Chapter 5: Internal

Gentilly

The supervisor called him in the next morning.

It wasn’t a summons. No sharp edge to it. Just a quiet request delivered through channels that pretended not to matter. He walked down the hallway past bulletin boards layered with notices no one read anymore and into an office that smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and old paper.

The supervisor closed the door but did not lock it. That was how these conversations went.

“You’ve been back out there,” the man said, not looking up from the file on his desk.

“Yes, sir.”

“No reason to be,” the supervisor said. “Case is moving where it needs to.”

He stood with his hands at his sides. He had learned long ago that folding your arms made you look defensive and putting them in your pockets made you look guilty.

“I wanted to make sure we had everything,” he said.

The supervisor finally looked at him. His eyes were tired. Not unkind.

“This city’s full of everything,” the man said. “We don’t get to hold on to all of it.”

He understood that too. He had understood it for years. Understanding was not the problem.

“There’s pressure,” the supervisor went on. “Not from upstairs. Just from gravity. Things settle. They’re supposed to.”

“Yes, sir.”

A pause stretched between them. The air conditioner kicked on and rattled.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” the supervisor said. “I want that on record. I just need to know you’re done.”

Done meant more than finished. It meant released. It meant willing to let the file close without your fingerprints on the hinge.

“I’ll finalize,” he said.

The supervisor nodded, relief passing over his face so quickly it might have been imagined. “That’s all.”

Back at his desk, the screen glowed with the open case. Status: Pending Closure.

He read through the report again. Every word was his. Every omission too. The facts lay there clean and contained, stripped of the heat and the voices and the shoe in the back room. It was a good report. Anyone reading it would say so.

He thought of the map. Of the memorial on the pole. Of the woman’s voice when she said people waited.

He could add nothing that would stand. He knew that. But he could choose when to stop.

He clicked through the final fields slowly. Verified evidence transfer. Notified coroner. No further investigative leads.

The cursor blinked at the last box.

Close Case.

He did not click it right away.

Across the room, phones rang. A printer jammed and cursed followed. Life in the building went on the way it always did, driven by the next thing and the next.

He thought of the candle in the church, still burning or already guttered out. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that it had been lit.

He clicked the box.

The system processed it without ceremony. The case status changed. Closed. Archived. Another small square filled in on a screen no one would study closely.

That afternoon, Internal Affairs sent a brief message acknowledging receipt of the closure. No questions. No flags. Just confirmation that things were as they should be.

On his way out, the younger officer caught up to him in the parking lot. “Heard you wrapped that Gentilly thing,” the kid said. “Guess that’s that.”

He nodded. “That’s that.”

The kid looked relieved. He would sleep fine tonight.

Driving home, the sky darkened without rain. The air stayed heavy, unmoved. He passed the turn toward Gentilly and did not take it. That surprised him more than anything.

At a stoplight, he rested his forehead briefly against the steering wheel. He did not feel like a man who had done right. He did not feel like a man who had failed.

He felt like a man who had stayed within the lines and still carried what lay outside them.

That night, he set his alarm for morning. He laid out his clothes. He went to bed.

Sleep came late, but it came.

And when it did, it did not bring answers—only the steady knowledge that tomorrow the radio would crackle again, and he would answer it, and the work would continue, whether the ground remembered or not.