Before I Sleep by Rachel Lee Page A

his conscience, too. His conscience was already overloaded.
    By the time he pulled into the police-station parking lot on First Avenue Norm, he had a grip on his temper.
    It was a beautiful day, he told himself. The last of the rain had dried up, and for once the air was clear of the heavy humidity. A warm breeze blew, stirring the leaves on the trees, and it was as perfect an August morning as he could have asked for. And while he was working, there would be no room in his thoughts for Danny and Carey.
    These were small blessings for which he decided to be suitably grateful, especially since there was little else in his life to be grateful about right now.
    He took his place at the table in the robbery-homicide squad room, which was really two rooms that used to be one. Some of the guys still groused about how the other room had control of the air-conditioning for both, but Seamus didn't much think about it. It was one of those “what's the point?” issues in his life.
    He scanned his mail and discovered that a defense attorney had subpoenaed him for a deposition next Thursday in an attempted-murder case. He couldn't remember whether it was the domestic violence case or the hit-and-run that had turned out to be deliberate. He made a note on his calendar, notified the State Attorney that he'd be there, and wrote a note to himself to review the file to refresh his memory.
    Gil Garcia slid into the chair beside him. A good-looking man of forty, Gil had inky black hair dashed with gray, the weathered face of a man who'd seen it all, and a warm, disarming smile. The wisdom in the squad room was that Seamus was a bulldog who wouldn't let go of a case, and that Gil could charm anyone into talking.
    Gil's charm hid a tough, life-hardened cop who seldom took anything at face value. He wasn't cynical, the way some cops got, but he wasn't quick to trust.
    Which wasn't a bad thing in a cop, Seamus thought. People lied, and sometimes they lied without any good reason to do so. What's more, if you had two witnesses to an event, you were likely to get two entirely different stories out of them. Hell, they wouldn't even agree on what the perp was wearing.
    Gil had a theory about that, which was probably why he hadn't become cynical. He believed that people didn't really remember events. “They remember their emotional impressions of what happened,” he liked to say. “The brain fills in the details, and as often as not they're wrong.”
    Seamus was inclined to agree with him, which meant there weren't any really good witnesses, there were only people who
appeared
to be good witnesses. Which meant there wasn't any such thing as truth, just something that appeared to be true. Seamus wasn't sure he liked the implications of that, but it was another of those “what's the point?” issues.
    Gil checked his own messages, made a couple of calls, then turned to look at him. “Ready to get to work on the Mayberry case?”
    Seamus patted his pocket to make sure he had his notebook, then shoved himself back from the table. “Let's go.”
    The Mayberry case had been assigned to them just two days ago, when the original detective on the case had had a heart attack. They'd spent the last couple of days getting up to speed from a file review, and from the stricken detective's young partner.
    Three weeks ago, a young man named Doug Mayberry had been shot to death riding his bicycle through a quiet neighborhood. One of the strangest elements of the crime was that no one had seen or heard a thing, even though it had happened in broad daylight and most of the residents were retired people who were home a lot of the time. The young man had bled to death in the street before he was discovered.
    Seamus quite frankly didn't believe that no one had seen or heard anything. The gunshot had to have been audible, even with windows closed and air conditioners running. Surely some retiree had been out working in his yard. Dogs must have barked. The young man had