“And you think drowning your frustrations is going to help?”

“No, but it will at least get me to stop thinking about it for a few hours.”

“In that case, let me think about it for you.”

“I want to say something, but I don't want it to be construed as offensive.”

“I already know you don't think I'm capable of being as brilliant as you are. It’s not a well-kept secret, in case you didn't know. I just meant that maybe having someone else look at it, having some fresh eyes, would be helpful. You never know what you're not seeing because you've been staring at it for too long.”

“That's not a bad point.”

“See, I have my good qualities.”

“You make it sound like I thought you didn't.”

“I have to check every now and again.”

Kat moved closer, taking the bottle out of Knox's hand before he could pour himself another overflowing glass. Her skin brushed against his, warmer to the touch, as the bottle slid through Knox's fingers, out of his control. She raised the bottle to her lips, taking a long drink, running her finger around the edge of the mouth when she had finished. For a moment, Detective Knox lost track of everything, remembering the power Kat could wield over him.

The level in the bottle continued to drop as Detective Knox recounted as much of the case to Kat as he could think of. She sat, curled on the couch, listening to his words become less defined as the whiskey sedated his tongue. Her face gave no clues regarding the thoughts she was hiding, a fitting mirror of the confusion he felt about the case. Detective Knox finished, waiting for Kat to tell him how simple the answer was, if he could get out of his own way. Neither spoke for minutes, and the silence unnerved Knox more than his own failures. After what seemed an eternity, Kat spoke.

“That certainly is a tough puzzle.”

“Don't I know it.”

“The one thing I don't get is the whole locked room thing. In theory, shouldn't that make it easier to solve the case? There are only so many ways to kill someone in one of them, so that takes away a lot of options.”

“Say that again.”

“There are only so many ways to kill someone in a locked room.”

“You're brilliant.”

“Why yes I am. How so?”

“You're right. There are only so many ways to kill someone, and all of them have to have been written already.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means there's a good chance the answer I'm looking for is in one of the books on the shelf.”

“Can you read when you're drunk?”

“I don't get drunk. I just get less miserable.”

“That's debatable.”

Detective Knox did not hear Kat's quip. He had shifted gears, his focus turned to his shelves of mystery novels. They had always struck him as an odd thing for a detective to collect, but people found it amusing to give them as gifts. The number of his friends and family made for a small collection, one he augmented on his own to look less pitiful. Along the way, he discovered an affinity for collecting, filling shelves with novels he read the last few pages of and nothing else. His memory was not what it once was, and looking at the vertical titles on the spines, none cracked at its center, brought no solutions to mind. Kat watched, slowly finishing the bottle for him, as he tore through book after book, devouring the possibilities.

Sometime later she awoke to find her husband still rifling through the amassed pages. The shelves were bare, the manuscripts piled in heaps all around him, covering the floor with literary murder.

“You haven't found anything yet.”

“No. Not a single one of these can help solve my case. It was a good idea, but I think we have to chalk this up as another failure.”

Detective Knox got up, his knees fighting to raise his weight, and he moved closer to Kat. He sat beside her, a move she welcomed, though it was unexpected. He picked up the bottle, examining the film of liquid still coating the bottom. There was not enough for even the most desperate man to drink. Already frayed, his nerves snapped, his anger getting the better of him. He threw the bottle against the nearest wall, shards of glass raining back at him like sharp rain, the shrapnel of dangerous ideas.

Kat covered her eyes, and when she dared to look again, she saw her husband sitting expressionless, bleeding from an open wound on his hand. She reached out and took his hand, examining the flow of blood. The cut was deep, too severe for her to tend to. Detective Knox could not feel anything, nor did he seem to notice the blood as it poured down his fingers, dripping onto the fake spatter printed on the covers of the books.

“This is bad. We need to get you stitched up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This cut needs to be stitched. We're going to the hospital.”

“Do I have to?”

“This isn't an argument. Someone has to take care of you.”

Chapter 26

Human Machinery

Detective Knox never understood why hospital walls were painted white. They looked sickly, gave no comfort to the addled, and served as a canvas upon which every germ was visible. His only theory that made sense was that in better places, where care is taken, the cleanliness of pure white was supposed to convey a sense of pride and competence. But in the city, where nothing was ever as it should be, attempts to live up to standards only revealed how far short everything fell. In most places, doctors were sworn to an oath to help heal the sick, but in the city doctors were nothing but mechanics, who kept the human machinery running as long as they could, until replacements were brought in.

Anatomy drawings hung from invisible hooks, peeling back the layers and revealing the true nature of the beast. They were intended to be educational, to illustrate in detail the beauty and mystery making up every person. Detective Knox, however, remained unmoved. That webs of blood and nerve could organize into such exquisite networks, that a clump of cells could create the very nature of consciousness, was in a way a miracle. So much of the art was beyond the grasp of all but the most ardent devotees of the form that they hung like grotesques in the eyes of many of the souls unfortunate enough to sit in their presence.

Detective Knox could see the intricate wonder, as he traced his eyes over the route blood would traverse as it carried the nutrients of his liquor-based diet throughout his body, and ultimately flushed it through the wound he was covering. Rather than be awestruck by sights that went beyond his understanding, he looked at those illustrations as virtual autopsies. In them, he could see the mechanisms of murder, the limitless ways life could be ceased by human hands. His mind had been trained to see death, and even when he knew it was not real, the sensation was too familiar and powerful to ignore.

Kat paced the room, her shoes clicking against the tiled floor, the sound echoing off cold walls. She was more nervous than her husband, sharing his compulsion for control. Their circumstances were in the hands of the hospital staff, a reality that did not satisfy Kat. With each step she took, her husband was losing more and more blood, and in the back of her mind she wondered if he had enough of a heart to continue pumping that much of it to waste.

Those thoughts disturbed her, both because she should not entertain such topics, and because she could not deny there was likely to be some truth to them. She loved her husband, and she believed he loved her in return, but theirs was not a normal romance. While friends and fairy tales talked of whirlwinds, their relationship was more practical. She understood it did not make their love any less real, but it did make her wonder if there was an analogue to love they had discovered, instead of what is commonly known.