"Francis, I am so sorry. I truly have no words."
Mike had lost track of how many times he'd repeated himself over the past hour, patiently resuming his guarded position on the couch, one hand on the widow's shoulder as she wept away.
The modest house just off 82 seemed smaller today, and darker. The curtains were partially drawn, keeping out the sunlight that normally continued to relentlessly heat the building that didn't have good ventilation to begin with.
Like a solemn token of remembrance, Francis had draped Alex Sabatino's old patrol uniform over the adjacent recliner, the dark blue jacket and pants now without their heroic owner.
"Why didn't he say anything? Why, Michael?"
Why had been the defining question since he'd received the heart-breaking phone call of his old friend turned Homicide Detective's untimely passing, the initial review suggesting suicide with his standard-issued .38.
Francis had been downstairs doing the laundry when she heard the shot and immediately ran upstairs, only to find her husband diseased on the couple's bed, a gaping hole in his left temple.
Alex had never been the kind of person he'd suspect of being depressed, much less consider suicide.
Although they hadn't seen each other face to face for several years, they'd talk on the phone regularly, reliving the days they worked together out on the streets before Mike moved to robbery and Alex several miles south, trying to get away from the inner city as much as possible.
It was too ironic that in the end, they both ended up in Homicide.
"Most times there are no answers unfortunately.", he replied on autopilot, his eyes drifting across the small living room to the cradle where a little baby girl was sleeping peacefully, completely unaware of the tragic turns life had taken.
"He loved his family. His life. This doesn't make any sense. It has to be murder, Michael, has to be."
The coroner and lead investigator didn't share that theory, that much Mike had gathered during a few follow-up phone calls he'd made after receiving the tragic news. As a matter of fact, several of Sabatino's colleagues had raised concerns about the seasoned detective's deteriorating mindset over the last few months and thus, sadly, weren't surprised by the outcome.
The puzzling thing was, each person, when asked what they attributed to the decline, couldn't give him a straight answer.
It seemed that whatever had bothered Alex so much that his only solution was to take his own life two days ago; he'd wanted to make sure the secret went to the grave with him.
"Harley and Sebastian are working with the funeral home. To…to make arrangements.", Francis muttered on, her voice grown frail from the strain of losing her husband.
Mike just nodded quietly, at a loss of words still.
As his mind wandered back to the times he spent out on the streets with the outgoing and charming descendant of Italian immigrants; he tried to find flaws in his friends' character, something, anything that could explain what had happened.
And yet it seemed that between the pleasant smile and the cordoned off, blood covered mattress upstairs were secrets that stubbornly eluded his prying questions.
"Francis, if it's alright, I want to stop by downtown, talk to his colleagues some more. See, if there was anything going on in the cases he was working, anything that might explain what happened."
Running a hand over her damp cheeks, the skinny woman in her mid-fifties nodded eagerly, her green eyes never rising from the small magazine table ahead.
"If you do that, you're going to need something else, Michael."
Without elaborating further, she slowly rose from the couch and took a sharp right, disappearing beneath the door to the basement at a slow, but resolute pace.
It had been a peculiar thing to say and Mike leaned back for a moment, frowning, trying to make sense of her strange actions but knowing that shock made some people do bizarre things.
Francis was gone almost ten minutes, long enough for him to consider going after her, when he heard her walk back up the steps, even slower this time, before closing the door behind her again.
In her hands she held a banker's box, the type they used in the bullpen for the forests upon forests of paperwork that came with their jobs.
By the looks of it, it seemed extraordinarily heavy.
Stepping away from the crib where he'd watched the little girl sleep for many long moments, Mike met Francis in the middle of the living room, reaching out to grab the box.
"What is in here?", he asked curiously, surprised that it wasn't nearly as heavy as Francis's strained expression had made it seem.
Then again, there was a difference between physical weight and the burden of memories.
"It's an older case he was working on.", she explained with a shudder, "I don't know much about it, he kept me out of it for one reason or another. But he picked it up eight months ago and just…I guess he couldn't let it go. When he couldn't close the case, they forced him to put it on ice, but Alex…well you know him…he couldn't leave it well enough alone. He had to solve it. So, he kept working it in his free time."
A plethora of warning bells went off all at once in Mike's mind and he nodded in gratitude, before setting the box on the couch, unwilling to peek into it until he was back in the privacy of his car.
"He didn't say anything about the case at all? What happened? Was it a complicated murder case? What was he trying to accomplish?"
"He did not tell me much about it, Michael.", Francis reiterated, her red-rimmed eyes finally drying, "He always tried to keep me and the kids away from the…the cases he worked. He said that these crimes were terrible enough without breaking any more hearts or causing any more nightmares. So, he wanted to…protect us from the vile things he saw."
Understanding the sentiment too well, Mike nodded, covering his mouth with his palm for a moment to regain footing in a personal tragedy he hadn't been quite ready for yet, still feeling effectively swept off his feet.
"How often was he working on this case, you think?"
"Oh, it depended on our evenings. When the kids were home we'd spend time with them of course, and he was always up here for dinner. But there were…there were days when he spent evening after evening down in the basement, going through this box. Sometimes, when I'd go to check on him, he'd have a piece of paper in his hand, a photo, or a hunk of clothing, and he'd just stare at it mindlessly. It was spooky. Downright frightening. And so unlike Alex. It seemed like he completely pored himself over this case and it drove him nuts that he couldn't crack it."
Glancing back over at the white box that stood as a silent memory of Alex's last few days, Mike felt a knot in his throat, wondering just what exactly was in there that could have forced his friend to make such a horrible decision.
"Well, thank you for all the help. And for calling me.", he finally said and cocked his head toward the box, "I am going to take a peek at this. And talk to his colleagues. Hopefully that will shed some light onto what happened. I can't promise I'll find out much bit I will try my best."
"That's good enough for me, Michael. I appreciate you coming down here on a minute's notice. It means a lot."
Reaching forward to rest a warm hand on his forearm, Francis smiled in gratitude, losing that hauntingly sad look in her eyes for the fraction of a second.
"Alex was family.", Mike countered and covered her hand with his, "And I will do anything in my power to get you some answers. "