The De­tec­tive re­minds you of your son.

You don’t know why.

She does­n’t talk the same. She does­n’t even act the same. She al­ways seems to be off in her own world.

Per­haps its her eyes. But how could you tell? She wears no glasses, but your son…

She claims she’ll find the killer.

Well, she never claimed that—she does­n’t say much that makes any sort of sense at all—but she is The De­tec­tive, is­n’t she? That’s what she does.

You ex­plain for the dozenth time what hap­pened just hours ago–what has been seared into your mem­ory, recorded on top of the bet­ter times you’d rather re­mem­ber.

She in­ter­rupts.

She says she’s al­ways hated talk­ing with fa­thers, es­pe­cially her own, all those years ago.

That does­n’t make sense! “Years ago? But you can’t be twelve!”

She looks at you strangely.

It’s that same look your son would give you when he thought you were miss­ing some­thing ob­vi­ous. Per­haps you are, or per­haps you’re just miss­ing some­thing ob­vi­ous to her.

And then you process the rest of the sen­tence. She hates talk­ing with you? Your son just was just killed, and she’s sup­posed to help find the mur­derer! She should be ask­ing you all sorts of ques­tions, left right and cen­ter. Per­haps you should even be a sus­pect!

You wish she’d say you were a sus­pect, just so you could know she was do­ing some­thing.

You start yelling about how aw­ful she is, how your son de­serves some re­spect, how he was a won­der­ful boy and why would any­one do this to him?

“Tell me some­thing in­ter­est­ing.”

“You’re The De­tec­tive!” It’s her job to find it in­ter­est­ing!

She gives you that look again, and once more, you flash back to your son. You start to tell the story again, but she ig­nores you.

One of the other de­tec­tives takes things more se­ri­ously. He’s a weird look­ing fel­low: donut frost­ing smeared all over the hints of stub­ble on his up­per lip. Is he try­ing for a mus­tache? He should at least try to keep it clean.

It’s dis­tract­ing, and right now, you want to be up­set. An­gry. Tired. Fear­ful. De­spon­dent.

Not dis­tracted.

“Have you and Adam had any dis­agree­ments re­cently? Fights?”

You freeze.

Yes, of course. Those fights. But you don’t talk about that.

“No.”

“You’re ly­ing.”

It’s The De­tec­tive. She is a ge­nius. It does­n’t mean you have to like her.