It had been a routine outing for NYPD Detectives Jo Martinez and Mike Hanson to interview a potential witness after Officer Delia Beard, assigned to answering the 11th Precinct's hotline, had passed an urgent message to them about a closed case.

Forty-five minutes earlier:

"A kid?" Jo had said, frowning at the hastily-scrawled note. "Sure this isn't a prank?"

"Normally, I would think that," Officer Beard had replied. "But I'm familiar with this particular kid from when I worked the 2-4 a couple of years ago."

"What, you're saying she's some kind of psychic or something?" Jo had asked, grabbing her jacket.

"Whatever she is," Beard had replied, "she's legit. Helped us on a few cases that had stumped us."

vvvv

The two detectives waited outside the door of a brownstone with a charming, bow-front window and intricate, 19th-century carvings on an idyllic, tree-lined street just off of Central Park West. The door was soon opened by a woman in her early 60's with a world-weary expression.

"Yes?" she asked, squinting suspiciously at them. They flashed their badges and identified themselves and she frowned before asking why they were there. That no one had called for the police.

"We beg to differ, ma'am," Jo told her. "Someone did call our tip hotline this morning. A young girl named - "

" - Glenda," the woman sighed out in frustration, shaking her head. Then, quickly schooling her features in a vain effort to appear more cheery, she said, "M-my granddaughter does things like that, calling the police about ... weird things that just seem to pop into her head." She let out a disingenuous laugh as she spoke and told them, "My name is Glenda Haley. She's, uh, named after me. Darling girl but I will make sure that she's appropriately dealt with for bothering you people with her little prank."

Mrs. Haley tried to close the door but Mike put his hand up to prevent that. "If you don't mind, Mrs. Haley, we'd like to decide for ourselves whether it was a prank or not. Let us in, please."

Mrs. Haley reluctantly nodded and let them in. "She's here in the living room," she told them with a wave of her hand to the left of the entrance way.

As they entered the cozy room decorated with flowery-upholstered, wood furniture and photos and bric-a-brac on nearly every shelf and table space, a young girl of nine or ten sat in the middle of the long sofa and smiled as they approached her. Her bright, green eyes sparkled but appeared to focus on nothing as she stared straight ahead. Officer Beard had given them the heads up that the girl was legally blind.

"You're the cops," she piped at them. "Don't let my grandmother bother you. She's just always worried about me."

They sat on either side of her and Mike let Jo take the lead in questioning her. He was a father but not the father of a little girl and he didn't want to spook her. He really wasn't convinced, either, that they weren't wasting their time by following up on this particular lead.

"That's right, Glenda," Jo replied. "I'm Det. Jo Martinez of the NYPD and this is my partner, Det. Mike Hanson. We're here to follow up on your phone call to our tip hotline this morning. Can you tell me more about the people you saw? The, um, man who was hurting the other man?"

"It happened a long time ago," Glenda replied. "I wasn't even born yet."

Jo frowned and looked worriedly at Mike, then back at the red-haired, freckle-faced girl. "If it happened before you were born, did somebody else tell you about it?"

"Nope," she replied and heaved a big sigh. "I see things. A lotta times I don't understand what I see but when it's clearer like this was, I let the police know now so they can go get the bad guys." Neither detective responded, not wanting to point out her sightless condition.

"Yeah, I know, I'm blind," Glenda told them as if reading their thoughts. "But if you'll just check it out, you'll find out that I'm right. Didn't Officer Beard and the captain at the 24th Precinct tell you that I had a pretty good track record helping them solve crimes? I'll bet I'm the youngest in the country. Maybe even the world."

"Um, yes, yes, they did tell us," Jo replied. The memory of Henry once telling her when they'd first met of his own pretty good track record came back to her. But this was a child in front of her. "Could you tell us again exactly what it was that you ... saw?"

Glenda sighed again but her smile broadened. "It's more like a dream. I just start seeing stuff and people are talking. I can see them, you know, like you see stuff in your dream. If everything's clear, then I know it's something that really happened. If it's in black and white, it happened long, long time ago. If it's in color, it's more recent." She shrugged as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "Simple as that." She blinked several times and raised her head as if recalling a memory.

"This was a man in an alley. Looked like an alley. It was dark. They were arguing but one was pointing a gun at the other man, who looked scared with his hands up. The man with the gun told the scared-looking man that it was nothing personal, that he was just following orders. Then he said, 'Sorry, Norm. You should have never crossed ... " The girl stopped speaking and frowned.

"Crossed whom?" Jo asked. "Did you hear the name?"

"No, but I saw some letters," Glenda replied, clearly frustrated.

"What were the letters, hon?" Mike asked.

"D-e-l-g-r-o-s," she replied.

Both Jo and Mike froze at the spelling of the name that belonged to a man they'd put away a couple of years ago for attempting to bribe someone running for city office. The same man, Tommy Delgros, who was the prime suspect in having ordered a bodega owner, Sergio, to murder the manager of a community center, Raul, in order to pave the way for his own construction project.

"I don't know how to pronounce that," Glenda told them. "But the man with the gun twisted the other man around so that he faced the wall and told him to get on his knees and told him to keep his hands up. Then he put the gun in the other man's hand real quick and made him shoot himself in the side of his head. He walked away real quick after that and just ... left him there."

Mike looked at Jo then back at the girl. "How is it you 'see' if you're ... blind?" he managed to ask.

"I told you, it's like a dream or maybe sometimes like a movie right in front of me." She sighed and looked a little sad for a moment. "Sometimes I wish I could see like I used to. Like everyone else and not this stuff where people are hurting each other. People don't always understand and ... they don't let their kids play with me," she quietly told them. "Sometimes we have to move so that people won't hurt me or take me away."

"We have moved a few times in the past three years," Mrs. Haley told them. "Ever since - " She stopped herself, looking down at her granddaughter and then back at them. "We like it here. We've had no problems for the past six months," she said. "It would be nice if, if all this could be kept quiet so we could stay here for a while."

They were moved by the pleading tone in her voice. "We will do all we can to not upset your life here, Mrs. Haley," Jo assured her.

"We'll be leaving now," Mike told them. They said their goodbyes and turned to leave, giving their cards to Mrs. Haley. "This is how you can reach either one of us."

"Hope you catch 'im," Glenda said.

Her grandmother followed them outside and closed the front door. She turned to them with a concerned look on her face and said, "The poor darling started 'seeing' these things soon after she lost her sight. Hysterical blindness, the doctors said, but that was more than three years ago."

"What happened to cause her to lose her sight?" Jo asked.

"Her parents died in a small plane crash in 2013," she told them. "Thank God, Glenda was home with me or she'd have been killed with them." The woman shook her head, wringing her hands. "Once we managed to tell her that her parents weren't coming back home, she woke up one day unable to see. The ... dreams or ... visions started a few weeks after that." She shook her head again. "I just don't understand any of it."

vvvv

"Delgros is doing four years in Otisville for his attempted bribery conviction in 2015," Mike said as they drove back to the precinct.

"But he has a parole hearing next week," Jo reminded him. "If we can connect him to that hit that little Glenda 'saw', he'll never get out."

Because he'd been able to elude being charged with ordering Raul's murder, his slap-on-the-wrist conviction and sentencing for attempting to bribe a political candidate for city office were of little consolation to either of them or to Henry. His shady lawyer had even been able to help him avoid getting the maximum sentence of 25 years in jail.

"Got it," Jo announced. Mike left his desk and quickly joined her at hers as they studied the information on her computer screen. "Norman Richards, 2002. Gunshot to the head. His body was found by a sanitation worker in an alley behind a Delancey Street restaurant in the lower east side. Ruled a suicide."

"Who was the ME?" Mike asked. "Washington was here back then, wasn't he?"

Jo grinned at the mention of the many times errant ME. "Well, he was on the job at that time, but the ME was Lorraine Harper." She looked despondently at Mike and sighed.

"What?" he asked.

"Harper retired seven years ago. I attended her retirement dinner," she told him. "I was someone's date," she explained at his look of confusion. "That's all I'm saying. The meal was the only enjoyable part of that evening."

"Okay. The pre-Sean era," Mike said, chuckling.

"That's all I'm saying," she repeated more emphatically. "Anyway, looks like Delgros has been dealing in dirt well before Raul's murder."

Mike made note of the 2002 address on Delancey Street. "That location is still a restaurant. A deli. Any chance of exhuming Richards' body?"

"Dang!" Jo hissed. "He was cremated two days after his death was declared a suicide."

"What about the weapon?" Mike asked.

A huge smile broke out on her face. "Thank goodness for whatever incompetent jerk handled this weapon in the Evidence Locker." She turned to Mike, still grinning. "It's still there."

vvvv

In the OCME, Dr. Henry Morgan and his young assistant, Lucas Wahl mulled over the results of their examination of the weapon connected to the Richards case from 2002. That is, Henry mulled over the results in his office while Lucas sat at his workstation awaiting his very astute boss' conclusions.

"The results confirm the original report from 2002 that shows the deceased held the weapon in his left hand," Henry finally stated. He had exited his office holding the file with the reports in it. "Autopsy reports from that time confirmed the presence of gunshot residue on his left hand on the left side of his head, neck, and shoulder."

"So ... nothing new to report?" Lucas asked.

"Not initially, no," Henry replied, his mind sorting things out under a furrowed brow. He suddenly closed the file and placed it on Lucas' workstation. "Lucas, stand up, please."

"Wha-what for?" he asked, then closed his eyes, groaning as Henry guided him to a spot and stepped away from him. "Am I to play the part of the victim again?"

"We want to explore every possibility, Lucas, of how Mr. Richards met his end," he informed him. "And, yes, you are to be the victim again. Fortunately, you are approximately the same height, build, and age as the deceased was."

"Yeah, how fortunate," Lucas wryly stated.

"Which only means that we do not have to make any special accommodations for this reenactment," Henry explained. "I believe that I am also the same height and build as the murderer."

"So, you do believe he was murdered?" Lucas asked, intrigued. "Why?"

"Because of the fingerprints on the gun," Henry replied.

Confused, Lucas repeated, "Yeah, his fingerprints on the gun."

"But, Lucas, the most important one, the one on the trigger, is not his."

Lucas turned to look over his shoulder at Henry. "But if he didn't actually pull the trigger ... "

" ... someone else did," Henry finished his thought for him. "Examination of Richards' body at the time should have included a search for fingerprints on his hand. At least, that's what I would have done. It is my belief that someone else forced the gun into Richards' hand and squeezed the trigger close to his head; giving the appearance of Richards having administered the gunshot himself. It would have been impossible, though, for him to have found the strength to pull the trigger at all."

"Why is that?" Jo's voice broke into their conversation and they both turned around to see her entering the morgue. She'd come down to find out if they'd come up with anything new regarding the Richards case. She'd also chosen not to tell them anything about what the little girl, Glenda, had 'seen'.

"Detective, how nice to see you again," Henry greeted her. "We were just about to reenact how I believe Norman Richards was murdered."

"Murdered. Okay," she said. "Don't let me stop you." It was always fun to watch their quirky ME walk them through one of his proposed scenarios. How does he do it? she wondered. How is he able to 'see' so much that others miss?

"And to answer your earlier question," Henry began, "we'll demonstrate."

He and Lucas went through the scenario in Henry's head that appeared to mirror what the young girl had told Mike and her earlier. She marveled at the near-accuracy of it all and asked, "Are you sure? Because Lorraine Harper was one of the best ME's who ever worked here and she ruled his death to be a suicide."

Henry spun around to face her. "Think about it, though. Why would a person leave their home to end their life in some deserted alley? Most people simply kill themselves in their own home; a gun being the weapon of choice for most men. Also, the bones in Richards' left hand and wrist showed disfigurement from advanced rheumatoid arthritis. He would not have been able to stretch his fingers out, let alone grip anything or pull the trigger on that gun. And the actual print on the trigger was not his."

Jo's eyes grew wider. "Wow. Um, if that was the case, then why would Harper not have noticed that, too?"

"I have no idea," Henry replied. "She was one of the best. An oversight on her part, I suppose."

Jo nodded, biting her lower lip. The thought of the respected ME having botched the COD in the Richards case disappointed her personally but professionally, it angered her. It meant that a murderer was still out there and they had been mistakenly forced to sit on their hands while he roamed free, most likely racking up other victims.

"Is it enough to reopen the case, though?" she pondered out loud.

"I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that it's enough to at least change the COD from suicide," Henry told her. He tilted his head to the side and studied her for a few moments. "You don't appear to be surprised, Detective. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. Why is that? And what is it that you have failed to share with me?"

Doesn't anything escape your all-seeing eye? she wondered to herself. She could almost be angry with him if he weren't so cute with that smug, lopsided smile of his. "I wanted to see what you came up with before sharing our new information with you."

"Uh, I can get up now, right, guys?" Lucas asked.

"Oh, sorry, Lucas, yes, by all means," Henry replied, chuckling. "Please place this file back into the drawers." Lucas rose and took it from Henry and walked over to refile it. Henry turned back to Jo and motioned toward his office. He followed her inside and he sat down behind his desk while she perched on the edge of it, facing the windows with her arms crossed. She then shared with him what the little girl, Glenda, had told Mike and her earlier that day.

"Sorry to have kept you in the dark," she told him. "But this whole thing is so bizarre, such a departure from the norm, that I wanted to see if you could come up with anything to lend any credence to her claim." She unfolded her arms and left her perch, walking over to take a seat in one of the chairs facing his desk. "Looks like you did. What you and Lucas reenacted mirrors almost exactly what she told us that she 'saw'."

Despite his secret of immortality also being a departure from the norm, he remained skeptical. He'd encountered other so-called mediums and spiritualists before. None of the ones he'd met had ever been able to see into his soul, as they'd all claimed they could do. None of them had been able to "see" how long he had lived. "Are you certain that she was not a witness or not simply relating what someone else had told her?"

"Pretty sure," Jo replied. "Richards died in 2002. She wasn't born until four years later. And the captain over at the 2-4 swears by her. Captain Swain says that this kid, Glenda, has helped them solve several murder cases over the past three years. And if you've ever met Captain Swain, you know that he's a lot like Mike. A real meat-and-potatoes kinda guy, a show-me-the-money kinda guy, a hard-working, down-to-earth - "

"I see your point, Detective," Henry said, interrupting her. "Well. I shall submit my findings in a report to the good Lieutenant and we'll see what happens after that."

vvvv

"Absolutely not!" Lt. Reece told them, shaking her head over their protests. "If Captain Swain wants to run his unit like they're in the X-Files, that's his business. This unit acts on facts, not hocus pocus."

"Well, what about Henry's determination," Jo asserted, "that it would have been impossible for Richards to have even gripped that gun he was killed with, therefore - " Reece cut her off before she could finish.

" - therefore, based on that fact and that fact alone," Reece said, pausing to take a breath, "will I allow you to reopen the case." She scoffed and placed the report back into the file and handed it to Jo. "I trust Henry. Not some pint-sized version of the Long Island Medium."

Jo walked out of Reece's office and over to her own desk where Mike and Henry had been waiting anxiously for her.

"Well?" Mike asked. "Do we got the green light?"

"Yes," she replied. "But we only have a week to come up with the killer. Delgros goes up before the parole board next Friday."

"That gives us only a little more than a week," Mike said, frowning.

"Then the sooner we get started the better," Henry stated. "Let's go catch us a killer."

vvvv

Notes:

Information on brownstones in NY found at gallerylist/70506/new-york-city-brownstones

References to "Forever" TV show S01/E05 The Pugilist Break