigated an outlandish theory, or prodded at a lead he never spoke about aloud. 

Hemlock barreled inside, a bound up powder keg of potential energy, and I reached out to rest my hand on his arm. Not quite to restrain him, but to give him pause. 

He was warm, even through the many layers of fabric he covered himself with. 

“SSA Ramirez,” I said quickly and smiled at the woman sitting at a large, wooden desk before us. She was absolutely surrounded by documents, flung from a file open in the center of her desk, covered in sticky notes and scrap paper. There were three empty coffee cups, too—the cheap, mass-produced kind that government break rooms always have. “Agent Jim Watkins, working the Drebson murder. This is Dr. Sterling Hemlock, a consultant on all things toxicology.”

Ramirez, a deeply exhausted-looking woman with warm brown skin, messy, curly hair that might’ve at one point been tied back, and creases between her eyebrows, looked up at us above the gold-rimmed reading glasses perched low on her nose. 

“You’re the one Hanford asked Strand to call in,” she said, looking at me, and then turned her gaze on Hemlock. “What poison was used to kill David Drebson?”

“What poison was used to kill Sophia Drebson?” Hemlock shot back, and Ramirez’s eyes narrowed. I caught a split-second flick down at her notes and I knew Hemlock was right on the money as far as her theory. 

“She died in childbirth,” I said, but Ramirez was already shaking her head.

“She died after childbirth,” she corrected and shuffled her papers. When she found the one she wanted, she plucked it from the stack and offered it—not to me, but to Hemlock. “My compilation of the complete timeline. Her son—Theodore—was born at 3:11 in the morning, August 4. She had been perfectly stable when he was born.” She pointed at another paper on her desk, this one covered in yellow highlight marks. “She didn’t die until the 5th of August, late into the evening. The doctors said it was…” she trailed off and shuffled the papers on her desk, clearly searching for something.

“Peripartum cardiomyopathy,” I offered, remembering from the file I’d read on the plane. “Heart failure after birth.”

“There were absolutely no signs of heart issues prior to, or during, Theodore’s birth,” she said and handed me another file. “You’re a doctor, right?”

“Not currently practicing,” I replied and flipped it open, “but yes.”

“Look at that.” Ramirez gestured at the file. “Look at the chart from the day Theodore was born—or, really, the day before. Then, look at the chart from when she died.”

I flipped through the pages, finding a complete archive of Sophia’s chart from her arrival at the hospital to give birth until her death. I skimmed it quickly—nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She was brought to the hospital by her fiancé and best friend about twelve hours before Theodore was officially delivered. Long labor, but not especially abnormal. They checked for AFI, got a biophysical profile, fetal echocardiogram—

And an echocardiogram for Sophia.

“They did an echo on her?” I asked Ramirez, who nodded. “Why? Was there concern before labor? Because if they knew she was at risk—”

“No clue,” Ramirez said and gestured to the file again. “Look at the results, though.”

I flipped the page to see a blown up printout of a few frames of ultrasound results, as well as an EKG printout showing her heart rate. Both looked…entirely ordinary, I thought. I could make out distinct ventricles and atriums, and each valve seemed normal. No obvious weakening or thinning of the walls, muscular structure all good—perfectly healthy.

Decidedly not the heart of a woman who had died of PPCM within forty-eight hours. It would have taken longer than that from onset to kill her—much closer to weeks. Sometimes months could pass before symptoms even became noticeable. Not hours. Complete failure not even two days after these results was all but unheard of—deeply statistically unlikely. 

“Watkins,” Hemlock said, staring at the paper over my shoulder. “Explain.”

“A woman who died of PPCM would’ve already had significant weakening of the heart by the time they took this echo,” I said, and dragged a finger down the lines of the muscles of the heart to the left ventricle. “Here, this is where it would be weak and swollen. It would look oblong, almost like a tumor, rather than the usual pointed shape.” I traced over the image as I spoke, pointing out each part I mentioned. “This was a perfectly healthy heart, as far as I can tell from these images.”

“That’s what the godmother said,” Hemlock murmured.

“The family prevented the local PD from doing an autopsy until nearly a week after her death, after the rumors started flying and a proper case was opened,” Ramirez said and leaned back in her chair, seeming to finally give in to her exhaustion. “Anything anyone had given her would’ve been out of her system by then.”

“Not anything,” Hemlock said and then held his hands out, brow raised, silently asking for Sophia Drebson’s medical file. I gave it to him, he turned all of his red-hot focus onto the paperwork, and I looked back at Ramirez.

“What was the godmother’s argument? It wasn’t discussed much in the overview I got,” I said, and Ramirez pulled a stapled packet of papers from under a stack on her desk, sending an empty styrofoam coffee cup tumbling to the ground. 

“Pretty much the same as what you’ve been saying, in not so many words.” She offered me the pages, which I could then see were a long series of tweets and then an article posted on a website called Substack by someone named Hope Jefferson-Webber. “She was Sophia’s best friend. She went to all of the prenatal appointments, even the mommy and me yoga Sophia was doing. She says in there she kept a journal of Sophia’s pregnancy, intending to give it to her as a gift once the baby came. She also said there was no sign of any heart problems whatsoever throughout the entire pregnancy. 

“In the article she talked about how Theodore was taken from her, even though it was Sophia’s express wish that Hope and Brigham Goodrich—he was Sophia’s fiancé—co-parent the boy if anything was to happen to her. There wasn’t an official legal document giving Hope any parental rights, save for a godmother agreement, so David Drebson and the fiancé overrode it, giving Brigham custody over her, and then filed a restraining order against Hope.”

“With what reasoning?” I asked, incredulous.

“They cited fear of Theodore being groomed into an ‘unacceptable lifestyle,’” Ramirez said, and her lips pursed. “Brigham Goodrich’s father is the chief of police. It wasn’t hard for them to push it through the system.”

“Shit. What do we know about Hope?”

“Not a lot. She left the country not long after Sophia’s case was closed, and she hasn’t been seen since.”

I blew a long breath out through my nose and tried to wrap my brain around all of this new information. It wasn’t damning, and it didn’t even really imply anything, but I could see, suddenly, why Hemlock and Ramirez thought it could. 

“Hemlock,” I said, and he glanced back at me, but he looked like he was still a million miles away. “What do you make of rache?” I pronounced it ray-sh at the time, unsure of the gruesome marking’s true meaning.

He pursed his lips and turned back toward us, fingers picking at the worn edges of the file in his hands. “Rache, German for revenge. Could also be Rachel, a woman’s name, or an old name for a certain type of British scenthound. Could be a surname, or entirely misleading. None fit quite right, all have the knobbled edges of a mismatched puzzle piece. I fear we won’t know without more clues, Doctor.”

It felt nice to be called doctor. It wasn’t often that people considered my medical past over my current status as a federal agent, despite having bled plenty for both. Looking back, that was a reassuring early sign of Hemlock’s earnest deference to my own knowledge in areas he ain’t especially educated in. 

In fact, the more I got to know Sterling Hemlock, during this case and far after, the more I found large, gaping chasms in his areas of knowledge. He may be a savant and have an eidetic memory, but when asked about things he considers trivial, he’s a sieve. I’ve found it fascinating since the start what is important enough for him to hang onto, and what he lets go without a second thought. 

It goes about like this: 

Pop culture—none.

Philosophy or sociology—practically none. 

Astronomy—none, but he has a good enough grasp on general physics, and a strange amount of knowledge on astrology, which comes up more often than you might think.

Botany—extremely knowledgeable, if almost entirely on poisonous or toxic plants. Excellent at split-second identification. 

Geology—only a practical knowledge, but a very profound one. He can tell at a glance what part of the country a soil sample is from, and could tell you which stone in the bottom of his sneakers was from which crime scene. 

Chemistry—deeply profound. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has an element named after him by the time he’s eighty. 

True crime—immense. He seems to know every detail of every crime committed since…well, I haven’t yet found the limit. 

Politics—American, very little. British, barely any more. 

Anatomy—relatively accurate, but I’m glad he has me to keep an eye on how he treats cadavers. 

Law—British, very well. American—let’s just say he’s lucky they still let him work for a law enforcement agency with some of the things he’s done and not found questionable until I brought it up. 

Language—I have yet to encounter a language Sterling Hemlock doesn’t speak at least conversationally. 

He plays the violin excellently. He is a talented boxer, and has much more muscle mass under those fancy shirts and sweaters than you might assume. 

Overall, Dr. Sterling Hemlock is made up of a hundred thousand strands of deeply understood, hyper-specific knowledge, but a great deal of those strands seem to be absolutely useless 99 percent of the time. 

Just then, though, when trying to figure out what a bizarre, bloody scrawl on the wall of an abandoned house might mean, his unique, encyclopedic mind came very much in handy. 

Ramirez yawned, hand clapped over her mouth, and I raised an eyebrow at her. “Want a coffee?” I asked her, and she glanced from me to the pile of empty coffee cups, then back to me. 

“...Yeah,” she agreed after a minute, and I huffed out a laugh.

“Long day?” I asked and looked at my watch, emphasizing the movement a little. Ramirez’s lips turned up at the corners and she shook her head. 

“Go get me a coffee, Watkins,” she said dryly, and I laughed but turned to do so. 

“Hemlock?” I asked, but the man didn’t respond. In fact, he was so enraptured in that file I wasn’t even sure he was capable of hearing me over whatever was going on in his head. 

This was the first instance of Hemlock’s dissociative tendencies that I personally witnessed. Dissociative sounds bad, but I mean it in a literal, psychiatric sense—denoting or relating to a disorder in which normally related mental processes are separated. 

He disappears into himself, looking for something hidden in a dark, dusty corner of his mind that might just solve the crime. 

I figured I wasn’t going to get anything out of him for a minute, so I stepped out and asked Scanlon to point me toward the break room. He gestured, tired face cradled in his slumped palm, and I went that way. 

I remember, randomly enough, that the coffee maker was nicer than the one in my D.C. office, which was why I hung around in the small room for as long as I did. The cups were the same—shitty, identical styrofoam cups with cardboard sleeves and uncomfortable lids—but the machine itself was fancy. I stuck a cup under it and poked at buttons until I found where to put the little pods, then shuffled through the box in the cabinet full of them until I found one that seemed appealing. I settled on a light roast, called something like ‘sunny day,’ and popped it in, then watched as it puttered into the cup. 

Everything is so clear to me, looking back. All that time wasted—spent looking at sugar packets, or trying to find a tea bag for Hemlock—sloughing off precious seconds that we could’ve spent on the case, could’ve spent preventing what happened next.

But I didn’t know then, so I took my damn time making my shitty office coffee, then a second one, and then just brewed some hot water for Hemlock. I took a shot in the dark, judging by just about everything I had learned about him so far, and splashed a little bit of oat milk in the cup as well. 

I remember this because, when I came back and gave the two their drinks, Hemlock’s gaze was focused once more and the corners of his pale grey eyes turned up when he peeked at the tag to see which tea it was. 

“Thank you, Dr. Watkins,” he murmured, and it felt like one of the first steps toward genuine camaraderie between the two of us. I smiled back, coffee in hand, and tapped the plastic rims of our lids together in gentle cheers. 

“Of course,” I replied. 

That, of course, was when the nervous young man that had driven me to the crime scene what felt like lifetimes ago came skidding into Ramirez’s office, struggling to suck in a breath of air. I hurried toward him, reaching out, but he waved me off. 

“Agent Ramirez!” he gasped and leaned heavily against the doorframe.

“Agent Martin, breathe,” Ramirez said and rose to her feet to take a half step toward the young man. “What is it? What happened?”

He took another shuddering breath, swallowed thickly, and glanced at me, then Hemlock, who was just as dialed in as Ramirez and I were. 

“The chief of police is dead,” he said, breathless.

Ramirez’s mouth fell open to speak, but Martin shook his head and held up a finger to his boss as he sucked in another breath. We waited, and watched, and then he spoke again with wide, glassy eyes. 

“That’s not all—Theodore Goodrich has disappeared.”

I’m from Texas originally—much closer to the border, down near Laredo—so typically a trip out meant I got to stop by and see Mamá and the girls, but not this time. I’d spent enough time with them during my months of recovery—I love them to death, but I didn’t exactly need more coddling. This was my first case back, and I just wanted to feel useful. 

The crime scene was nearly an hour and a half drive from the airport, and I was picked up from SAT by a local agent, a younger man who seemed far more at home behind a wheel or a keyboard than a gun, and he spent the entire drive trying not to ask about Chamberlain. 

I let him stew. It’s good for the young ones to learn to speak their minds. 

And, to respect their elders. And by that, I mean I made him buy me coffee on the way, so I wouldn’t be plagued with a raging caffeine headache in the next few hours. I needed a clear head. 

I figure we got to the address—a run-down house in the middle of nowhere, desert—around eight in the morning, and the sun was already blaring an oppressive Texas heat.

Still, there’s one thing I don’t think I’ll ever grow used to: the rancid smell of heat blisters on a corpse. 

And when I stepped out of the car, that was exactly what I smelled. 

The younger agent did a quick three-point turn in the sand and gravel and, before I knew it, I was left alone at the end of the driveway with a parked black SUV and nobody else in sight. 

I knew Strand wouldn’t send me on anything too intense on my first case back, even if I felt at the time that I could handle it. This was a warm up. A test, even.

So, I had to pass.

“Jim Watkins,” a voice called from around the side of the house, and I exhaled. 

“Mike Hanford,” I replied, face splitting easily in a smile. 

I’ve known Hanford since long before I was recruited to the Bureau. Not only did Hanford and I serve together, overlapping in Afghanistan on two tours, but we also ended up at the FBI Academy at the same time, both part of a large recruitment push for veterans. It was almost comforting to have one familiar face here, it made me feel like I’d never even been on leave. He was in a plain black suit and pale blue shoe covers sprinkled with drops of blood.

We shook hands and I pretended not to see him glancing at my leg. My cane was folded up in the brown, S.O.C. three day pass bag I’d gotten at a military surplus store a few years back—I probably still should’ve been using it at that point, but I hated the looks it got me.

“Good to see you Jim,” he said. 

“Good to be out. What brings you all the way down to this little slice of Texas, though? I thought you were climbin’ the food chain, workin’ your way up so you wouldn’t have to come out on milk runs,” I said. 

Hanford’s lips twitched up in a grim smile. “I have, for the most part. I have my own team now, but I’m stuck as the newest handler for a consultant nobody else wants to deal with.” He grimaced. “That’s why I’m here. They wanted him, not me.”

My eyebrows raised in surprise. “What kind of a consultant gets ditched by his handlers and still gets called in?”

“A very, very good one,” Hanford answered simply, and then began to walk toward the house, down the sweltering gravel and dirt driveway. The unevenness of the surface made me move slow, but Hanford was kind enough not to mention it, and kept pace with me. I was silently grateful and persistently irritated that I had any lasting damage from the bombing at all.

The house itself was a rickety old thing. The walls were nearly bowed under its own weight. Thin, brown roots surged up through cracks in the foundation and some sort of vining plant had made the building into a trellis, reaching from windowsill to windowsill, forcing apart the siding to consume the space between the roof and the walls. The paint job might’ve once been something akin to classic fiesta yellow, but the effect could also very well have been the stain of the sun from decades of neglect. 

The mailbox had fallen off its post at some point long ago and sat in a rut in the dirt just beside the cracked and brittle stairs up to the shallow porch. The metal address numbers were gone entirely, and I remember seeing a spot where the sun-bleached siding and screw holes curved into the shape of a three. 

“Dr. Hemlock is an expert in all things forensics,” said Hanford, “but his main focus is on toxins. Poisons. There is no visible cause of death, despite—well, you’ll see—so Ramirez sent me out to take a look before the actual autopsy, and I brought Hemlock. The local PD have already been through, but the body hasn’t been moved yet on Ramirez’s orders. She’s the head of the closest local branch of the Bureau.”

I let that percolate in my head for a minute. 

“His name is Hemlock, and he’s a poison expert?” I asked, and Hanford smiled in an odd, sideways way. It was the kind of smile that clearly telegraphed that I had no idea what I was getting into. 

“That’s just about the least surprising thing you’ll learn about Sterling Hemlock today,” he replied. “You’ll see.”

As we stopped in front of the porch stairs, he asked me if I had read the file the local PD faxed over to the D.C. offices, so I began to recite what I had read on the early flight. 

“Attorney General David Drebson didn’t turn up to dinner on Monday night. His maid reported him missing twenty-odd hours later, but he wasn’t found until last night, four days after he was last seen. Some kids found him when they drove out here after school, almost an hour from his house in San Antonio. Other notes…He’s had a lot of death threats, a lot of protests against him lately due to his positions on…certain hot-tempered topics, and a minor scandal a few years back concerning the death of his daughter. Details were light, on that one.”

“That was ruled to be from natural causes,” Hanford explained. “She died after giving birth. There was an online conspiracy started by an ex family friend that there was foul play involved, but it fizzled out pretty quick.”

“What do you think?” I asked, and Hanford shrugged.

“Looked at the daughter’s records, briefly. Seemed green to me, but I’m not a doctor. Part of why I figured I’d call you. Which, by the way, I have a ton of bureaucratic bullshit to wrap up once we return to the San Antonio office. I’m letting you take the lead on this one, but I’ll still be handling Hemlock, so long as we need him here.”

“No worries, Mike. Hey, thanks for calling me,” I said and clapped my hand on his shoulder. “Death threats, abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, old internet drama—I’ve got plenty of strings to pull on. The kind of people who are willing to try something on a man of his status ain’t usually too hard to find.”

“Very true,” Hanford agreed and offered me a pair of nitrile gloves from his pocket, keeping two for himself. I pulled them on and stepped up onto the porch carefully to look at the front door. It had two window panels just above eye level, but the glass was smashed with a trail of blood smeared from a jagged edge down to the doorknob.

“Fingerprints?” I asked, but Hanford shook his head. “Any ID on the blood?”

Hanford’s face twisted and he pulled the door open. “We know it’s not Drebson’s, but that’s about it. The real forensics team will be on it after we remove the body, but the agent who leads that team was up in Dallas for a conference I guess, so she won’t be back for a few hours,” he explained with a flat tone that easily told me exactly how he felt about that delay. 

“Team can’t come out without her?” I asked, but Hanford just gave me another shrug. 

“Just following Ramirez’s orders,” he said with a slightly bitter turn of his lips. “Here, you’re gonna want these, too.” He handed me shoe covers, and I grimaced, but pulled them on over my boots. Then, he reached out and lifted the drape of dead foliage and angry, crunchy leaves that had grown to cover the inside of the doorframe, and we both ducked inside. 

It was immediately clear why they’d called in backup. 

The entire living room was coated in rust brown streaks of dried blood. There were hundreds of footprints pressed into it—some crisp boot prints and others just smudges of dirt. Even the walls had blood smeared across them, and on the bare wall across from the entrance, the red had been carefully, intentionally dragged to spell out a word. 

RACHE. 

Below the grim scrawling was the body. 

Born and raised in San Antonio, David Drebson was white and stocky with short brown hair and blue eyes, and from the interviews I’d watched on the plane, I knew he was over six feet tall when he wasn’t still and limp with death. Whatever had happened, he was laying on his stomach now, with his gaunt cheek pressed to the floor. He stared right at me, lifeless, left hand outstretched toward the crooked letters. 

There were no visible wounds despite the gallons of blood, splattered not only on the corpse but also the miscellanea in the room, like an old, rotten couch and the rug. The only exempt thing seemed to be a low table that held a relatively clean glass and decanter. I barely noticed the glass at the time, but looking back, it feels obvious, like I had missed a yellow, this is important outline in a video game. 

Beside the body, crouched in careful examination, was Sterling Hemlock. 

I remember thinking there was an almost biblical beauty to the man. Round glasses were perched atop his nose, long and sloped, with a bump right at the bridge. The stormy, focused grey of his eyes conjured images of classical art in my mind, like Cabanel’s Lucifer. His hair, dark brown and slicked back—which it only ever is at the start of a day, his curls wild and messy by the end from his endless touching—added an almost ethereal quality to him, seeming to almost sparkle in the low morning light. The only warmth about him was his brown skin; even his clothes were charcoal grey and deep black. Behind the scruffy beard and mustache that made him seem older, his face was sharp angles of bone, as if cut against a whetstone. 

I also noted that he was wearing a long sleeve button up and thick slacks, despite the heat of the summer. On his feet, a pair of beat-up, black high-tops wrapped in the same shoe covers as my own boots. 

Once Hanford and I drew closer he stood, and I was faced for the first time with the sheer height of him. I’m nearly six feet tall, but Hemlock is easily a couple inches taller than me. Combined with his slim physique, I thought at the time that it almost gave him an inhuman appearance. 

“You must be Dr. Hemlock,” I said and offered my gloved hand. Hemlock didn’t take it, and instead passed a long, inquisitive look over my body. 

Now, I’ve grown pretty damn used to the hyperperception of others. I came back from the so-called war on terror with a crooked red scar on my jaw and dozens more down my left shoulder and arm from the bite of shrapnel, and the American people, as a societal rule, tend to show deference to veterans. The attention and thank you for your service comments were nice, in the beginning—I lost a lot, fighting that damned war. But now, it makes my skin crawl. 

Hemlock’s gaze, however, wasn’t the same. It was analytical and precise, with sharp eyes and a furrowed brow. Almost like he was picking out parts of me with a scalpel and reading what was written in my blood. 

“I’m not finished yet,” Hemlock said after a moment and crouched once more, returning to his close examination of the back of David Drebson’s skull. For some reason, I was surprised by his accent—British, and posh.

“Excuse me?” I answered. 

“Hanford said the body would remain until I was finished, and then it would be taken for autopsy,” Hemlock said without looking up.

I glanced at Hanford, who shrugged, an amused half smile on his lips. 

“I’m not here to do the autopsy,” I said, and that seemed to draw Hemlock’s attention back to me. 

“But you are a doctor, correct?” He sank back onto his heels and rested his hands on his knees. He was wearing gloves, but not the familiar nitrile blue of crime scene investigation. Instead, he wore slim leather gloves that made his fingers look long and delicate. They were utterly inappropriate for the setting, but Hanford didn’t say anything, so I didn’t either. “An Army doctor, at that,” he continued, drumming his fingers on his knees. “Wounded in action and recruited after recovery to make use of your security clearance, I presume.”

I looked at Hanford again. “What, did you give him a biography before I got here?” I asked, but Hanford shook his head. 

“I only told him your name,” he replied, clearly entertained. “I swear. This is what he does, picks things out from nothing. It’s why he works with us. Go ahead, ask him how he got it.”

I turned back to Hemlock and said, “Alright then, I’ll bite. How’d you know all that?”

“Your skin,” Hemlock said and reached out to the corpse, carefully turning his wrist to face upright. “You have moles, sunspots, and more signs of aging overall than someone of your age—late thirties, if I had to wager a guess—might typically. You’re wearing regulation uniform boots, but they’re old, and I don’t think they were bought at a surplus store because the style was mostly retired in 2015, switching instead to the modern color known as coyote brown. So you haven’t seen combat in over a decade, at least. 

“You’ve got an FBI badge and you’re in the field, so you’ve been with the Bureau for some time. You have a limp and you favor your left arm. Those injuries could’ve come from either—your Army experience, or your service as an agent—but I can see an old scar on your right side, just above the collar of your shirt, that is flat and pale. It’s easily a decade old. So, I deduced that it was from the first of the two positions, while your gait seems unsure, so the limp is likely newer. I’d guess from within the past year or so. That led me to assume that you’re on light duty as an agent for the time being, hence performing an autopsy, rather than being here in an investigative capacity.

“As for the doctor bit,” Hemlock said, and he didn’t even seem to be out of breath despite the sheer amount of words that had come out of his mouth in the past minute. “Hanford called you Dr. Watkins on the phone.”

I was stunned. “I thought you were a toxicology expert.”

“People can do two things,” Hemlock replied. “You’ll find I do many, many more.”

With that, he returned to the corpse, tugging insistently at the man’s clamped fingers. He tried to pry them open, but rigor mortis had already set in, and the joints held tight. The man’s skin was unblemished and unbruised, save for the usual postmortem lividity, heat blisters of summer, and splashes of blood that supposedly weren’t his. 

“Impressive,” I conceded, “but you got a few things wrong.”

That seemed to pique his interest.

“Explain.”

“First of all, I was in the Air Force, not the Army,” I began and crouched across from him, stretching my leg out carefully so as to not fuck up my knee again. “Second, I was on light duty. This is my first case back.” I reached down and put pressure on the man’s finger joints, just behind his knuckles. The fingers uncurled slightly, just enough for the item clenched in them to fall out of his grip: a small golden ring. It started to roll across the floor, but Hemlock caught it between his gloved fingers. 

“But a doctor, yes? Afghanistan?” he asked as he examined the ring, holding it up in the light. It looked simple from what I could see: a plain gold band with a gleaming diamond. I caught his eye through the round curve of metal, and for a moment, it lined up perfectly with the round lens of his glasses. 

“Yes,” I admitted. “Medically retired in ’08 after being an on-base physician for the last part of my career.”

“Fascinating,” Hemlock murmured reverently, but he wasn’t talking about me anymore. He stared at the ring like every aspect of the case hinged on the way the stone was mounted into the band, or whether there was a scuff in the polish. It was an all-consuming sort of look, examination sharper than a microscope. I swore I could almost hear the ticking of his mind like a clock in the quiet of the abandoned house. 

Then, Hanford’s phone began to ring, and he scrambled to answer it. 

“Shit,” the agent exhaled under his breath after listening for a moment. “I’ll be right back. Jim, watch him—Hemlock, don’t do anything…uncouth, please.”

With that, he rushed out of the house, and I was left alone for the first time with Sterling Hemlock. 

“That’ll be the San Antonio office,” Hemlock said quietly with an amused half smile playing at his lips. He watched Hanford go for a moment before he turned back to the corpse between us. “He forgot to sign out the car when we left.”

“And you didn’t remind him?” I asked.

Hemlock turned that intense gaze on me, and I felt somehow more dissected than the corpse. “I figured they wouldn’t call for an hour at the least, and it’s been nearly ninety minutes since we left. I hoped I could use the time offered by the phone call’s distraction to get a moment alone with the scene,” he said, “or with you.”

There has always been a certain intensity to the way Sterling Hemlock looks at me—looks at anyone, for that matter. I remember feeling flayed open, like the hot sun was peeling me apart and Hemlock’s grey eyes were simultaneously a bizarre balm. His eyes are like magnifying glasses, or telescopes—everything we see, he sees in triplicate details, and understands. 

“If we’re to be working together, I mean,” Hemlock said, and I watched as he pulled his left glove off, one finger at a time. “I believe it is good to get an unbiased overview.” He offered me his hand, then—his left. I wondered if he was left-handed (I know now that he is). 

I shook, and I remember noting that his fingertips were far more calloused than I would have expected on a man as posh and put together as him. It reminded me instantly of my sister Mia and how her fingers had grown tough from playing the violin all throughout our childhood. 

The thought that followed that, like a sour, nasty chaser, was brought by guilt. Being in Texas, but not telling my family…it was the cowardly choice to make, after everything they had done for me while I was recovering. But the second thought, the second connection that slid into place, was the instrument. I normally wouldn’t have said anything, but after Hemlock’s precise dressing down, I found myself almost wanting to show off. I wanted to prove to him that I was worth finding as interesting as he had initially seemed to find me. 

“Do you play the violin?” I asked, and watched as his amused little smirk grew into a genuine, face-splitting smile. He ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair, sending the strands flying loose from their gel, curling around his ears and over his forehead. 

“Impressive, Dr. Watkins,” he said, and I felt pleased with myself. Or, really, it was more than that—it was like a high, the pride of making a deduction that felt as effortless as his.

I think it was that feeling that brought me to chase after Sterling Hemlock for as long as I have, ever since then. The way the most ingenious man I’ve ever met—a savant—seemed to find me clever? I don’t entirely know how to explain it, but it’s a heady feeling. If you’ve met the man, you must understand; he makes everybody in any room he’s in want to seem smart, or prove themselves.

Hemlock turned back to the body, a smile still pulling at his mouth, and I watched him intently. Then his mouth parted as if in epiphany, and he suddenly leaned in close. It looked like he was listening. After a moment of this, he pulled the man’s mouth open with his still gloved right hand, leaned in even closer, and sniffed carefully at his parted lips. 

Hemlock’s tongue darted out to taste the air as he leaned back, and then he nodded, grabbed his glove, and stood as if to leave. “Alright.”

“Alright?” I echoed. He held up his left glove, and I realized it was cradling the gold ring. 

“I believe I have everything I need. Time to head back to the city,” he said, and then called out, “Agent Hanford, if you please?”

The man returned then, phone in his hand and an extremely irritated look on his face. Hemlock ignored it entirely until Hanford offered an evidence bag, which Hemlock dropped the ring into, sealed, and then tossed my way. Then, he grabbed his coat, which had been sitting on the only clean surface in the room: that low table, right beside the decanter. Why he had a coat was beyond me—it was June in Texas, which meant it was easily in the nineties, not to mention the drowning humidity this close to the gulf. Even without the coat, he wore a long sleeve button up and slacks, but, impossibly, he didn’t look bothered by the heat in the slightest. 

Except for once we stepped out onto the porch, and a bead of sweat rolled down his temple, then caught on a curl of hair loosened by his repeated touching. I had to swallow a laugh at the way it broke the facade of perfection. 

“Hemlock,” Hanford said and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning into the shade of the old house. “I have to stay until the forensics crew gets in, and Dr. Ortiz is still running late. It’s easily going to be another hour.”

“I have to go back to the city,” Hemlock said with a furrowed brow. His tone was odd, like he couldn’t figure out how these two facts could coexist. 

Hanford let out a long-suffering sigh and rubbed his own sweaty forehead, where hair hung in an attempt to hide the way his hairline had been receding since before Afghanistan. “I can’t drive you, Hemlock. I’m the only SSA here, and I have to stay with the body.”

“I have to go back,” Hemlock insisted. “I could have this case solved by the time she gets here, if she ever even does at this bloody rate.”

“This investigation doesn’t revolve around you. All we needed you for was the poison, and you haven’t even been able to—”

“I can drive him back.”

It took me the entire moment of stunned silence to realize that it was I who had spoken. I almost immediately regretted butting in, but then Hemlock’s face twisted from poorly concealed anger into a smug, insistent grin.

“I mean, if you’ll let me borrow the car,” I added, and Hemlock’s smile only grew.

“See, Michael? Watson will drive me back.”

I coughed. “Watkins.”

“Whichever.”

With that seemingly decided, Hemlock hopped down the stairs with a limberness only attributed to youth, and started to walk back toward the black SUV in the gravel.

“Are you sure about this, Jim?” Hanford asked, a bone-weary tiredness clear in his body language. “He can be…a lot.”

“He seems fine enough, just…a bit eccentric,” I said diplomatically, and then, “I oughta be gettin’ back, anyways. My leg is killin’ me.” I rubbed at my calf a bit to massage the muscle, projecting an exaggerated grimace. It did hurt—it almost always hurt, back then—but it wasn’t nearly so bad that I needed to go back to the office. It worked, though, and Hanford’s face slipped into a mask so quickly, the edges of pity hidden behind porcelain chips. It was an expression I knew intimately—not just since the bombing, but since my discharge in ’08. 

It did get worse after the bombing, and how publicized the whole thing became, and I used that to my advantage plenty of times. I still do, to be completely honest. 

“If you’re sure,” Hanford said finally. “Don’t let him do anything batshit though, alright?”

“I won’t let him do anything I wouldn’t do,” I replied, and Hanford pursed his lips, but dropped it. 

In that moment, I had no idea just what kind of messes Sterling Hemlock was going to get himself involved in over the next few months. I had no idea how dangerous being his colleague was, and I especially had no idea how quickly I would come to trust him more than any other man I have ever known.

My name is Jim Watkins. I used to be in the U.S. Air Force, but now I work for the FBI. More specifically, I’m a special agent working out of Washington D.C. and the handler for a genius consultant named Dr. Sterling Hemlock. As a doctor, I know a decent amount about the human body, and I’ve dabbled in forensics since I got recruited back in 2010. Hemlock—the other kind of doctor, not by scalpel but by pen—knows just about everything about everything else. 

Officially, I’m his liaison with the Bureau. Unofficially, he’s one of my dearest friends. An unexpected, and sometimes reluctant, part of my life. But I’d do just about anything to keep him out of trouble, and when I say anything, I mean it. That line has been stretched, tested, and bent out of any recognizable shape. This convoluted internal investigation is just the next logical step to me having his back. Is my version of things going to be biased? Sure, but so is life. So is every goddamn person on the planet, when it comes to the people they care about. 

Anyway. You’ll see, throughout these six cases we worked together before that final day, what I mean. You’ll see his genius, his stubbornness, and everything else that makes him him. Because this isn’t about me, not really. I’m just a witness. 

Sterling Hemlock?

He’s the one everyone’s worried about. 

I won’t be the one to fuck that up.