The fluorescent lights of the precinct squad room hummed a low, persistent note of institutional fatigue, a sound Claire McGuire had come to terms and association with the slow grinding of justice. It was 8:17 AM. She sat at her desk, a fortress of organized case files, her posture so rigid it seemed to defy the very physics of the worn-out office chair. She was staring at her computer screen, a dense financial report from the FBI accountant blurring into a grey smear before her eyes. She had been “reading” the same paragraph about Luxembourgish shell corporations for ten solid minutes, her mind a thousand miles away, trapped in the memory of cheap cotton sheets and the scent of gun oil.
Every nerve ending was hyper-aware, tuned to the specific, heavy sound of the squad room door swinging
