Snowblind by Christopher Golden

glanced up sharply. Detective Keenan had come into the room just behind Harley and they made a comical picture. With his Irish face and blue eyes, the detective reminded Jake a little of the actor Daniel Craig. His big hands and the slight crook in his nose that showed it had once been broken suggested he might once have been a boxer, and he was not a small man, but next to Harley the detective seemed diminished.
    “Doing your job for you, I think,” Jake replied.
    The look that rippled across Keenan’s face made Jake blink. His balls didn’t exactly shrink up inside his body, but they certainly did not approve. The detective’s light tone and the way he’d entered the room had allowed Jake to forget for a second just how serious Keenan was about his job.
    Keenan stepped around Harley and moved deeper into the room, taking in the crime scene with a sweeping glance.
    “You want to explain that?” he asked without looking at Jake.
    “Just instinct and observation. I get a different perspective sometimes through the camera. The nightstand drawer is in kind of cockeyed, which I know sounds stupid…”
    He trailed off. It did sound stupid. But had he just seen Keenan take visual note of the same thing?
    “Go on,” the detective said.
    Jake pointed to the spot where the mussed sheets draped to the floor. “Under there.”
    Keenan went down on one knee and picked up the edge of the hanging sheets to reveal the small white pill-bottle cap that Jake had spotted in the shadows there. The detective left the cap where it was—he wouldn’t pick it up without donning latex gloves for fear of contaminating evidence.
    “Talbot, gimme your flashlight,” Keenan said.
    Harley handed it over and the detective used the light to search under the bed before clicking it off and handing it back. Keenan brushed off the knees of his trousers as he stood and turned a contemplative eye on Jake.
    “No bottle,” Jake said.
    “Nope,” Keenan agreed.
    Pulling a latex glove onto his left hand, the detective went to the nightstand and tried to open it. The drawer stuck but with a bit of jostling he got it to slide open. It was empty.
    “Talbot, have you been into the bathroom?” Keenan asked.
    “Took a look, yeah.”
    “Anything out of place?”
    “No,” Jake said, cutting in. “And I took pictures. But I didn’t—”
    Keenan nodded. “But you didn’t open the medicine cabinet.”
    “No,” Jake said. “I didn’t.”
    Harley crossed his arms, his body practically blocking their view of the open door. “So it’s a drug thing. We go into the bathroom again, we’re going to find the medicine cabinet empty. Some pill-head came in and beat the lady up for her meds?”
    “Not just her own prescriptions—” Detective Keenan started.
    “I get it, Detective,” Harley interrupted. “She’s a pill-head, too. She had a bunch of illegal scrips, maybe was selling them, and some guy knew it and cleaned her out. Probably someone she knows.”
    Jake and Detective Keenan both looked at him.
    Harley laughed and shook his head. “You two think you’re Holmes and friggin’ Watson. Can we just finish this shit up and go? I go off duty in twenty minutes and I need a cocoa.”
    “Cocoa,” Jake repeated.
    Harley glowered at him. “When it snows, I like cocoa. A little whipped cream, too. You got something to say about it?”
    Detective Keenan outranked him but didn’t say a word. Neither did Jake.
    “I thought not,” Harley said. Scowling, he turned and left the room. Jake laughed and started packing away his camera.
    “You’re pretty smart, kid,” Keenan said, sounding for a moment like he’d stepped out of some 1940s gangster movie.
    “Harley doesn’t think so,” Jake replied with a laugh.
    “Ever think about becoming a cop yourself?”
    Images of that night flickered through Jake’s mind again. Isaac’s broken body, the falling snow, the flash of a camera … those had been real, tangible things. Awful things, yes, but